While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Material culture. The culture of the
Sauk was that of the eastern wooded area. They were a canoe people while
they were in the country of the Great Lakes, using both the birch-bark
canoe and the dugout. They still retain the dugout, and learned the use
and construction of the bull-boat on coming out upon the plains. They
practiced agriculture on an extensive scale; they cultivated the ground
for maize, squashes, beans, and tobacco. Despite their fixed abodes and
villages they did not live a sedentary life altogether, for much of the
time they devoted to the chase, hunting game and fishing almost the whole
year round. They were acquainted with wild rice, and hunted the buffalo.
They did not get possession of horses until after the Black Hawk war in
1832, and they did not become very familiar with the horse and the mule
until after their arrival in Kansas, after the year 1837. Their abode was
the bark house in warm weather and the oval flag reed lodge in winter; the
bark house was characteristic of the village. Every gens had one large
bark house wherein were celebrated the festivals of the gens. In this
lodge hung the sacred bundles of the gens, and here dwelt the priests that
watched over them. It is said that some of these lodges were of the length
required to accommodate five fires. The ordinary bark dwelling had but a
single fire, which was at the center.
