130 Our Field and Forest Trees 



and some of them are forgetting how to boil it at 

 all. But fifty years ago the Menomini used to 

 make many tons of maple sugar every spring. 



The sugar-boiling season was opened by the 

 arrival of the first crows, flying back from the 

 South. It was eagerly expected, and became a 

 holiday for everybody. Each house-mother had 

 her own sugar hut, built in a grove of maple trees, 

 and she returned to the self-same spot each season. 

 She had provided herself with a number of sap 

 pans and buckets, made of four-cornered sheets 

 of birch-bark, with their edges turned up and their 

 corners folded in. They were tightly stitched 

 into shape with threads of basswood, or with 

 strings obtained by splitting the fine rootlets of 

 the cedar. An Indian woman might have from 

 twelve to fifteen hundred of the birch-bark ves- 

 sels. Wooden sap-troughs were also at hand, 

 made from time to time in the summer season. 



When the crows appeared, everyone was on the 

 lookout. As soon as the necessary camp outfit and 

 sugar-making utensils could be gathered together 

 each family moved to its own sugar grove. There 

 wigwams were put up for sleeping quarters, and a 

 wooden hut, with a roof of bark or mats, to 

 shelter the sugar-makers. 



Sometimes we hear the Indians called lazy, 

 but there is a Menomini story of the maple and 

 the sap, which shows how well the red man knows 

 that work is good for the soul. 



