time, and the ice they break and cast out of the vessela. I 
asked them if they were not throwing away the sugar. 
They said no, it was water they were casting away ; sugar 
did not freeze, and there was scarcely any in that ice." 
Among many if not all the Indians inhabiting the North- 
ern United States, maple sugar was not merely a luxury 
— something eaten because it was toothsome — but was 
actually an important part of their support. Mixed with 
pounded, parched corn, it was put tip in small quantities 
and was a concentrated form of nutriment, not much less 
valuable in respect to its quality of support than the 
pemmican which was used almost down to &ax own 
times. 
Among all the older writers who had much familiarity 
with the customs of the Indians, accounts are given of 
the manufacture of sugar, and this custom was so general 
that among many tribes the month in which the sap ran 
best was called the sugar month. By the Iroquois the 
name Ratirontaks, meaning tree eaters, was applied to the 
Algonquin tribes, and an eminent authority, Dr. Brinton, 
has suggested that they were probably "s® called from 
their love of the product of the sugar maple." On the 
other hand, Mr. A. F. Chamberlain has very plausibly 
said "That it is hardly likely that the Iroquois dis- 
tinguished other tribes by this term, if its origin be as 
suggested, since they themselves were sugar makers and 
eaters." A more probable origin of the word is that given 
hy Schoolcraft, in substance as follows ; "Ratirontaks, 
whence Adirondacks, was applied chiefly to the Montag- 
nais tribes, north of the St. Lawrence, and was a derisive 
term indicating a well-known habit of these tribes of eat- 
ing the inner bark of trees in winter when food was 
scarce, or when on war excursions." This habit of eating 
the inner bark of trees was, as is well known, common to 
many tribes of Indians, both those who inhabit the country 
where the sugar maple grows and also those in other parts 
of the country where the maple is unknown. 
On the Western prairies sugar was made also from the 
box elder, which trees were tapped by the Indians and the 
sap boiled down for sugar, and to-day the Cheyenne In- 
dians tell us that it was from this tree that they derived 
all the sugar that they had until the arrival of the white 
man on the plains, something more than fifty years ago. 
It is interesting to observe that in many tribes to-day 
the word for sugar is precisely the word which they ap- 
plied to the product of the maple tree before they knew 
the white man's sugar. It is interesting, also, to see that 
among many tribes the general term for sugar means 
wood or tree water — that is to say, tree sap. This is true 
of the Omahas and Poncas, according to J. O. Dorsey, and 
also of the Kansas, Osage and Iowa, Winnebago, Tus- 
carora and Pawnee. The Cheyennes, on the other hand, 
call it box elder water. Mr. A. F. Chamberlain, who has 
gone with great care into the question of the meaning of 
the words which designate the maple tree and its product, 
is disposed to believe that the name of the maple means 
the tree — in other words, the real or actual tree, or the 
tree which stands above all others. 
Another evidence of antiquity of sugar making among 
the Indians is found in the fact that a great wealth of 
myth and folk-lore has grown up about this tree. A story 
is told by the Ojibwas concerning the change of a certain 
Nishosha, who was a magician, into a maple tree, and 
another Ojibwa story, quoted as having been told to 
Dr. W. J. Hoffman some years ago, is as follows: "One 
day Nokomis, the grandmother of Manabush, was in the 
forest, and accidentally cut the bark of a tree. Seeing 
that a thick syrup exuded from the cut, she put her finger 
to the substance, and upon tasting it found it to be very 
sweet and agreeable. She then gave some of it to her 
grandson, Manabush. who liked it very much, but thought 
if the syrup ran from the tree in such a state it would 
cause idleness among the women. He then told Nokomis 
that in order to give his aunts employment and keep 
them from idleness, he would dilute the thick sap, where- 
upon he took a vessel of water' and poured it over the 
tops of the trees, and this reduced the sap to its present 
consistency. This is why the women have to boil down 
the sap to make syrup." 
Mark Morrow* 
RocHESTKR, N. H. — Editor Forest and Stream: I see 
in the issue dated Feb. 23 Mr. C. H. Ames makes an 
inquiry for the name of a story. Some time ago he wanted 
the source of a bear story, and I was fortunate enough to 
remember it. The same luck again. The story he asks 
for is named "Nick Whifiies," It was published years 
ago in the New York Ledger and is to be had now in 
book form — at least I have seen it within a year or two. 
