My fat grandmothers made a funny sight, washing their faces; stooping, with eyes tightly shut, each filled her mouth with water, blew it into her palms and rubbed them over her face. No towels were used.
The men of the household more often went down for a plunge in the river. Some of the young men of the village bathed in the river the whole year, through a hole in the ice in winter.
Many bathers, after their morning plunge, rubbed their wet bodies with white clay; this warmed and freshened the skin.
My mother usually washed my face for me; I liked it quite as little as any white boy.
Our morning meal was now eaten, hominy boiled with beans and buffalo fat, and seasoned with alkali salt—spring salt we called it, because we gathered it from the edges of springs. After the meal, I had nothing to do all day but play.
My best loved toy was my bow, of choke-cherry wood, given me when I was four years old. My arrows were of buck-brush shoots, unfeathered. These shoots were brought in green, and thrust into the hot ashes of the fireplace; when heated, they were drawn out and the bark peeled off, leaving them a beautiful yellow. Buck-brush arrows are light, and I was allowed to shoot them within the lodge.
My uncle, Full Heart, a boy two years older than myself, taught me how to use my bow. In our lodge were many mice that nested in holes under the sloping roof, and my uncle and I hunted these mice as savagely as our fathers hunted buffaloes. I think I was not a very good shot, for I do not remember ever killing one.
But I had the ill luck to shoot my mother. She was stooping at her work, one day, when an arrow badly aimed struck her in the cheek, its point pierced the skin, and the shaft remained hanging in the flesh. I saw the blood start and heard my mother cry, “Oh, my son has shot me!” I dropped my bow and ran, for I thought I had killed her; but she drew out the shaft, laughing.
I was too young to have any fear of the Sioux, and I had not yet learned to be afraid of ghosts, but I was afraid of owls, for I was taught that they punished little boys. Sometimes, if I was pettish, my uncles would cry, “The owl is coming!” And in the back of the lodge a voice would call, “Hoo, hoo, hoo!” This always gave me a good fright, and I would run to my grandfather and cover my head with his robe, or hide in my fathers bed.
It was not the custom of my tribe for parents to punish their own children; usually, the father called in a clan brother to do this. My uncle, Flies Low, a clan brother of my father, punished me when I was bad, but he seldom did more than threaten.