Shirts and Skins

Even before the Puritans met any Native Americans face-to-face, they had made up their minds: Indians were filthy and beast-like, with an appetite for human flesh. What they saw when they did encounter natives, (while they found no evidence of cannibalism), served to shore up their wariness. Natives didn’t build and accumulate furniture; they didn’t tend animals. They didn’t have beds or linens. They displayed their bodies, favoring nudity and animal skins over proper English clothing. They referred to bodily functions matter-of-factly. They didn’t swaddle their babies and allowed their toddlers to run around naked. They had a habit of frequent bathing, exposing their nude bodies directly to the air and water—and to the view of others. And to top it off, they were a graceful, healthy, attractive people. As the Englishman John Josslyn, wrote, the women were “broad Breasted, [with] handsome straight Bodies, and slender . . . Their limbs cleanly, straight, and of a convenient stature, generally, as plump as Partridges, and. .. of a modest deportment.” This attraction made them all the more dangerous to the Puritans; Indians, they knew, were a serious threat to the morals and piety of the Puritan community.

At the same time, the New England natives had reservations about the personal habits of the colonists. English clothing, while it was useful to wear for ceremonies or as a sign of friendship when meeting with the English, was unpleasantly confining, often uncomfortable, and even hazardous. It threatened to soften their robust bodies which had hardened through regular exposure to fresh air. It was restricting to movement when working and harbored lice and other parasites. It hindered bathing and anointing skin with moisturizing and protective agents. The English habit of wearing long linen shirts (or shifts) under their outer clothes to absorb sweat and dirt held no attraction. They did not want to follow the English practice of washing linens regularly. The prospect of regularly sweating over kettles of boiling water and scrubbing out stains with harsh soaps did nothing to increase the appeal of adopting English clothing. Natives had no desire to give up their skins for English linen shirts.

The two cultures had profoundly different approaches to personal cleanliness. Both seemed practical in the context which generated them. But when circumstances brought them into close proximity, these differences became one more opportunity for misunderstanding. It took generations for these differences to fall away and make room for a new synthesis.

Yet now we live in a time when most people accommodate to seasonal changes by exposing more or less of our bodies to the open air. We anoint our skin with moisturizers. We tend animals in our homes and accumulate furniture. We speak matter-of-factly about bodily functions. We no longer think regular baths are dangerously sensual. We regularly bathe and we also wear sweat-absorbent underclothes that require us to regularly do laundry.

The daily habits of the culture we grow up in will always seem normal to us. But we humans are wired so that, when we encounter people whose customs are different than our own, we gradually adopt the ones that enhance our lives. It’s only when we encounter people whose customs are quite different than ours that we can judge the relative worth of our own habits.

John Pory’s Letter

Plimoth Plantation Palisade

For three years John Pory served as Secretary to the Governor and Council of Virginia.  On his way home to England in 1622, he stopped to visit the fledgling Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.  A perceptive, scholarly man, Pory recorded his observations in letters two years after the colony was founded.  In his descriptions of the native peoples and colonists in the area, he demonstrated an awareness of the complexities of the two cultures, and the possible challenges to forging a peaceful coexistence. He contrasts New England with Virginia, and finds Virginia wanting.  He praises the New England colonists for their morality and industry, expressing the wish the Virginians were “as free from wickedness and vice as they are in this place,” and admires the strength of their buildings, particularly the “substantial palisade” and “a blockhouse which they have erected in the highest place in town in mount their ordnance upon.”  He comments on the abundance of seafood and the wholesomeness of the climate.  And then he describes the natives:

“The people seem to be of one race with those in Virginia, both in respect of their qualities and language.  They are great lovers of their children and people, and very revengeful of wrongs offered.  They make their canoes, their arrows, their bows, their tobacco pipes and other implements far more neat and artificially than in those parts.  They dress, also, and paint leather; and make trousers, buskins, shoes with far greater curiosity.  Corn they set none in their parts toward the   north, and that is the cause why Indian corn, pease and such like is the best truck [barter] for their skins—and then in winter especially, when hunger doth most pinch them. . . Their babes here also they bind to a board and set them up against a wall, as they do in the south.  Likewise, their head they anoint with oil mixed with vermillion; and are of the same hair, eyes and skin that those are of.”  He also describes the history of the political machinations between tribes and between colonists and natives and is open about the damage created by sea captains who took Indians captive in 1614 and 1620 and sold them into slavery.