Mark Marrow was one of the characters; Chris Carrier, 
Le Loup, a Delaware Indian and a fighting Quaker, whose 
name I can't remember, were some more. The location 
and time of the story was laid in the Northwest at the 
time of the rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Comnany 
and the Northwest Fur Company. He speaks of Dog- 
Ribbed Tndigns. The authority I have names them Dog- 
Rib, a family of the Athabascan tribe, or family of 
tribes. I never have seen or read Hearne's Journey, but 
have seen quotations and references to it, so can't say 
that the Mark Morrow ig the s^me; but the one I do 
}^Q^ is as above. E. C. Neae, 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The Stone Whale of Safata. 
In the declining years of the last century, while yet 
Laupepa sat on the throne of his ancestors, the Malietoas, 
whose scepter was destined to fall from the feeble hands 
of his son and impermanent suscessor, Tanumafili. in this 
posture of the affairs of the Samoan kingdom, it befell 
that an embassy of the ruling lords of Safata toiled across 
the mountain chain which accentuates the east and west 
extent of the Island of Upolu, an embassy directed to the 
representative of the United States, bearing gifts and 
empowered to negotiate a matter which, while not political 
in itself, would yet call for the exercise of the- not in- 
considerable amount of diplomatic talent in the possession 
of these embassadors. 
It is not often that these narratives of jungle heights 
and South Sea depths offend through any such attempt at 
the grand style of historical prose. But it might have 
been done ; only the saving grace of a keen sense of the 
ridiculous has prevented. Taken seriously — ^and that is 
how Samoa has too often been taken — Samoa is a tragedy ; 
it is the part of wisdom to see it for the farce that it 
must ever continue to be so long as its chiefs are allowed 
to think themselves a people of peculiar dignity and 
free from any necessity to earn their living.- No little of 
the troubles which Samoa has brought to civilized people 
has arisen from the mistake of dealing with its petty 
squabbles as though they were worthy the pen of the 
historian. 
Reduced to the verities of plain statement, the introduc- 
tory period means no more solemn a matter than that 
two chiefs of the Safata district on the south coast of 
Upolu had come on a begging expedition to obtain funds 
tward the completion of the new/ church which was to 
replace the one that had been destroyed in the last war, 
and was destined in its own turn to be destroyed in the 
war about to come, that being the common fate of all the 
Samoan churches. Incidentally, these two chiefs intended 
to get any other benefit for themselves or their community 
that could be acquired by the island arts of compliment 
and cajolery. It being impossible to conceive of a Samoan 
as ever informal, it should scarcely be necessary to add 
that the two chiefs were attended by the proper allow- 
ance of talking men to make their speeches and a number 
of bearers who carried the presents of live stock and 
vegetables which etiquette required them to offer us, and 
for which the return presents of biscuits and cans of 
corned beef would make payment at a somewhat ex- 
oi-bitant rate, as is usually the case in such interchanges. 
In the course of a few hours of making and hearing 
long speeches, the two chiefs, Te'o and Tuia, managed to 
obtain a satisfactory assurance that a sufficient contribu- 
tion should be made toward the completion of their 
church. This was a well recognized tax on the consular 
corps, and was generally accounted for as an item of the 
political corruption fund, it being certain that any village 
to which had been denied the contribution for the building 
or repair of its church would go over to the rebel side 
Avithin a month. But of much more importance to Te'o 
and Tuia was the acceptance of their invitation that we 
should pay a formal visit to their village of Vaie'e — in 
fact, a regular "malanga" with the fixed duration of three 
days of entertainment. It was impossible for any of the 
officials to go on malangas for less than $50 in wages 
and the necessary presents, and when consuls were green 
to the ways of the land the expense might far exceed that 
figure. The presents amounted to a considerable item in 
the village visited, and while they were religiously repaid 
by return presents, the exchange was handicapped by the 
fact that all Samoan presents were the products of the 
soil, and cost the donors nothing, and the Papalangi 
presents were such testimonials of esteem as kegs of salted 
beef and tins of biscuit, which grow on no trees and cost 
no small figure when bought of the traders on the Apia 
beach. A village that was visited by a malanga of one or 
other of the high officials was the envy of its whole dis- 
trict, and was considered to have done very well indeed. 
