Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

What have you seen that is made of splints of wood?

Find branches that can be made into splints.

See if you can do anything to the wood to make it split more easily.

How many splints do you think the women split the stems into at first? How could they make flat splints?

How could they make splints that were the same width?

After the spruce branches had soaked a few days, the women brought them to the cave.

While the children played with sticks and stones, their mothers made some splints.

They peeled off the bark with their teeth and nails, and split one end of the stem.

Then they held one piece with their teeth and pulled the other two pieces with their hands.

The splints that they made in this way were neither round nor flat.

They had three sharp corners.

Two of these corners were hard and tough, but one was soft and pithy.

So they bit the pithy corner and pulled off a long strand of pith.

This left a thick splint that was nearly flat.

The women found that it was hard work to split the larger stems.

They were about to give it up when Firekeeper found a large stem whose layers of wood peeled easily.

So they all tried to find such stems.

It was not long before they found that the stems that peeled the most easily were the ones that the children had pounded.

So they all picked up hammer stones and pounded the large stems.

At first each hammered to suit herself, but soon they learned to strike together.

It was easier for them all when they worked in the same time.

People who have made splints for baskets since then have worked in the same time.

Sometimes they keep time by calls and sometimes they use rhymes.

Perhaps you have heard a bark-beater’s rhyme, or have a rhyme yourself.

This rhyme is used by children nowadays when they try to beat in the same time:

“Sip, sap, say; sip, sap, say;
Lig in a nettle bed, while Mayday.”

THINGS TO DO