appeals to his honor and ambition. He is called
the future defender of his people, whose lives may
depend upon his courage and skill. If the child
is a girl, she is at once addressed as the future
mother of a noble race.

In hunting songs, the leading animals are intro-
duced; they come to the boy to offer their bodies
for the sustenance of his tribe. The animals are
regarded as his friends, and spoken of almost as
tribes of people, or as his cousins, grandfathers and
grandmothers. The songs of wooing, adapted as
lullabies, were equally imaginative, and the suitors
were often animals personified, while pretty maid-
ens were represented by the mink and the doe.

Very early, the Indian boy assumed the task of
preserving and transmitting the legends of his an-
cestors and his race. Almost every evening a
myth, or a true story of some deed done in the
past, was narrated by one of the parents or grand-
parents, while the boy listened with parted lips and
glistening eyes. On the following evening, he was
usually required to repeat it. If he was not an apt
scholar, he struggled long with his task; but, as a
rule, the Indian boy is a good listener and has a good
memory, so that the stories were tolerably well mas-
tered. The household became his audience,
by which he was alternately criticized and ap-
plauded.