Of course, Pory wrote his letter more than fifty years before tensions between colonists and natives had grown to the point of open violence.  But I find his account especially noteworthy because he puts the New England colonists and natives in a larger context.  Even in those days when transportation and information flow was so slow that we would find it unbearably frustrating, he was able to see the larger picture.  He was able to see the virtues and value the practices of people he did not live among.  It suggests he nurtured the seeds of a global mindset—a way of seeing the world beyond immediate, personal interests.  A mindset that we desperately need today.

 

 

 

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Letter at the Bridge

Indians Attacking a Garrison House

At dawn on February 21, 1676, some three hundred native warriors under the leadership of the Nashaway Nipmuc sachem Monoco, attacked and burned the town of Medfield in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Medfield was a”frontier town,” about twenty-miles from Boston, established to buffer the more populous towns on the coast from the “Indian-infested wilderness.” According to contemporary sources, the natives had infiltrated the town at night, quietly making their way through woodlots and bushes and taking cover overnight. As the Reverend William Hubbard wrote in 1677:  “some getting under the Sides of the Barns and Fences of their Orchards … where they lay hid under that Covert, till break of Day, when they suddenly set upon sundry Houses, especially those houses where the Inhabitants were repaired to Garrisons…some were killed as they attempted to fly to their Neighbors for Shelter: some were only wounded, and some taken alive and carried Captive.”

Seventeen people were killed. One woman was killed while fleeing with her infant. The baby was left for dead, but survived. Another woman, Elizabeth Paine Adams, survived the attack but was killed that night in the minister’s home when a firearm accidently discharged from the floor below. Increase Mather found the incident instructional: “It is a sign that God is angry,” he wrote, “when he turns our weapons against ourselves.”
Forty or fifty buildings were destroyed, although all the garrison houses survived. After plundering the town, the natives withdrew, crossing bridges over the Charles River. It was on one of these bridges that a letter was posted, a letter expertly designed to terrify its English readers:

Know by this paper, that the Indians that thou hast provoked to wrath and anger, will war this twenty one years if you will; there are many Indians yet, we come three hundred at this time. You must consider the Indians lost nothing but their life; you must lose your fair houses and cattle.

Scholars believe that this remarkable letter was written by James Printer, a Hassanamesitt Nipmuc who was apprenticed to the printer Samuel Green in Cambridge. A brilliant and educated “praying Indian,” he fled his apprenticeship when hostilities broke out, and joined Metacomet’s massed forces in what is now central Massachusetts. His letter points to one of the most distinctive differences between the English and native cultures—the value placed on property. While the Indians lived semi-nomadic lives, quickly erecting shelters and discarding them when they were no longer useful, the English spent many of their resources constructing permanent buildings in which to live and house their animals, which they depended on to supply labor and food.

The letter must have sent a chill through its English readers. It signaled a resilience and determination to resist further English incursion. And—more importantly—it revealed an astute and contemptuous grasp of material English values. If the English did not know before this letter, they certainly knew after reading it that their enemy was not the primitive society of barbarians they’d assumed. It appeared their enemy had an uncanny ability to see into their souls.

Did the Puritans Party?

We don’t usually think of Puritans as having much fun in life. The stereotype of them is serious to the point of depressing: grim, sexually repressed, and pious, spending what little free time they had praying and reading the Bible. But, as is usually true with stereotypes, that image doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In fact, the Puritans were not ascetics, but embraced joy, recreation and leisure. They wore colorful clothing, not the black-and-white garb that we so often see in modern depictions. They enjoyed good food and drink and celebrated sexual gratification within the confines of marriage. They liked music and played instruments and sang on social occasions. And—sometimes—they danced.

Dancing was a bit of a challenge for the Puritans. The Bible didn’t prohibit it, and Biblical characters, such as David, are described as dancing before the Lord. Since the Puritans looked to the Bible for their behavioral cues, they weren’t about to prohibit dancing. But they were wary of it, because they believed that dancing could lead to “sin and sloth.”

So they put restrictions on it, especially on “lascivious dancing,” which they defined as any dancing in which men and women touched each other. They also forbid any mixing of dancing and alcohol consumption. So dancing wasn’t organized in the early days of the New England colonies. Instead it was done spontaneously at home or outdoors at celebrations. But dancing didn’t go away, and after 1700 the restrictions were relaxed to accommodate mixed dances. Country [contra] dancing became acceptable and popular.

