CRADLES OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 203 



with black quills and 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 wig- 

 wam, 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 mat- 

 ters 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 be- 

 fore the child's face, is carefully and superstitiously preserved the um- 

 bilicus, 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 5 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. 11, Catliu's 

 Eight Years). 



* Long, Maj. S. H. (Expedition to the Sources of the St. Peter's River. Philadelphia. 

 1824. 8vo.) Among the Pottawatomie great care is taken that the body shall be 

 straight and well formed ; no attempt * * * is made to change the shape of the 

 head, "this being regarded as having a tribal significance" (vol. I, p. 100). On the 

 Cottonwood River, Long saw an old Pottawatomie chief with "a child-board on his 

 back, in which he carried his little grandson" (vol. 1, p. 178). The child was naked 

 (p. 179). Of the Dacotah, Long or Keating, who compiled and edited his notes, says: 

 ''The practice of shaping the heads of infants is unknown to them" (vol. 1, p. 

 404). 



Charlevoix, Perede. (Journalof a Voyage to North America. London. 1761. 8vo.) 

 Tbe Tetes de Boule (Roundheads), an Algonquin tribe north of Montreal, " have their 

 name from the roundness of their heads; they think there is a great beauty in this 

 figure, and it is very probable the mothers give it to their children while in the 

 cradle " (vol. I, Letter xi, p. 285). Speaking of the tine figures of the " Indians of 

 Canada," Charlevoix says that one reason for this is, that " their bodies are not con- 

 strained, in the cradle" (vol. 11, Letter xxi, p. 79). Just after (p. 120) he describes 

 the ornamentation of " their children's cradles" among the Hurons. 



Lahontau, Baron. (New Voyages to North America. London. 1735, 2d ed. 8vo.) 

 These observations were made upon the Algonkian and Iroquoian tribes of the St. 

 Lawrence and the Lakes in the latter part of the seventeenth centur} 7 . Like Hearue, 

 he says: "There is no such thing as a cradle among the savages" (vol. II, p. 7); but 

 he adds that "the mothers make use of certain little boards, stuffed with cotton, upon 



