The Crees are also fond of painting their faces with vermilion and charcoal. In general the dress of the male consists of a blanket thrown over the shoulders, a leathern shirt or jacket, and a piece of cloth tied round the middle. The women have in addition a long petticoat, and both sexes wear a kind of wide hose, which, reaching from the ankle to the middle of the thigh, are suspended by strings to the girdle. These hose, or “Indian stockings,” are commonly ornamented with beads or ribands, and from their convenience have been universally adopted by the white residents, as an essential part of their winter-clothing. Their shoes, or rather soft boots (for they tie round the ankle), are made of dressed moose-skins; and during the winter they wrap several pieces of blanket round their feet. They are fond of European articles of dress, such as great-coats, shawls, and calicoes, which, however showy they may be at first, are soon reduced to a very filthy condition by their custom of greasing the face and hair with soft fat or marrow. This practice they say preserves the skin soft, and protects it from cold in the winter and the mosquitoes in summer; but it renders their presence disagreeable to Europeans who may chance to be seated near them in a close tent and near a hot fire.
120. WATCHING FOR CREES.
The Cree women are not in general treated harshly by their husbands: a great part of the labor, however, falls to the lot of the wife. She makes the hut, cooks, dresses the skins, and for the most part carries the heaviest load; but when she is unable to perform her task, the husband does not consider it beneath his dignity to assist her.
The Crees are extremely indulgent to their children. The father never chastises them; and the mother, though more hasty in her temper, seldom bestows a blow on a troublesome child.
The cradle in use among them is well adapted to their mode of life, and is one of their neatest articles of furniture, being generally ornamented with beads and bits of scarlet cloth, but it bears a very strong resemblance in its form to a mummy-case. The infant is placed in this bag, having its lower extremities wrapped up in soft sphagnum, or bog-moss, and may be hung up in the tent or to the branch of a tree, without the least danger of tumbling out; or, in a journey may be suspended on the mother’s back by a band which crosses the forehead so as to leave her hands free. The sphagnum forms a soft elastic bed, which absorbs moisture very readily, and affords such a protection from the winter cold that its place would be ill supplied by any other material.
121. A CREE VILLAGE.
The ordinary wigwams, skin tents, or “lodges” of the Tinné and Crees are exactly alike in form, being extended on poles set up in a conical manner; but as a general rule the tents of the latter are more commodious and more frequently supplied with a fresh lining of the spray of the balsam-fir. They also occasionally erect a larger dwelling of lattice-work, covered with birch-bark, in which forty men or more can assemble for feasting, debating, or performing some of their religious ceremonies. The entire nation of the Eythinyuwuk cultivate oratory more than their northern neighbors, who express themselves more simply and far less fluently.
Vapor baths are in common use with the Crees, and form one of the chief remedies of their medicine-men. The operator shuts himself up with his patient in the small sweating-house—in which red-hot stones besprinkled with water, and having a few leaves of a species of prunus strewed around them, produce a damp atmosphere of a stifling heat—and shampoos him, singing all the time a kind of hymn. As long as the medicine-man can hold out, so long must the patient endure the intense heat of the bath, and then, if the invalid be able to move, they both plunge into the river. If the patient does not recover, he is at least more speedily released from his sufferings by this powerful remedy.