We were told that these women sometimes put their children there to
sleep; but the custom must be rare among them, as we never saw it
practised. These boots, however, form their principal pockets, and
pretty capacious ones they are. Here, also, as in jackets, considerable
taste is displayed in the selection of different parts of the deerskin,
alternate strips of dark and white being placed up and down the sides
and front by way of ornament. The women also wear a moccasin
(_Itteeg~eg~a_) over all in the winter time.
To judge by the eagerness with which the women received our beads,
especially small white ones, as well as any other article of that kind,
we might suppose them very fond of personal ornament. Yet of all that
they obtained from us in this way at Winter Island, scarcely anything
ever made its appearance again during our stay there, except a ring or
two on the finger, and some bracelets of beads round the wrist; the
latter of these was probably considered as a charm of some kind or
other. We found among them, at the time of our first intercourse, a
number of black and white beads, disposed alternately on a string of
sinew, and worn in this manner. They would also sometimes hang a small
bunch of these, or a button or two, in front of their jackets and hair;
and many of them, in the course of the second winter, covered the whole
front of their jackets with the beads they received from us.
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