A variety of devices was employed to ensure that when the application of direct warnings or harsh action was unavoidable, such uncongenial means would be perceived by their recipients as emanating not from people closest to them, but from strangers or the spirit world.

The learning of vocational skills that was accomplished mainly by childhood games or by observation and copying of adult behavior was also well grafted onto the societies in which it occurred.

North American indigenous peoples, like humans everywhere, possessed systems of education even though they did not have schools prior to the coming of the European. Like most successful pedagogical complexes, their educational approaches simultaneously reflected the values the adult community shared, and instilled them in the next generation. The curriculum of this instruction told young people who they were, what other beings around them were, and how the humans and the other beings related to one another. It explained where they all came from and where they were destined to go, what the dangers and opportunities of the journey were, and what obligations and rights, both individual and collective, they had. And it prepared them to be successful mothers, providers, defenders, instructors and leaders of their own communities. It attuned them to the world, both material and spiritual, about them.