?

"Winona, the First-born, of course. That is hers by right of birth."

"Still, it may not fit her. One must prove herself worthy in order to
retain that honorable name."

"Ugh," retorts the first grandmother, "she can at least bear it on
probation!"

"Tosh, tosh," the other assents.

Thus the unconscious little Winona has passed the first stage of the
Indian's christening.

Presently she is folded into a soft white doeskin, well lined with the
loose down of cattails, and snugly laced into an upright oaken cradle,
the front of which is a richly embroidered buckskin bag, with porcupine
quills and deers' hoofs suspended from its profuse fringes. This
gay cradle is strapped upon the second grandmother's back, and that
dignitary walks off with the newcomer.

"You must come with me," she says. "We shall go among the father and
mother trees, and hear them speak with their thousand tongues, that
you may know their language forever. I will hang the cradle of the
woman-child upon Utuhu, the oak; and she shall hear the love-sighs of
the pine maiden!"

In this fashion Winona is introduced to nature and becomes at once
"nature-born," in accord with the beliefs and practices of the wild red
man.

"Here she is! Take her," says the old woman on her return from the
woods. She presents the child to its mother, who is sitting in the shade
of an elm-tree as quietly as if she had not just passed through woman's
severest ordeal in giving a daughter to the brave Chetonska!

"She has a winsome face, as meek and innocent as the face of an ermine,"
graciously adds the grandmother.

The mother does not speak. Silently and almost reverently she takes her
new and first-born daughter into her arms. She gazes into its velvety
little face of a dusky red tint, and unconsciously presses the closely
swaddled form to her breast. She feels the mother-instinct seize upon
her strongly for the first time. Here is a new life, a new hope, a
possible link between herself and a new race!

Ah, a smile plays upon her lips, as she realizes that she has kissed her
child! In its eyes and mouth she discerns clearly the features she has
loved in the strong countenance of another, though in the little woman's
face they are softened and retouched by the hand of the "Great Mystery."

The baby girl is called Winona for some months, when the medicine-man
is summoned and requested to name publicly the first-born daughter of
Chetonska, the White Hawk; but no