If there is enough of the material that was used for the shirt left,
two long, straight pieces may be cut, embroidered on the long edges,
fringed, and tied about the Indian’s legs for leggins.
A most gorgeous headdress may be made for the Indian from crépe paper
feathers. The feathers are made by fringing crépe paper and pasting
this fringe to short lengths of flower wire. Gilt paint will make the
feathers even more glorious, and when a number of them are finished,
red, and blue, and green, and yellow--all the rainbow colors in
fact--they may be wired to a headdress made of stiff cambric or heavy
cardboard.
What shall we call the boy when he is dressed in his home-made
chieftain’s suit, which will be more effective, even, than the one
he saw in the toy shop? Hiawatha, perhaps, as he dons his war paint
and feathers and starts in search of all sorts of interesting Indian
adventures.
HOW TO MAKE STICK PICTURES
It is a new sort of fun that a boy can have with just plain, everyday,
ordinary sticks. You can play at being an Indian, too, at the same time
for the Indians did it first and called it picture-writing.
Suppose you were an Indian child in paint and feathers, and moccasins.
Suppose that you never went to school, and never had seen a piece of
paper or a lead pencil. Then suppose that you wanted to write a letter
to your little red cousin who lived on the other side of the forest in
another tribe, far away from yours.
Of course, you have ever so much to tell your little red cousin. You
want him to know that the big chief, your father, has just put up a
fine new wigwam of skins for you to live in, a more beautiful wigwam
than any other in the village. You want the cousins to know, too,
that the sap has begun to run in the maple tree and soon your mother,
Laughing Water, will get out the big kettle and build a fire of pine
branches and boil the fresh, sweet sap into maple sirup. Then there is
a still more wonderful thing to tell your little red cousin. In the
full of the last moon, a strange water creature was seen in the river
in front of your wigwam. It was white, and large, and it had huge white
wings that the wind filled. It was a pale face ship--much larger, and
very different from an Indian’s canoe.
Now, how are you going to tell all these exciting things to the
far-away little red cousin when you have no pencil and no paper for a
letter, and there is no postman and no railway train to carry a letter
to the other tribe? Why, it is going to be the easiest thing in the
world to do. Make some stick pictures that will tell all the stories
that you would like to write if you only knew how.
In the forest there is a fine old hunting ground. You know just the
spot where all the tribes gather and build their great camp fires, and
cook the game, and dance in the evening when the hunt is done. Before
another moon your cousin’s tribe will be there. And you are going now,
to the hunting ground, to make some stick pictures for that little
Indian boy to find. Then he will understand that you have been there
and you were thinking of him.
Jump into your canoe and paddle down the river. Tie the canoe fast to
the bank, then jump out and plunge into the forest. You know the way
to go, for the moss grows on the north side of the trees. There, you
have come to a cleared spot in the deep, deep woods. There isn’t any
sound save the chattering of the chipmunks. They won’t disturb your
picture writing. Now you may go to work.
You break many of the straight, stout twigs from the pine tree. Some
of the twigs must be long, and others you will break off short to fit
together where there are corners in the pictures. There is a smooth bed
of moss under the pine tree. That will be a splendid place for your
picture writing. First, you will make a picture of the new wigwam. Just
two long sticks, crossed at the top will make the outline, and you put
two short sticks together to show the door. Now, for the maple tree.
You will lay a long stick down on the moss to show the outline of the
tree. Some shorter sticks, laid close to the sides of the longer stick
make the branches. The pale face ship may be more difficult to make,
but you will be able to outline the picture with your sticks. There are
the sloping sides of the ship and there are the sails.
The picture letter is done. When the little cousin finds it there in
the woods he will know all about the new wigwam, and the maple sirup,
and the strange ship. You travel home again if you are a little Indian
boy, and you don’t mind in the least not having a pencil, or a postman.
How may a little pale face child play at picture writing?
If it is vacation time, you can gather sticks in the woods just as
the little Indian boy did. Be sure that they are long, straight ones,
though. You may sit in the grass and lay your stick pictures on the
lawn, or you may make them on the floor of the piazza.
