Although there was much physical training to make them efficient in hunting, fishing, farming, etc., and much mental training to gain a full knowledge of all that boys and girls should know, yet there was no moral training. From early age to puberty boys and girls had free access to each other. Public reprobation was only visited upon those who committed a wrong so clumsily as to be found out. I have heard them speak admiringly of one who, while working for a white man, robbed him so cleverly as not to be discovered, and such a one would bring back to his town the proceeds of his robbery and boastfully describe how he committed it; on the other hand, I have heard them call the unsuccessful thief a “fool,” not bad nor wicked, but _elema_ = stupid, fool, etc. We could not discover any words for virtuous or vicious; a person either had “good ways” or “bad ways,” but these referred more to the presence or absence of rudeness, disrespect to superiors, or greediness, than to any moral or immoral qualities. For lying and stealing a child was not punished unless the lie or the theft inconvenienced the parent in some way. As a result of the lack of any moral training while young we found both men and women most unblushing liars and thieves. I have seen the tail of a fish sticking out of a man’s cloth, and he asseverating with many oaths that he had neither touched nor seen the fish, until the fisherman who had been robbed pointed to the fish-tail sticking out well in view beyond the thief’s cloth; and when convicted he laughingly said, “I don’t know how the fish got there.” Yet they were capable of telling the truth and being honest, as I discovered later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER X NATIVE GAMES AND PASTIMES Dolls—Make-believe games—Mimic war—Model of steamers—Game of hand-thrusting—Hockey—Wheel game—Flipping arrows—Lip-sucking game—Ball game—“Tip-it”—Game with palm nuts—African backgammon—Gambling game—Teetotums—Hoop game—Cat’s cradle—Water games—Spear-throwing—Bull-roarers—Imitating movements of animals. There are not many games, but such as there are train the eye in quickness, the hand in precision, and the body in agility. Some little girls take pieces of stick or cassava roots to represent dolls, or, as they call them, _bana_ = babies, and tying them on their backs with an old rag they play with them as such. An English doll is too uncanny, too much like a human, for them to play with; they do not understand it, and put it away, or their elders take it away and sell it as a powerful fetish. Parents fond of their children make small paddles, baskets, and hoes in imitation of their own, and the youngsters play with them when they accompany their mothers to the farms, or their fathers in the canoes. Toy hoes and baskets are given to girls only, toy fish-traps to boys; but toy paddles to both boys and girls.