As time passed, wedding receptions became important social occasions, often including dancing. The well-to-do gave dinner parties for visiting merchants. They were careful not to let things get out of hand, but they were flavored with gaiety and relaxation.

After all, the Puritans were people. And people like to party.

Mary Rowlandson’s “Removes”

Earlier this week, I visited my son in central Massachusetts. Though the day was sunny, they’d accumulated about a foot of snow, which made the thought of walking through the woods (without snowshoes) distinctly unappealing. Yet it brought to my mind Mary Rowlandson and the eleven weeks she spent as captive to hostile natives.  I knew that we were in the general area where Mary Rowlandson’s captivity took place, but I didn’t realize how close my son lived to one of the important locations until I looked at an old map.

The map was the attempt by one author, based on Rowland’s descriptions in her captivity narrative, to locate all of her twenty “removes.”  After attacking Lancaster in February of 1676, the natives marched their captives through central and western Massachusetts, and north into Vermont, and New Hampshire, before returning to release Rowlandson and others near Mount Wachusett.  Each “remove” was a place they stopped and stayed one or more nights.  Rowlandson used the removes as a device to organize her narrative.  The third remove – not far from my son’s home – was the Nipmuc winter encampment at Menameset – two large villages about a mile apart on what is now the Ware River.

English accounts of the time estimated that there were over 2,000 natives gathered at Menameset when Rowlandson and the other captives arrived.  Winter storms had provided the extra security of deep snow.  Rowlandson, who had been carrying her mortally wounded daughter, Sarah, on the forced march through the snow since the attack three days before, was overwhelmed and close to fainting at the sight of the great number of natives.  She was sold by her captor to a Narragansett sachem and given shelter, where she desperately struggled to care for her dying child without the customary support of friends and family or the herbs and medicines she was used to.  Instead, she was repeatedly threatened.  She describes her experience in Menameset in her narrative: “I sat much alone with a poor wounded Child in my lap, which moaned night and day, having nothing to revive the body, or cheer the spirits of her, but in stead of that, sometimes one Indian would come and tell me in one hour, that your Master will knock your Child in the head, and then a second, and then a third, your Master will quickly knock your Child in the head.”  Sarah died of her wounds eight days after the attack, and was buried by the natives in an unmarked grave.

Rowlandson stayed in Menameset for about two weeks, until the natives divided into small groups and fled west, eluding the English soldier who pursued them. It was a harrowing experience – not just for the English captives, but for the native Nipmucs as well.  They had welcomed their allies, the Narragansett and Wampanoag, into their midst, doubling or tripling their population.  But they didn’t have the food or space to adequately support such numbers.  On top of that, much of their winter foodstores had been stolen or destroyed by English soldiers.  They were on the move at a time of year when they normally remained in winter camp.

February turned into March and then April and the ice broke up in the rivers, sending torrents of icy water downstream.  But they kept moving.

Although the snow wasn’t as deep in central Massachusetts this week as it was 338 years ago, there was still plenty of it.  And as my husband and I drove along the wooded back roads, I imagined what it must have been like for Mary Rowlandson – physically wounded, and psychologically traumatized, yet having no choice but to walk for days through snow and ice, up and down hills, through swamps, and across rivers in spring flood.  It would have been an extraordinary accomplishment even without the snow.

Imagined Encounters I: Entering the Experience

One of the pleasures of writing historical fiction is vividly imagining what it must have been like to live in another time and place.  As I’m shaping a novel, I usually do a lot of preparatory writing that never makes it into the book.  Here’s a sample, describing the experience of a young Nipmuc boy when he first encounters John Eliot, the 17^th century Puritan missionary to the Indians.  This boy will grow up to become James Printer, who became a printer’s apprentice in Boston and helped Eliot translate and print his “Indian Bible.”

I was five when I first saw a coat man.  It was summer and my family had traveled east, following the fish and deer.  My mother built her wetu near a river and planted corn in the flat field behind.  There were other wetus, filled with aunts and cousins.  The camp was laid out in a circle, like a great hoop, protecting all the people.  In the center of the circle was a smaller circle of big stones the men placed there.

I thought the coat men very odd.  They covered their bodies covered in stiff black material, though it was summer when the sun made the earth warm and people did not wear skins.  The village dogs thought them odd, too; they swarmed them in excited circles, barking.

