The Abbeville Banner

FAITH OF AN INDIAN MOTHER.--If a mother lost her babe, she would cover it with bark and envelope it anxiously in the softest beaver skins; at the burial place she would put by its side its cradle, its beads and rattles; and as a last service of maternal love, would draw milk from her bosom in a cup of bark, and burn it in the fire, that her infant might find nourishment in the land of shades. Yet the new born infant was buried, not as usual, on a scaffold, but by the wayside: so that its spirit might secretly steal into the bosom of some passing matron, and be born again under happier auspices. On burying her daughter, the Chippewa mother adds, not snow shoes, beads and moccasins only, but (sad emblems of woman's lot in the wilderness,) the carrying belt and the paddle. "I know my daughter will be restored to me," one said, as she clipped a lock of hair as a memorial, "by this lock of hair I shall discover her, for I shall take it with me," alluding to the day when she, too, with her carrying belt and paddle, and the little relic of her child, should pass through the grave to the dwelling place of her ancestors.
Bancroft's History.