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[2] Later on, when I was fourteen years old, my father made a house. We stayed there at that time. Before that we had always lived in bark lodges. Then I was born there, there at Balsam Lake as it’s called. I was born a long time ago. And both of my parents lived here for a long time.

[3] My father, he was born over there at Mille Lacs as it is called. Then, when he was nineteen years old, there he married my mother. Then he stayed here until he left [for the spirit world]. And my parents had nine children.

What They Did Long Ago

[1] Hello Indians! First of all I want to talk about how things were with me in former times when I was young. I can’t know where I must have been born—in a bark lodge or a lodge with a peaked roof or somewhere out there in the bush. In former times some Indians were born out there.

[2] Maybe when I was fourteen, that was the first time I went inside a house my father had built. We had only been in bark lodges each winter. And this one of my parents, over there at Lac Courte Oreilles as it is called, my mother was born over there. There with that Indian named Aanakwad, they lived over there. Then over there somewhere they must have been born, my mother and the old man Neweyaash as her father was called. And my mother’s husband she had married long ago, this old woman as she was called.

[3] When her husband left [for the spirit world], then she moved back there to Balsam Lake. Then they lived there, my grandmother who had spent her entire life there and my mother who had come to live there not so very long ago. And my father, over there at Mille Lacs as it’s called, that’s where he was born. And there at Balsam Lake, there he married my mother. When he was nineteen years old, at that time he married my mother there.

[4] And that’s where my own life began when I was born. My father built a house there. We were right there.

[5] And in the spring too, in the midst of this season, long ago the Indian moved then, moving into the deep forest, he made this here sugar from the trees, as the syrup was handled in a certain way. That’s how they made it. Over there where they lived, it wasn’t far—five miles out in the woods somewhere. They lived over there when they sugared off.

[6] Again when they’re done sugaring off, then there on the shore of Balsam Lake, that’s where they set up camp. They set up camp there again, at this time harvesting fish by shining them, hauling in the largemouth bass. He lived right there, that’s how the Indian lived long ago.

[7] Then again the Indian moved home. Then already they began preparations for when the Indian participated in the medicine lodge. The Indian took part in the medicine lodge everywhere—at Lac Courte Oreilles, again at Lac du Flambeau, and at Bad River, and again over there at Dewegishigamiing. I am not sure what it’s called, what that reservation over there is called in Indian. And here too at Little Sand Lake (Maple Plain) as it’s called, and again over there at Big Sand Lake (Hertel), at Danbury—right there those Indians customarily did the medicine dance long ago.

[8] And then when they finished the medicine dance, then again they had a pipe ceremony when the ice went out on this lake; they made tobacco offerings to the spirit to be thought of there in what they were up against in their lives.

[9] Then again after they had the pipe ceremony, then again already they picked berries when they were ripe—the blueberries, the raspberries, the blackberries, whenever they ripened. That’s how they harvested berries. That’s how the Indian lived long ago, from the extent of what I’ve come to know of it myself. And that’s it.

[10] Again in the fall, now they moved to the shores of the water to pick rice, knocking the rice. First of all they had a pipe ceremony when they wanted to pick rice, making tobacco offerings to this lake, tying up this rice they want to knock. Nobody embarked. First of all he offered tobacco in the waterways.

[11] And