idual characters; some 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 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 cre