ABSTRACT
Agriculture was little practised by these savages; at most they grew only maize, an occupation which was left to the women as being unworthy of independent men. Their most violent imprecation against a mortal enemy was that he should be reduced to tilling the soil – the same curse that God called down upon the first man. Sometimes they would stoop to fishing, but their lives and their glory consisted in hunting. The whole nation went off to the hunt as if to war; every family, every hut participated in this search for subsistence. They had to prepare for these expeditions by strict fasts, and they would only set off after invoking the help of the gods. They did not ask for the strength to slay the animals, merely for the good fortune to find them. Apart from the aged who were too feeble to do so, everyone joined in the expedition, the men to kill the game and the women to carry it and dry it. For such a people, winter was the best season of the year: the bear, the roebuck, the stag and the moose were unable to flee with their accustomed speed through four or five feet of snow. These savages, whose progress was blocked neither by bush nor ravine, neither by lake nor river, and who were more fleet of foot than the majority of even swift animals, were rarely unsuccessful in the chase. But failing meat, they lived on acorns; and failing acorns, they ate beans or the inner bark of aspen and birch trees.
