Contents ▼▲
Front Matter At Boonesborough Beginning of the Story Boone on the Yadkin Boone Moves his Family Ready for the Journey What we Wore Driving Cattle and Sheep Camping at Nightfall The Long Halt Jimmy Boone Goes to Clinch Murder of Jimmy Boone A Time of Mourning The Faint-hearted Return A New Home Making Moccasins Tanning Leather Governor Dunmore Our Home on the Clinch Household Duties Attacked by a Wildcat Fighting the Wildcat Boone and Father Return The Wilderness Road Building the Forts Boonesborough Gathering Salt Boonesborough Precautions Our Home in the Fort Ready for Cooking Furnishing the House The Hominy Block The Supply of Water Sports Inside the Fort Wrestling and Running Religion of the Indians Indian Babies Colonel Callaway Arives News from Eastern Colonies Venturing Outside the Fort Dividing the Land Who Owned Kentucky? Ready to Build a Home Billy's Hard Lot Preparing Flax Spinning and Soap Making Broom Making More Indian Murders Indian "Signs" Woodcraft and Hunting Pelts Used as Money Petition of the Settlers Making Sugar Building Fences Capture of the Girls My Willful Thoughts Finding the Trail The Pursuit The Story Told by Jemima Elizabeth's Heroism Rescuing the Girls Alarm Among the Settlers Indians on the Warpath The First Wedding The Wedding Festivities The Brides Home The Housewarming Attacks by the Indians Besieged by the Savages In the Midst of the Fight The Assault by the Indians Failure of the Assault Watchfulness of the Indians The Sortie My Father Wounded Our Wounded

Hannah of Kentucky - James Otis




Indian Babies

It does not seem reasonable that people who delight in torturing others could have any love for their own family, and yet father says that a squaw takes as good care of a baby, after her own fashion, as does a white woman.

What amused Billy and was his description of an Indian cradle. It is nothing more than a thin board with a foot rest at the bottom covered with soft moss, so that the child, when laid on, the board, shall not bruise its feet; at the top there is a stout wooden hoop which extends out three or four inches so that the child's head may be protected from swinging boughs or falling branches when the mother carries it on her back, as she always does while attending to her work in the cornfield or the lodge.

The baby is wrapped in strips of softest deer hide, the bandages beginning at the feet and winding around until even the arms and hands are bound tightly to the child's sides, while the face, except for the hood of which I have spoken, is left ' uncovered. There are two holes, one on either side of the upper end of the board, through which are passed thongs of buck skin, serving to tie the cradle, baby, and all, on the mother's back; for fastenings are passed over her shoulders, under her arms, and then tied to the bottom of the board in such a fashion that even though she bends over at her work of hoeing or cooking, the odd cradle cannot move about.