The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 27

Nevertheless, as Professor Mason observes, among primitive races, woman's share in the "invention, dissemination, conservation, and metamorphosis of language" has been very great, and she has been _par excellence_ the teacher of language, as indeed she is to-day in our schools when expression and _savoir faire_ in speech, rather than deep philological learning and dry grammatical a.n.a.lysis, have been the object of instruction.

_Geography._

Much has been said and written about the wonderful knowledge of geography and topography possessed by the Indian of America, and by other primitive peoples as well. The following pa.s.sage from Mr. Powers'

account of the natives of California serves to explain some of this (519. 109):--

"Besides the coyote-stories with which gifted squaws amuse their children, and which are common throughout this region, there prevails among the Mattoal a custom which might almost be dignified with the name of geographical study. In the first place, it is necessary to premise that the boundaries of all the tribes on Humboldt Bay, Eel River, Van Dusen's Fork, and in fact everywhere, are marked with the greatest precision, being defined by certain creeks, canons, bowlders, conspicuous trees, springs, etc., each one of which objects has its own individual name. It is perilous for an Indian to be found outside of his tribal boundaries, wherefore it stands him well in hand to make himself acquainted with the same early in life. Accordingly, the squaws teach these things to their children in a kind of sing-song not greatly unlike that which was the national _furore_ some time ago in rural singing-schools, wherein they melodiously chanted such pleasing items of information as this: 'California. Sacramento, on the Sacramento River.'

Over and over, time and again, they rehea.r.s.e all these bowlders, etc., describing each minutely and by name, with its surroundings. Then when the children are old enough, they take them around to beat the bounds like b.u.mble the Beadle; and so wonderful is the Indian memory naturally, and so faithful has been their instruction, that the little shavers generally recognize the objects from the descriptions of them previously given by their mothers. If an Indian knows but little of this great world more than pertains to boundary bush and bowlder, he knows his own small fighting-ground infinitely better than any topographical engineer can learn it."

Mr. Powers' reference to "beating the bounds like b.u.mble the Beadle" is an apt one. Mr. Frederick Sessions has selected as one of his _Folk-Lore Topics_ the subject of "Beating the Bounds" (352), and in his little pamphlet gives us much interesting information concerning the part played by children in these performances. The author tells us: "One of the earliest of my childish pleasures was seeing the Mayor and Corporation, preceded by Sword-bearer, Beadles, and Blue Coat School boys, going in procession from one city boundary-stone to another, across the meadows and the river, or over hedges and gardens, or anything else to which the perambulated border-line took them. They were followed along the route by throngs of holiday makers. Many of the crowd, and all the Blue boys, were provided with willow-wands, _peeled_, if I remember rightly, with which each boundary mark was well flogged. The youngest boys were b.u.mped against the 'city stones.'"

In the little town of Charlbury in Oxfords.h.i.+re, "the perambulations seem to have been performed mostly by boys, accompanied by one or more of their seniors." At Houghton, a village near St. Ives in Huntingdons.h.i.+re: "The bounds are still beaten triennially. They are here marked by holes in some places, and by stones or trees in others. The procession starts at one of the holes. Each new villager present is instructed in the position of this corner of the boundary by having his head forcibly thrust into the hole, while he has to repeat a sort of mumbo-jumbo prayer, and receives three whacks with a shovel. He pays a s.h.i.+lling for his 'footing' (boys only pay sixpence), and then the forty or fifty villagers march off to the opposite corner and repeat the process, except the monetary part, and regale themselves with bread and cheese and beer, paid for by the farmers who now occupy any portion of the old common lands."

In Russia, before the modern system of land-registration came into vogue, "all the boys of adjoining Cossack village communes were 'collected and driven like flocks of sheep to the frontier, whipped at each boundary-stone, and if, in after years two whipped lads, grown into men, disputed as to the precise spot at which they had been castigated, then the oldest inhabitant carrying a sacred picture from the church, led the perambulations, and acted as arbitrator."

Here also ought to be mentioned perhaps, as somewhat akin and reminiscent of like practices among primitive peoples, "the _blason populaire_ (as it is neatly called in French), in which the inhabitants of each district or city are nicely ticketed off and distinguished by means of certain abnormalities of feature or form, or certain mental peculiarities attributed to them" (204.19). In parts of Hungary and Transylvania a somewhat similar practice is in vogue (392 (1892). 128).

_Story-Telling._

Some Indian children have almost the advantages of the modern home in the way of story-telling. Clark informs us (420.109):--

"Some tribes have regular story-tellers, men who have devoted a great deal of time to learning the myths and stories of their people, and who possess, in addition to a good memory, a vivid imagination. The mother sends for one of these, and, having prepared a feast for him, she and her little 'brood,' who are curled up near her, await the fairy stories of the dreamer, who, after his feast and smoke, entertains them for hours. Many of these fanciful sketches or visions are interesting and beautiful in their rich imagery, and have been at times given erroneous positions in ethnological data."

