VARIOUS as are the customs of the Indians, it is their savage, warlike natures that we are most apt to remember. Few of us, in fact, ever think of Indian children at all, except at the sight of a picture of them. Little has been told or written about the boy and girl red folk, and it would puzzle most of my readers to say what they suppose these children of nature look like, or do to amuse themselves, or how they are brought up. It will astonish most city people to hear that red children are very like white children, just as a lady who was out on the plains a few years ago was astonished to find that they had skins as smooth and soft as any lady's--no, smoother and softer than that: as delicate and lovely as any dear little baby's here in New York. This lady was visiting the Blackfeet in my company, and she was so surprised, when she happened to touch one little red boy's bare arm, that she went about pinching a dozen chubby-faced boys and girls to make herself sure that all their skins were like the coats of ripe peaches to the touch.
Whether the Indians really love their children, or know what genuine love or affection is, I cannot say; but they are so proud and careful of their little ones that it amounts to the same thing so far as the youngsters are concerned. Boy babies are always most highly prized, because they will grow up into warriors.
The little that is taught to Indian boys must seem to them much more like fun than instruction. They must hear the fairy stories and the gabble of the medicine-men or conjurers, and the tales of bloody fights and brave and cunning deeds which make the histories of their tribes. They learn not to take what does not belong to them unless it belongs to an enemy. They learn not to be impudent to any one stronger and bigger than themselves; they learn how to track animals and men, how to go without food when there is not any, how to eat up all there is _at once_ when any food is to be had, how to ride and shoot and run and paddle, and smoke very mild tobacco. As for the rest, they "just grow," like Topsy, and are as emotional and fanciful and wilful as any very little white child ever was. They never get over being so. The older they grow to be, the older children they become, for they are all very much like spoiled children as long as they live.