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Recent events both in Canada and the United States have made the ques- tion of the treatment of the Indian tribes one of very considerable interest. Mach as has been written of them, there is still much to learn. The fol- lowing treatise by the Rev. M. Petitot, van Oblat missionary, who has for years lived amongst the tribes of which he writes, and who has not only had unusual opportunities of becoming thoroughly acquainted with their habits and modes of thought, but is also, from the bent of his mind, peculiarly quali- fied to study their past history, tradi- tions and beliefs, will be found attrac- tive to those whose attention has been drawn to such investigations. Archbishop Tach^, in his' " Sketch of the North- West," says: -"When was America peopled ? An answer to this question would be extremely interesting, but I am sure it will not be discovered here, and I even think that it will never be found. Our Indiana of the Northern Department have no chronicles, no an- nals, no written monuments, nor record of any kind whatever. They do not know even their own or their children's ages, or did not until our arrival amongst them." Without disputing the correctness of the Archbishop's statement as to the want of chronicles, &c., it may yet be possible, not to fix the date, perhaps, but at least to trace the route followed by the Indians from the birth-place of their race, aa the glacial drift has been tracked by the boulders dropped during its advance. This is what M. Petitot has attempted to do, without dogmatising on so ob« scure a subject. The work is divided into two parts. The first describes the present state of the Indians, the secoif>d relates to their origin. The advocates of the Anglo- Israelitish theory are strongly recom- mended to study carefully the latter, in which the reverend author believes he has produced sufficient proof of the Asiatic origin of the Redskin nations, and indicated the probability of their identity with the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. He, however, expresses himself with great modesty on the latter point, contenting himself with furnishing the evidence which has most strongly in- clined him to adc^t such an opinion. I had at first thought of presenting a summary of the work, but the author had already so condensed the informa- tion he possessed, that it was difficult to reduce it to greater brevity without losing much of the essential informa- tion it contains. Besides, however conscientious such a summairy might be, it would almost unavoidably be colored by the mental peculiarities of the writer undertaking such a task, and I have, therefore, preferred to give a faithful translation, allowing the author to speak for himself, although through the medium of a different language from that in which he has written. Douglas Brymner. Ottawa, Januaiy, 1878. * Monomphie des IMni-Dindjii, par Le R. P. E. Petitot, Miaikmafre ObUt de Marie Ini« macule, OAdcr U'Acad^mic^ te., ftc, Parii. I z Dene-Dindjik Indians. Monograph of the Dkvl-DiNiMii Indians. I. I call by the conapound name of D^n^-Dindji6, a large family of red- Rkinned Americans, peopling the two slopes of the Rocky Mountains and the adjacent plains, between 54" north latitude and the Glacial Sea, from south to the north ; Hudson's Bay and the Cascade Mountains, near the Pacific, from east to west Within this circumference, vast as it is, are not included the Sarcis of the Saskatchewan, who belong to the same family. The D6n^-Dindji<58 people, then, more than half the British North-West Territory, three-fourths of British Col- umbia and of the new American Ter- ritory of Alaska. Samuel Heam, the traveller, first mentioned the D^nd-Dindji^s, whom he called Northern Indians. Sir Alex- ander Mackenzie, Franklin, Hales and Richardson, gave them the name of Tinv^h, as well as that of Chippewas and Athabaskans. The first French Can- adians who explored the North-West Territories called them Montagnais-du- Nord, on account of the similarity of their mild and peaceable character to that of the Montagnais of the Saguenay ; but the latter belong to the great Algic family. The proper name of the Indian of whom we are now speaking is that of mdif, which is translated without indicat- ing numbers, by the words dini, tine, done, dune, adine, adcena, dnaini, dindjii, dindjitch, according to the tribes and dialects. These words, which are iden- tical with the name of man in Lower Britany dh, in Gaelic dame, in Nabajo tana, in Tagal tan, and perhaps even in Maori Inngata, signify that which is earth, land, terrestrial, with the par- ticle de, that which is, and the root ntU, nni, nan, nwn, earth. In uniting the word dhU, which be- longs to the Chippewas, the most southern tribe, to that of dindjii, which is given to the Loucheux, the most northern tribe, I have included under one compound name, which I believe to be appropriate the entire Northern red-skin nations of America, of which so little is yet known. The Loucheux here spoken of are the Indians whom Sir Alexander Mac kenzic named the Quarrelers, and whom Richardson believed he had designated by their real name when he called them Kutchin.* Neither of them consider themselves as belonging to the same great family as the me Montagnais, or Chippewas. This last word, or rather Tchipway- anawok, is the name by which the D^n^- Dindji^ are known to their neighbors to the south, the Crees and the Sauteux. It signifies, according to Mgr. Tach6, pointed skins, from wayan, skin and tchipwa, pointed ; wok being the sign of the plural. This etymology is the more plausible, as the Dindjii still wear a tight jacket of reindeer or moose deer skin, furnished with a tail in front and behind, after the fashion of the Poncho wo-n by the Chilians. The Hare In- dians have told me that such was also their dress t)efore the fusion among their tribes produced by trade and re- •The word Kuttchin (not Kutchin) is improp- er, liecause it is a mneric verbal noun signifying inhabitants, people, nation, persons. The Dtndjies do not confine it to themselves, but apply it to all men ; whilst they restrict the title of Histdjii (man) to their nation or tribe alone. It is the same with the words oHinh, gottini, tUtani, synonymous with Kuttchin, but in more southern dialects. These are verbal substan- tives formed from the verb oitti, 6tti, gitti, or Ku-ittchin (acaird ing to the dialects), which may be rendered literally by the English verb to do. By extension it is emjiloyeii for dwelling, in- habiting J thus a Slave will say : i^jian ottti illi (here I do not), meaning, I do nut live here. A Hare Indian will say : «•<"« ii gitti (I steal, me, he makes) to express : he letl me to steal. Finally a Loucheux will translate the same phrase by nid^tn kwittehin krwa, but these words have never been the ^oper names of the tribes which employ them. Dene-Dindjie Indians. 5 ligion. It is probable that this costume was originally that of the D6n(\ the most southern and nearest neighbors or the Algonquins. The Kollonches of the Pacific, who are also of the D^n^ race, also wear these tails. It is no doubt this peculiarity which led certain Western Indians tu tell La Peyrouse that there existed in the East, on the continent, men furnished with a caudal appendage. They are decorated with fringes like the tallith of the Jews, which the clothing of the D^n^, the Mexicans, and the Chilians strongly resembles. The Esquimaux, neighbors of the Loucheux in the north, give the whole D6n^-Dindji('i family the insulting name of Irkrfliit, that is larvae of vermin. They hold them in the greatest con- tempt, as much on account of the timid- ity of their character, as from the pre- judice of nationality, which leads every nation, especially the most barbarous, to hate or despise its neighbors. 