With the aid of a needle she might be able to manufacture the
skins of the small animals into some sort of jacket, and the doe-skin
and deer-skin could be made into garments for the boys. Louis was always
suppling and rubbing the skins to make them soft. They had taken off the
hair by sprinkling it with wood ashes, and rolling it up with the hairy
side inwards. Out of one of these skins he made excellent mocassins,
piercing the holes with a sharpened bone bodkin, and passing the sinews of
the deer through, as he had seen his father do, by fixing a stout fish-bone
to the deer-sinew thread; thus he had an excellent substitute for a needle,
and with the aid of the old file he sharpened the point of the rusty nail,
so that he was enabled, with a little trouble, to drill a hole in a
bone needle, for his cousin Catharine's use. After several attempts, he
succeeded in making some of tolerable fineness, hardening them by exposure
to a slow steady degree of heat, till she was able to work with them, and
even mend her clothes with tolerable expertness.
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