The photograph at the top shows two children gazing into the soft light of a fanoos [fan-NOOS], or traditional Ramadan lantern. In the photograph below, Ramadan lanterns are hung outside a shop in a section of medieval Cairo. As far as is known, the tradition originated in Egypt, perhaps as long ago as pharaonic times, when it may have announced the Nile flood. The tradition in its current form may date to the Fatimid period (969-1171 CE). It isn’t clear when the custom became associated with the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, when Muslims keep the fast from dawn to sunset. Indeed, lanterns and lamps of various kinds, of many hues and degrees of brightness, and even both real and imaginary, have always been special to Egypt. For centuries before the coming of electricity, Cairo itself was noted for its spectacular use of lanterns to illuminate the city, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.

The tradition of the colorful lanterns is coupled with the song, which children sing as they process through the streets of Egyptian, and especially Cairene neighborhoods announcing the coming of Ramadan, and collecting coins and sweets. The words of the song that are not translated are obscure, perhaps referring to fire or light (wahawi, ya wahawi). "You have gone, O Sha'ban" refers to the lunar month before Ramadan, and "the daughter of the Sultan is wearing her caftan" means she is dressed in a loose, often embroidered garment worn when going out and on holidays. "Give us this season's gift" is a plea for the small presents children would receive from adults for going out in procession to announce the coming of Ramadan.

Children are typically very excited about the coming of Ramadan, because it is a festive time that lasts an entire month. Even though abstaining from food and drink daily from dawn to sunset is a hardship, many children are anxious to participate as much as they can, fasting part of the day or just a few days. Some manage to fast the whole month by the age of ten or so. After sunset each day, in contrast, special, abundant food, friends and family, and evening activities, including visits to the mosque (Arabic, masjid) take place. Ramadan culminates in the major festival called Eid al-Fitr at the end of the month. Children traditionally receive new shoes and clothing, money, sweets and toys as a reward for just trying, or accomplishing the fast.

Theodore de Bry included this colorful engraving in his publication of Hariot's, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). It was based on a watercolor by John White (fig. 2) painted five or six years earlier. Despite their differences, in both versions a mother is standing with her 8- to 10-year-old daughter who is wearing a string of beads and a leather string around her waist (tied to another holding moss between her legs). The girl is holding an English "puppet" or "poppet." In 16th century England, wax dolls (of adult women) like this one were mass-produced from molds. According to Hariot, a scientific advisor who sailed to Roanoke in 1585-6 and collaborated with John White while colonizing the mid-Atlantic region, the native people were "greatlye delighted” with the "puppets and babes" "broughte oute of England." The rattle, which did not appear in John White's water color, was a popular toy in early modern Europe.

Representations like these can be useful sources of information about Native-American children. However, those who produced them drew upon artistic traditions and Western cultural values in their often embellished and stylized representations of indigenous children. As a result, these visual sources must be used critically, cautiously, and comparatively. For instance, how does the girl in John White’s watercolor compare with one in the lavish engraving? Also compare the girl in the hand-painted illustration to the boy in the 1705 engraving published in The History and Present State of Virginia, In Four Parts (fig. 3).

What might account for the change in the sex of the child and the toys in their hands? Robert Beverley did write this book just a few years after his 16-year-old wife died while giving birth to their only son. In what ways might the boy also have served as a more suitable representation of emergent Enlightenment notions of childhood innocence and activity at the dawn of the 18th century?

Krishna is known in the stories of the Bhagavata-Purana as the 8th incarnation of the god Vishnu, destined to perform great deeds and remove the evils of the world. Shown in this Indian miniature watercolor painting as a child with grey-blue skin, he is a popular deity, a divine hero who personifies superhuman powers as well as human hopes and failings. Stories of Krishna's childhood with his loving foster-mother Yashoda in a village of cow-herds are much beloved and illustrated in paintings and sculpture.