11. The D^n^-Dindji^ family is divided into a multitude of clans or tribes, whom Europeans found all at war among themselves, mutually hating, plundering and rending each other, although ac- knowledging themselves to be of the same origin. These intestine feuds, this voluntary separation, explain even more than in- difference, apathy, natural obstacles, custom and hereditary defects, the ex- treme division which exists in the language of the D6n^-Dindji(^. Each petty clan has a particular dialect, so different from its neighbor that it is almost impossible for them to under- stand each other except by signs. A singular fact, observable even amidst this very diffusion, is that tribes separated by hundreds of,sometimes even by a thousand leagues, have occasional- ly more resemblance in theii; language than those which are adjacent. Hence, among the Hares of the Anderson, are to be found numbers of verbal forms and words made use of on Lake La- Crosse, and among the Sekanis of Peace River. Again, the more closely the Pacific is approached, descending the River Yukon, in Alaska, the more closely does the Dindjie language offer an- alogies! to the dialect of the Athabasca, or the River Liards. So that the lovers of the marvellous would have a fair op- portunity to admit that there has been a second diffusion of language on the American Continent itself. What we can assert positively is, that the D^n^-Dindji^ dialects must have been formed in America ; that it is im- possible to assign to any of these languages the priority over the others, or the name of the root language ; that the distribution of the tribes and dialects in the country has produced a fan- like radiation from the north-west towards the south, the south-east, and the north-east. I much regret my having to contradicx now what I tried to prove ten years ago, that is, Asiatic non-im- migration ; but I did not then possess the knowledge since acquired, and re- spect for truth makes me revert to thia subject. It will be spoken of in its proper place. The Ddn^-Dindji6 who inhabit the North-West territor}' are divided into thirteen or fourteen tribes, which belong to one of the four groups of Montagnais, Montagnards, Slaves and Loucheux. This division into groups is purely con- ventional on my part ; it has relation solely to the language, without regard to the manners and customs, which are almost identical, or to a government which has no existence. I content my- self, then, with enumerating the D^n^- Dindji^ tribes, following an ascending line, that is, from south to north. 1. The Chippewas : Thi-lan-ottim (people, or inhabitants of the end of the head), live on the banks of La- Crosse, Cold and Heart Lakes. 2. The Athabaskans : Kknsit' ay It kki oUini (people, or inhabitants of the 596 DiNK-DlNDJIt tNntAKS. poplar boards) ; they hunt round Lake Athabasca and along the Slave River. 3. The Cariboo Eaten, or Elhen- tldlli, *ivf; to the east of the Great Cariboo and Athabasca Lakes, in the steppes extending as far at Hudson Bay. 4. The Yellow Knives, the Copper Indians of Franklin, Taisan ottini (cop- per nation), who frequent the steppes to the east and north-east of Great Slave Uke. To the group of Montagnards, or D^nd, of the Rocky Mountains, belong 5. The Beavers, Tsa-ttinni (dwelling among the beavers), with 6. The Sarcis, who have separated from them. The first hunt along the Peace River, the second in the Upper Saskatchewan towards the chain of the Rocky Mountains. 7. The Sekanis, Thi-kka-tU ( those who live on the mountain). The greater part of these border on the tradmg posts of the Fraser ; a few only frequent the heights of the Peace and Liards rivers, where they have acquired a great reputation for misanthropy. 8. The Na'-annh ( inhabitants of the West ) or NoK-hoHni of Richard- son. There exists of them also but a small nucleus on the eastern slope of the mountains. 9. The Mauvais- Monde, Wicked peo- ple, or EtUha-oUini (those who act con- tradictorily). They frequent the chain of peaks in the latitudes of old Fort Halkett and are very little known. Richardson names them Dtcha-ta- uttini. Finally 10. The Esbo'lfa-'Ottinf, or dwellers among the Argali.* These are the Sheep-people of Franklin, and the Atnba-ta'Ul'tiiU of Richardson. They live on the high mountains between River Courant-Fort and that cf the Na'antUt. In the Slave group I placC) * A kind of antelope fovnd Muuntaini. the Rocky It. The Etchari'OUini (those who dwell in shelter). These are the 7jri//a> Af-M/ViW of Richardson and the Strong- bows of Franklin. They hunt along the Liards river. 12. The Slaves, properly so called, who are divided into the people of Hay River, Trout Lake, Horn Moun- tain, the forks of the Mackenxie and Fort Norman. In order to save space, I refrain from giving their Indian names. The name of Slaves was given to them by their southern neighbors the Crees, on account of their timidity. 13. The Dog-ribs, L'in-tchanri. They live on Slave and Bear Lakes, to the east of the Mackenzie and on the banks of the Coppermine River. They are subdivided into the Dog-ribs of Fort Rae, Tak/uel-ottini and Tte-ol- tini. 14. The Hare Indians. Theypsople the Lower Mackenzie, from Fort Nor- man to the Glacial Sea, and are dU vided into five tribes, the Nut- ottini (people of the moss) who live along the water shed of Great Bear Lake; the K'a-tagottini {^tap\c among the hares), along the river; the fCa-iehS-gottini (people among the big hares), who hunt in the interior, between the Mackenzie and the Glacial Sea ; the Sa-tchS-tugot' tini (people of Great Bear Lake), whose name indicates the territory, and finally the Bastard Loucheux, or NtU-la-gottint (people of the world's end), the nearest neighbors of the Esquimaux on the north of the continent. The Hares are the Peaux de Liivre of the French, and the Ka-cho-'dttinni of Richardson. 15. The Eta^gottin/ or mountain people. They inhabit the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, between the Eiba-fO'Ottinitmd the Loucheux. Rich- ardson names them Dahd'dttinni. There need be no astonishment felt at the difficulty apparently experienced by the learned Doctor to express and write the names of these tribes, for he owns himself, after Hales, Isbister and Dknk-Dindjii Indians. 5 50« felt iced and he and all British travellers who have traversed these countries, that " the sounds of the Tiun6 language can with difficultx ^ rendered by the English alphabet, and that a great number of them are of a pronunciation which is absolntely im- possible to an Englishman." To the Loucheujc, or Dindjil group, belong thirteen tribes, which from the Anderson River to the East, extend into the territory of Alaska, ai far as the vicinity of the Pacific, where, as on the Mackenzie, they are circum- scribed by the Esquimaux family. These thirteen tribes are: i. The Kwitcha-Kullckin, or inhabitants of the steppes of the Glacial Ocean, between the Anderson and the Mackenxie ; a. The Nakotchro-ondJig-Kutkhin, or \tco- ple of the Mackenxie ; 3. The Tittltt- KuttchtK, or inhabitants of the Peel River ; 4. The Dakiadhi (Loucheux), named also Tdha-Kki-Kuttchin (peo- ple of the mountains), and Kto-vin- Kutkhin (people of the edge of the prairies). They inhabit the Rocky Mountains between the Mackenxie and Alaska; 5. The Van ot ZjtH-Kutkhin (people of the lakes or of the rats) ; their territory is on the Porcupine river ; 6. The Han-Kulkhin (people of the river) ; same territory ; 7. The Artet Kutkhin\ K, The Kukhid-Kukh- in (giant people), who live on the Up- per Yukan ; 9. The Tchandjari-Kutt- chin, who hunt along Black River; 10. The |)eople of the rising ground, or Tannm-Kutkhin (people of the mountains), along the River Tanana ; 1 1 . The Tetkhii-Dhidii, or people seat- ed in the water; iz. The Intst-Dind- iitch, or men of iron ; and lastly ; 1 3. The Ttas-tsitg Kutkhin, who people the same Yukan. III. The D^n«-Dindji6 type is entirely different from that of the Esquimaux, but has numerous points of resem- blance to the Sioox. Several portraits from Dakota, in the galleries of the Museum of Anthropology, in Paris, are in every respect Montagnais, Hare or Beaver faces. Besides, the features of Dindji6 approach the Nabajo type, of which I have seen faithful portraits, sometimes the Hindoo type. Finally the faces of the Egyptian dancing giris. also in the Gallery of Anthropology in the Jardin des Plantes, have reminded me feature by feature, of the faces of the Dog-rib, Slave and Hare women. To have a rigorously exact descrip- tion of the type of our Indians, it would no doubt be necessary to depict them tribe by tribe, for each of them presents characteristics which distin- guish it from its sister tribes. But as I