Knortz refers in glowing terms to the _adisoke-winini_, or "storyteller" of the Chippeway Indians, those gifted men, who entertain their fellows with the tales and legends of the race, and who are not mere reciters, but often poets and transformers as well (_Skizzen_, 294).

So, too, among the Andaman Islanders, "certain mythic legends are related to the young by _okopai-ads_ [shamans], parents, and others, which refer to the supposed adventures or history of remote ancestors, and though the recital not unfrequently evokes much mirth, they are none the less accepted as veracious" (498. 95).

_Morals._

Among some of the native tribes of California we meet with _i-wa-musp_, or "men-women" (519. 132). Among the Yuki, for example, there were men who dressed and acted like women, and "devoted themselves to the instruction of the young by the narration of legends and moral tales." Some of these, Mr. Powers informs us, "have been known to shut themselves up in the a.s.sembly-hall for the s.p.a.ce of a month, with brief intermissions, living the life of a hermit, and spending the whole time in rehearsing the tribal-history in a sing-song monotone to all who chose to listen."

Somewhat similar, without the hermit-life, appear to be the functions of the orators and "prophets" of the Miwok and the peace-chiefs, or "sh.e.l.l-men," of the Pomo (519. 157, 352). Of the Indians of the Pueblo of Tehua, Mr. Lummis, in his entertaining volume of fairy-tales, says: "There is no duty to which a Pueblo child is trained in which he has to be content with the bare command, 'Do thus'; for each he learns a fairy- tale designed to explain how people first came to know that it was right to do thus, and detailing the sad results which befell those who did otherwise." The old men appear to be the storytellers, and their tales are told in a sort of blank verse (302. 5).

Mr. Grinnell, in his excellent book about the Blackfeet,--one of the best books ever written about the Indians,--gives some interesting details of child-life. Children are never whipped, and "are instructed in manners as well as in other more general and more important matters."

Among other methods of instruction we find that "men would make long speeches to groups of boys playing in the camps, telling them what they ought to do to be successful in life," etc. (464. 188-191).

Of the Delaware Indians we are told that "when a mere boy the Indian lad would be permitted to sit in the village councilhouse, and hear the a.s.sembled wisdom of the village or his tribe discuss the affairs of state and expound the meaning of the _keekg_' (beads composing the wampum belts).... In this way he early acquired maturity of thought, and was taught the traditions of his people, and the course of conduct calculated to win him the praise of his fellows" (516. 43). This reminds us of the Roman senator who had his child set upon his knee during the session of that great legislative and deliberative body.

_Playthings and Dolls._

As Professor Mason has pointed out, the cradle is often the "play-house"

of the child, and is decked out to that end in a hundred ways (306.

162). Of the Sioux cradle, Catlin says:--"A broad hoop of elastic wood pa.s.ses around in front of the child's face to protect it in case of a fall, from the front of which is suspended a little toy of exquisite embroidery for the child to handle and amuse itself with. To this and other little trinkets hanging in front of it, there are attached many little tinselled and tinkling things of the brightest colours to amuse both the eyes and the ears of the child. While travelling on horseback, the arms of the child are fastened under the bandages, so as not to be endangered if the cradle falls, and when at rest they are generally taken out, allowing the infant to reach and amuse itself with the little toys and trinkets that are placed before it and within its reach" (306.

202). In like manner are "playthings of various kinds" hung to the awning of the birch-bark cradles found in the Yukon region of Alaska. Of the Nez Perce, we read: "To the hood are attached medicine-bags, bits of sh.e.l.l, haliotis perhaps, and the whole artistic genius of the mother is in play to adorn her offspring." The old chronicler Lafiteau observed of the Indians of New France: "They put over that half-circle [at the top of the cradle] little bracelets of porcelain and other little trifles that the Latins call _crepundia_, which serve as an ornament and as playthings to divert the child" (306. 167, 187, 207).

And so is it elsewhere in the world. Some of the beginnings of art in the race are due to the mother's instinctive attempts to please the eyes and busy the hands of her tender offspring. The children of primitive peoples have their dolls and playthings as do those of higher races. In an article descriptive of the games and amus.e.m.e.nts of the Ute Indians, we read: "The boy remains under maternal care until he is old enough to learn to shoot and engage in manly sports and enjoyments. Indian children play, laugh, cry, and act like white children, and make their own play-things from which they derive as much enjoyment as white children" (480. IV. 238).

