_Initiation._--Indian parents bring up their children in a manner which better deserves the name of training than that of education. They think children become best fitted for future life when they can, for a certain period of their ages, roam around at will and act at their own pleasure. They do not reprobate or punish them for any wanton act they may commit; hence the licentiousness of both sexes up to the time of marriage, and the comparative want of discipline among warriors on their expeditions. But the boys were taught to harden their constitutions against the inclemencies of the seasons and the privations in war, and this result they most successfully attained by the so-called _initiation_, and also by continued bodily exercise before and after that solemn period of their lives. B. Romans (1775) sketches the training of the Creek youths in the following words (p. 96): "Creeks make the boys swim in the coldest weather; make them frequently undergo scratching from head to foot, through the skin, with broken glass or gar-fish teeth[120], so as to make them all in a gore of blood, and then wash them with cold water; this is with them the _arcanum_ against all diseases; but when they design it as a punishment to the boys, they dry-scratch them, _i. e._, they apply no water after the operation, which renders it very painful. They endeavor ... to teach them all manner of cruelty toward brutes," etc.