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So Nagami took her knife and worked for an hour, then came with the bundle saying: "See, Mother, they are smooth, and so white that they have not a brown spot left." "Good," said Akoko, "now you need some bark of the willow for sewing cord. Let us look along the river bank."
"See, my Nagami, when I was a little girl I had only a bone needle made from the leg of a deer, but you have easy work; here is a big steel packing needle, which I bought for you from a trader. This is how you make your basket." So Akoko began a flat coil with the spruce roots, and sewed it together with the willow bark for thread, until it was a span wide.
"Come, little Nagami, my Bird-Singer, you are ten years old, it is time you learned to make baskets. I made my first when I was but eight," said Mother Akoko proudly, for she was the best basket-maker on the river. So they took a sharp stick, and went into the woods.
When they were dry, Nagami was taught to add a rim to her basket, by sewing it over and over as in the picture. Then Akoko said, "Good, my little Bird-Singer, you have done well, you have made some old black roots into a beautiful basket." N.B. The Guide will remember that rattan and raffia can be used for this when it is impossible to get spruce roots and willow bark.
So they sought in a sunny place along the shore, and found the fruit of the squawberry or blitum. "See," said Akoko, "the miscawa. Gather a handful, my Nagami. They make the red basket-dye." They crushed the rich red berries, saving the red juice in a clam shell, and soaked a few strands of the white willow bark in the stain.
Akoko looked for spruce trees that had been blown down by the storm, but found none, so she stopped under some standing spruce, at a place with no underbrush and said: "See, Nagami, here we dig for wattap." The spruce roots or "wattap" were near the surface and easily found, but not easily got out, because they were long, tangled and criss-crossed.
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