"Then there were earthworks for forts and signal stations. You'll find
those on the high places overlooking the principal trails; there were
always heaps of wood piled up for smoke signals. The circles were for
meeting-places and for games."
"What sort of games?" demanded Oliver.
"Ball-play and races; all that sort of thing. There was a game we played
with racquets between goals. Village played against village. The people
would sit on the earthworks and clap and shout when the game pleased
them, and gambled everything they had on their home-town players.
"I suppose," he added, looking around on the green tumuli, "I remember
it like this, because when I lived here I was so full of what was going
on that I had no time for noticing how it looked to me."
"What did go on?" both the children wished immediately to know.
"Something different every time the moon changed. Ice-fishing,
corn-husking. We did everything together; that was what made it so
interesting. The men let us go to the fur traps to carry home the pelts,
and we hung up the birch-bark buckets for our mothers at the
sugar-boiling. Maple sugar, you know.
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