If you want to make stick pictures in the house on a stormy day, ask
mother to let you use her sewing table to put them on, or you can lay
them on the kitchen floor, or the nursery hearth rug. For the indoor
stick pictures, you can use burnt matches, or toothpicks, or clothes
pins--anything long and straight will do. You can buy colored sticks
at a kindergarten shop, and those will be the best of all for stick
pictures. And if you have a game of jackstraws, the straws may be used
for the pictures.
The Indians had no picture books, but you have. You can play a game
with the stick pictures. You can make pictures to illustrate one of
your favorite stories, and then ask the boy or girl who is playing
with you to try and guess what the story is that fits the picture.
[Illustration: STICK ILLUSTRATION OF THE STORY OF THE THREE BEARS]
A splendid story to illustrate with stick pictures is The Three Bears.
Here is their house.
Here is the table that held the three bowls of porridge.
Here are their three chairs.
And here are their three beds.
A TOY INDIAN VILLAGE
Just fancy an encampment of real, live Indians in the house in a little
Indian village that you made all yourself! It will be the best sort
of fun to make the camp, and when it is done it will be a fine, new
plaything for all winter long, as the toy Indians have sham fights, and
May dances and tell each other stories around their tiny camp fires.
And this is the way to make the fascinating toy.
A long, shallow tin with very narrow sides is the foundation for the
Indian village. The tinsmith has large sheets of bright new tin, and
he will make you one of these shallow tin trays for just a few cents.
The florist will give you a basket of soft, black earth--enough to fill
the tray--and you can mold and pat it into tiny hills and queer little
valleys, and long foot paths, no wider than your little finger for the
toy Indians to trail up and down.
You must take a long walk now as far as the woods to find some sprays
of white pine, hemlock, and spruce for the Indians’ trees. Gather some
little straight twigs, too, for wigwam foundations, and if the ground
is still bare, pick up some of the prettiest pebbles you can find for
make-believe rocks in the Indian encampment. With your jack-knife
strip from the birch tree just a very little bark to make an Indian
canoe--not much, for it takes a birch a long, long time to grow more
bark. Then you may go home again, but on the way, buy a penny’s worth
of grass seed at the florist’s. What are you to do with all these
things?
Just listen, and you will find out.
Scatter the grass seed very softly over the earth in your tray and
sprinkle it with the rubber bulb sprayer that mother uses for her house
ferns. You would not believe it perhaps, but in a week or ten days
your little Indian camp ground will be covered with a carpet of soft,
green grass really growing in the earth. After you have planted the
grass seed, stick the little evergreen trees in the earth and lay your
pebbles about as if they really belonged there on the ground. In one
corner of the tray, if mother is willing, you may sink a shallow, round
cake tin filled with water to make a miniature lake, and about the lake
you can put a border of stones covered with the moss that comes in a
box of Noah’s Ark animals. The tray of earth is quite transformed now
into a tiny forest.
[Illustration: Pattern for Toy Wigwam.]
Under the trees the Indian wigwams are scattered. Making these tepees
is ever so much fun and will fill a long winter evening after your
lessons are learned and you have the library table free to work on.
Fig. 1 shows you how to cut out an Indian wigwam, and heavy dark brown
paper or brown canvas is a strong material to use. When the wigwam is
cut, it may be decorated with paints in any design you wish. A border
of small squares is an attractive decoration, or some grotesque heads
and bows and arrows may be painted on. Gold or red paper stars and
crescents and suns may be cut and glued to the outside of the wigwam,
forming a very gay scheme of trimming it, or very tiny autumn leaves
may be waxed and glued on. When a number of these little wigwams have
been cut, decorated, and glued together, as shown in Fig. 2, place them
in your play forest, using two or three twigs crossed for supports, the
ends extending through the hole in the top of the wigwam.
Now you can make the Indians. English walnuts form the heads. These are
just the right size, brown enough for the complexion of any Indian,
and nicely wrinkled, too. With a sharp jack-knife smooth down a few
of the walnut’s wrinkles, and carve the Indian’s features, trying to
give him high cheek bones. Color his cheeks with vermilion and paint
his face, too, in as many different colors as you like. A roll of stiff
paper or cloth glued to the nut head makes the Indian’s body, about
which is wrapped a blanket of fringed crépe paper, red flannel, or any
sort of gay stuff that mother will give you. This walnut Indian wears a
marvelous feather headdress. The feathers come from the chicken yard or
the oldest feather duster--whichever source is available--and they are
glued to a strip of brown paper which, in turn is glued to the little
Indian’s head.
