mother. She offered to keep me until I died, and then she
would put me in my mother's grave. Of course my other grandmother
denounced the suggestion as a very wicked one, and refused to give me
up.

The babe was done up as usual in a movable cradle made from an oak board
two and a half feet long and one and a half feet wide. On one side of
it was nailed with brass-headed tacks the richly-embroidered sack, which
was open in front and laced up and down with buckskin strings. Over
the arms of the infant was a wooden bow, the ends of which were firmly
attached to the board, so that if the cradle should fall the child's
head and face would be protected. On this bow were hung curious
playthings--strings of artistically carved bones and hoofs of deer,
which rattled when the little hands moved them.

In this upright cradle I lived, played and slept the greater part of the
time during the first few months of my life. Whether I was made to lean
against a lodge pole or was suspended from a bough of a tree, while
my grandmother cut wood, or whether I was carried on her back, or
conveniently balanced by another child in a similar cradle hung on the
opposite side of a pony, I was still in my oaken bed.

This grandmother, who had already lived through sixty years of
hardships, was a wonder to the young maidens of the tribe. She showed
no less enthusiasm over Hakadah than she had done when she held her
first-born, the boy's father, in her arms. Every little attention that
is due to a loved child she performed with much skill and devotion. She
made all my scanty garments and my tiny moccasins with a great deal of
taste. It was said by all that I could not have had more attention had
my mother been living.

Uncheedah (grandmother) was a great singer. Sometimes, when Hakadah
wakened too early in the morning, she would sing to him something like
the following lullaby:

Sleep, sleep, my boy, the Chippewas

Are far away--are far away.

Sleep, sleep, my boy; prepare to meet

The foe by day--the foe by day!

The cowards will not dare to fight

Till morning break--till morning break.

Sleep, sleep, my child, while still 'tis night;

Then bravely wake--then bravely wake!

The Dakota women were wont to cut and bring their fuel from the woods
and, in fact, to perform most of the drudgery of the camp. This of
necessity fell to their lot, because the men must follow the game
during the da