was too young to live without a 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 sugges-
tion 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 artis-
tically 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 con-
veniently balanced by another child in a similar
cradle hung on the opposite side of a pony, I was
still in my oaken bed.