The redskin boy-child who looks out from his little cradle-board on a
world of forest through whose trails his baby feet are already being
fitted to follow is not many hours old before careful hands wrap him
about with gay-beaded bands that are strapped to the carven and colored
back-board that will cause him to stand erect and upright when he is a
grown warrior. His small feet are bound against a foot support so that
they are exactly straight; that is to start his walk in life aright.
He is but an atom in the most renowned of the savage races known to
history, a people that, according to the white man's standard, is
uncivilized, uneducated, illiterate, and barbarous. Yet the upbringing
of every Red Indian male child begins at his birth, and ends only when
he has acquired the learning considered essential for the successful
man to possess, and which has been predetermined through many ages by
many wise ancestors.
His education is twofold, and always is imparted in "pairs" of
subjects--that is, while he is being instructed in the requisites of
fighting, hunting, food getting, and his national sports, he takes
with each "subject" a very rigid training in etiquette, for it would
be as great a disgrace for him to fail in manners of good breeding as
to fail to take the war-path when he reaches the age of seventeen.