bark

Pigeon trap made from a wooden frame with bark nets.

"They use the same term for boards stripped of bark, and two of these apacoyas, one on top of the other, to protect one from the rain as well as serve as the best blanket. These are used for the cabins which they use in autumn and winter, even if they leave their canoes, the women carry these on their backs" ("ils disent de mesme pour des planches escorces, et deux de ces apacoya L'un sur l'autre, metent aussi bien a la pluye que la meilleure couverture, se sont les Cabanes don’t ils se servent l'automne et l'hiver, quoy quils quittent leurs pirogues, les femmes les portent sur leurs dos").

"The respective bands assemble together in the spring at their several ordinary places of resort, where some have rude cabins, made of small logs, covered with bark, but, more commonly, some poles stuck in the ground and tied together with pliant slips of bark, and covered with large sheets of bark, or a kind of mats made of flags".

Corn storage is done by means of bark-lined holes in the ground; especially when they have to leave their village or to hide it from enemies, or by drying and hanging bunches of ears, or threshing. "Their corn and other fruits are preserved in repositories which they dig in the ground, and which are lined with large pieces of bark. Some of them leave maize in the ear, which is tufted like our onions, and hang them on long poles over the entry of their cabbins [sic]. Others thresh it out and lay it up in large baskets of bark, bored on all sides to hinder it from heating".

Powdered bark from a certain tree, along with fat and sometimes vermillion are used to preserve their hair. The hair is also sometimes wrapped in an eel or snakeskin, and braided, hanging down to their middle.

Bark string is used in the torture of enemies. 

Paapaamootekutauwee is a game of shooting where a ball of bark is thrown in the air and shot at with an arrow. Betting is involved.

Bark is used to cover a lodge.

Bark was used as a hand-held torch. For example, a bark torch was used in courtship, where a young man would go secretly into the lodge of the parents of the girl of his interest using a bark torch for light.

"If the deceased has been a chief of war parties that have brought in prisoners they plant a tree forty or fifty feet long, which several men go to fetch at the request of the relatives, who give a feast. From this tree they peel the bark and color it with the shades of red and black and make pictures of the chief and the prisoners he has taken, tie a bundle of small logs representing as many persons as he has killed, which they also fasten to the stake and then they plant it beside the tomb" ("Si c'est un chef de partis, qui ayent amene des prisonniers, ils plantent une arbres que plusrs. Hommes vont chercer sur la demande que leur en font les parents par un festin de quarente ou cinqte. pieds de long, duquel ils levent l'ecorce, Et y font des nuances de Rouge et de noir et dessinent son portraits, et les prissoniers qu'il a amene Lie un tas de Buchettes d'autant de personnes qu'il a tue qu'il attachent encore au poteau et ensuitte ils le plantent a coste du tombeau").

Bark was used in cooking white water lily rhizomes (Nymphaea odorata, also called macopines) in a pit. Roots placed on aquatic grass which was laid over hot rocks in a pit, then roots covered with dry grass and bark ("chaque Cabanes met ses Racines en un Endroit les couvrent d'herbes seches et des Ecorces par dessus et ensuite de la terre").

Women peeling bark off trees was observed at a buffalo hunting camp ("plusrs. feemes qui  estoient aux Environs a lever des ecorces vinrent au coup de fusil").

"The women had thrown down their packs and had run, each with an axe, into the woods to cut poles and to peel bark for their summer hunting cabin. As for the kind they use during their winter sojourn, they always carry these along; they are similar to those which they have in summer . . ." ("Les femmes avoient jette leur paquet bas, et avoient courrus avec chacune une hache dans le Bois couper des perches et lever des Ecorces pour leur leur Cabanne de Chasse d'Ete, pour celle qu'ils ont dans leur hivernement, ils les portent toujours avec eux, Et sont pareilles a celles qu'ils ont dans leur Ete").

"This is what the savages of this quarter do to protect themselves against them [mosquitos]. They erect a scaffolding, the floor of which consists only of poles, so that it is open to the air in order that the smoke of the fire made underneat may pass through, and drive away those little creatures, which cannot endure it; the savages lie down upon the poles, over which bark is spread to keep off rain" ("Voicy ce que font les sauvages de ces quartiers pour s'en deffendre; ils elevent un eschaffault don’t le plancher n'est fait que de perches, et par consequent est perce a jour affinque la fumee du feu qu'ils font dessous passe au travers et chasse ces petitz animaux quui ne la peuvent supporter, on se couche sur les perches au dessus desquelles sont des escorces estendues contre la pluye").

" . . .built of bark, supported by a few posts, and sometimes coarsely plastered on the outside with clay . . . These cabbins are from fifteen to twenty foot broad, and sometimes a hundred in length. In this case they have several fires, each fire serving for a space of thirty feet. . . . The doors are only so many pieces of bark, suspended from the top like the ports of a ship".

Women make items from bark.

Bark of trees are used to make dyes for tattooing. "The colours made use of on these occasions [adorning a victim who is about to be sacrificed to the god of war, or painting dead persons] are the same employed in dyeing their skins, and are drawn from certain earths and from the barks of trees".

There is a piece of bark, of Myaamia origin, coated with vermillion, housed at the Glen Black Laboratory in Indiana.

Canoes are made from bark. "Kapia married at Fort Wayne a Wea woman, on the Wabash River on a bark canoe to Wea Plains these went . . ."

There are four Myaamia items made in part or whole of bark housed at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. including: a maple sugar basket, sap tub, model canoes and paddles.

Shingles made of bark for the houses which were fastened to rafters by wooden pins.

Bark is used to draw maps on, using charcoal.

Bark is used to build a fire during a healing ceremony. In the traditional story Medicine Men, Gabriel Godfroy probably relayed to Dunn that medicine men brought patients into their house, made a fire using tree-bark, stripped the patient down to their breech cloth and sat them down in a stool, danced around the fire and threw fire on the patients head but neer burned them. In this way patients were cured of seizures and other ailments.

Upon the death of a man's brother, the Algonquians that are neighbors to the surviving brother offer the deceased two gifts in order to remove the tears of his relatives. A mat is used to lie on and a piece of bark to shelter the corpse from the weather, in this process. "In the speech which they [neighbors] accompany this gift they declare that it is made in order to wipe away the tears of his relatives; and that the mat which they give him is for him to lie on, or [that they give--Blair's note] a piece of bark to shelter his corpse from the injurious effects of the weather".

Algonquians use bark to fill in the wound made from an awl, during ear-piercing which is part of a ritual for five or six month old children. "After he [the juggler] has ended his pouch a flat bodkin made a bone, and a stout awl, and with the former pierces both ears of the child, and with the awl its nose. He fills the wounds in the ears with little rolls of bark, and in the nose he places the end of a small quill, and leaves it there until the wound is healed by a certain ointment with which he dresses it. When it has healed, he places in the aperture some down of the swan or the wild goose".

During hunting, women collect poles and bark and makes a lodge as soon the man has prepared a place for the kettle two poles to support a cross-piece of wood and gone off to hunt.

"All these nations [at what is now Detroit, a historic melting pot of native communities] make a great many bark canoes, which Are very profitable for Them. They do this Sort of work in the summer. The women sew these canoes with Roots; The men cut and shape the bark and make gunwales, cross-pieces, and ribs; the women gum Them. It is no small labor to make a canoe, in which there is much symmetry and measurement; and it is a curious sight".

Peoria observation of Nez Perces when they were held in Miami, OK:  "In the spring, when the bark would slip easily, they would select their tree and cut it and then carefully remove the bark and sew the ends together. This was waterproofed and across the center to hold the sides apart they would put a hole to make it as wide as they wanted."