cannot linger on this subject and prefer to devote my essay to the dis- cussion of the question of origin, I will merely pencil a sketch of the general type of the nation. The D^n^-Dindji^ have the head elongated, pointed towards the base, unduly raised above. Its greatest breadth is at the cheek bones. The forehead is passably high, but it is tapering, conical, depressed towards the temples, and has a rounded protu- berance on the upper part. The arch of the eyebrow is clear cut, but very high and strongly marked. It shows a large eye, black, ardent and shining with a snake-like lustre. The upper eyelid, heavy, and rather oblique, often assumes a singularly suspicious and dis- trustful aspect. The nose is generally aquiline, as seen in profile, broad and somewhat flat on a front view ; the side of the nostril is strongly indicated, especially among the Loucheux, whose nose is also more prominent and hooked. This partly arises from the swan bone and other ornaments which they wear in the nasal membrane, like the natives of New South Wales, the Esquimaux, the Sauteux and the Indiana of Panama. They have lately aban* doned this usage. Their mouth is wide, furnished with small teeth, com- i9> Dbmb-Dindjib Ihdians. pact Mid beftatifully ouunelled. The apper lip projects beyond the lower ■pd is ilightly drawn up; especially among the inhabitants of the moan- tains, whose expression recalls that of birds or prey. The chin is pointed, peaked in some, retreating in others. To these characters, which belong almost all to the Aramean type, if we added hair of an ebony black, hard, shining, as short among the women as among the men, and which falls in long locks over the eyes and upon the shoulders, there will be a complete portrait of the Redskins. I have not mentioned their color, which varies greatly even in the same tribe. However, those of them who have the whitest skin never attain the dead white and red of the European ; it has always a bistre tint. The skin appears to be very thick, although it may be fine, smooth and destitute of hair. Their flesh is not soft like that of Europeans, but firm, hard and stiff. The D^n^-Dindji^ are generally tall and well-proportioned ; they have con- vex chests and are not inclined to obesity. There are among them neither humpbacks, lame, nor frail and rickety beings, so common in our communities of refined civilization. Yet their de- velopment is slow, and seldom begins before the age of from fifteen to six- teen. Before the arrival of Europeans they knew no diseases but rheumatism, ophthalmia and deafness; but strabismus is frequently met with in the Dindji^ nation, which accounts for the Cana- dians giving them the not very French name of Loucheux ( squinters ). The Dog-ribs and certain small tribes of the Montagnards present the singular phenomenon of a general and hereditary itnttering. IV. Of a bilio-lymphatic temperament, onr Indians are the Redskins who pos- sess the greatest number of good quali- ties mited to the defects of the savage natvre. This had rendered them liars, disdainful, ignorant, dirty, improvident, without the least real affection, without gratitude, not much given to hospitality, greedy, hard towards the women, the old and the weak, blind and over-indul- gent towards their children, cowards, idle, dastards, unreflecting, selfish and cheats. This was their lot in common with all savages ; this was the result of their isolated life, of their total want of education. But of how many of the other vices of savage life were they ig- norant I They are humane towards their equals, and mild in character ; they neither in • suit nor ill-treat one another ; contra- dict no one to his face ; follow the laws of nature ; are faithful in the obser- vance of such customs of their ances- tors as are good ; they are prudent and reserved towards strangers, sober, and enemies of strong drink, indefatigable and patient in suffering ; are ignorant of theft, rage or murder. It is precisely this great depth of simplicity ^rhich ren- ders them beggars, pusillanimous and servile. With those who have acquired their confidence they are candid and open. They like to be instructed, and, like children, ask questions about every- thing. Further, they are naturally re* ligious, have few superstitions, and are not stubbornly attached to them. Fi- nally, they may be considered relatively moral, as compared with surrounding nations. We must not seek elsewhere than in these qualities, which are rarely met with among other Indians, a reason for the facility, I might even say the joy, with which the Din^-Dindji^ have ac- cepted and still bear the yoke of the Gospel. Richardson, in spite of his sectarian prejudices, confessed that the Catholic missionaries, and the French, or French-Canadians of the North-West possessed the entire confidence of these Indians, and that it would not be easy for Protestant preachers to obtain a I Dens-Disdjii Indians. S9I footing Kmong them. In fact, almost | the whole number of the D^n^-Dindji^ it Chriatian and Catholic. Our red skinn are also grown up children all their life long. It is not that they are- devoid of intelligence and reason ; on the contrary, they have sagacity ant] penetration, and possess to a high degree the Uilei.t peculiar to children, of estimating at a first encoun- ter the good and bad qualities of a man ; of exhibiting the defects and ridiculous side of eac4i, and of indulging in criti- cism, in the shape of a running fire of jokes and jests. In fact, raillery is often the weapon of the cowardly, or at least of the weak ; but our Indians in- dulge in it without malice, and in their mouth there is no lack of Attic salt. If they could paint, the Montagnais, espe- cially, would be good caricaturists. The D^n^-Dindji6, then, are not des- titute of spirit, and they can reason on everything ; but their sphere is limited, their mind and reason have not been exercised, they want the power of comparison, and their reasonings are stamped with an odd originality, which sometimes turns into burlesque. Their intellect is evidently in ihe swaddling bands of infancy , their faculties are as if asleep, or restrained by an obstacle which is only that abnormal condition which we call the savage state. With them, reason never rises higher than in- duction; their judgments remain pue- rile, and consequently natural, and it is not reasoning which has power over them and by which they can be con- vinced. They possess in a high degree the faculties of the senses, the wants and instincts common to them with the lower animals, such as those of self- preservation and reproduction, the memory of places, the force of habit, routine and the love of children. I may say as much of their facility for acquiring languages. Their sight may be compc -^ to that of the eagle ; their aense oi -nell is perfect ; but the senses of taste, touch and hearing, are as if obliterated by their privations, sufferings and rigor of the climate. Their perceptive faculties are equal- ly enfeebled or depraved by the lew !