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What was birth and childhood like?
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In Plateau society, the life of a person was marked by ritual acts that
opened the gateway to the different social roles he had to enact.
From baby to child, from child to adult. Some rituals even began before a
person was born.
Among the Sinkaietk, for example, a pregnant woman was not supposed to
give birth to her child in her regular home but in a menstrual lodge or another
separate lodge.
The newborn baby spent its day strapped in a cradle of the flat board type.
At the age of one the child was ceremonially conferred a name from the wealth of
names in the family.
The training of the child was left to the mother and grandmother, but even as a
small boy a Sinkaietk could accompany his father on fishing and small-game
hunting trips, while the little girls helped their mothers about the house
and gathered roots in the fields.
Grandparents saw to it that the child was hardened by such practices as bathing in
cold streams.
Disobedience was rare but could sometimes result in the child being whipped.
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