collected the sap of the maple for its sugar, but did not value it as 
highly as some of the Algonkian tribes. The Ojibwa of lake Superior, 
for example, stored it away in quantity for the lean months of 
winter.^ Nut-trees, and the maple disappeared north of the low- 
lands of eastern Canada, and fruits and berries became gradually 
scarcer. The Cree and the Indians of the ^Mackenzie River basin 
gathered crowberries, cranberries, and a few other varieties; in times 
of scarcity they sometimes subsisted on reimleer moss; but the supply 
of these articles was generally so scanty that it did not affect the 
regular diet. Speaking broadly, it would ajq^ear that roots and wild 
fruits formed a considerable portion of the food supply in British 
Columbia, diminished in value eastward, and in the northern parts 
of Canada ceased to possess any real inqmrtance. 
.'50203 
Red eldeiberrics drying in tlie .smi, Rella Coola. (Photo hi/ Tfnrlan I. Smith.) 
In spite of the wild fruits that they collected, and the vast 
quantity of maize, beans, and squaslies they harvested, neither the 
Iroquoian tribes nor their neighbours could live on vegetable pro- 
ducts alone. Meat, or fish, seems to be a physiological necessity in 
cold climates, and in the absence of domesticated animals or of wool- 
1 Ibid. p. 286. The Indians solidified the sap in several ways. They boiled it in clay pots directly 
over the fire, and in vessels of birch-bark by means of hot stonc.s; they froze it in shallow basins and 
threw away tlie ice; and they poured it slowly over a sheet of birch -bark placed in warm sunlight 
or near a fire, when it hardened to the consistency of treacle and finally crystallized. 