When Te'o and Tuia found their invitation accepted they 
felt the glow of the utmost satisfaction. ICnowing the 
possibilities of slips 'twixt cup and lip, they sent a runner 
across the mountain with the joyful news and decided to 
accept the hospitality of Vaiala for the few days which 
must intervene before our departure to visit their village. 
Thus they prevented our being side-tracked through the 
scheming of any envious politician from some slighted 
village, a thing that experience had shown was always 
more or less possible. 
This is not meant to be an account of the malanga; it 
differed in no particular from other such trips already 
sufficiently described. Its only point of difference lay in 
the finding of a local legend and the proof of the same 
lying at the bottom of the beautiful bay on whose shore 
the days of the visit were spent. 
It also discovered another trail across the Tuasivi, one 
that was somewhat longer in point of actual distance^ and 
rose to a higher altitude on the cone of Mount Suisenga, 
but which had the great advantage that it skirted the 
morass on the summit plateau into which the Ala Sopo 
plunged for a mile of mud march. It was not on this 
account that Te'o and Tuia guided us along the other 
trail. They thought nothing at all of the mud or the 
breakneck scramble that lay beyond where the trail found 
its way down the center of the Papapapa cascade. But 
they did mind Suatele, the head chief of the whole dis- 
trict on the south coast. He had established himself as a" 
planter on the very summit of the Tuasivi at the edge of 
the morass, and the trail went by his door. He had the 
most suave gentility imaginable, and he never asked any 
questions, but he had the most observing eyes; nothing 
escaped his vision that went over the mountain along his 
trail, and when he saw anything that he thought he 
could put to some use, a very polite message was received, 
stating just what he fancied and claiming it by virtue of 
his superior rank. It was the part of -wisdom for Te'o 
and Tuia to wait our pleasure and guide us over the road 
that was not under Suatele's very eyes. Kegs of beef are 
hard enough for Samoan s to get, without having them 
snatched away by the order of higher chiefs. 
fhe Vaie'? frpm which the invitation ha:4 coma— 
[March i6„ 1901, 
Vaie'e-i-uta, that is Vaie'e inland as opposed to Vaie'e-i- 
tai, which lay across the bay on the edge of the ocean — is 
as beautifully situated as any place of human habitation in 
the South Seas, Here was Safata Bay, a safe though 
shallow harbor. On the east of the bay the beach stretched 
away for glistening miles of clean sand, and offshore 
nearly two miles away was the surf-marked line of the 
barrier reef, and in the intervening space good channels 
for such small craft as were likely to seek that still-water 
sailing. On the west of the bay there was little reef, and 
after the next point had been rounded there was nothing 
but the iron-bound coast of Aana, which for mile after 
mile offers no refuge for such boats as may be endangered 
in the perils of the open ocean. Looking shoreward from 
the sea there is nothing to cause one to suspect that behind 
the bright sand beach which makes the eastern cape of 
Safata Bay there lies a landlocked body of water. The 
entrance cannot be seen even from the bay until one gets 
fairly abreast of it. Except on just one bearing the en- 
trance looks to be no more than a tide chaimel into 
the muddy recesses of the mangrove swamp in which 
there is nothing more interesting than the scrambling of 
fighting crabs or the oysters growing in clusters on the 
branches of the trees like some sort of marine grapes. 
On that one bearing, however, and just for a fleeting 
moment, the eye will be caught by the beauty of the placid 
inner bay and the commanding site of a large Samoan 
house set on the crest of a rocky bluff some thirty feet 
above the \vater. If the beauty of this single glimpse 
proves sufficient to attract the voyager to follow the chan- 
nel before him, he will be well repaid when he has made 
his way between the mangrove swamp on the one hand 
and the cocoanut groves of the sand beach on the other. 