Of the Seminole Indians of Florida, Mr. MacCauley says that among the children's games are skipping and dancing, leap-frog, teetotums, building a merry-go-round, carrying a small make-believe rifle of stick, etc. They also "sit around a small piece of land, and, sticking blades of gra.s.s into the ground, name it a 'corn-field,'" and "the boys kill small birds in the bush with their bows and arrows, and call it 'turkey-hunting.'" Moreover, they "have also dolls (bundles of rags, sticks with bits of cloth wrapped around them, etc.), and build houses for them which they call 'camps'" (496. 506).

Of the Indians of the western plains, Colonel Dodge says: "The little girls are very fond of dolls, which their mothers make and dress with considerable skill and taste. Their baby houses are miniature teepees, and they spend as much time and take as much pleasure in such play as white girls" (432. 190). Dr. Boas tells us concerning the Eskimo of Baffin Land: "Young children are always carried in their mothers' hoods, but when about a year and a half old they are allowed to play on the bed, and are only carried by their mothers when they get too mischievous." The same authority also says: "Young children play with, toys, sledges, kayaks, boats, bow and arrows, and dolls. The last are made in the same way by all the tribes, a wooden body being clothed with sc.r.a.ps of deerskin cut in the same way as the clothing of the men" (402.

568, 571). Mr. Murdoch has described at some length the dolls and toys of the Point Barrow Eskimo. He remarks that "though several dolls and various suits of miniature clothing were made and brought over for sale, they do not appear to be popular with the little girls." He did not see a single girl playing with a doll, and thinks the articles collected may have been made rather for sale than otherwise. Of the boys, Mr. Murdoch says: "As soon as a boy is able to walk, his father makes him a little bow suited to his strength, with blunt arrows, with which he plays with the other boys, shooting at marks--for instance the fetal reindeer brought home from the spring hunt--till he is old enough to shoot small birds and lemmings" (514. 380, 383).

In a recent extensive and elaborately ill.u.s.trated article, Dr. J. W.

Fewkes has described the dolls of the Tusayan Indians (one of the Pueblo tribes). Of the _tihus_, or carved wooden dolls, the author says (226. 45): "These images are commonly mentioned by American visitors to the Tusayan Pueblos as idols, but there is abundant evidence to show that they are at present used simply as children's playthings, which are made for that purpose and given to the girls with that thought in mind."

Attention is called to the difficulty of drawing the line between a doll and an idol among primitive peoples, the connection of dolls with religion, psychological evidence of which lingers with us to-day in the persistent folk-etymology which connects _doll_ with _idol_.

The following remarks of Dr. Fewkes are significant: "These figurines [generally images of deities or mythological personages carved in true archaic fas.h.i.+on] are generally made by partic.i.p.ants in the _Ni-man-Ka-tci-na_, and are presented to the children in July or August at the time of the celebration of the farewell of the _Ka-tci'-nas_ [supernatural intercessors between men and G.o.ds]. It is not rare to see the little girls after the presentation carrying the dolls about on their backs wrapped in their blankets in the same manner in which babies are carried by their mothers or sisters. Those dolls which are more elaborately made are generally hung up as ornaments in the rooms, but never, so far as I have investigated the subject, are they wors.h.i.+pped. The readiness with which they are sold for a proper remuneration shows that they are not regarded as objects of reverence."

But, as Dr. Fewkes himself adds, "It by no means follows that they may not be copies of images which have been wors.h.i.+pped, although they now have come to have a strictly secular use." Among some peoples, perhaps, the dolls, images of deities of the past, or even of the present, may have been used to impart the fundamentals of theology and miracle-story, and the play-house of the children may have been at times a sort of religious kindergarten of a primitive type. Worthy of note in this connection is the statement of Castren that "the Finns manufacture a kind of dolls, or _paras_, out of a child's cap filled with tow and stuck at the end of a rod. The fetich thus made is carried nine times round the church, with the cry 'synny para' (Para be born) repeated every time to induce a _hal'tia_--that is to say, a spirit--to enter into it" (388. 108).

A glance into St. Nicholas, or at the returns to the syllabus on dolls sent out by President Hall, is sufficient to indicate the farreaching a.s.sociations of the subject, while the doll-congress of St. Petersburg has had its imitators both in Europe and America. A bibliography of doll-poems, doll-descriptions, doll-parties, doll-funerals, and the like would be a welcome addition to the literature of dolls, while a doll-museum of extended scope would be at once entertaining and of great scientific value.

The familiar phrase "to cry for the moon" corresponds to the French "prendre la lune avec ses dents." In ill.u.s.tration of this proverbial expression, which Rabelais used in the form _Je ne suis point clerc pour prendre la lune avec les dents_, Loubens tells the amusing story of a servant who, when upbraided by the parents for not giving to a child what it wanted and for which it had been long crying, answered: "You must give it him yourself. A quarter-of-an-hour ago, he saw the moon at the bottom of a bucket of water, and wants me to give it him.

