ome were ready to
yield up their life-blood, while others were more reluctant. Now one of
the birchen basins was set under each tree, and a hardwood chip driven
deep into the cut which the axe had made. From the corners of this
chip--at first drop by drop, then more freely-the sap trickled into the
little dishes.

It is usual to make sugar from maples, but several other trees were also
tapped by the Indians. From the birch and ash was made a dark-colored
sugar, with a somewhat bitter taste, which was used for medicinal
purposes. The box-elder yielded a beautiful white sugar, whose only
fault was that there was never enough of it!

A long fire was now made in the sugar house, and a row of brass kettles
suspended over the blaze. The sap was collected by the women in tin or
birchen buckets and poured into the canoes, from which the kettles
were kept filled. The hearts of the boys beat high with pleasant
anticipations when they heard the welcome hissing sound of the boiling
sap! Each boy claimed one kettle for his especial charge. It was his
duty to see that the fire was kept up under it, to watch lest it boil
over, and finally, when the sap became sirup, to test it upon the snow,
dipping it out with a wooden paddle. So frequent were these tests that
for the first day or two we consumed nearly all that could be made; and
it was not until the sweetness began to pall that my grandmother set
herself in earnest to store up sugar for future use. She made it into
cakes of various forms, in birchen molds, and sometimes in hollow canes
or reeds, and the bills of ducks and geese. Some of it was pulverized
and packed in rawhide cases. Being a prudent woman, she did not give it
to us after the first month or so, except upon special occasions, and it
was thus made to last almost the year around. The smaller candies were
reserved as an occasional treat for the little fellows, and the sugar
was eaten at feasts with wild rice or parched corn, and also with
pounded dried meat. Coffee and tea, with their substitutes, were all
unknown to us in those days.

Every pursuit has its trials and anxieties. My grandmother's special
tribulations, during the sugaring season, were the upsetting and gnawing
of holes in her birch-bark pans. The transgressors were the rabbit and
squirrel tribes, and we little boys for once became useful, in shooting
them with our bows and arrows. We hunted all over the sugar camp,
until the little creatures were fairly