Then for the first time he discovers that this entrance, 
not much more than wide enough for two boats to pass 
without tossing oars, leads to an inner bay extending for 
nearly a mile on the left hand, for twice that on the right 
hand and about half a mile across. As he rows across 
it to the village that lies at the foot of the little bluff, 
whose crowning edifice has attracted him at the first 
glimpse, the village of Vaie'e-i-uta, he cannot fail to 
remark the appearance here and there of pools in the 
water of concentric ripples as though something were boil- 
ing up from below. If he follow the example set by his 
Samoan boatmen and 'scoop up the water to his mouth, he 
will find that from the salt sea he is quaffing water as 
fresh and clear and cold as from the highest mountain 
spring. As he comes to land beneath the bluff of the 
village he will see many springs issuing from the rocks 
above high tide level or between the tides, thus showing 
the existence of a very considerable underflow, which 
here comes to the surface. A closer search will disclose 
the fact that through these springs, both on the shore 
and submarine, so much fresh water enters this inner 
bay as to prevent the coral from growing. The bottom, 
then, of this inner bay is of thick, black mud, with re- 
curring patches of black volcanic pebbles. These facts 
should be sufficient for any person at all skilled in the 
physics which go to mold the earth's surface to enable 
him to tell how this inner bay happened to be at this 
particular spot, and ho-w long it will probably be before 
the bay turns into flat areage of rich soil. But the 
Samoans are not at all scientific observers ; their explana- 
tion had nothing to do with physical geography, but it 
was so satisfying to their own ideas of the supernatural 
that it was only with difficulty that I was able to dig out 
the story, the people professing the missionary religion in 
fair weather, but at night or in the gale cherishing a 
sneaking suspicion that the old gods have not left the 
country or consented to the new ideas which seem to have 
ousted them. 
With every acknowledgment of the desire of Vaie'e to 
make the visit enjoyable, it is fair to confess that there 
is a most tiresome sameness about these set visits. Daily 
for the three days there is the same formal drinking of 
kava and the making of ceremonious speeches. Daily 
there is the same underdone pig baked whole, proclaimed 
to the guests and villagers with much loud shouting; the 
same fish toasted in green leaves; the same sprinting 
chickens stuffed with a cobble stone apiece, and from the 
general flavor roasted with the feathers on. By day there 
is the unflagging political conference with the village 
elders that never leads to anything; by night the dreary 
round of native dances. At the end of this visit the 
pigeons had retreated so far toward the mountain summits 
that it would have been an all-day affair to get near them. 
At the upper end of the inner bay there was a fine grassy 
marsh much affected in the proper season by the ducks, 
but this was not the proper season. Along the shore 
scurried any quantity of birds that seemed to promise 
well. They looked like snipe, and good large snipe at 
that; they were manifestly plump and in good condition 
and clearly shootable. Their only unfavorable qualiiica- 
tion was that after they had been beautifully broiled they 
tasted like salt codfish that had fallen on evil days. Even 
the Samoans, who have the most catholic taste in food, 
after politely nibbling the birds, confessed that they were 
too strong to be palatable. The only sport left was to go 
outside and fish. The need of the boat for this purpose 
brought me to my first knowledge that there was a special 
Vaie'e story that was worth looking into. 
Although the trip had been made afoot and across the 
mountain, the boat's crew had gone along to carry the 
precious kegs of beef and other presents. From the trader 
across the bay they had borrowed a boat for my fishing; 
and while it -was by no means so commodious or so clean 
as our own trim craft, it served, and there were no good 
clothes to think of. While they were rowing across the 
inner water and toward the passage out into Safata 
Bay, one of the boys (Tulifau, I imagine, since he was 
the acknowledged poet of the crew) began to improvise a 
song with local application. Now that is a very nice thing 
to do in Samoa, and is very highly thought of by the per- 
son or community thus honored, and any person who has 
a laureate under wages who is capable of doing this spon- 
taneous poetry is greatly to be congratulated. Well, one 
verse passed off very well, and it was stuffed full of com- 
plimentary things about the village. But the next verse 
was suddenly chokM off by one of the Vaie'e men who 
was in the boat with us, to give us the benefit of his local 
experience in the choice of fishing grounds. He said 
something to the improvisator, something which I could 
not catch; and the poet stopped , in short order. Then 
Vaepga up in tht bow started up some common boat song 