• ness of their imagination, fear ot superstition. Thereareno idiots among them, nor what may, strictly speaking, be called insane, but there are many laboring under hallucinations and monomanias. What the British travel* ler Pallas says of the excessive excit« ability of the Samoides, of the Tongooi and other natives of the North of Asia, is fully applicable to the D^n^-Dindji^. Whatever be the cause, this excessive nervous excitability so d. ^.urbi their organism, that it makes them lose the self-control so peculiar to the red- skins ; but what is worse, this morbid affection of their imagination acts sym- pathetically on their neighbors. We have seen numbers of these manias passing by contagion through whole tribes and into all latitudes. The heathen women are especially subject to them. In certain cases the hallucina- tions of one or two take such possession of a whole tribe, that it leads to the most extravagant actions. Every year, during summer, fear is communicated to them as an epidemic. They then live in continual fright, and in dread of an imaginary enemy who constantly pursues them, and whom they fancy they see everywhere, although he exists nowhere. I attribute to this morbid and sympa- thetic aflfection the acts of cannibalism whirh unhappily have taken place in al- most all the tribes before their conver- sion. The pangs of hunger and the ex- cessive fear of death render these In- dians so stupid, that, so far from think- ing of looking abroad for food, t^tey fall on one another, slaughtering each other without pity, in contampt of the legiti- mate affections of nature. The Montag- nais have less to reproach themselves with in this respect tha!i other tribet,be- cause they lead a solitary existence, S94 Dknk-Dinojik Indians. family by family. Their life is tad and their morose character is favorable to reflection. The D^n^-DindjiA have no idea, or else have false ideas of what we call beauty, goodness, order, time, quantity, quality, love, gratitude, &c. They never consider beauty when they marry, and the goodness of a wife does not in their eyes depend on the purity of life she may have led before marriage. Let her be submissive, able to work and laborious, fruitful, fat and well, the rest is of little consequence. A boy and girl, however ugly they may be, will always find a partner, if they are fit to work and to bring up a family. It may be a more judicious plan than we imagine. Our Indians du not know their age, and after three or four years they lose count of that of their children. They believe it is of more consequence for them to remember how much the clerk at the nearest trading-post owes them ; and I can safely say that they never lose count of that. The hand serves them as a standard for calculation and gives the measure of its extent. When they have counted the five fingers on the one hand, they begin on the other till the ten fingers are finished. Do not ask them further. Their ideas of num- bers are so limited, and such is their habit of exaggeration and falsehood, that when they see five or six persons arrive, they exclaim that a great multi- tude is coming ; and when a tribe of three or four hundred souls is assembled, they swell ..ith pride, declaring that the number of their brethren equals that of the mosquitoes who hum beneath the trees. But when led by interest, they can equally diminish numbers. If they are called, for instance, to give an ac- count of their fishing or hunting, be as- sured that they have taken a score of fish when they say they have caught none, or that there are hundreds when they venture to say that they have caught a few. They recognixe in beings no quali- ties but those cognizable by the sen8 very be light admi ra- se ratch they cry , hard." ,ve often lunch oT by the ipression picture. jt exceed know a ley char- litions of ley divide (T moons, cycle of •rding to Kastern apanesc. luins are give the [68 as our jem have ;he eagle, 'lope, the [the word |frequent- or nan in Mon- alled mh lis word leposition Indefinite 1 meaning (duration, 1 identical Itive moii ; connec- moon, Ifrom the I Anglo-Saxon mSna. Moon is also called mina in Gothic, and is masculine in gender. Ha, moon, presents an anal- ogy also with the Chaldean word tfm. The D^n^-Dindji4 count the days from one sunset to the other, because, they say — and with reason— that night preceded day. This was the accepted belief among all the ancient nations — the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Gauls, as well as an.ong all the Celtic nations, according to an English author. They make the year begin in March, with the vernal equi- nox, agreeing in this with the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Tlascalians. Finally, they have in their vocabu- lary the names of a small number of Constellations, whi( h M^y make use of to determine their easterly course in their freque\ \nd painful journeys. A singular fact, which may give a high idea of the gentleness of the D6n^-Dindji^,is that although destitute of any kind of government, judges and laws, no kind of crime punishable by human tribunals is to be found among them ; only the weaknesses inherent to our nature. Retaliation, the right of reprisals, that sor^ of lynch law which is recognized as just and equitable by the other redskin families, does not exist among the D^n^-Dindji^. There are exceptions, but these only prove the rule. The chiefs named by certain tribes, or rather given to them by the Hudson Bay Conjpany, have absolutely no other power than to regulate the or- dinances regarding hunting and the journeys to the trading posts ; to harangue from morning to night and to give gifts to their followers, whom they pompously style their tail, their feet fs'ilchiUkwii, i'tsk'inin, tik'inij. In Hebrew the same word also signifies ~< ti and men of the feet. Until the Indians knew and practised true religion ( of which they generally acquit themselves as good and fervent Christians) there were among them three sorts of beings miserable beyond expression — the wife, the old man and the child, especially the orphan child. If you wished to raise a laugh, speak of conjugal love to the Din(^-Dindji^. This sentiment we had to create and we see it gradually springing up. I'hey have never been able to imagine that it was necessary to man's \ appiness, still less that it tended ti > < soul's sal- vation. To be feared a. \ slavishly obeyed by and to rule as r ('espot over her who was called hi" '!dve, 'o dispose of his progeny as ser ;d good to him, by according or de-^troying an existence of which he believed hi'i\sfii master, — such was the idea of marriuge and its duties. This savage I'id not then love, still loves but little. He can now, per- force, not hate his companion, not cast hei "tit of the tent in a moment of ani;rr or blind jealousy — for he is very jt:a!oiis— no longer dash her brains out with uii axe, nor cut her nose off to rev«'nge himself; but to surround her with respect, with affection, with those fraternal attentions which form the happiness of so many civilized commu- nities, he is incapable of, and his half in no degree expects it. And yet, by a singular contradiction, if, within a tribe, he calls his wife sf^a, my slave, he names her elsewhere in truly Bibli- cal language stdh4, my sister. Thus Abraham gave the endearing name of sister to his wife; thus the High Priest Jonathan, writing to King Ptolemy Philadelphos, saluted at the same time the Queen Arsinoe, whom he called the King's sister. Bigamy, polygamy, znd even a sort of communism were frequent among the D^n^-Dindji^, without increasing their happiness. What the male gained in libertinage and tyranny, the unhappy wife, the family and society entirely lost. Alas ! they have thus lost all, for 596 Dene-Dindjie Indians. V God knows how many years tbv un- fortunate remnant of this people will still exist. Religion alone has been able to reconstitute family ties among them, to raise the woman from her long abase- ment, by teaching her that she is en- dowed with a soul like her insensible and indifferent husband. Alone it has been able to prevent the murder of female children, who very often were devoted to abandonment, or to the jaws of the wolf, as useless and burdensome beings. It was a practice formerly of the Greeks and Romans ; it is still the practice of the Malgaches and the Chinese. This hardness of heart is the lot of paganism and materialism. Eigh- teen hundred years ago St. Paul ex- claimed, speaking of the heathen : Gen/es sine affectu ! If I were now asked the reason of the servitude of the wife among the D^n^- Dindji6, I would be constrained t(^ n-fer him to the history of all nations, whi :h assigns to it, as sole and original <:aiise, the fall of the first woman, and the sub- jection of man to every evil and to death by the fault of the woman. Tht* D6n^ and the Dindjid have not forgot- ten that ancient tradition, denied by so many modern free-thinkers. Until our arrival, the Indians united in marriage without any formality. Usually the woman was 1 artered by her father for a blanket, a musket, or, still better, for one or two dogs. When the husband, tired of his wife, sent her back, he resumed all that he had given her, but he had not the right to reclaim from the offended father that which had served as the seal to the bargain. But, in reality, marriage, properly so-called, did not exist among our Indians, for a union on trial, with no kind of even im- plied contract, cannot be called by that name. Our