Pain, suffering, and brutality were accepted parts of the lives of the native peoples: as both an expectation and as a hurdle or obstacle to learn to overcome and even control. Consequently, many bands of Native Americans had devised rigorous and often ruthless means to preparing or "educating" their young into the horrors that were integral to "being human." These cultures looked as these physical, emotional, and psychological trials and tribulations as both desensitizing activities and as a means to "toughening up" the individual neurologically for higher pain tolerances. Thus, children were not only subjected to heavy demands of manual labor from very young ages (a group necessity in woodland agricultural societies in which the element of prime-specimen males were often absent for months at a time due to long-distance seasonal trading and hunting and fishing parties) but they were also subjected to regular (sometimes daily) pain-tolerance-building practices like shin-whipping, shin scraping, purging (the consumption of vomitives and emetics), tatooing, cutting, cold- (and heat-) exposure, as well as time-honored ritual practices such as fasting, vision quests, war games, and even intentional bone-breaking (depending on the tribe and parents) all with the goal of "toughening up" the child in preparation for the challenging extremes that (they believed) all humans (and, as observed, all creatures in Nature) could and would likely be exposed to.
It must also be noted that the concept of "childhood" was quite undefined among America's indigenous peoples. There was, of course, a protective period during the helpless, hapless period of infancy and toddlerhood, but the child of four or five was most certainly "put to work" with the demands of regular menial tasks and chores--many of which involved either delegated responsibilities expected of women like water procurement, tending to the simple needs of village infants, or food preparation tasks like de-feathering birds, chopping or mashing vegetables or in the form of games which imitated the activities of hunting, fishing, or war craft. In the second half of the child's first decade it was not uncommon for the boys to spend hours or days playing at the various crafts and skills commonly used in war while girls added activities that prepared them for taking their place among village/band care and maintenance like sewing, farming, gathering, fishing, hunting (locally, on a daily basis only), washing and cleaning, building repair and maintenance, and food preparation. The Native American perspective expressed an understanding and acceptance that they were very much a part of Nature, a part of the animal kingdom, which is why they were able to learn so much from the study and observation of their "brothers" in the Circle of Life.
It must also be noted that the concept of "childhood" was quite undefined among America's indigenous peoples. There was, of course, a protective period during the helpless, hapless period of infancy and toddlerhood, but the child of four or five was most certainly "put to work" with the demands of regular menial tasks and chores--many of which involved either delegated responsibilities expected of women like water procurement, tending to the simple needs of village infants, or food preparation tasks like de-feathering birds, chopping or mashing vegetables or in the form of games which imitated the activities of hunting, fishing, or war craft. In the second half of the child's first decade it was not uncommon for the boys to spend hours or days playing at the various crafts and skills commonly used in war while girls added activities that prepared them for taking their place among village/band care and maintenance like sewing, farming, gathering, fishing, hunting (locally, on a daily basis only), washing and cleaning, building repair and maintenance, and food preparation. The Native American perspective expressed an understanding and acceptance that they were very much a part of Nature, a part of the animal kingdom, which is why they were able to learn so much from the study and observation of their "brothers" in the Circle of Life.
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