y. Very often my grandmother carried me with her on these
excursions; and while she worked it was her habit to suspend me from a
wild grape vine or a springy bough, so that the least breeze would swing
the cradle to and fro.

She has told me that when I had grown old enough to take notice, I
was apparently capable of holding extended conversations in an unknown
dialect with birds and red squirrels. Once I fell asleep in my cradle,
suspended five or six feet from the ground, while Uncheedah was some
distance away, gathering birch bark for a canoe. A squirrel had found it
convenient to come upon the bow of my cradle and nibble his hickory nut,
until he awoke me by dropping the crumbs of his meal. My disapproval
of his intrusion was so decided that he had to take a sudden and quick
flight to another bough, and from there he began to pour out his wrath
upon me, while I continued my objections to his presence so audibly that
Uncheedah soon came to my rescue, and compelled the bold intruder to
go away. It was a common thing for birds to alight on my cradle in the
woods.

My food was, at first, a troublesome question for my kind foster-mother.
She cooked some wild rice and strained it, and mixed it with broth made
from choice venison. She also pounded dried venison almost to a flour,
and kept it in water till the nourishing juices were extracted, then
mixed with it some pounded maize, which was browned before pounding.
This soup of wild rice, pounded venison and maize was my main-stay. But
soon my teeth came--much earlier than the white children usually cut
theirs; and then my good nurse gave me a little more varied food, and I
did all my own grinding.

After I left my cradle, I almost walked away from it, she told me. She
then began calling my attention to natural objects. Whenever I heard
the song of a bird, she would tell me what bird it came from, something
after this fashion:

"Hakadah, listen to Shechoka (the robin) calling his mate. He says he
has just found something good to eat." Or "Listen to Oopehanska (the
thrush); he is singing for his little wife. He will sing his best." When
in the evening the whippoorwill started his song with vim, no further
than a stone's throw from our tent in the woods, she would say to me:

"Hush! It may be an Ojibway scout!"

Again, when I waked at midnight, she would say:

"Do not cry! Hinakaga (the owl) is watching you from the tree-top."

I usually covered up my head, for I ha