MICHELSON. ] AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FOX WOMAN. 305 
“Come, stop crying. It’s just the way with us women. We have 
been made to be that way. Nothing will happen to you. You will 
have gotten over this now in the warm weather. Had it happened to 
you in winter you would have had a hard time. You would be cold 
when you bathed as you would have to jump into the water four 
times. That is the way it is when we first have it. Now, to-day, as 
it is warm weather, you may swim as slowly as you like when you 
swim,’ I was told. “Lie covered up. Do not try to look around. I 
shall go and make (a wickiup) for you,” I was told. 
I was suffering very much there in the midst of the brush. And it 
was very hot. 
It was in the evening when I was told, “At last I have come for 
you. Ihave built (a place) for you to livein. Cover your face. Do 
not think of looking any place.” I was brought there to the small 
wickiup. And I was shut off by twigs all around. There was brush 
piled up so that I could not see through it. There was only a little 
space where I lived to cook outside. My grandmother must have 
made it a size so that there was only room for us to lie down in. 
“T shall fetch your grandmother to be here with you,” my mother 
told me. It was another old woman.™ As a matter of fact the 
reason she was brought there was for to give me instructions. I did 
not eat all daylong. The next day I was told, “We shall fetch things 
for you to use in cooking.” I was not hungry as I was frightened. 
The next day my grandmother went to eat. It was only as long as 
she (took) when she went to eat that I was alone, but I was afraid. 
In the evening I was brought little buckets to cook with, any little 
thing to eat, water and wood. ‘Then for the first time I cooked. 
And my grandmother would keep on giving me instructions there, 
telling me how to lead a good life. She really was a very old woman. 
Surely she must have spoken the truth in what she had been saying to 
me. ‘My grandchild,” she would say to me, “soon I shall tell you 
how to live an upright life. To-day you see how old I am. I did 
exactly what I was told. I tried and thought how to live an upright 
life. Surely I have reached an old age,’ she told me. ‘That is the 
way you should do, if you listen to me as I instruct you. Now as for 
your mother, I began giving her instructions before she was grown up, 
every time I saw her. Because she was my relative is why I gave 
her instructions, although she was well treated by her father’s sister 
by whom she was reared. That is why she knows how to make things 
which belong to the work of us women. If you observe the way your 
mother makes anything, you would do well, my grandchild. And 
this. As many of us as entered young womanhood, fasted. It was 
very many days: some fasted ten days, some four, five, every kind 
of way. To-day, to be sure, things are changing. When I was a 
young woman I fasted eight days. We always fasted until we were 
grown up,” my grandmother told me. 
