WHOLE VOL, ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER 277 



In teaching a child to walk, many mothers still follow the traditional 

 custom of making a pathway just wide enough for the child to 

 walk in between two rows of colihue sticks. The sticks are crotched 

 at the top and are planted a foot apart. In the crotches of each row, 

 colihue poles are placed horizontally and fastened. The child is taught 

 to hold onto the horizontal poles and coaxed to move forward by 

 its mother who is at the other end of the pathway. She will be saying, 

 "Come ! Come ! Come !" A listener-in remarked, "After a child has 

 once learned to walk by this method, it can be coaxed to walk to 

 other places by telling it to come to get something." A young mother 

 had recently taught her child to walk by having it hold onto a low 

 bench, and then to take steps to keep up with the bench as she moved it 

 forward. If a child a year old makes no attempt to walk, the mother 

 will switch its calves lightly with nettles. The child will then take steps 

 to get away from the sting of the nettles. 



A toddler old enough to run away is tied to a stationary object with 

 a rope long enough to let it move around to play. "I often tied my 

 children to a tree at that age, especially when I was weaving." A 

 child's first creeping or walking is not celebrated as an event ; in- 

 formants were amused at the thought. 



Nothing was done to bring about early speech development. "If 

 the time has not yet come for the child to talk, it will not talk ; when it 

 is old enough to do so, it will talk." At about lo months the mother 

 began to teach it words, usually names, such as "father" and "mother." 

 "It is done like this — at least I did it this way," said a 65-year-old 

 woman. "I took a piece of bread and let the child hold it while I said, 

 'Bread,' and then I took it away from the child. The child would 

 laugh. Then I would show the child the piece of bread again, and say, 

 'Bread. Bread. Bread.' I repeated this on different days, and soon 

 the child said, 'Bread.' " Another mother, also in her sixties, had not 

 used the above method but had shown a child bread or maybe a cup, 

 and said, "Get me that bread," or "Get me that cup." Other mothers 

 had merely talked to the child, and "the child learned to speak Arau- 

 canian as it learns to speak Argentine today." Today a child 2 

 years old speaks Araucanian if it is reared in a home where that 

 language is spoken. "Formerly, everyone had to learn Araucanian; 

 our parents would not allow us to speak Argentine ; we had to speak 

 Araucanian." 



NURSING, WEANING 



Mothers nursed their children unless an unusual situation arose, 

 for it was believed that mother's milk aided the child in developing a 