That's all." (_Prov. et locut. franc_., p. 225.)

To-day children cry for the moon in vain, but 'twas not ever thus. In payment for the church, which King Olaf wanted to have built,--a task impossible, the saint thought,--the giant demanded "the sun and moon, or St. Olaf himself." Soon the building was almost completed, and St. Olaf was in great perplexity at the unexpected progress of the work. As he was wandering about "he heard a child cry inside a mountain, and a giant-woman hush it with these words: 'Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ to-morrow comes thy father Wind-and-Weather home, bringing both sun and moon, or saintly Olaf's self.'" Had not the king overheard this, and, by learning the giant's name, been enabled to crush him, the child could have had his playthings the next day.

In the course of an incarnation-myth of the raven among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, Mr. Mackenzie tells us (497.

53):--

"In time the woman bore a son, a remarkably small child. This child incessantly cried for the moon to play with, thus--_Koong-ah-ah, Koong-ah-ah_ ('the moon, the moon'). The spirit-chief, in order to quiet the child, after carefully closing all apertures of the house, produced the moon, and gave it to the child to play with." The result was that the raven (the child) ran off with the moon, and the people in consequence were put to no little inconvenience. But by and by the raven broke the original moon in two, threw half up into the sky, which became the sun, while of the other half he made the moon, and of the little bits, which were left in the breaking, all the stars.

In the golden age of the G.o.ds, the far-off _juventus mundi_, the parts of the universe were the playthings, the _Spielzeug_ of the divine infants, just as peasants and human infants figure in the folk-tales as the toys of giants and Brobdingnagians. Indeed, some of the phenomena of nature and their peculiarities are explained by barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples as the result of the games and sports of celestial and spiritual children.

With barbarous or semi-civilized peoples possessing flocks and herds of domesticated animals the child is early made acquainted with their habits and uses. Regarding the Kaffirs of South Africa Theal says that it is the duty of the young boys to attend to the calves in the kraal, and "a good deal of time is pa.s.sed in training them to run and to obey signals made by whistling. The boys mount them when they are eighteen months or two years old, and race about upon their backs" (543. 220). In many parts of the world the child has played an important role as shepherd and watcher of flocks and herds, and the shepherd-boy has often been called to high places in the state, and has even ascended the thrones of great cities and empires, ecclesiastical as well as political.

_Dress._

In his little book on the philosophy of clothing Dr. Schurtz has given us an interesting account of the development and variation of external ornamentation and dress among the various races, especially the negro peoples of Africa. The author points out that with not a few primitive tribes only married persons wear clothes, girls and boys, young women and men even, going about _in puris naturalibus_ (530. 13).

Everywhere the woman is better clothed than the girl, and in some parts of Africa, as the ring is with us, so are clothes a symbol of marriage.

Among the Balanta, for example, in Portuguese Senegambia, when a man marries he gives his wife a dress, and so long as this remains whole, the marriage-union continues in force. On the coast of Sierra Leone, the expression "he gave her a dress," intimates that the groom has married a young girl (530. 14, 43-49).

Often, with many races the access of p.u.b.erty leads to the adoption of clothing and to a refinement of dress and personal adornment. A relic of this remains, as Dr. Schurtz points out, in the leaving off of knickerbockers and the adoption of "long dresses," by the young people in our civilized communities of to-day (530. 13).

With others the clothing of the young is of the most primitive type, and children in very many cases go about absolutely naked.

That the development of the s.e.x-feeling, and entrance upon marriage, have with very many peoples been the chief incitements to dress and personal ornamentation, has been pointed out by Schurtz and others (530.

14).

Not alone this, but, sometimes, as among the Bura Negroes of the upper Blue Nile region, the advent of her child brings with it a modification in the dress of the mother. With these people, young girls wear an ap.r.o.n in front, married women one in front and one behind, but women who have already had a child wear two in front, one over the other. A similar remark applies to tattooing and kindred ornamentations of the body and its members. Among the women of the Bajansi on the middle Congo, for example, a certain form of tattoo indicated that the woman had borne a child (530. 78).

Schurtz points out that the kangaroo-skin breast-covering of the Tasmanian women, the shoulder and arm strips worn by the women of the Monb.u.t.tu in Africa, the skin mantles of the Marutse, the thick hip-girdle of the Tupende, and other articles of clothing of a like nature, seem to be really survivals of devices for carrying children, and not to have been originally intended as dress _per se_ (530.

110, 111). Thus early does childhood become a social factor.