There were two coat men.  My cousin told me they were English, a word that I had never heard, an empty word that had no meaning inside it.

I soon learned that the coat men had other names – Ell-ye-yot and Goo-kin  – and I found comfort in this, even though they were also empty words that had no meaning I could fathom.  But they were proof that these two English were not alone in the world, that they had kin and friends somewhere.

The coat men gave gifts to my father: two knives, a blanket and a string of wampum.  I noticed that Eliot and Gookin were both shorter than my father and brothers.  The one called Eliot had hair the color of a muskrat pelt, not only on his head, but beneath his nose and chin.  He did not dress his hair, but let it fall untended in waves that reminded me of water after a storm.  The other man was younger and sadder.  All afternoon my father and my oldest brother sat with them under a big chestnut tree outside the circle of wetus.

I sat with my mother and helped her shell beans.  I asked her about the men.  They did not look friendly or happy in their strange black clothes.  My mother stroked my hair, which rose in black spikes at the crown.  “Do not worry, Anequsemes, my little chipmunk.  They live far away by the sea.  They are not our enemies.”

I did not ask how she knew.  My mother was wise and understood many things.  She had seen the sea once when she journeyed with her people – the Qunnipieuck – to a  feast hosted by the Pocasset sachem, Corbitant.  She had told me about the short, crooked pine trees of the forest in that place.  She had described the shore of brown sand and the pink and white shells she had collected there.  She explained how the sea was a great lake, a lake so large no one could see the other shore.  It had its own spirit, Paumpagussit.  I tried to imagine the sea but could not.

When I tired of shelling beans, I played with the dog, then wandered up the hill and lay in the grass near the talking men.  I listened to the strange words of the coat men and whispered them to myself.  They were sharp, spiky words.  They sat on my tongue like porcupine quills.  I whispered them slowly and carefully so that they would not cut my lips.

Eliot and Gookin talked with my father and brother late into the afternoon and even though it was not the people’s custom to eat together, all the men gathered around the stewpot and ate as one.  I watched them use pieces of baked noohkik to scoop the lumpy paste from the pot.  Once Eliot looked at me and smiled.   That night everyone slept in the wetu; I curled like a young rabbit against my mother’s back.

On the second day, Eliot began to tell tales of heroes and spirits.  He gathered all the people who would listen and I sat all afternoon with the other children, carving the figures of two small deer into a stick as I listened.  Eliot did not know many words of Nipmuc but made himself understood by signs and the words of the Massachuset and Wampangoag peoples.  He told of Jesus, a strong ahtuskou who lived many years ago in a distant land.  This ahtuskou would come, he said, and the people must be ready for him when he did.  He talked of Keihtan and a god named Jehovah and he said there was only one spirit, not many as we had been told.

The elders listened politely but I saw that most of them did not like the stories because their own were better.

Eliot and Gookin left on the third day and life went back to normal except the people did not stop talking about the two strangers.  The powauws dreamed of snakes and hawks and smoked many pipes of tobacco to cleanse the air.

But it was too late.  The strangers had infected the people.  Sokanonaske, Tuckapewillin’s wife, saw a white porcupine when she was hoeing squash, and Konkontusenump encountered a fire spirit when he walked at night by the river.  The people gathered around the fire and told their own stories to strengthen their hearts.  But they knew the strangers would return.

The Praying Towns, Part II

It seemed obvious to English Puritans that Christian natives would need to be “civilized.” Conversion would require them to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and commit to living in permanent villages. They would have to cut their hair in the English manner, and wear English-style clothes. They would be obliged to divide labor along the established English gender lines – men would have to give up hunting and farm the land. The women, who had previously done the bulk of the agricultural work, would be “freed” to practice English housewifery.

The General Court enacted laws to regulate native behavior. They stated that, while it was improper to “compel either by force or by poenall [penal] laws” the Indians to profess Christianity, they couldn’t in good conscience, allow Indians to continue to exhibit certain behaviors they deemed offensive and/or pagan.

Blasphemy was number one on their list – they declared that it would not be tolerated and that any offense would be considered a capital crime, punishable by death. They also outlawed “powwowing” which they saw as the worship of false gods. This was the same as heresy, and subject to severe fines. Natives were required (like the English) to attend public worship on the Lord’s Day, as well as public thanksgiving and fasting days. (There were a lot of fasting days.)