There should be a whole tribe of Indians, as many as you can make
before bedtime, and when it comes morning run up to the play room and
stand the Indian braves at the doors of their wigwams or in the little
path between the trees where they can see their real green grass coming
up, and enjoy the friendly shelter of their fine little camping ground.
These nut Indians will need bows and arrows when they have sham
battles. Tiny twigs may be bent bow shape with rubber bands for bow
strings and burned out matches may be sharpened to a point for arrows.
Toothpicks make arrows, too. A bow and a bundle of arrows may be laid
at the door of each little Indian’s wigwam. The canoe that floats on
the tin pan lake is made of a strip of folded birch bark shaped at the
ends like a real canoe and stitched with brown linen thread. It will
really float if it is carefully made.
For a camp fire, pile up some broken twigs in a cleared spot in your
Indian encampment and put in some scraps of twisted, red tissue paper
which will look like flames. One of the kettles from the dolls’ kitchen
may hang on a forked stick over this make-believe fire to cook the
dinner for the walnut Indian tribe.
This play Indian village will last all winter, a comfortable camping
ground for the tribe, and a delightful plaything for the clever boy who
made it.
There may be some walnut squaws added perhaps, and some peanut
papooses wrapped in blankets cut from a scrap of old chamois and hung
contentedly by thread to the sheltering trees. The grass will grow so
high that it may have to be mowed with the nursery scissors, and when
the trees fade, more can be gathered and put in the places of the old
ones.
CORN TOYS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM
Corn cobs really look as if they would like to play. There is a whole
binful out in the barn, and the chickens do not want them and neither
does the farmer. He will make a big bonfire out in the wood lot
some day and burn up all the corn cobs if the children do not take
possession of them first, and help them to play by making them into
toys.
What fine, long, straight little logs they are for a log cabin, or they
might be made into Indian or toy rafts, or a rail fence, or almost
anything else a child chooses.
First you can make a little rail fence that stretches across one corner
of the barn floor. To do this, lay down six corn cobs in zigzag fashion
on the floor with the ends not quite as far apart as the cobs are long.
Then across every two cob ends lay another cob and finish the fence in
this way, making it very snug.
Behind the fence lives Apple Johnny. He owns the farm whose boundary
lines the fence marks out on the floor. Apple Johnny has a little hard
apple for his head joined by a toothpick to a fat apple that forms his
body. His legs and arms are twigs and his face is cut with a jack-knife
in the smaller apple. Apple Johnny has a herd of wild potato horses on
his farm. Each potato has four twig legs, and a flowing mane, made of
a fringed corn husk pinned to the long end of the potato, and a straw
tail pinned to the other end.
As you put the last corn cob in the fence, you heard the rain just
pouring and pouring on the barn eaves. Suppose the roof of the barn
should cave in and the whole inside be flooded! What would poor little
Apple Johnny do, and how would he ever make his escape? Apple Johnny
must have a raft. Select six more corn cobs from the binful, all of
them just the same length, and lay them down on the barn floor, side by
side. In one of the corners of the barn is an old last summer’s berry
basket. Strip off two bits of the binding rim as long as the row of
cobs is wide. Nail one to each end of the row of corn cobs, putting a
nail in each cob, which holds the small raft firmly in place. Then turn
the raft right side up and to one end nail a long, straight twig for
a mast, to which you can glue a white paper sail. It is a fine little
raft when it is completed, and strong enough to carry Apple Johnny and
a potato horse or two safely through any possible flood.
But Apple Johnny has no house. Well, a house is easily planned when one
has a whole bin of corn cobs to draw upon for building materials.
Gather an armful of cobs and make a corn-cob house. Lay two corn cobs
opposite each other, and two more across the ends, log cabin fashion,
driving nails through to hold them together. Next, put two more corn
cobs over the first two and two more over the second, until the house
is twice as high as Apple Johnny is tall. For a roof, nail two sides
of the berry basket to the log cabin, and then with a rip saw cut out
a front door high enough to let Apple Johnny step through. There will
be rather wide chinks in the house, but you can play that these are
windows through which Apple Johnny can watch for the corn-cob Indians
and shoot at them with a twig musket when he sees them coming.
