Camping, Outdoor life, Wild Foods, Nature craft, Outdoor recreation, Indigenous crafts, Indigenous handicrafts, Indigenous peoples -- Material culture -- North America, Indigenous peoples -- Material culture 

"THE MYRIAD JINGLE-JANGLE GADGETS OF SOME OF OUR modern outdoorsmen would make our ancestral buckskin men turn in their graves. Their packs were light and their equipment meager, for these adventurous and picturesque wilderness men depended upon their skill and ingenuity in woodcraft rather than upon a lot of "things." It is to these lusty spirits of the wilderness that we owe our woodlore knowledge; yes, and to the early red men, who taught the white newcomers their woodcraft and the ways of the wild. From the kindly but unknown Indians of the past, who first welcomed to their lodges the adventurous Europeans and unraveled for them the mysteries of the American wilderness, came the outdoor knowledge that we treasure today. Let us, then, conjure up those wilderness men of the past, both red and white. Let us ask them to sit with us in council around the campfire. And in the shifting ghostlike wreaths of the smoke we may catch glimpses of them in fringed buskckins with tomahawk and long rifle. How were these early woodsmen dressed? All of the early explorers, Spanish, French and English, were impressed with the buckskins the Indians used for clothing. It was more durable than woven and as soft as expensive velvet; and so the white men used it in making their own wilderness clothing. The early woodsman wore an adaptation of the Indian shirt and leggings. The shirt or tunic was called a "wammus" and differed from the Indian shirt in that it often had a short cape. The leggings were patterned after the Indian leggings and were merely leg coverings without a seat as in breeches or trousers. Some of the buckskin men wore a short breech clout to cover their middles, but the hips were usually bare even in winter. The long shirt fell just above the knees and offered some protection, however. Both the "wammus" and the leggings were fringed, not for ornament alone, but to act as a drain, the rain dripping from... (from page 1, 2 The Woodsman Of Yesterday)"--Amazon.