“If you listen to my words you will become a good man, and will amount to something.  If you let the wind blow them away, you will become lazy, and will never do anything.”

So my uncle talked to me for a long time, and just as he had finished his talking, we saw, down in the valley below us, a deer come out from behind some brush, and feed for a little while, and then it went back into another patch of brush, and did not come out again.

“Ah,” said my uncle, “I think we can kill that deer.”  We went around a long distance, to come down without being seen to where the deer was, and we had crept up close to the edge of the bushes before the deer knew that we were there.  When we reached the place we walked around it, he on one side and I on the other; and presently the deer sprang up out of the bushes, and my uncle shot it with his arrow; and after it had run a distance it fell down, and when we got to it, was dead.  I also shot at it with one of my sharp-pointed arrows, but I did not hit it.  After we had cut up the meat of the deer, and made it into a pack, done up in the hide, we started back to the camp.  I felt proud to have gone on a hunt with a man and to be carrying the rabbits.

As we walked along to the camp that night, my uncle told me other things.  He said:  “Always be careful to do nothing bad in camp.  Do not quarrel and fight with your fellows.  Men do not fight with each other in the camp; to do that is not manly.”

You see, my uncle thought that I was now old enough to be taught some of the things a man ought to do, and he tried to help me; for my father was dead, and I had no one else to teach me.  The words he spoke were all good words, and I have tried always to remember them.

The white people gather up their children and send them all to one place to be taught; but that is not the way we Indians do.  Nevertheless, we try to teach our children in our way; for children must be taught, or they will not know anything, and if they do not know anything they will have no sense, and if they have no sense they will not know how to act.

When our children are small, the mother tries to keep them from making a noise.  It is not fitting that young children should disturb older people.  I am telling you about the way I was taught in the old times, when there were but few white people in the country.

Because we have no schools, like the white people, we have to teach our children by telling them what to do; it is only in this way that they can learn.  They have lived but a short time, and cannot know much.  We older ones, after we have lived many years, and have listened to what our fathers and brothers have taught us, know a good many things; but little children know nothing.  We want them to be wise, so that they may live well with their people.  But we want them to be wise also, so that when they are the chiefs and braves of the tribe they may rule the people