They required that the laws must be read by a court appointee (helped by an interpreter) to all Indians at least once a year. “One or more” magistrates were appointed as circuit court judges whose job it would be to travel from town to town to hear civil and criminal cases and to :carefully endeavor to make the Indians understand our most usefull laws, and those principles of reason, justice, and equity whereupon they are grounded.”

The third praying town, Hassanamesit, was established in 1660, under the following laws:
1. If any man be idle a week, or at most a fortnight, he shall pay five shillings.
2. If any unmarried man shall lie with a young woman unmarried, he shall pay five shillings.
3. If any man shall beat his wife, his hands shall be tied behind him and he shall be carried to the place of justice to be severely punished.
4. Every young man, if not another’s servant, and if unmarried, shall be compelled to set up a wigwam, and plant for himself, and not shift up and down in other wigwams.
5. If any woman shall not have her hair tied up, but hang loose, or be cut as men’s hair, she shall pay five shillings.
6. If any woman shall go with naked breasts, she shall pay two shillings.
7. All men that wear long locks shall pay five shillings.
8. If any shall kill their lice between their teeth, they shall pay five shillings.
These laws likely reflect the behaviors that the English found most repugnant. It’s worth noting how many of them focus on personal grooming.

Of course there’s no way of knowing how many of these laws were actually enforced. The law designated that power to the village sachems, along with the power to make judgments, impose and collect fines.

Could it be that the Puritans were more concerned with how the laws looked “on the books” than how faithfully they were followed?

The Praying Towns

The Puritans had imagined it would be easy. Fervent believers themselves, they expected the native people of New England would embrace Christianity. It was just a matter of presenting the gospel to natives and they would immediately cast aside their own “heathen idols” and convert to faith in the one, true God. They would kneel and thank the English for bringing them the Word. Wouldn’t they?
Widespread conversion of the natives had been one of the Puritan’s justifications for settling in New England. It was in the royal charter and the governor’ oath. Yet for the first twenty-five years, there were hardly any converts at all. There was no missionary program or even any attempt to launch one. The leaders of the New England colonies were consumed with more pressing matters, until critical voices grew so loud the situation became embarrassing.
But converting the natives proved formidable, choked with obstacles. The polity of the Puritan church didn’t help. There was no central hierarchy; each church was autonomous and answered to no higher authority. And there wasn’t enough money for missionary programs. The Puritans were already struggling to pay their debtors in England for the goods and supplies they needed. Then there was the problem of who could do the missionary work itself. There was a shortage of ministers as it was.
A Puritan minister was called by a specific congregation as a pastor or a teacher (and often as both), and his primary obligation was to the members of that church. He was on call twenty-four/seven. This meant that the only missionary ministers were ones who stole time from their regular parish duties.
Then there was the fact that tribal religious and political leaders rightly regarded mission work as a threat to their power and the stability of their communities. Algonquian languages were complex, unwritten, and tonal, difficult for the English to master. Dialects varied from tribe to tribe. There was also the matter of tribal customs, which required dedicated interaction between missionaries and natives. There was the question of how a minister could effectively communicate the abstract European ideas and doctrines to people who had no context for them.
Finally, in 1646, the General Court of Massachusetts passed “An Act for the Propagation of

Rev. John Eliot

the Gospel” and soon afterwards, money began to flow in from English contributors.
One minister – John Eliot, of Roxbury – successfully rose to the challenge. With the help of Samuel Danforth, he managed to juggle his parish duties so that he could spend large amounts of time among the natives without forfeiting the loyalty of his English parishioners. He must have been a man of enormous energy and charisma, for he not only preached to the natives, but also founded a school, directed the translation of the Bible into the language of the Massachusett tribe, helped to edit the Bay Psalm Book, and established the fourteen “praying towns,” in an attempt to consolidate converted natives in planned Christian towns.
The “praying towns” were located in a ring around the coastal English towns. The only residents were converted natives and their families. They governed themselves (under the authority of the Court) and led their own Christian worship services. On paper, at least, they were adhering to English customs of dress, labor, and religion. They gave up hunting and become completely agricultural. They lived in square, English houses and follow English marriage customs.
At least, that’s what Eliot’s English funders were told. But perhaps it should come as no surprise that there’s no archeological evidence that the converts actually adhered to these regulations.
The mission to the natives turned out to be a short-lived experiment, lasting less than thirty years. In 1675, King Philip’s War erupted, resulting in the near-destruction of native culture, and the dissolution of most of the praying towns.

