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128 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 99
qualities, or reminiscent of one of his feats on the war path, while
hunting, etc.
Care for Child—Child Life
The Cherokee are very fond of children and are far less loath to
give vent to their affection than Indians are generally believed to be.
There are now no special cradles, nor is there any distinctive
dress for children. The first few weeks it may be merely swaddled
in a bed sheet, and as it grows up it is astonishingly soon considered
of age to wear the cast-off garments of its elders. I saw little boys
and girls of 4 and 5 years old dressed for all the world like their
fathers and mothers, and at the family we stayed with, a much
dilapidated black felt hat was shared by a little fellow of 6 and his
married brother of 25, who borrowed it as circumstances demanded.
The child is always nourished with the mother's milk, unless it be
brought up to be a witch (see p. 130), or if the mother's lactation is
deficient; this is only rarely the case. If for any of these two reasons
the mother does not nurse her child, it is brought up on the liquid
part of k'a'no'e-'no", corn hominy.
Very soon the young fellow adopts the fare of the grown-ups, and
eats as they do the almost indigestible corn dumplings and the
underdone venison. The results, it need hardly be said, are often
disastrous.
There are various ways and means to help the child along with its
growth, and to endow it with a fine physique as well as with all kinds
of enviable qualities:
The very strong sinewy roots of Dt'st§,-yo°' {Tephrosia virginiana
(L.) Pers.; goatsrue; catgut) are boiled and given to the child to
drink to make it strong and muscular.
It is given the eavesdrop, from where it falls in one continuous spout,
to drink, so that it may be a fluent speaker. This behef is very prob-
ably borrowed from the whites.
The flesli}^ tubers of k*a ntGu-tsa'ti (Lilium canadense L.; wild yellow
lily) are boiled and the decoction is given to the child to drink;
it is also bathed in it, the object of both actions being to make it
fleshy and fat. Another plant put to the same use was the Apledrum
hiemale (putty root; Adam-and-Eve) (cf. Mooney, Myths, p. 427).
Another means to ''endow the children with the gift of eloquence"
is indicated by Mooney, op. cit., p. 420.
As a rule the child's hygienic condition is very bad indeed. I have
known cases where infants who were born rosy, chubby little fellows
had hardly made any progress two months or ten weeks after their
birth, as they were literafly being eaten up and worried to death by
vermin and filth. There are, however, some fortunate exceptions,
and some of the cleaner mothers take as much pride in their offspring