Chapter 9 cont. A BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY Everywhere near streams forest trees abounded, intermixed with crab-apple and plum trees, vines, berry and hazlenut bushes.  Walnut and hickory trees were numerous, also many large pecan trees which yielded hundreds of bushels of nuts, of which the Indians were very found and which they traded or sold to the whites.  These latter trees grew mostly upon the islands.  The sloughs also produced an abundance of wild rice, which, when gathered by squaws (of course) and properly threshed and cleaned, made a palatable dish for them as well as for the whites.  Without doubt many of the large forest trees could now be found growing from the corn hills described in another place.  The large elms were utilized by the Indians in this way: the squaws in the springtime would cut through the bark to the wood, above and below, strip it off and use for siding and roofing their summer homes, at the town of Sau-ke-nuk. The river abounded in fish; we white people would eat only pike, pickerel, bass, salmon, sunfish or, if hard pushed, the bluecat of six or eight pounds.  In my younger days it was our custom to cross the Mississippi to Rock river, where we easily caught in a short time all the fish we could use. Debbie Clough G-erischer G-erischer Family Web Site http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/ Assistant CC, Iowa Gen Web, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ List Manager for: IASCOTT-L * G-erischer-L * D-encker-L Fitzpatirck-L * V-lerebome-L * Huntington-L * Otis-L * Algar-L EIGS-L * Pickens-L * McNab-L * Patris-L - Rankin-L