calico, straps him on his board cradle, suspends it on a limb, and goes on with
the spinning or weaving that had occupied her a few minutes before. All Indian
babies are direct gifts from the Powers That Be, and a token of said Powers'
favor. A childless Indian wife is pitied and scoffed at by her tribe.
After a few months the child is released from his cradle prison and allowed to tumble around the mother's loom while she weaves her blankets. He entertains himself and learns to creep and then to walk without any help. If there is an older child he is left in its care. It is not unusual to see a two or three-year-old youngster guarding a still younger one, and keeping it out of the fire or from under the hoofs of the ponies grazing around the camp.
As the children grow older they are trained to work. The boys watch the flocks
and help cultivate the fields, if fields there be, and the little girls are taught the household tasks of tanning the sheep hides, drying the meat in the sun, braiding the baskets, carding and spinning wool and making it into rugs, shaping the pottery and painting and baking it over the sheep-dung fires. These and dozens
of other tasks are ever at hand for the Indian woman to busy herself with. If you think for an instant that you'd like to leave your own house and live a life of ease with the Indian woman, just forget it. It is a life of labor and hardship, of toil and endless tasks, from day-break until long after dark, and with the most primitive facilities one can imagine. Only on calendars do we see a beauteous Indian maiden draped in velvet, reclining on a mossy bank, and gazing at her own image in a placid pool. That Indian is the figment of a fevered artist brain in a
New York studio. Should a real Indian woman try that stunt she'd search a long way for the water. Then she'd likely recline in a cactus bed and gaze at a medley of hoofs and horns of deceased cows bogged down in a mud hole. Such are the
surroundings of our real Indians.
Indian women are the home-makers and the home-keepers. They build the
house, whether it be the brush hewa of the Supai or the stone pueblo of the Hopi.
They gather the piñon nuts and grind them into meal. They crush the corn into
meal, and thresh and winnow the beans, and dry the pumpkin for winter use.
They cut the meat into strips and cure it into jerky. They dry the grapes and peaches. They garner the acorns and store them in huge baskets of their own weaving. They shear the sheep, and wash, dye, spin, and weave the wool into marvelous blankets. They cut the willows and gather sweet grasses for the making of baskets and trays. They grind and knead and shape clay into artistic
pottery and then paint it with colors gleaned from the earth. They burn and bake the clay vessels until they are waterproof, and they carry them weary miles to the railway to sell them to the tourists so that their children may have food and clothing.
The Hopi woman brings water to the village up a mile or two of heart-breaking
trail, carrying it in great ollas set on her head or slung on her back. She must have water to make the mush for supper, and such trivial things as a shampoo or
a bath are indulged in only just before the annual Snake Dance. Religion demands it then!
Where water is plentiful, however, the Indians bathe and swim daily. They keep
their hair clean and shining with frequent mud baths! Black, sticky mud from the bottom of the river is plastered thickly over the scalp and rubbed into the hair, where it is left for several hours. When it is washed away the hair is soft, and gleams like the sheeny wing of the blackbird. Root of the yucca plant is beaten
into a pulp and used as a shampoo cream by other tribes. Cosmetics are not greatly in use among these women. They grow very brown and wrinkled at an early age, just when our sheltered women are looking their best. This is accounted for by the hard lives they live, exposed to the burning summer suns and biting winter winds, and by cooking over smoky campfires or hovering over
them for warmth in the winter.
An Indian's hands are never beautiful in an artistic sense. How could they be?
They dress and tan the sheep and deer hides; they make moccasins and do exquisite bead work; they cut and carry the wood and keep the fires burning.
They cook the meals and sit patiently by until the men have gobbled their fill before they partake. They care tenderly for the weaklings among the flocks of sheep and goats. Navajo women often nurse a deserted or motherless lamb at their own ample breasts. They make clothes for themselves and their families, although to look at the naked babies one would not think the dress-making business flourished.
But with all the duties incumbent on an Indian mother she never neglects her children. They are taught all that she thinks will help them live good lives. The girls grow up with the knowledge that their destiny is to become good wives and
mothers. They are taught that their bodies must be kept strong and fit to bear many children. And when the years of childhood are passed they know how to
establish homes of their own.
Many interesting customs are followed during courtship among the tribes. The Pueblos, among whom are the Hopis, have a pretty way by which the maidens announce their matrimonial aspirations. How? By putting their soft black hair, which heretofore has been worn loose, into huge whorls above the ears. This is
called the squash-blossom headdress and signifies maturity. When this age is reached, the maiden makes up her mind just which lad she wants, then lets him
know about it. The Hopi girl does her proposing by leaving some cornmeal piki
or other edible prepared by her own hands at the door of the selected victim under cover of darkness. He usually knows who has left it, and then, if "Barkis is willin'," he eats out of the same bowl of mush with her, the medicine man holds a vessel of water into which both dip their hands, and the wedding ceremony is
finished. He moves into the bride's house and they presumably live happily ever
afterward. However, squalls do arise sometimes, and then the husband is likely
to come home from work in the fields or a night at the lodge and find his wardrobe done up in his Sunday bandanna waiting on the doorstep for him. In that case all he can do is take his belongings and "go home to mother." His wife has divorced him by merely throwing his clothes out of her house.
Navajo bucks purchase their wives for a certain number of sheep or horses, as do also the Supai, Cheyenne, Apache, and other desert tribes. There is not much fuss made over divorce among them, either. If a wife does not like her husband's treatment of her, she refuses to cook for him or to attend to any of her duties, and he gladly sends her back to her father. He, like Solomon of old, agrees that "it is better to dwell alone in the wilderness than with an angry and contentious woman." The father doesn't mind getting her back, because he keeps the original purchase price and will also collect from the next brave that wants to take a
chance on her; why should he worry? In a few instances braves have been known to trade wives and throw in an extra pony or silver belt to settle all difficulties. The missionaries are doing much to discourage this practice and are trying to teach the Indians to marry in a civilized manner. In case they do succeed let us hope that while the savages embrace the marrying idea they will
not emulate civilized people in divorce matters.
For a primitive people with all the untrained impulses and natural instincts of animals, there is surprisingly little sexual immorality among the tribes. It seems that the women are naturally chaste. For there is no conventional standard among their own people by which they are judged. If an unmarried squaw has a
