298 SOCIAL AND WARLIKE CUSTOMS 



themselves in giving the appropriate responses, while others uttered 

 encouraging ■words with becoming gravity. 



With regard to the manner of bringing up Indian children nothing 

 can he more erroneous than to suppose that the young were allowed 

 to grow up without any sort of discipline. So far from this having been 

 the case, in addition to the ordinary way of correcting children, there 

 were many other restraints imposed upon the young. The Indians 

 knew in their primitive state, apparently as well as civilized commu- 

 nities, that children too much humored and neglected in moral train- 

 ing when young, as they grow up are apt to become turbulent and 

 bad members of society. As one of the most effective means for 

 training and forming the character of the Indian youth, fasting seems 

 to have been established and practised from time immemorial, and 

 prevailed, I am led to believe, universally among the Indian tribes of 

 this continent. As soon as children were thought capable of reason- 

 ing they were required to practise fasting, until they were married. 

 Besides their regularly abstaining from food for so many days succes- 

 sively, at different parts of the year, they were obliged to fast before 

 they were allowed to take any of the wild fruits of the earth, at the 

 different seasons as they became ripe. The same rule was observed 

 with regard to the produce of the farm. 



The Indians were most exact in enforcing their rules of fasting. 

 With young children it lasted the whole day, and if a child put any- 

 thing in his mouth during the day, as, for instance, snow or a piece of 

 icicle, — which children are very apt to do when playing in the open 

 air in winter, — that day went for nothing, the child was then per- 

 mitted to eat, with strict injunctions to renew his fast the next day. 

 It was also imposed as a punishment upon those children who mani- 

 fested a disposition to be disobedient and disrespectful ; and was 

 found an excellent means of discipline to make children sensible of 

 their duties, and exercised a wholesome restraint upon the youth. 

 With yovmg men from sixteen to twenty-five years of age it was no 

 longer necessary to remind them of the practice. It was looked upon 

 as a duty by every young man, who had too much honorable feeling 

 to submit to the sneers of his companions as a worthless glutton. 

 They, moreover, believed gluttony to be highly displeasing to the 

 Great Spirit ; and that, in order to obtain special favors from him, it 

 was absolutely necessary to restrain the appetite. The young men 

 frequently spent one or two months during the winter in fasting, 

 taking only one meal in the day after sunset. la summer less time 



