The child is wrapped in rabbits’ skins, and placed in this little coffin-like looking cradle, from which it is not, in some instances, taken out for several weeks. The bandages over and about the lower limbs, and as high up as the breast, are loose, and repeatedly taken off in the same day, as the child may require cleansing; but the head and shoulders are kept strictly in the same position, and the breast given to the child by holding it up in the cradle, loosing the outer end of the lever that comes over the nose, and raising it up of turning it aside, so as to allow the child to come at the breast, without moving its head. [Illustration: 210½] The length of time that the infants are generally carried in these cradles is three, five, or eight weeks, until the bones are so formed as to keep their shapes, and preserve this singular appearance through life. This little cradle has a strap, which passes over the woman’s forehead whilst the cradle rides on her back; and if the child dies during its subjection to this rigid mode, its cradle becomes its coffin, forming a little canoe, in which it lies floating on the water in some sacred pool, where they are often in the habit of fastening the canoes, containing the dead bodies of the old and the young; or which is often the case, elevated into the branches of trees, where their bodies are left to decay, and their bones to dry; whilst they are bandaged in many skins, and curiously packed in their canoes, with paddles to propel, and ladles to bail them out, and provisions to last, and pipes to smoke, as they are performing their “long journey after death, to their contemplated hunting-grounds,” which these people think is to be performed in their canoes. In +plate+ 210½ letter _a_, is an accurate drawing of the above-mentioned cradle, perfectly exemplifying the custom described; and by the side of it (letter _b_,) the drawing of a Chinook skull, giving the front and profile view of it. Letter _c_, in the same plate, exhibits an Indian skull in its _natural_ shape, to contrast with the _artificial_.[18]