95 
There were various ways of keeping children quiet in the evenings. 
Parents sometimes frightened them by saying “ Be quiet, or the bear's 
paw will come and get you.” More often they used the expression “ The 
little owl, kokoko, will get you.” If the warning was of no avail, the mother 
sometimes opened the door and called “ Come, little owl, these children 
are making too much noise.” To keep them indoors in the evening it was 
only necessary to hang an owl-mask made from birch bark outside the 
wigwam. But parents should never invoke anything but the small owl, 
kokoko . If they invoked the big horned owl that bird might really attack 
a child’s shadow and kill it. 
“ In one of our camps the children had been too noisy, so a relative of mine slipped 
away into the woods soon after dark, put on his oldest clothes, stuffed them before 
and behind with leaves and grass, blackened his hands and face, covered his face with 
an owl-mask, and leaped into the circle round the campfire crying kokoko . All the 
grown-up people shouted “ Kokoko has come because you children were so noisy. ” 
The children were terribly frightened and fled immediately to their beds ” (Jonas 
King). 
The ordinary punishment for young children six to eleven years of 
age was to keep them in a corner of the wigwam for several days, giving 
them only soup at noon, and nothing at all either morning or evening. They 
were told to stay there and dream in order that their punishment might 
not be without its profit. 
“ My parents once punished me by tying me up in a tree, where they intended 
to leave me all night. But three or four hours later my brother happened to return, 
from a lumber camp and he released me” (Pegahmagabow) . 
Parry Island children really possessed far more freedom than children 
of European descent, and enjoyed nearly as many outdoor pastimes, 
although of a simpler character. Their parents often made them toy boats 
by coiling a bulrush spirally, pegging the coils together, and setting up a 
mast in the centre. The children themselves strung berries into necklaces, 
made necklaces and bandoliers of pine needles, modelled animal figures 
from clay, and filled with berries the leaves of the “ owl’s socks ” or pitcher 
plant. Boys and girls often played camp together; the boys caught fish 
and birds for the girls to cook, and the girls made little mats and birch- 
bark baskets for their tiny wigwams. There was a game of marbles played 
with stones , 1 toys such as the buzz and the bull-roarer, three varieties of 
the ring-and-pin , 1 and the popular windigo game . 1 In winter the children 
coasted down the slopes on small toboggans , 1 played shinny on the ice with 
stones and -wooden sticks curved like golf-clubs, or vied with each other 
in the widely-spread game of snow-snake . 1 
“ When I was a little boy I used to hold my nose between the thumb and fore- 
finger and run about calling memenggwa, ' butterfly/ so that the butterflies would 
play with me. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t” (Jonas King). 
1 It seems unnecessary to give details of these games, which have been fully described by Miss Densmore 
(op. cit., pp. 67-70, 117-118). The three variants of the ring-and-pin game at Parry island required the following 
appliances: 
(*) A piece of tanned deerskin shaped like a deer, with perforations in the surface, attached to one end of a cord. 
To the other end was attached a bone needle. The game consisted in tossing up the “deer*' and impaling it with 
the needle through one of the holes. Pegging it through a hole in the "tail'' gave the highest count. 
CO Ten rings of birch bark strung together on a cord similarly provided with a bone needle. 
(•) A bunch of cedar twigs tied tightly together with basswood twine on the other end of which was a sharpened 
stick. 
