"You must never forget, my little daughter,
that you are a woman like myself. Do always
those things that you see me do," her mother
often admonishes her.
Even the language of the Sioux has its fem-
inine dialect, and the tiny girl would be greatly
abashed were it ever needful to correct her for
using a masculine termination.
This mother makes for her little daughter a
miniature copy of every rude tool that she uses
in her taily tasks. There is a little scraper of
elk-horn to scrape rawhides preparatory to tan-
ning them, another scraper of a different shape
for tanning, bone knives, and stone mallets for
pounding choke-cherries and jerked meat.
While her mother is bending over a large
buffalo-hide stretched and pinned upon the
ground, standing upon it and scraping off the
fleshy portion as nimbly as a carpenter shaves
a board with his plane, Winona, at five years of
age, stands upon a corner of the great hide and
industriously scrapes away with her tiny instru-
ment! When the mother stops to sharpen her
tool, the little woman always sharpens hers also.
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