D-^mVDindjif^ had no kind of worship, nor even religion, if practices or rites prescribed by their ancestors, having the force of law, be excepted. A great number of these are excellent. because they emanate, if not from the Mosaic at least from the natural law. We shall enumerate them in treating of the origin of this nation. They are called aw/*;, gofwtn and chonan. To these prescribed rites they added what has been called nagwalhm, or lodemism, or adoration of the brute creation, the most abject and material form of fetichism conceivable, since it makes of the animal a god, or instru- ment of the Divinity, and of God an animnl, or incarnation of the brute. They call their fetiches ilkiusi, ellon^, allon'on, according to the dialect. These words, which have a certain connection with the name of God, El, tlohim, Eliot, Elli, in Hebrew ; Illus, in As- syrian, and Allah, in Arabic, equally mean animal and God. We discover in this a similarity of ideas between the Yihnh and the Greeks, who formed the name of God, theos, from the verb to run Ihein ; for the roots ell,e/l, mark in D6ne fluidity, perpetual niotion, the flowing of water, the running of animals, and flight of spirits, eternity, and the absence of bounds. The Slaves give the name of ellon^ to the elk ; the Hares, to the reindeer; the Montagnards, to the beaver ; all, consequently, to the animal by which they are especially sustained, and which thus becomes the efficient cause of their existence. The worship called nagwalism, if the name of worship can be applied to a few idle practices, consists : i . In wearing on the person a relic of the animal genius, which has been reveal- ed to the Indian in a dream ; 2. in engaging in some secret practice in order to please the animal, because the animal itself has prescribed it in a dream to the individual whom it would possess; j. To abstain most carefully from insulting, trapping, killing, and above all, from eating the flesh of the nagwal, which is then called ///, ata, "ay "a, "ey, according to the dialect. It is simply the tak>o of the Polynesians. Almost all Indians, even those who are Dene-Dindjie Indians. S97 baptized, have retained a repugnance to their former taboo. They no longer venerate it ; they even regard it as wicked, but they continue to abstain from it for this reason, and we do not seek to force their wills. Time will put an end to these childish fears. Further, the fetichism of the D6n^- Dindji^ does not differ from that of the Esquimaux, the Algonquins, the Sioux, the Blackfeet and other North \merican nations. It is allied as with them with ancient forms of worship, particularly with Sabeism. Under whatever aspect we regard these nations, we perceive only remains and ruins. Nothing is followed or co-ordinated among them,so as to present a complete society, hav- ing its own autonomy, an established and rational religion, any form what- ever of government ; everything is mu- tilated, adulterated, diffused, deformed. With fetichism and in spite of feti- chism, our D^n^-Dindji^ have the primordial knowledge of a Good Being who is placed above all beings. He has a multitude of names ; the most usual, in the three principal dialects is B^llsen-nu-unli (He by whom the earth exists), Nnutsf (make earth, or creator) and 7i/V(^ (Father of men). The Hares and the Loucheux call their god threefold. This triad is composed of father, mother and son. The father is seated at the zenith, the mother at the nadir, and the son traverses the heavens from the one to the other. One day whilst thus engag- ed he perceived the earth ; then hav- ing returned to his father, he said, singing (and this song is carefully pre- served intact by the Harets) : " Oh ! my father, seated on high, light the celestial fire, for on this sro !1 island (the earth, which the Indians believe to be a round island), my brothers-in- law nave long been unhaj^py. Behold it now, oh ! my father. Then descend towards us, my father, says to thee, the man who pities."* *The following are the words of this song in It has been rightly said that a triune God could not be known naturally by heathens, f But when to this is joined so explicit a tradition, and so clear a faith in the expectation and coming of a Redeemer, there is no longer room for hesitation ; eithei; the D^nds have preserved in purity the ancient belief, or they have received the knowledge of the Gospel at a period of which we arc ignorant, and which already is far, very far distant. Yet no worship is rendered to this Creator. On the question which I put to my Hare Indian narrator, the old female juggler K'atchdti, if the D6n6s had seen this celestial fire, or if they had heard that the Son of God had de- scended to earth, she answered : "Yes • long before the coming of the whites, my mother told me that a star had ap- peared in the West- South -West, and that several of our nation had gone towards it. Since that time we have all been separated. The Montagnais have reached the South ; their arrows are small and ill-made. The Loucheux have gone towards the North ; their women are awkward ; but we, who are the true men, have remained in the Rocky Mountains, and but a short time will elapse before we arrive on the banks of the Mackenzie." This recital, the truth of which I guarantee, has led me from ray subject. I resume. Independently of the creative triad the Hare language : " Sffa tayita, ffita otUy- inkron, tidi nnu yati kki tehatk'i k'$t'tdaUi lonnt^ kka-neunt'a. Ek'u lef'a ni-nondj», uf a, nendi dtui it'unettintn." Like the ancient na- tions, the iribcf of the lower Mackenzie have consecrated the most remarkable passages of their traditions, by formulas which are sung, and have become, as it were, stereotyped, they aie so unchanged. t Eusebius (De Prepar. Evang., book x., chap. I and book xiiL, chap, x.) proves, in fact, sa^ Migne, that what Plato said of God and His Word, and what Trism^stus said, " Moko* gtnuit momulem tt in $$ rejQxit arDini>j» Indians. and the animal geniuses, or Elloni, the D^n^-Dindji4 acknowledge an evil spirit, who also has several names. The most usual ATey^tlanyi-sline^^O'ner- ful evil); tttsoni (otter, evil spirit) ; 4dt^ (heart) ; yafinontay (come from heaven, which has traversed heaven) ; itUini (spirit); "onn^-Usen (rejected, repulsed). The Indians are greatly afraid uf it, and make it the object of their black magic, for they distinguish several sorts of magic. The most inoffensive is the curative, which is employed in cases of disease. Its name is e/kk^ztn tiedjun (one sings one over the other). The second is inquisitive, and is used to re- cover lost objects, to know what has become of an absent person, to hasten the arrival of boats. It is called ink- krant^, that is, the shadow, the sil- houette. The third is operative, and its only object is thr glory of causing illusions. The Indians acknowledge it is only play, yet they call it strong medi- cine, inkkranz^ Ha natsrr (the shadow which is strong). The fourth is malig- nant. It is the sort of witchcraft em- ployed by the sorcerers of the Middle Ages. They call it nanly^li {ihvX which throws itself, that which falls), and inkkranzi deni kk4 oUi (the shadow which kills man). The Hares and the Loucheux give it the name of the de- mon h.inself, the fallen, the rejected (yat'4, nontayj, or again that of thi, kjwi, which means head. Finally, these samr Indians have a fifth kind of magic called 4k'4-tayitl4, or tayitlin (the young man bounding, or tied). They practice i^ with the double object of obtaining a large num- ber of animals in hunting, and of caus- ing the death of their enemies. For this purpose they tie tightly one of themselve., hang him up in th*; lodge by the head and feet, and swing him from side to side. The Esquimaux and Sauteux sorcerers have themselves also bound before practising their enchantments. It ap- pears that this practice has been in use in all ages, and that the Hebrews them- selves believed that the Spirit, good or evil, was accustomed to bind those whom he possessed, for St. Paul, to ex- press that the Holy Spirit urged him to go to the Deicide city, wrote these words : " And now, behold, I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem."