on a
world of forest through whose trails his baby feet are already being
fitted to follow is not many hours old before careful hands wrap him
about with gay-beaded bands that are strapped to the carven and colored
back-board that will cause him to stand erect and upright when he is a
grown warrior. His small feet are bound against a foot support so that
they are exactly straight; that is to start his walk in life aright.

He is but an atom in the most renowned of the savage races known to
history, a people that, according to the white man's standard, is
uncivilized, uneducated, illiterate, and barbarous. Yet the upbringing
of every Red Indian male child begins at his birth, and ends only when
he has acquired the learning considered essential for the successful
man to possess, and which has been predetermined through many ages by
many wise ancestors.

His education is twofold, and always is imparted in "pairs" of
subjects--that is, while he is being instructed in the requisites of
fighting, hunting, food getting, and his national sports, he takes
with each "subject" a very rigid training in etiquette, for it would
be as great a disgrace for him to fail in manners of good breeding as
to fail to take the war-path when he reaches the age of seventeen.

FIRST, COURAGE

The education of an Iroquois boy is begun before he can even speak. The
first thing he is taught is courage--the primitive courage that must
absolutely despise fear--and at the same time he is thoroughly grounded
in the first immutable law of Indian etiquette, which is that under no
conceivable conditions must one ever stare, as the Redskin races hold
that staring marks the lowest level of ill-breeding.

SECOND, RELIGIOUS TRAINING

His second subject is religious training. While he is yet a baby in
arms he is carried "pick-a-back" in his mother's blanket to the ancient
dances and festivals, where he sees for the first time, and in his
infant way participates in, the rites and rituals of the pagan faith,
learning to revere the "Great Spirit," and to anticipate the happy
hunting grounds that await him after death.

At the end of a long line of picturesque braves and warriors who circle
gracefully in the worshipping dance, his mother carries him, her
smooth, soft-footed, twisting step lulling him to sleep, for his tiny,
copper-colored person, swinging to every curve of the dance, soon
becomes an unconscious bit of babyhood. But the instant he learns to