11 
beaver and bear only after the snow disappeared; for the Indians could 
discover comparatively few bear dens when the animals were hibernating, 
and until they obtained steel tools it was only with much labour that they 
could break open a beaver’s house through a 3-foot covering of ice. They 
could secure fish at all seasons, but the winter spearing through holes in 
the ice yielded a very slim harvest. Pickerel ascended the streams in large 
numbers early in the summer, but were not numerous at other seasons; 
whitefish, sturgeon, and trout kept to the deep, open waters of the great 
lakes, whither the Indians could not follow them, until the autumn, when 
they approached the shore for spawning. 
This variety and seasonal nature of their foods kept the Indians in 
constant motion. The hunting and the fishing grounds, the maple groves, 
the patches of wild berries, and of wild rice, lay scattered in different 
places often many miles apart. At certain seasons a whole band might 
camp together for a few days or weeks, but then the exigencies of the food 1 
supply would bring about its dispersal into small groups of perhaps four 
or five families each. These small groups again would dissipate, and the 
families roam about individually, but keep in touch with neighbouring 
families through certain signs and signals, of which the following are 
examples: 
(а) Draw a picture message on birch bark and suspend the birch bark to a tree 
along the trail. Should there be danger ol enemies lurking in the vicinity 
place the birch bark on the ground and partly cover it with a stone. Friends 
will be looking for it, but enemies will never suspect it. 
(б) To indicate that one has passed a place: lay a bough on the ground and 
weight it down with a stone, 
(c) To indicate the direction one has taken: plant a stick in the ground and 
attach to its end a twig pointing in the required direction. 
(cZ) When other families are in sight, but out of hearing (as across a bay) : tie 
a glowing coal to the head of an arrow and shoot it into the air. An arrow 
shot straight up means that the archer is not moving camp; shot north, it 
signifies he is moving north. 
With a life so migratory the Indians naturally required a certain 
number of terms for measuring distances and time. They had no fixed 
measure of length like our mile, so they described the distance between 
two places as the number of camps a man would erect in passing from 
one to the other, or the number of times he would sleep on the journey. 
If the jouniey could be compassed in less than a day then the distance 
was so many hand-stretches, one hand-stretch (i.e. the distance between 
the tip of the thumb and the tip of the outstretched little finger) being 
one-fourth of the arc of the sky from the horizon to the zenith, or, con- 
verted into a time scale:, from one to one and a half hours. When travel- 
ling by canoe a man might reckon the distance as so many pipes, i.e., the 
number of pipefuls of tobacco he might have smoked on the journey; or, 
if the distance were very short, he might say “My pipe had hardly burned 
out when I reached the place.” But this measurement of distance developed 
only after the establishment of the European fur trade, when tobacco 
became plentiful and smoking ceased to be an exclusively religious cere- 
mony. 
To keep track of the days the Parry Island Ojibwa sometimes cut 
notches on a stick, or marked it with charcoal. In summer an alternative 
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