Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/107

Rh have a thousand times wandered through this, the island of my nativity.

While hemmed in on this island by their enemies, the Ojibways lived mainly by fishing. They also practised the arts of agriculture to an extent not since known amongst them. Their gardens are said to have been extensive, and they raised large quantities of Mun-dam-in (Indian corn), and pumpkins.

The more hardy and adventurous hunted on the lake shore opposite their village, which was overrun with moose, bear, elk, and deer. The buffalo, also, are said in those days to have ranged within half a day's march from the lake shore, on the barrens stretching towards the headwaters of the St. Croix River. Every stream which emptied into the lake, abounded in beaver, otter, and muskrat, and the fish which swam in its clear water could not be surpassed in quality or quantity in any other spot on earth. They manufactured their nets of the inner bark of the bass and cedar trees, and from the fibres of the nettle. They made thin knives from the rib bones of the moose and buffalo. And a stone tied to the end of a stick, with which they broke branches and sticks, answered them the purpose of an axe. From the thigh-bone of a muskrat they ground their awls, and fire was obtained by the friction of two dry sticks. Bows of hard wood, or bone, sharp stone-headed arrows, and spear points made also of bone, formed their implements of war and hunting. With ingeniously made traps and dead-falls, they caught the wily beaver, whose flesh was their most dainty food, and whose skins made them warm blankets. To catch the moose and larger animals, they built long and gradually narrowing inclosures of branches, wherein they would first drive and then kill them, one after another, with their barbed arrows. They also caught them in nooses made of tough hide and hung from a strong bent tree, over the road that these animals