In winter, the men from Hilltop's village also went fishing with nets
which they poked down through the ice. Driftwood helped her mother
clean the fish with her special woman's knife--the kind that Eskimo
women used everywhere. Then she did something many Eskimos never used
to do. She cooked the fish.
Once Driftwood tried sprinkling the fish with salt that white traders
had given her. But her family didn't like it.
If there were many fish, the women cleaned them, took out the backbones
and stored them away to freeze. In early summer and fall, they hung the
fish up to dry. Once in a while the men caught so many that the women
couldn't keep up with them. Then they cleaned the fish and tossed them
into a big box. Later they built a heavy log wall around it to keep out
bears and wolves. Hilltop and Driftwood particularly liked to eat this
kind of fish raw, after it had been frozen in winter--even if it was
rotten.
[Illustration: The women hung fish and meat up to dry like this.]
[Illustration: Copper Eskimos]