CEADLES OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 



185 



made of soft flags, a foot wide, joined by cross-rows of twined weaving 

 2 inches apart. This mat is bordered by a braid of flags, and the two 

 ends are puckered or drawn to a point. The cradle belongs to the open, 

 unhooded type, and is made by doubling the matting at the head and 

 drawing it together to a point at the foot. The two edges next to the 

 cradle-frame are joined and fastened to the 

 frame, while the outer edge is allowed to flare 

 open. In this little ark of flags or rushes the 

 baby is placed.* 



The children of the California peninsula 

 stand and walk before they are a year old. 

 When they are born they are cradled in the 

 shell of a turtle or on the ground. As soon 

 as the child is a few months old, the mother 

 places it perfectly naked astraddle on her 

 shoulders, its legs hanging down on both 

 sides in front. In this guise the mother roves 

 about all day, exposing her helpless charge 

 to the hot rays of the sun and the chilly winds 

 that sweep over the inhospitable country.t 



Like her white sister, the Indian mother (to 

 be) in Montana and her friends make prepa- 

 rations for the coming event by collecting 

 cloths, and the board that the child is to pass 

 so many hours of its first year of life on, 

 which, if richly ornamented with beads, otter- 

 skin, and fringes, with bells on them, is worth 

 a good horse, which is generally what is given 

 for the child's board or cradle. This is usually 

 the case when the boy or girl is given and 

 adopted by another mother. So an Indian 

 child has generally two mothers, and of course two fathers, but the 

 father has but little to do with the child till it is old enough to run 

 around. 



When the child is born it is taken in charge by its adopted mother, 

 or by a hired woman. It is washed, dried, then greased, and powdered 

 with red ocher, then nursed by some Indian woman or its mother, and 

 wrapped up, with its arms down by its side, in a buffalo-calf skin or 

 shawl or small blanket, and placed in its board or cradle, to be taken 



* Acosta, Padre Jose" de. (The Natural.and Moral History of the Indies. Ed. Hak- 

 luyt Soc. London. I860. 8vo.) Of the "Chichimecas" — savage mountaineers— he 

 says : " The wives likewise went a hunting with their hushands, leaving their young 

 children in a little panier of reeds, tied to the houghs of a tree." (Vol. ir, p. 450.) 

 Head-flattening. (Mexico.) " Las parteras hacen que las criaturas no tengan colo- 

 drillos ; y las madres las tienen echadas en cunas de tal suerte que no les crezca, 

 porque se preciau sin el." (G6mara, Mejico, p. 440.) 



t Cradle of Turtle-shell, Low. Cal. Inds., 1773. Baegert, in Smithsonian Rep., 1863, 

 p. 362. 



Pig. 16. 



Taqui Cradle, made of Canes. 

 Soft bosses used foe pillows. 



( U. S. N. M. 



Sonora, Mexico. Collected by 

 Edward Palmer. ) 