* Fable also informs us that it was necessary to bind Proteus to compel him to deliver his oracles. There is no religion without priests. H\i^ fttichisnit nagwalism, or chamanism of the D^n^-Dindjiersonal interest in advancing them, and that in doing so, I expose myself less tu the approbation than to the criticism of certain people. Further, in this chapter, as in all the others which I have written, I cannot accuse myself of generalising. I do not assimilate the D^n^-Dindji^ to such or such a nation in particular. I con- tent myself with putting forward the points of resemblance which they offer to several Asiatic nations, or nations of which Asia was incontestably the cradle, leaving to«he reader the task of judging of their similarity or dissimilarity. Three leading points concur in es- tablishing the Asiatic origin of the D^nd-Dindji6 : 1. Their own testi- mony; I. Legends and customs analo- gous either to those now preserved in Asia, or to those of former times ; 3. Finally, traditions and observances identical with those of the Israelites, among which may perhaps be- distin- guished vestiges of Christian ideas, pro- bably imported from Asia. I. Oral Testimony of the Dent-Dindjif, in Favor of their Asiatic Origin. In the year 1863, the Yellow Knives of Great Slave Lake, whom I question- ed as to their place of origin, told me : •' Here is all we know of our origin. In tlie beginning there existed a giant so great that hit head s^ept the arch of heaven ; hence they called him lakki-tlt'ini. But he was hunted ; kill- ed and overthrown, and his body hav« ing fallen across the two earths, he be- came petrified and served as a bridge by which the periodical migrations of the reindeer took place. His head is on our island * and his feet on the Western land." I might then have admitted, as a fact recognized oy these Indians them- selves, the reality of an ancient Asiatic emigration into America by the way of Behring's straits and the Aleutian Is- lands. But I wished for a more deci- sive proof, and not finding the evidence of navigators sufficient, as to the nar- rowness of the channel separating Rus- sian America from Kamtschatka, or, as to the identity of the strata on both banks, whence might be deduced proofs of the rupture between the two conl» • nents, I did not hesitate to maintain the hypothesis of the native origin of the D^nfes in America. A few years after, I read in a small work published by Mgr. the Bishop of Saint Bonifacef that thii venerable pre- late had found among the Chippewas of Lake Athabasca, a tradition ao to their origin. It is identical wit.i vhat of the Yellow Knives. I began then to believe that there was more than a childish fable under the apologue of the petrified giant. Arrived among the Hares of the Arctic Circle, I found that they gave the name of the backbone of the earth (Ti-gotian-kkw«fne) to the Rocky Moun- tains. Here is my giant again, I said to myself. Finally, in 1S74, finding myself seven hundred leagues south of them, among the Thi-/an-ot/in^ {inhahi- tants of the end of the head), in 54" north latitude, I heard anew, from their 'The Redskins alwajrs speak of tlie earth as an island ; all the continents they regard as islands. fEifuit** du Nord-oueit d* VAm»r\qm by Moni. Al. Tach^, now Archbishop. J2/ 70a DiNt-DiNDjTt Indians. I # own mouth, in reference to the etymo- logy of their singular name, the same tradition. This significant peculiarity, however, was added, that at the time of the giant's fall, his head reached Cold Lake, while his feet rested very far into the North North-West. It was easy then to understand the sense of the apologue, for these D^nd, living at the end of the giant's head, are the most southern existing tribe of this Redskin family on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, that is, who have reached the south after having crossed this Cor- dillera. The giant, then, symbolises the whole D6nd-Dindji6 nation, and the migrations of the reindeer are the suc- cessive hordes who pressed forward, passing from Asia into America. It seems to me that this is not a random opinion. In any case, it is worth more than an hypothesis. But it is support- ed by other traditions. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the first European explorer of the fine river which bears his name, tells us that the Chippewas of his time believed that they came from a great Western con- tinent, on which they had always fol- lowed a line of march from West to East ; that they stated they had lived in slavery amongst a very wicked peo- ple ; that, to escape from the yoke, they had to traverse a very long and narrow lake, very flat and studded over with is- lands ; that they coasted along this lake all summer and reached a river, on the banks of which they found a shining metal (Coppermine River) ; but that afterward this metal sunk six feet under ground as a punishment for a crime.* I knew nothing of this relation of Sir A. Mackenzie till long after collect- ing the traditions of the Hares and Loucheux, which agree with it in every respect. But the Chippewas or Mon- * A journey from Montreal to the Glacial and Pacific Oceans, by Sir Alexander Mackeiuie, London, 1789-93. tagnais, in consequence of their dis- tracting occupations, of newly acquired ideas and of longer contact with the whites, have completely lost the remem- brance of these facta, which are better preserved by the ii bes living nearer the Strait. There only remains to them the apologue of the giant, as I have sum- marised it. Sir John Franklin* says still more than Mackenzie, for he assures us that in his time (1820), the Rocky Moun- tain tribes, who resorted to Liards fort, said that they had come by water from a verdant and Western country, where there was abundance of large fruits, of singular trees and of many animals, of which one, bearing a resemblance to man, grimaced and perched on the trees. I quote these authors without taking the responsibility of their state- ments ; at the same time I must remark, that this knowledge of the ape, which some of our Ddn^s have, perfectly agrees with vhat the Esquimaux of the Lower Mackenzie told me in 1868. It is among the Hares and the Lou- cheux that the remembrance of the ex- istence of the D^n6-Dindji^ on a West- ern continent, and of their ednigration into America, is most vividly preserved. The following is a summary of the tradition which I obtained from them- selves : "They formerly lived very far in the West, beyond the sea, and in the midst of a ven powerful nation, in which the magicians had the power to transform themselves into dogs or wolves during the night, resuming their form of men in the day-time. These enemies had taken wives from among the D^n6s, but these women did not participate in the occult practices of their husbands. The latter alone could be at once men and dogs. They per- secuted the Ddn^, to the East of whom their territory extended, and incessant * Narrative of a journey to the theres of the Polar Sea, by Sir John Franklin, K,B., R.N., London, 1819-32. DsNK-DtNDjiE Indians. 703 war was waged between the two na- tions. These enemies, the Hares call- ed them Kfwi-diUU (bald heads), for they shave the head and wear a wig, were not taller than the men of the D^nd nation, but they were terribly ferocious and cannibals. The Monta- gnaia from whom the remembrance of these enemies has passed away, pre- serve only the name of Eyounni, that is, phantoms." The Loucheux describe them to us as very brave but itnmoral and going almost naked. In war they wear wooden helmets, very hard skin shields suspended from the shoulder, and clothing covered with scales (cuirasses). Their arms, they say, weru sharp knives, fastened to the end of a pole (lances). The Loucheux and Hares agree that in the country which they originally in- habited, conjointly with these sangui- nary men, were enormous lynxes {non- tacho, na'ay) lar ruminants {ite ra- koUhd), monstrn«i-Dindji6, and besides, the Loucheux type pre- sents a great resemblanceto the Hindoo type. Finally, I find two new indications of the conformity and unity of the fable of the Man-dog, in whatever country it is found, in so far that the Dt^n^-Dindjit'; when they speak of this race without making use of parables or apologues, represent it as sliaving the head and wearing false hair, a fact which agrees