See the Essays section for a profile of J. William Ettawageshik (ca. 1889–1942).
It is more than a century ago since the territory about the Great Lakes was settled by the white people. Some times the Indians and the whites were on friendly terms and at other times they had trouble.
One day a white boy who lived some distance from an Indian village came to the camp of the Indians where he was kept as a prisoner. This was at a time when the Indians and whites were having trouble.
Every evening, about sunset, the Indians gave their prisoner some maple sugar, of which he was very fond. One day he was caught stealing some maple sugar, but the Indians did not reprove him for this act, but determined to punish him in an unusual way.
One of the Indians brought some sand to the camp from the lake shore. The sand along the lake shore resembles very closely pulverized maple sugar.
In the evening when it was time to give the prisoner his sugar, one of the Indians went to the sandpile and took a handful of sand; in the other hand he had sugar. On reaching the boy he gave him the sugar and kept the sand in his hand. After watching the boy devour the sugar, all the Indians with the exception of one went into their different wigwams to retire for the night.
After everything was quiet the boy thought he would help himself to the sugar, so he took a good handful of the sand, which so closely resembled sugar that he did not notice the difference, and put it into his mouth. He was badly fooled and had some difficulty in getting the sand out of his teeth. The Indian who was placed as a sentinel awoke the others to enjoy the joke which had been perpetrated on the boy who was so fond of maple sugar. Needless to say, he never again stole maple sugar from the Indians.22