The first demon to threaten the infant Krishna was the flying ogress Putana who abducted and killed infants and children by feeding them poison milk from her breasts. Putana, in the form of a beautiful woman, came to the house of Yashoda to kill Krishna. Yashoda did not recognize the danger, and allowed Putana to nurse the infant Krishna. Krishna, destroyer of wickedness, was immune to the poison. Holding fast to her breast, he sucked her milk and with it, sucked the life out of the ogre. Putana writhed with convulsions making the ground shake. As Krishna held her, she assumed her ugly form and fell to the ground, uprooting trees over a wide area. The villagers approached the corpse to find Krishna playing on top of her. As the painting shows, the villagers chopped Putana into pieces and prepared a cremation fire. The women and Yashoda bathed Krishna lovingly, rocking his body over a basin and gently pouring the water into a stream over a cow's tail.

The miniature painting belongs to the Pahari style of the Himalayan foothills, a courtly style of the Rajput kings that flourished from the 17th to the 19th century.

Krishna is known in the stories of the Bhagavata-Purana as the 8th incarnation of the god Vishnu, destined to perform great deeds and remove the evils of the world. Shown in this Indian miniature watercolor painting as a child with grey-blue skin, he is a popular deity, a divine hero who personifies superhuman powers as well as human hopes and failings. Stories of Krishna’s childhood with his loving foster-mother Yashoda in a village of cow-herds are much beloved and illustrated in paintings and sculpture.

This painting, which measures 22.5 x 30.5 centimeters, illustrates Krishna defeating a whirlwind. According to the Bhagavata Purana, when Krishna was five months old, he was attacked by Trinavart, the demon of storm and whirlwind. The demon took hold of the child Krishna and spun with him in the air. While Yashoda and others anxiously searched for the child, he gripped the demon with tenacious strength, causing it to fall to its death on a huge rock. Krishna landed safely, cushioned by the monster’s body. In awe of his feat, Yashoda picked up the child and hugged him to her bosom while the other women looked on with affection.

The miniature painting is dated to 1770 CE, and belongs to the Pahari style of the Himalayan foothills, a courtly style of the Rajput kings that flourished from the 17th to the 19th century. This painting shows little of the ordinary surroundings of the village, focusing instead on the supernatural whirlwind, ominous sky, bent trees, and blowing curtain. Krishna appears three times in the same panel, showing the dramatic sequence of events from right to left across a single panel, in a narrative technique sometimes used by comic book artists on splash pages today, in which all the action appears in one frame.

This watercolor (fig. 1) of a mother carrying her baby was painted c. 1585 by John White who explored the mid-Atlantic region with other Englishmen including Thomas Hariot. Hariot's A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia published in 1590 included an illustration based on White’s watercolor by engraver, Theodore de Bry. (fig. 2)

While John White had painted this Poemiooc mother impossibly carrying her toddler on her back and on her side, De Bry's 1590 engraving included a front and rear view of the same mother. In Beverley's early 18th century version above (fig. 3), there are two different women demonstrating three methods of carrying infants including the cradleboard hanging from a tree between them.

What evidence is there that 16th-century colonizers and 17th-century colonists drew upon artistic traditions and Western cultural values in their depictions of indigenous babies? These visual sources should be used critically, cautiously, comparatively, and corroboratively. What information about Indian children—and those who observed them—can be further gleaned from the 1705 publication that included this description below?

In 17th-century New England, Puritan beliefs about "infant depravity" (born with "original sin") generated anxieties about "eternal damnation" that shaped methods of childrearing and notions of death. Puritan beliefs can be "read" on the gravestones often made out of dark grey slate. The standard three-lobed shape of early Puritan gravestones reflected the belief that to enter eternity the soul passed through arches and portals. The primary motifs included skulls (winged "death's heads"), skeletons, hourglasses, bones, scythes, and coffins. Upper-case lettering lent authority to bold inscriptions. Ligatures (e.g., combining letters into words) saved space. Stone carvers used abbreviations and raised letters especially at the far right margin to make words fit on to a line.

By the early 18th century Enlightenment ideas about children's innocence, natural impulses, and malleability impacted perceptions of children and methods of child rearing. In addition to the changing material culture of children's lives, were varying modes of representing death.

