During the winter no more corn could be procured than was enough to furnish an occasional hoe-cake.

The people sickened on a steady diet of buffalo-bull beef, cured in smoke without salt, and prepared for the table by boiling.

The buffalo was the stand-by of the settlers; they used his flesh as their common food, and his robe for covering; they made moccasins of his hide and fiddle-strings of his sinews, and combs of his horns.

They spun his winter coat into yarn, and out of it they made coarse cloth, like wool.

They made a harsh linen from the bark of the rotted nettles.