as well with the customs of the Egyptians, as with those of the , Arabs, Assyrians and Chinese. Further, we find in Japan a God-Uog, Canon (whose name, at the same time shows a great analogy to the word amis), as there exists in F-gypt the God-Dog Anubis. We have heard the oral testimony of the D6n<^ Dindjif'; touching the point of space and the continent whence they emigrated to America. Th<^ first is the West, the other Asia, Let us now compare their usages and tradi- tions with the customs and beliefs of tto Asiatics and the Ancients. II. Lef^t'nds and Customs of the Dhie-Dind- jif Analogous to those of the Asiatics and Ancients. Several of these customs and beliefs may be drawn from the description we have already given of the Di'^n^-Dind- \\6. But we will accumulate here all the correlations which we have been able to find between the D(in(i-Dindji6 6t of in many tribes the ancient faith in metem- psychosis and the migration of souls is deeply rooted. It is usually infants born with one or two teeth, a very common event among the I)6n68, who pass for the resuscitated or reincarnat- ed, it is the same with those who come into the world shortly after the death of any one. The testimony of Hearn confirms i.iy assertions. I have had great trouble in dissuading the Hares from holdingthissuperstition and doubt if I have succeeded. I was not able to rid the mind of a young girl oi" the persuasion she felt that she had lived, before her birth, tmder a name and with different features from those with which I knew her ; nor to prevent an old woman from claiming the proprietorship of her neighbor's child, under the spet ious pretext, that she recognised in him the transmigrated soul of her deceased son. I know of several such cases. The Hurons share the same belief. According to Malte-Urun, they inter the little children on the edge of paths, that the women who pass by may receive iheir souls and bring them again into the world. This fa<:ulty of reincarni- hell, situate^ to the North West, is gloomy and frozen. Both are, according to their belief, the faithful image of this earth. Dene-Dindjie Indians. 5d ♦s igician ted by iwer of Dwerful as his illed a >ting a This ito the si-t'an day in game flecks [ds the arrived \kfuoitC) level imense river. avem, I* up to seen, louls of le mi- te Dini- le birds autumn. [gloomy lir belief, grating game, and the thunder bird, return at the approach of winter. But in spring, when the aquatic birds return again to our country, the manes, the spirits {itisin^, as well as the thun- der, come in their coirpany. " NaykuM looked into the cave. He there perceived souls stretching their fishing nets in the river. It was small fry they were catching. With double pirogues* the manes visited their nets ; others danced on the banks. The magician could only distit guish the legs of the dancers, who saig at the same time : rillcha tset'ine, we sleep separated from one another, (in veiled terms these words mean : T'lere exists no longer any matrimonial union among us.) "The magician had remained till then outside of the cave, on the banks of the river, and in the midst of these souls in pain, called the burned dead. They lived there miserably on still-born foe- tuses, mice, frogs, squirrels, and small animals which we call natsal'oli (swim- mers). These are the game which these souls hunt. " Nayhviri remained dead for two days. For two nights his body remained lying on the ground, and in that lapse of time he killed iht fawn of an animal. He killed only one, and it gave him power to come to life again on earth on the third day. This is now how he was able to penetrate into the cave : In front of the cavern rose a great tree ; the magician had laid hold of it, and by its means leaped into the sky. This is what they say a man did in the far dis- tant past. Now this earth at the foot of heaven is called I'^-n^m (the other earth). That is the end." * Etla-chht-klu-*Cchu (with canoes or pirogues tied). This peculiarity deserves attention, for neither our Indians, nor any other North Ameri- can nation, that I know of, make use of double pirogues ; whilst everyone must be aware that several itations of the Indian and Great Oceans are in the habit of using them. How was the knowledge of such vessels found among our Dinis, unlesj it was that they formerly use^ them when they lived on the shores of the Pacific As may be seen, the history of our D6n^ does not yield in the marvellous to the iCneid or the Odyssey. Nayhu- iri renews the same high achievements which made Theseus, Hercules, Or- pheus and the son of Anchises illus- trious. But here we see something more precise than in fable ; for two days and two nights he who created hy thought lived among the dead ; it was the death of the fawn, or lamb, which gave him the right to resuscitation ; it is the tree to which he owes his entry into heaven. May we not have here again, under the form of an allegory, a vague remembrance of the Christian faith, received at a very distant period ; or else do we see in it only one of these figurative and prophetic myths, met with among all Asiatic nations, and which are evidently echoes of primitive revelation ? Further, by a slight addi- tion, the word nayew4ri becomes an- nay4v)dri, meaning he who awaits or is awaited. Let us notice still further a few of the marks of identity which this D^n6-Dind- ji6 tradition presents with the ancient theogonies. It expresses the name of the soul by words which are the translation of the Latin spiritus, breath, or which have the same root. Compare *//jiW, soul, with attsey, nilttsi. wind, edayini, eyunnifiovX, with ^a"yi6,4yu, breathing, breath. It places the Dfmfe Paradise at the South pole, but towards the west, at the foot of heaven, that is at the junc- tion of the firmament and the earth ; whilst hell is to be found at the North pole, like that of the Tlascalians and Esquimaux. Now it is also at the poles that the Ancients placed their Elysian Fields and their Avernus. " At ilium ($olicet polum) Sub pedibus Styx atra videt) manes(| '■ profundi " Among all ancient races, such as the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and even the Latins, the North was con- sidered as unlucky, says the learned M. de Charencey. Is it not equally curious to find under TPB-T! 3/ Dene-Dindjie Indians. the Arctic Circle the ancient belief which refused entrance into Elysium and the deprivation of eternal rest to the souls of slaves and of prisoners of war, whose bodies had been burned, and whom the D^n^, therefore, call E%vi4-elurt (burned corpses) ; but sub- stantially the reason is the same. These incomplete souls are presented to us, in the D^n^, tradition, as loitering sadly on the banks of the infernal river, feed- ing on the dead, figured as mice, squir- rels, foetuses, frogs, animals reputed among our Indians to be foul and dia- bolical. The souls of the happy, on the contrary, live on fish, symbol of life, dance and hunt eternally. Compare now the belief of the Hare Indians with that of the ancient Hurons, as transmitted to us in the learned and interesting Relations of the Jesuits. The Hurons placed the land of spirits at a great distance and to the west of America. To reach it, the manes must cross a river and defend themselves from the great Celestial Dog. They equally alleged that the prisoners who were burned were re- pulsed from this Olympus and tor- mented outside of the entrance, as well as the souls deprived of sepulture. They even believed that the souls of beasts went there like those of men. In a word it might be said that our hy- perborean D^n^s had copied in all points the beliefs of the Oneidas, al- though the two nations are so distinct in language and customs, and that both had learned by heart the sixth book of the jfilneid. The Idaans, or Bornese, have a faith almost identical, according to Beechey, already quoted. In face of these strik- ing correlations, what becomes of the autochthony, or native origin, of the Americans ? The D6n^-Dindji6 think that the earth is flat, disc-shaped, surrounded by water, and resting on that element. Such is also the persuasion of the Abys- siniana^ who say, besides, that it is girdled by two immense boas, called, BiMyanroih and Zerabrock.