It is not a rare sight to see a pair of elaborate tiny moccasins above a little Indian grave. A mother's fingers have embroidered them, a mother's hand has hung them there, to help the baby's feet over the long rough road that stretches between his father's wigwam and the Great Chief's happy hunting grounds.
Indians believe that a baby's spirit cannot reach the spirit-land until the child, if living, would have been old enough and strong enough to walk. Until that time the little spirit hovers about its mother. And often it grows tired—oh so very tired! So the tender mother carries a papoose's cradle on her back that the baby spirit may ride and rest when it will. The cradle is filled with the softest feathers, for the spirit rests more comfortably upon soft things—hard things bruise it—and all the papoose's old toys dangle from the crib, for the dead papoose may love to play even as the living papoose did.
THE MAIDENS' FEAST
Of the many peculiar customs of the Indians in the long ago, perhaps the most unique was the annual "feast of Maidens." One was given at Fort Ellis, Manitoba, some thirty years ago, in a natural amphitheatre, surrounded by groves, fully one thousand feet above the Assiniboine River.
It was observed at a reunion of the Sioux, and of the Assiniboines and the Crees, three friendly tribes.
In his "Indian Boyhood," that brilliant Sioux author, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, great-grandson of Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky, that potential friend of the missionaries in pioneer days at Lake Calhoun, graphically describes it thus:—
"One bright summer morning, while we were still at our meal of jerked buffalo meat, we heard the herald of the Wahpeton band upon his calico pony as he rode round our circle.
"White Eagle's daughter, the maiden Red Star, invites all the maidens of all the tribes to come and partake of her feast. It will be in the Wahpeton Camp, before the sun reaches the middle of the sky. All pure maidens are invited. Red Star, also, invites the young men to be present, to see that no unworthy maiden should join in the feast."
The herald soon completed the rounds of the different camps, and it was not long before the girls began to gather. It was regarded as a semi-sacred feast.