408 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



mother fills the cradle with black quills aud feathers, in the parts which the child's 

 body had occupied, and in this way carries it around with her wherever she goes for 

 a year or more with as much care as if her infant were alive and in it ; and she often 

 lays or stands it leaning against the side of the wigwam, where she is all day engaged 

 in her needlework, and chatting and talking to it as familiarly and affectionately as 

 if it were her loved infant instead of its shell that she was talking to. So lasting 

 and so strong is the affection of these women for the lost child that it matters not how 

 heavy or cruel their load, or how rugged the route they have to pass over, they will 

 faithfully carry this, and carefully, from day to day, and even more strictly perform 

 their duties to it than if the child were alive and in it. 



In the little toy that I have mentioned, and which is suspended before the child's 

 face, is carefully and superstitiously preserved the umbilicus, which is always secured 

 at the time of its birth, and, being rolled up into a little wad of the size of a pea and 

 dried, it is inclosed in the center of this little bag and placed before the child's face, 

 as its protector and its security for " good luck " and long life. 



Letter c, same plate, exhibits a number of forms and different tastes of these little 

 toys which I have purchased from the women, which they were very willing to sell 

 for a trifling present ; but in every instance they cut them open and removed from 

 within a bunch of cotton or moss the little sacred medicine, which to part with would 

 be to endanger the health of the child, a thing that no consideration would have 

 induced them in any instance to have done. — Pages 130-132, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight 

 Years. 



DRESSING AND TANNING DRESS-SKINS. 



Mr.Catlin, in 1832, whilst among the Crows and Sioux, thus describes 

 the method of preparing leather : 



The Crows, like the Blackfeet, are beautifully costumed, and perhaps with some- 

 what more of taste and elegance ; inasmuch aa the skins of which their dresses are 

 made are more delicately and whitely dressed. The art of dressing skins belongs to 

 the Indians in all countries; and the Crows surpass the civilized world in the beauty 

 of their skin-dressing. The art of tanning is unknown to them, eo far as civilized 

 habits and arts have not been taught them ; yet the art of dressing skins, so far as we 

 have it in the civilized world, has been (like hundreds of other ornamental and use- 

 ful customs which we are practicing) borrowed from the savage, without our ever 

 stopping to inquire from whence they come, or by whom invented. 



The usual mode of dressing the buffalo and other skins is by immersing them for a 

 few days under a lye from ashes and water, until the hair can be removed, when 

 they are strained upon a frame or upon the ground, with stakes or pins driven through 

 the edges into the earth, where they remain for several days, with the brains of the 

 buffalo or elk spread upon and over them, and at last finished by " graining," as it is 

 termed, by the squaws, who use a sharpened bone, the shoulder-blade, or other large 

 bone of the animal, sharpened at the edge, somewhat like an adze, with the edge of 

 which they scrape the fleshy side of the skin, bearing on it with the weight of their 

 bodies, thereby drying and softening the skin and fitting it for use. 



The greater part of these skins, however, go through still another operation after- 

 ward, which gives them a greater value and renders them much more serviceable — 

 that is, the process of smoking. For this a small hole is dug in the ground, and a 

 fire is built in it with rotten wood, which will produce a great quantity of smoke 

 without much blaze, and several small poles of the proper length stuck in the ground 

 around it, and drawn and fastened together at the top, around which a skin is 

 wrapped in form of a tent, and generally sewed together at the edges to secure the 

 smoke within it. Within this the skins to be smoked are placed, and in this condition 

 the tent will stand a day or so, inclosing the heated smoke ; and by some chemical 

 process or other, which I do not understand, the skins thus acquire a quality which 



