480 REPORT — 1900. 



or bed of the cradle, extended about iouv inches beyond the other at the 

 foot, and about six inches at the head. The extension at the foot was 

 bent upwards till it reached an angle of thirty or forty degrees, and 

 fastened in this position to the upper piece by lacing. ' This formed a kind 

 of foot-board the object of which was to keep tlie baby from slipping 

 down out of the cradle and allow at the same time the liquids to escape. 

 The head of the cradle was left open. The child passed the first year of 

 its life in this receptacle, never leaving it except to be washed twice daily. 

 It was both fed and dandled in its cradle. If the mother had outside 

 work to do, the cradle was usually slung to her shoulder or to a swing-pole. 

 In carrying it the weight was borne on the hip. It was during this 

 cradle existence of the child that the cranial deformation formerly piactised 

 by this tribe took place. This was effected by fi'ontal pressure, pads or 

 bands of slu'wi being tied across the anterior part of the cranium and held 

 there by thongs fastened to the bottom of the cradle. A pad was also tied 

 across the tojj of the head about the line of the coronal suture to prevent 

 the head from rising to a ridge here, as was common among the Siciatl 

 tribe, the Sk-qo'mic regarding this as ugly and unsightly. The immediate 

 effect of this pressure was threefold. It caused a Hattening of the occi- 

 pital regioii by contact with the cradle-board ; it gave a peculiarly receding 

 sweep to the frontal bone, a line of beauty in Sk-qo'mic eyes ; and it pro- 

 duced a compensatory bulge of the head laterally ; the genei'al effect of 

 all which was to make the head appear abnormally short and the face 

 unusually broad. This practice of cranial deformation has now, I believe, 

 been wholly given up by the Sk-qo'mic, though the infant still passes the 

 greater part of the lirst year of its existence in a cradle as formerly. On 

 one of my visits to the Sk-qo'mic I observed an Indian mother nursing 

 her baby in a rush-made cradle with open top. This, I was informed, 

 was the style now commonly used. Should the birth take place in the 

 winter, or when it was not convenient for the mother to retire to the 

 woods, a temporary screen of reed mats would be put up in the general 

 dwelling, behind which the woman would give birth to her child. A very 

 peculiar custom obtained among the Sk-qo'mic in the case of first-born 

 children. The mother might not feed the child from the breast for 

 four days. Her breasts must first be steamed with a decoction of the rind 

 of the elderberry {Sambucus racemosa), and then covered with poultices 

 of the same material. This was kept up for four days, its object being to 

 ' cook ' the mother's milk. The process, called in the Sk-qo'mic imo'tlkwai 

 mlukivum^:^'' cooking the breast,' was sometimes repeated at the birth of 

 the second child, only on this occasion the infant was not deprived of the 

 breast. It was thought that the mother's milk was harmful to the child 

 before the fourth day and before it had been 'cooked.' This strange 

 custom amongst others may perhajDS have had something to do with the 

 high death-rate among the old-time children. In earlier days, before 

 contact with the whites, it was not at all uncommon for a mother to give 

 birth to a dozen children ; but there were few households Avhich contained 

 a family of children of more than half of that number. It is true female 

 children were commonly strangled at birth if there were too many girls 

 in the family. This unnatural practice war, effected by the parents them- 

 selves — usually by the mother — by stopping the nostrils and placing a gag 

 of sluici in the child's mouth. My informant was herself doomed to this 

 fate at her birth, and was only spared at the earnest solicitations of an 

 elder sister. 



