Telling Our Stories:

    "Lexlexey'em"

When I was 3 or 4 years old, I remember a young baby at Andrew and Rosie Gilbert’s house.  As I understood then, it was one of Rosie and Andrew’s daughters’ child.  I can’t remember if it was Olive or Onopp’s child, and I can’t remember if the child was a boy or girl.  I recall how I used to see the baby in a swing, the type which Indian people used for holding their babies in their papoose baskets to put them to sleep.  The swings were simply two ropes attached to ceiling joists about six feet apart.  A blanket would be wrapped between the two ropes which would then hold the baby and its cradle^*.  The baby would then be swung gently back and forth until the baby finally drifted into dreamland.  I still can hear the soft creaking of the leather or buckskin connected to the iron loops screwed into ceiling as the swing gently swayed back and forth. 

One day, by way of listening to the grown-ups, I learned that the baby at Andrew and Rosie’s had died.  Eventually, I ended up going to the house where the baby lay in its casket.  When I was able to get a closer look at the deceased baby, I couldn’t get over how rosy red the cheeks looked and how shiny the whole face looked.  It looked exactly like many dolls I had seen in houses around the reserve.  From that time on, and for many years after, I thought that when babies died, they turned into dolls and that was where dolls came from.

^{* Baby cradles were most often homemade.  Often red willow branches were used to form the frame and then cardboard was used to cover  the frame.  Finally, colourful cotton cloth would be used to cover  the finished basket.}

^{Back to List of Stories}