A young married woman is supposed to go out from the lodge, and busy herself in breaking up dry limbs, and preparing wood, as if to lay in a store for a future and approaching emergency.
A raven, perched on a neighbouring tree, espies her, at her work, and begins to sing; assuming the expected infant to be a boy.
| In dosh ke zhig o mun |
| In dosh ke zhig o mun |
| In dosh ke zhig o mun |
My eyes! my eyes my eyes! Alluding to the boy (and future man) killing animals as well as men, whose eyes will be left, as the singer anticipates, to be picked out by ravenous birds. So early are the first notions of war implanted.
A woodpecker, sitting near, and hearing this song, replies; assuming the sex of the infant to be a female.
| Ne mos sa mug ga |
| Ne mos sa mug ga |
| Ne mos sa mug ga. |
My worms! my worms! my worms! Alluding to the custom of the female's breaking up dry and dozy wood, out of which, it could pick its favourite food, being the mösa or wood-worm.
Want of space induces the writer to defer, to a future number, the remainder of his collection of these cradle and nursery chants. They constitute in his view, rude as they are, and destitute of metrical attractions, a chapter in the history of the human heart, in the savage phasis, which deserves to be carefully recorded. It has fallen to his lot, to observe more perhaps, in this department of Indian life, than ordinary, and he would not acquit himself of his duty to the race, were he to omit these small links out of their domestic and social chain. The tie which binds the mother to the child, in Indian life, is a very strong one, and it is conceived to admit of illustration in this manner. It is not alone in the war-path and the council, that the Red Man is to be studied. To appreciate his whole character, in its true light, he must be followed into his lodge, and viewed in his seasons of social leisure and retirement. If there be any thing warm and abiding in the heart or memory of the man, when thus at ease, surrounded by his family, it must come out here; and hence, indeed, the true value of his lodge lore, of every kind.
It is out of the things mental as well as physiological, that pertain to maternity, that philosophy must, in the end, construct the true ethnological chain, that binds the human race, in one comprehensive system of unity.