In the early seventeenth century French missionary Gabriel Sagard described how Hurons trained boys and girls to do adult tasks:

If a mother asks her son to go for water or wood or do some similar household service, he will reply to her that this is a girl's work and will do none of i t . . . Just as the little boys have their special training and teach one another to shoot with the bow as soon as they begin to walk, so also the little girls, whenever they begin to put one foot in front of the other, have a little stick put into their hands to train them and teach them early to pound corn, and when they are grown somewhat they also play various little games with their companions, and in the course of these small frolics...