292 
For their food supply tlie Ilurons depended principally on maize, 
with beans and pumpkins as subsidiary crops. Fish was fairly 
plentiful, but meat rather scarce, although in the autumn of the year 
tire hunters drove the white-tailed deer into pens and killed con- 
siderable numbers. Under normal conditions every family was self- 
sustaining: it owned (in usufruct) a plot in the cornfields, obtained 
its own fish, and was allotted a share of the venison secured in the 
comnrunal hunt. The planting, weeding, and harvesting of the crops 
devolved on the women, but the men assisted them occasionally, 
agriculture being no disgrace to an able-bodied Huron hunter as it 
was to an Iroquois. As soon as the planting ended, however, the 
men scattered in all directions to trade with neighbouring peoples, 
or to raid the camps of the Iroquois south of the St. Lawrence, so 
that only a minimum force of warriors remained in the settlements 
to protect them against attack. June to September, in fact, were 
favourite months for tlie Irocpiois themselves to raid the Hurons, 
partly because travel was easiest at that season, and partly because 
the country was then so largely denuded of its men. Both warriors 
and traders returned about September, when the women were harvest- 
ing and storing away the corn; and they devoted the rest of the year 
to hunting and fishing. During November, several parties established 
camps on the islands at the bottom of Georgian bay to capture with 
seines the sturgeon, whitefish, and trout that spawned close to shore 
during that month. Some made brief hunting and fishing excursions 
between December and ^^larch, but the majority loitered around the 
settlements; for tliose months were taken up with festivals and 
council meetings, which kept the people in such constant motion 
travelling from one village to another as to leave little time for other 
pursuits. 
On the whole, the men had more leisure than the women, for 
while the former hunted and fished, traderl with neighbours and 
raided the Iroquois, built houses and canoes and fasliioned their 
various tools and weapons, the women performed all the household 
work as well as the work in the fields. It was they who gathered 
the winter’s supply of fuel,’ who made the clay cooking pots and 
the bark vessels that served for dishes,- the wicker baskets for carry- 
1 111 March and April, because in the laic spring and summer berry picking and the cornTtelds 
engaged all their attention. 
-The men sometimes carved wooden bowls from tree knots, and the\' constructed the.ir bark 
canoes witliout the airl of tlu; 'vomen. Among tlie Algonkians the men maflo the frames of the 
canoes, but the women sewed together the strips of bark. 