Sealing the Deal

United States public domain

The seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony shows a Native American man standing between two evergreen trees.  He is naked except for a loincloth of leaves, and he’s holding a bow in one hand and arrows pointing down (signifying peace) in the other.  From his mouth emerges a scroll, bearing the words “Come over and help us,” an allusion to Acts 16:9, which records the Apostle Paul having a vision in which he saw a man begging him: “Come over into Macedonia and help us.”

It seems a strange image for a colony of Puritans whose primary reason for settling in New England was freedom from religious persecution.   It suggests that there were other, perhaps equally significant, motivations.  It also betrays an acute awareness that the land they were “coming over to” was already occupied.

Though the seal portrays a native asking for help, there’s no evidence that the native Algonquian people of New England ever felt the need for English help, let alone that they begged for it.  So the seal is clearly not based on historical events.

John Eliot (United States public domain)

An obvious conclusion is that the seal reflects the Puritans’ missionary zeal.  But, in fact, they didn’t make much effort to convert the natives for more than a decade, even then, it was largely the efforts of one man: John Eliot, the minister at Roxbury.  And his labors were only marginally successful.

Why, then, was this image chosen to represent the colony?  Why not a seal showing the colonist’s connection to the wealth and power of England?  Why not one representing the resources available in the new world?

The simple answer is that the seal was a public relations tactic, and its purpose was economic.  To understand this, we need to look at what was going on in England.  The great migration of Puritans from England to Massachusetts Bay Colony started in 1630.  The Puritans were able to raise money to support their migration to New England, by promising great economic benefits for their investors.

But, when the civil war in England resulted in Oliver Cromwell’s rise to power, many Puritans decided to go back. That left those who stayed concerned about financial backing.  It was at this point that the emphasis shifted from religious freedom to converting the natives.  It wasn’t an all-out effort, but it got attention – and funds.  To the English investor, it appeared to be a worthy Christian endeavor, with obvious economic benefits.  If the natives could be “helped” by being converted to Christianity and integrated into English society, then their land and resources would come with them.

The money poured in and John Eliot began his ventures into Nipmuc territory to proselytize and baptize.  Massachusetts Bay Colony had an image to seal the deal.

Living in the Cold

Here in Vermont we’ve been through a couple of cold spells and last Friday night it was 20 below.  We woke up Saturday morning to find our pipes had frozen.  It prompted me to wonder how people in the 1600’s coped with New England winters.  We know the Pilgrims survived their first winter thanks to the help of the natives.  But while the Massachusetts Bay Puritan settlers were shivering by open hearths in their drafty frame houses, what were the natives doing?

For centuries, the Algonquian people of New England had moved with the seasons.  In winter, they moved away from the open valleys with their icy winds and drifting snow and sought the protection of inland mountains and deep forests.  Their wetus were dismantled and the insulating mats and hides were backpacked to their new location.

Their winter dwellings were sometimes larger, especially ceremonial houses, and designed to shelter several families, equipped with two or more smoke holes. Two or more entrances, covered with deerskins, provided access.  The outside was covered with tree bark and the inside lined with woven reed mats.  They wore capes, leggings and moccasins of animal hides, with the fur-side turned toward the body. 

Winter was hunting season.  The men built snowshoes and toboggans for stalking and hauling game. They tracked rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, deer, moose, and bear.  They also shot or snared turkeys, quails, partridges, ducks and geese.  Carnivores such as fox, wildcats, and wolves, were not eaten, though their skins were valued.  Every part of killed animals were used, from the meat to the sinews, bladders, and bones.

When the weather became severe, the people stayed in their villages and relied on stored food they’d harvested from their summer gardens.  It was a leisurely season during which they socialized, told stories, repaired their tools, prepared hides, wove baskets and decorated their clothing with dyed quills.

Although there are people who relish winter and its outdoor sports, many of us think of winter as a time of hardship, when snow and ice make it often difficult to pursue our normal activities.  Maybe the problem isn’t winter, but our own reluctance to adjust our habits to the season.  Maybe we could learn something from the Algonquians and appreciate winter as an opportunity to spend leisurely time together, relaxing, socializing and telling stories.