You can make a whole tribe of these corn-cob Indians, and it will
be the most fun of all, even jollier than making a corn-cob fence,
and a raft, and a house. First, wind corn husks around a cob to make
the Indian’s clothes, but leave one end, the larger end of the cob,
uncovered because that is going to be the Indian’s head. Then on this
end, mark a face with a bit of charcoal; eyes, nose, and mouth; and
paint the cheeks red with a crushed cranberry, rubbing the juice on
the corn cob. The hens’ nests in the barn are full of ever so many
pretty feathers, so you can collect as many of these as you wish and
glue them to the corn-cob Indian’s head for his headdress. Last of
all, ask mother if she is willing to give you a few pieces of the left
over plain cloth from sister’s school dress for the corn-cob Indian’s
blanket. Of course mother is willing. Almost every mother is willing to
give a boy things when he is trying to amuse himself all alone. She may
even cut a square of gay plaid from the piece of cloth itself and turn
out all the pieces from her sewing bag, where there are other scraps
just right for Indians’ blankets; red flannel, and gray serge like your
last winter suit, and brown merino, and yellow silk.
The Indian looks very splendid indeed in his feather headdress and a
red plaid blanket. All he needs then is a bow and quiver of arrows. The
bow you can make by bending a length of willow and tying a piece of
cord across. The arrows are shorter, pointed twigs with a very small
hen’s feather tied to the end of each.
This Indian you can name Chief Big Cob.
[Illustration: CORN COB PAPPOOSE]
[Illustration: CORN COB INDIAN]
HOW TO MAKE A MARBLE BAG
Nobody knows why the first of March brings marbles, but it certainly
does. Some games really belong to the season in which they come as
coasting and snowfights, but other games are played at certain times
of the year for no reason except that they always have been and always
will be. If some one should ask a boy--any boy, why it wouldn’t be
better to play football in the summer and baseball at Thanksgiving
time, he couldn’t tell you, but his sense of the fitness of things
would be outraged.
And so, when the snow goes away, and the frost comes out of the ground,
and the sap begins to run in the trees, and a boy’s toes wiggle and
wiggle and long to kick out of his shoes and dig themselves into the
soft mud, it is quite the proper thing for him to hunt up all his last
year’s marbles, and ask his sister--or somebody else’s sister--to make
him a bag to hold them, so that he will be ready for the season’s
marble campaign.
The simplest marble bag to make is one which is made in just the same
way as a tobacco pouch. Take an oblong piece of heavy tan canvas,
measuring twelve inches long by five inches wide. Tan does not show the
dirt readily, and the heavier the material is the better, for the bag
is not going to be gently handled. Double this piece of canvas in the
center, so that it forms a bag six inches deep by five wide. Sew up the
two side seams with a coarse needle and very heavy linen thread, and
make the seams very strong. The sewing should be about a quarter of an
inch back from the edges. Then “scrape” the seams open, which simply
means to run your thumb nail along the seams right where the joining
is, so that one raw edge shall be folded toward each side. Next make
a hem at the top by folding the material over once, and then again.
This hem should be about a quarter of an inch wide, and in sewing it
down leave a space unsewed on one side where it crosses the seam, so
that the draw string can be run in. Turn your bag so that it will be
right side out, and the seaming all on the inside. A piece of heavy,
wrapping-paper twine twelve inches long will make a fine draw string,
by running it through the hem with a bodkin and tying the two ends
together.
[Illustration: Pattern of a Marble Bag.]
