fter a few months the child is released from his cradle prison and
allowed to tumble around the mother's loom while she weaves her
blankets. He entertains himself and learns to creep and then to walk
without any help. If there is an older child he is left in its care. It
is not unusual to see a two or three-year-old youngster guarding a still
younger one, and keeping it out of the fire or from under the hoofs of
the ponies grazing around the camp.

As the children grow older they are trained to work. The boys watch the
flocks and help cultivate the fields, if fields there be, and the little
girls are taught the household tasks of tanning the sheep hides, drying
the meat in the sun, braiding the baskets, carding and spinning wool and
making it into rugs, shaping the pottery and painting and baking it over
the sheep-dung fires. These and dozens of other tasks are ever at hand
for the Indian woman to busy herself with. If you think for an instant
that you'd like to leave your own house and live a life of ease with the
Indian woman, just forget it. It is a life of labor and hardship, of
toil and endless tasks, from day-break until long after dark, and with
the most primitive facilities one can imagine. Only on calendars do we
see a beauteous Indian maiden draped in velvet, reclining on a mossy
bank, and gazing at her own image in a placid pool. That Indian is the
figment of a fevered artist brain in a New York studio. Should a real
Indian woman try that stunt she'd search a long way for the water. Then
she'd likely recline in a cactus bed and gaze at a medley of hoofs and
horns of deceased cows bogged down in a mud hole. Such are the
surroundings of our real Indians.

Indian women are the home-makers and the home-keepers. They build the
house, whether it be the brush hewa of the Supai or the stone pueblo of
the Hopi. They gather the pinon nuts and grind them into meal. They
crush the corn into meal, and thresh and winnow the beans, and dry the
pumpkin for winter use. They cut the meat into strips and cure it into
jerky. They dry the grapes and peaches. They garner the acorns and store
them in huge baskets of their own weaving. They shear the sheep, and
wash, dye, spin, and weave the wool into marvelous blankets. They cut
the willows and gather sweet grasses for the making of baskets and
trays. They grind and knead and shape clay into artistic pottery and
then paint it with colors gleaned from the earth. They burn and bake t