CRADLES OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 207 



nature is stopped in one place, if a destruction of the whole system doth 

 not thereby ensue, it breaks out in a proportional redundancy in another. 

 May we not to this custom, and as a necessary effect of this cause, 

 attribute their fickle, wild, and cruel tempers? Especially, when we 

 connect therewith both a false education and great exercise to agitate 

 their animal spirits. When the brain, in cooler people, is disturbed, it 

 neither reasons nor determines with proper judgment. The Indians 

 thus look on everything around them through their own false medium, 

 and vilify our heads because they have given a wrong turn to their 

 own." (Adair's American Indians, p. 8.) 



Lafitau* speaks as follows concerning the Southern Indian cradfo: 

 "The cradle for the savage children in New France is made through- 

 out pretty and roomy. It consists of one or two very thin planks of 

 light wood, 2£ feet long, ornamented on the edges and rounded at the 

 foot, to give convenience of cradling. The child enveloped in fine fur is 

 as thon^ -■'-■ :he united planks, and is placed standing up in a 



way tnat it shall hang over a little ledge of wood where its feet are, 

 the point turned under for fear lest they should get hurt, and in order 

 that it should hold the fold by which it is necessary to carry the frame. 

 The swaddling-clothes or furs are held up in front by large bands of 

 painted skin, which does not stretch much, and which are passed and 

 repassed in the small loops of tough skin which hang from the sides of 

 the cradle, where they are firmly fastened. They let these swaddling- 

 clothes hang considerably below the cradle, and they throw them be- 

 hind when they wish to go walking with the child, or let them fall over 

 a half circle, which is fastened to the planks near the head of the child, 

 and which can be made to turn forwards in order that the child can 

 breathe freely without being exposed to the cold of winter or to the stings 

 of mosquitos or gnats in summer, and in order that it should not receive 

 injury if the cradle fell. They put over that half circle little bracelets 

 of porcelain and other little trifles that the Latins call crepundia, which 

 serve as an ornament and as playthings to divert the child. Two large 

 lengths of strong leather, which come out from the cradle at the head, 

 enable the mother to carry it everywhere with her, and to fasten below 

 all their other bundles, when they go to the fields, and to suspend to 

 some branch of a tree, where cradled and soothed to sleep by the wind, 

 while she works. 



u The children are very warm in the cradle and very easy, for besides 

 the furs, which are very soft, they put much down taken from the cala- 

 mus (cat-tail, rush ?), which they stuff in a wad, or perhaps the pounded 

 bark of the peruche (birch f), with which the women scour their hair 

 to invigorate it. They are also very careful so that it can not soil their 

 furs; by means of a little skin or a rag which they pass between their 

 thighs, which hangs out over the fore part, they can attend to their 



*Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, vol. I, p. 597. 