Another marble bag that will prove very satisfactory, and will be so
unusual that the boy who owns it can gloat over the other fellows, is
made of very heavy chamois, or buckskin. A paper pattern is made first,
like Fig. 1. It measures two and a half inches across the top, four and
a half inches from side to side at a point three and three-quarters
inches below the top, and its height is six and a half inches. After
these points have been determined a boy can mark in the vase shaped
outline freehand. When the pattern is made and cut out, lay it on the
buckskin, holding it carefully, so that it will not slip, and cut four
pieces just alike. Then take a large darning needle or a “rug” needle
and thread it with a strand of raffia. If red, or blue, or green raffia
are used instead of the ordinary natural color, it will make the sewing
very decorative. Take two of the pieces of buckskin, and, beginning at
the bottom, sew them together with the stitch that is used for making
baseballs. This is done by taking a stitch up from underneath, then
crossing over, and taking a stitch up from the under side of the other
piece, then back to the first piece and so on, drawing the raffia snug
each time. Instead of making a knot at the beginning, leave the raffia
hanging loose for about an inch or more, and when the top of the seam
is reached, fasten the raffia tight before cutting off. Next join the
third piece to the second in the same way, the fourth to the third,
and then the fourth to the first, so that all four together form a
bag. Take the four ends of raffia at the bottom and knot them snugly
together, two by two. They may be trimmed off short, or left hanging
loose to form a tassel for decoration. Now take a narrow piece of soft
wood and slip it inside the mouth of the bag, so that you can cut slits
for the draw string. They are cut with a sharp penknife and should come
just at the narrowest part, or neck of the bag. If the upper ends of
the cuts are three-quarters of an inch from the top of the bag, and the
cuts themselves a half inch long, they will be about right. There are
four cuts in each section making sixteen cuts in all. Next take three
pieces of raffia twenty-four inches long. Knot the three together at
one end, and then braid them tightly into a cord. When the other end
is reached knot it as you did the first. String this cord through the
slits in the neck of the bag just as though you were weaving--under
one, over one, under one, over one--and then when it is all strung, tie
the two ends together in a square knot.
It makes an exceedingly unique bag, and will hold all the marbles a
boy can win, and besides winning marbles he will win the envy of every
other boy who sees his fine, new marble bag.
[Illustration: WHITTLED SCHOOL BOX]
[Illustration: CHAMOIS MARBLE BAG]
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN SCHOOL BOX
Every boy needs a pencil box. Plain little oblong boxes most of them,
with a flat hinged cover, and a little lock that you keep carefully
fastened with the key. That is, a boy locks his pencil box when he is
able to find the key, but whether it was in his pocket, or fastened to
his watch chain, the school-box key always does manage to get away,
somewhere--to make its escape.
One day, however, the boy sees displayed in the window of a stationery
shop, a new sort of pencil box, a most fascinating kind. The cover of
the box is made of narrow strips of wood fastened side by side like the
strips in the top of a roll-top desk, and when the shopman opens the
pencil box to show the boy the inside, the cover just _slides_ right
back out of sight, while the boy looks on in open-eyed astonishment.
The shopman’s supply of these magic boxes is limited, though, and there
is a wild scramble for their possession among the boys who can produce
ten cents--for that is the exorbitant price charged by the shopman.
The boy wants one of those magic boxes. His fingers just tingle and
burn to hold one and try to make the cover slide in its charming way,
but he has only five cents, he can’t buy one.
The boy will be able to make his own pencil box, though, and this
is the way he must go about it in order to construct one of those
fascinating, roll-top ones, just like the one in the shop window.
In the first place, a boy must know how to whittle. All that he
needs in the way of material is a jack-knife, some pieces of wood
three-sixteenths of an inch thick, some more pieces an eighth thick, a
strip of white cloth, and some little three-eighth inch nails.
The first piece to make (Fig. 1) is the side of the box. It is just
a plain oblong of the three-sixteenth inch wood, measuring nine
inches long by two and a quarter inches wide. All the pieces are made
three-sixteenths thick except the strips for the cover. Two of these
sides are necessary of course.
Next come two strips nine inches long and a quarter of an inch wide
which are fastened, notched side up on the inside of each side,
“flush”--even--that is, with the top, with four little nails driven
from the outside. The piece which is cut from the end of each of these,
as shown in the drawing, is to make a joint which is later to be
fitted with Fig. 10.
[Illustration: Diagrams of a School Box.]
[Illustration: Diagrams of a School Box.]
Fig. 3 is eight and nine-sixteenths inches long and one and
seven-sixteenths wide and one end is rounded into a half circle. Figs.
3 and 4 are nailed in position on the inside of the side pieces, and
together they form the track around which the cover runs. Two of each
are required. Fig. 5 is the bottom piece, and is simply an oblong nine
inches long by two and a half wide. It is placed in position with the
side pieces upright on either side of it and nailed from the outside.