Page:How and Why Library 014.jpg

 wigwams, like circus tents. Others built long houses of bark, big enough to shelter the tribe.

Our little Indian boy was born in a circus tent wigwam, in a village of other wigwams, in the forest. His mother put a long shirt of soft yellow deer skin on him and taught him his first lesson before he was a day old. She taught him that he must not cry. When he cried she put her hand over his mouth. She did this because cruel enemies and wild animals might hear him. When he grew up he could bear any pain without complaining.

The Indian baby could not even kick. His mother bound him to a flat piece of birch bark, to make his back and legs straight. She hung "the baby cradle and all" from her shoulders. She wrapped a big skin around herself and the baby, if it was cold weather, leaving his face uncovered so he could see. Then they went "by-by." Any baby would like that. When the tribe stopped to rest, the baby and his cradle were hung from the limb of a tree, and the wind rocked him to sleep.

Someone was always saying "don't" to the Indian boy and girl. "Don't make a noise when you walk. You must not even rustle a leaf, or snap a twig." That might scare away the deer father was trying to kill, and then the family must go hungry. Sometimes, when out hunting, a boy had to lie for an hour, as quiet as a pussy at a mouse hole. The Indian boy had to learn to strike fire from two pieces of flint; to make a bow and a stone arrow head; to make a canoe and snow shoes. He shot arrows at a mark every day; he speared fish, and threw stone hatchets. These hatchets were called tomahawks. He must learn the ways and places and calls of animals and birds, and be able to follow the tracks of men and wild beasts. He had to learn how to fight, too, or he and his family would be killed. The Indian boy was grown to a man before he had learned all his lessons.

One sign that he had grown up was that he was given a name. It was really a nickname, given for something he had done. This name he had to bear all his life, so he was very careful not to do anything foolish or cowardly. If he did something brave, and got such a name as Eagle Heart, he was so proud he couldn't sleep the first night. The Indian man was proud and brave and cunning. Sometimes he was cruel. No man could use him for a slave.