If it was winter-time, however, all the wild meat was very lean and poor eating, unless by chance a bear was found in a hollow tree, when there was a royal feast, the breast of the wild turkey serving as a substitute for bread.[15] If the men were suddenly called away by an Indian inroad, their families sometimes had to live for days on boiled tops of green nettles.[16] Naturally the children watched the growth of the tasselled corn with hungry eagerness until the milky ears were fit for roasting.

When they hardened, the grains were pounded into hominy in the hominy-block, or else ground into meal in the rough hand-mill, made of two limestones in a hollow sycamore log.

Until flax could be grown the women were obliged to be content with lint made from the bark of dead nettles.

This was gathered in the spring-time by all the people of a station acting together, a portion of the men standing guard while the rest, with the women and children, plucked the dead stalks.

The smart girls of Irish ancestry spun many dozen cuts of linen from this lint, which was as fine as flax but not so strong.[17] Neither hardship nor danger could render the young people downhearted, especially when several families, each containing grown-up sons and daughters, were living together in almost every fort.