Steadily (albeit unevenly) over the course of the 18th century, there were significant changes in the shape, height, design, inscription, and composition (e.g., sandstone) of tombstones. The hand-carved death's skulls were increasingly replaced by winged faces representing resurrection and ever-lasting life. Smiling angels, sentimentalized urns, winged cherubs, and natural objects (birds, fruit, willows) were carved on the gravestones of children whose lives were cut short. Inscriptions gradually changed from the stark Puritan style, "HERE LYETH YE BODY OF" to "In Memory of." In that semantic shift, "lyeth" became "lyes" and finally, "lies." Ligatures gave way to unabbreviated words, verse, and Biblical quotations inscribed in upper and lower case with a liberal use of the elongated "S."

Compare this gravestone to those from the 17th century as well as later ones using the on-line Farber Gravestone Collection. In what ways does Sarah Sanford's 1722 slate (21 inch) gravestone from Newport, Rhode Island, reflect the transition between Puritan notions and Enlightenment ideals of childhood? How does the line ("mouthmark") above the skull's teeth change the expression of the death's head? In what ways does the placement of the skull's teeth make them look more like a neck decoration?

Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted "Children's Games" in 1560. While many of his other paintings also portray peasant folk culture, this summer townscape that is devoid of adults is rich in detail about Medieval children—especially at play. The painting provides a window into amusements and recreations in the past in its detailed depiction of some 200 children engaged in nearly 80 different games and play activities. Many (although not all) of the outdoor activities included in this visual compendium of 16th-century children's play will be recognizably familiar.

Physically energetic and imaginatively engaged girls and boys are everywhere in Bruegel's busy painting. Some are using their bodies, others are playing with children and/or with toys (e.g., windmill; hoops). Here are some examples. Three boys mounted on a red fence are pretending to race horses. A few are playing leapfrog and others playing "horsey" and "tug of war." Another is straddling a hobbyhorse. Two girls are playing a medieval form of jacks (knucklebones) but with a bone instead of a ball. A group of children playing dress-up are staging a wedding. A small group of boys are spinning tops (a popular toy). A girl is playing musical instruments, another with a doll. A few boys are balancing on barrels. Some children are engaged in solitary play (e.g., blowing bubbles; dollmaking). While some are playing gently, there are rough bullies here as well.

In addition to this painting and additional ones by Bruegel the Elder there are other useful sources of information about children's play in medieval Europe. Illuminated manuscripts from the Netherlands include noteworthy depictions of children at play. Other kinds of evidence can be drawn from poetry, such as, The Pilgrim of the Life of Man, a French poem translated in 1426 by the English poet John Lydgate. It includes an energetic girl, named Youth, with a passion for play. She enumerates 25 different activities and games. Archeologists also have located toys and other objects for material culture analysis. A highly useful secondary source is Nicholas Orme's Medieval Children (Yale University Press, 2001). A comprehensive chapter on "play" is also lavishly illustrated with art and artifacts.

Although marriage was not forbidden between Europeans and slaves or other non-Europeans, it was quite rare and entailed a drop in social status for the European. Nevertheless, sexual relationships occurred—sometimes coerced, sometimes by mutual agreement. The children born to slave women by these relationships were seldom openly acknowledged by their fathers, and thus usually followed the fate of their mothers. Religious and secular authorities were not at ease with this situation. This can be seen in church proclamations that called on Europeans to baptize all their slave children, and secular laws that sought to regulate the living conditions of slave children, especially of mixed race. In the following excerpt, it is noteworthy that the "children of free heathen" are also mentioned. These "heathens" were probably not Khoikhoi, but rather former slaves, either from East Africa or Asia, who bought or earned their freedom and were known as Free Blacks. In this case, the designation "heathen" might also refer to followers of Islam.

Dorothy and Abigail Faulkner: aged 10 and 8

Dorothy Faulkner and Abigail Faulkner, Jr. also lived in Andover, Massachusetts, and their mother was accused of witchcraft as well. While short testimonies, these two children’s stories include the same elements noted in the other children’s trials. Their case is similarly based on the direct implication of mothers in children's confessions. Abigail Faulkner Sr. was an accused witch whose daughters stated that "they were lead into that dreadfull sin of witchcraft by hir meanse." One of the most interesting aspects about these two children is that their grandfather, Reverend Francis Dane, was a vocal critic of the trials (perhaps not all that surprising). He and 23 other ministers wrote an open letter condemning the Salem trials on October 18, 1692. This petition argues that the children’s confession was not motivated by religious fear. Again, these sources convey the depth of Puritan belief even in the very young.