Mothers who neglect to thus instruct and care for their daughters at the adolescent period are criminals both to their children and to the race. Among the ancient Greeks such a mother would have been regarded as a monstrosity; yet many mothers have confessed to their physicians they have never had one word of converse with their daughters upon this most important subject. When I see children going to school at this adolescent period, and being forced by our competitive system of education to strain every nerve to cram the required amount of facts into their brains, I do not wonder that we have so many sickly women who are incapable of being the mothers of healthy and happy children. Far better that our children be not educated in chemistry, and literature, in physical science and art, than that they unfit themselves for the happy relations of a beautiful marriage and sweet and tender parenthood. For let the new or the old woman say what she will, the divinely ordered plan is that women shall be wives, and happy wives at that, capable of making their husbands happy, or at least of contributing their share to that end, and also that they shall know the joys of maternity. Unhappy indeed is that woman whose physical condition is such that she refuses to know the sweet touch of her own baby’s body, and denies herself the blessed privilege of training its soul for a beautiful and useful life. The Indian mother sees to it that her daughter is early taught her future possibilities and the will of Those Above in regard to her, and the growing woman would as soon shirk the responsibilities of her sex as she would refuse to eat. The consequences are that normal births with Indian women are practically painless and entirely free from danger. I have known a woman to deliver herself of her child, sever the umbilicus, and then walk half a mile to the creek, walk into it with the baby, and give herself and the child a good washing, then return to her camp, suckle the little one, and proceed to attend to her duties as if nothing had happened. At another time I saw a woman, less than half an hour after her child was born, start off for a heavy load of wood. Their freedom from constricting waist-bands, their absolute freedom of body, their nasal and deep breathing, their muscular exercise through life, their open air sleeping and living,--all have much to do with these easy births. [Illustration: THE AUTHOR DESCRIBING THE SYMBOLISM OF THE PAIUTI BASKET DESIGN.]