BOURGEOIS - Toronto Public Library

338 CHARLES MACKENZIE
while the women, as active as they, were securing all the drift
wood within their reach for fire.
The Mandanes are excellent swimmers; I was no less surprised
to see ill the drift ice the men occasionally leap from one block
to anoLhel', often falling between, plunging under, darting up
elsewhere anrl securing themselves upon very slippery flakes;
yet no serious accident happened. The womell performed their
pal't equally well; you would see them sli p out of their leather
smoks, despising danger, plunge in to the troubled deep to secure
tl1l'ir object. Nor did they seem to feel the smallest inconvenience
from the presence of crowds who lined the beach. The
men and womell of this place do !lot think it necessary to sew
fig leaves together to make themselves aprons, and they are not
ashamed to ::tppear naked in public.
Drift. wood supplies the villages with fuel, which, as well as
the timbers for their hOllses, is dragged home always by the
women. Horses are never employed on these occasions.
Wood is scarce here, which is the Gause that villages are
often removed. A great quantity of dry and green wood is
rl?qui I'ed every winter, the dry for fuel, the green for provender;
a certain portion of poplar branches is provided for each horse,
and the barl{, which the horse clears off, is reckoned little
inferior to oats.
In the spring, so soon as the weather and the state of the
ground will permit, the women repair to the fields, when they
cut the st.alks of the Indian corn of the preceding year and drop
new seed into the socket of the remaining roots. A small kind
of pumpkins which are very productive they plant with a
dibble, and raise the grollnd into hillocks the same as those
about Indian corn. Their kidney beans they plant in the same
manner.
They cultivate a tall kind of sun flower, the seed of which is
reckoned good eating dry and pounded with fat and made into