Indian Boyhood | Page 4

was then fully sixty),
and possessed of as much goodness as intelligence. My mother's
judgment concerning her own mother was well founded, for soon after
her death that old lady appeared, and declared that Hakadah was too
young to live without a mother. She offered to keep me until I died, and
then she would put me in my mother's grave. Of course my other
grandmother denounced the sugges- tion as a very wicked one, and
refused to give me up.
The babe was done up as usual in a movable cradle made from an oak
board two and a half feet long and one and a half feet wide. On one side
of it was nailed with brass-headed tacks the richly-embroidered sack,
which was open in front and laced up and down with buckskin strings.
Over the arms of the infant was a wooden bow, the ends of which were
firmly attached to the board, so that if the cradle should fall the child's
head and face would be protected. On this bow were hung curious
playthings--strings of artis- tically carved bones and hoofs of deer,
which rattled when the little hands moved them.
In this upright cradle I lived, played and slept the greater part of the
time during the first few months of my life. Whether I was made to
lean against a lodge pole or was suspended from a bough of a tree,
while my grandmother cut wood, or whether I was carried on her back,
or con- veniently balanced by another child in a similar cradle hung on
the opposite side of a pony, I was still in my oaken bed.
This grandmother, who had already lived through sixty years of
hardships, was a wonder to the young maidens of the tribe. She showed
no less enthusiasm over Hakadah than she had done when she held her
first-born, the boy's father, in her arms. Every little attention that is due
to a loved child she performed with much skill and de- votion. She
made all my scanty garments and my tiny moccasins with a great deal
of taste. It was said by all that I could not have had more atten- tion had
my mother been living.
Uncheedah (grandmother) was a great singer. Sometimes, when
Hakadah wakened too early in the morning, she would sing to him
something like the following lullaby:
Sleep, sleep, my boy, the Chippewas

Are far away--are far away.
Sleep, sleep, my boy; prepare to meet
The foe by day--the foe by day!
The cowards will not dare to fight
Till morning break--till morning break.
Sleep, sleep, my child, while still 'tis night;
Then bravely wake--then bravely wake!
The Dakota women were wont to cut and bring their fuel from the
woods and, in fact, to perform most of the drudgery of the camp. This
of neces- sity fell to their lot, because the men must follow the game
during the day. Very often my grand- mother carried me with her on
these excursions; and while she worked it was her habit to suspend me
from a wild grape vine or a springy bough, so that the least breeze
would swing the cradle to and fro.
She has told me that when I had grown old enough to take notice, I was
apparently capable of holding extended conversations in an unknown
dialect with birds and red squirrels. Once I fell asleep in my cradle,
suspended five or six feet from the ground, while Uncheedah was some
dis- tance away, gathering birch bark for a canoe. A squirrel had found
it convenient to come upon the bow of my cradle and nibble his
hickory nut, until he awoke me by dropping the crumbs of his meal.
My disapproval of his intrusion was so decided that he had to take a
sudden and quick flight to another bough, and from there he began to
pour out his wrath upon me, while I continued my ob- jections to his
presence so audibly that Uncheedah soon came to my rescue, and
compelled the bold intruder to go away. It was a common thing for
birds to alight on my cradle in the woods.
My food was, at first, a troublesome question for my kind
foster-mother. She cooked some wild rice and strained it, and mixed it
with broth made from choice venison. She also pounded dried venison
almost to a flour, and kept it in water till the nourishing juices were
extracted, then mixed with it some pounded maize, which was browned
before pounding. This soup of wild rice, pounded veni- son and maize
was my main-stay. But soon my teeth came--much earlier than the
white children usually cut theirs; and then my good nurse gave me a
little more varied food, and I did all