* The Arabs and Egyptians, who share the same be- lief, surround the terrestrial disc with a long and cir ular mountain, named Ka/, which recalls the foot of heaven, or yakk^-khind, yakkitlay-tchini, so often spoken of in the D^n^-Dindji6 legends. Besides, it must not be forgotten that the Greeks of the t'me of Homer be- lieved also the earth to be a disc sur- rounded by water. Something of this idea may perhaps be found in the ex- pression of Psalm cxxxvi. : " Qui firmavit ten am super aquas "\ if the Holy Scriptures did not represent the earth as a globe in a hundred other places. According to our Indians, the firma- ment, like a hemispherical cup rested upon the edges of the terrestrial disc, like a crystal cover over a cheese plate. A prop named ya-otUha nCay sustained heaven and earth, thus taking the place of the tortoise of the Algonquins and the elephant of the Hindoos. In plac- ing this support or stay obliquely, the Den^-Dindjie seem formerly to have had the knowledge shared by the An- cients, of the inclination of the earth towards the West : " Adspice convexo nulantem pondere mun- dum." Eclog. iv. sang Virgil ; and again . " Obliquus qua se signorutn verteref ordo. Mundus ut ad Scythiam Rhipxasque arduus arcis Consurgit : premitiir Libyae devexus in Austros. " Georg. I. V. 235. I have said that the Hares and the Loucheux make the second person of their Divine Triad of the feminine sex. The latter name her Yakkray-Usieg (Boreal light woman), and they place her to the North-East. This word, yakkray, which designates the polar light, the Aurora borealis, and which * Life in Abystinia, already quoted. t The words of the authorized version are : " To him that stretched out the earth above the waters."— Tr. DsNB-DiKDjtE Indians. 3^ «>7 brdo. Lie arduus Ixus in I- V. 235- land the ^rson of tine sex. \ay-ttsitg ey place Is word, le polar Id which sion are : above the means, word by word, celestial white- ness (from^a, heaven, and dtkka, white) has the closest relation to the name of God (yakkras/a) in the D^n^ (iialect of the Carriers, (Jhrieurs) as well as to that of the Musk ox (jrakiray) in the D^n^ dialect of the Dog-ribs. So that in the same language the same word means God, ox and light. Can we not see in this linguistic curi- osity an approximation with the ancient myth of Isis, Ceres, Astarte or Ash- taroth, and Diana or the moon, in which the worship of the lunar light, which symbolized this goddess under a multiplicity of names, is so intimately connected with the adoration of the bovine race, the disposition of whose horns recalled, to a certain extent, the waxing moon ? Thus the cow repre- sented Isis, as the ox Apis was tt)e em- blem of the dead Osiris. If what we have said be remembered, as to the magical virtue which the Dindji^, agreeing in this respect with the Hindoo adorers of the Zebu ox, attach to the dung of the Musk ox, it will be seen that this coincidence of terms to designate the Divinity, light and the ox, is not, perhaps, more fortui- tous in D^n^-Dindji^, than the union of the worships of lunar light and of the ox was in Egypt and in Hindostan, whence it might have passed into America. Another proof might be drawn in favor of the identity of the Egyptian belief and that of the inhabitants of the Lower Mackenzie, from the fact that the Loucheux name Etsi4g4, that is, he who has been rubbed with cow dung, the male divinity who, by their state- ment, resides in the moon. The Hares also say of this god, that he was, in his life time on earth, gofwen /sanni, that is, tabooed by dung. Both invoke him in the moon in the spring and autumnal equinoxes, and in the month cor- responding with March-April ; now, it was in this same month that the Phenicians invoked Astarte, the Scan- dinavians Afena, their male lunar god, that the Greeks and Romans held cele- bration;> in honor of Ceres and the Egyptians of Isis. In the month of March, sacrifices were offered to Diana, or the moon, on Mount Aventin. At the beginning of the March moon, the Druids went in search of the sacred mistletoe. It was in March-April, that the Tlascalians offered their human sacrifices, and that the present Ma- hometans hold their Ramadan, and the Jews their Passover. Among the D6n6- Dindji^, the purpose of the feast of the moon is to obtain a happy result for the reindeer hunting and a great abund- ance of food ; and at the same time to deliver the star, which they say is in suffering, and to secure the death of their enemies. Now, the feast of Ceres and of Diana, among the Romins, and that of Artemis, among the Greeks, an- swered to the first of these purposes. It also was ce'ebrated in spring. " Atque annua magnse Sacra refert Cereri l«tis operatus in herbis, Extreme sub casum hientalis,jam vera sereno." Georg. I. V. 340. And we know that in Egypt the spring festival of Isis had no other ob- ject than to celebrate the deliverance of Horus, son of the sun, or Osiris, and of the moon, or Isis ; from Horus, the light, cause and spirit. Still another characteristic fact. If certain D^nfe-Dindji6 immolate the fawn of a reindeer, on the occasion of this equinoctial, it must be black, as is indicated by the song which accom- panies the ceremony, " Ttit ditUy en4fion ndkkwdni .' AilUtha ! " " Little black fawn, behold thy bones ! Aillaha ! " for this festival has equally a funeral character, and is called. Funeral march around the tents ( tana-echili-tsatili ) . In the same way the modern Arabs, ac- cording to Burkhardt, sacrifice a black ewe, in honor of their dead parents. The Dog-ribs and Hares believe that after the deluge, which destroyed all men, the South was re- peopled by a 33 68 DBNS-DlIfDJIB IndIAMS. pike and a loach, two voracioni fish, whose elongated zv^ linaous fonn pre- sented. In miniature, a certain analogy with the crocodile and the serpent. From the belly of the pike issued all the men. It is not said that they were armed from head to foot like the Myr- midons, sprung from the teeth of the serpent killed by Cadmus. From the belly of the loach were bom all the women. But their Noah, figure of God, as well as the crow, the cause of their deluge, and which symbolises the Demon, were the procreators of this new race of men ; their Noah was father of the men, and the demon-crow father of the women. Such is also the reason given by theDindji^ and the KoUouches for their allegation that they have des- cended from the crow by two wives ; whilst t"he Dfenfts acknowledge Kunyan. or their Noah, as their father. Thus, theni the sort of Darwinism contained in this tradition is yet superior to that of the inventor of so absurd a religious system. I would remdrt on this legend, that the pike {on-dagi, on-tayi\ he who has the habit of holding himself high, because this fish likes to enjoy the sun, sleeping near the surface of the water) offers close relations in its name to Dag-on (the illuminator fish, or the fish Eon) to which the Syro-Phoenicians attributed their science and origin, and which they adored as a god. The only difference is, that the two mem- bers of these compound names are transposed. The Dindji^ or Loucheux celebrate a feast of the dead, which offers the greatest analogy with that of the Neo- Caledonians, which is spoken of by Father Gagni^re, Mariste, in the An- naUs de la Propagation de la Foi. He, or they, who gave the feast, collected a quantity of objects for distribution to the guests. Then in the midst of a final and general dance the Amphy- trion made a division of his presents by throwing them at the head of him whom he sought to honoor. If the gift did not suit the guest, he had the right to throw it at the head of the giver, who went through the same cere- mony with a third person, giving and receiving in the same fashion. The D^n^-Dindji6 make fire by means of compact pyrites, or sulphate of iron, similar to the Egyptians and to the Esquimaux of the polar islands. Before our arrival, they buried their dead immediately on the decease ; af- fecting in this office, like the Jews, and Mussulmans, great precipitation. They sewed the corpse tightly into skins which they painted red, then deposited them in the tombs which I have else- where described, or else buried them upright in the hollow trunk of a tree, an African mode. One of these mum- mies was lately discovered at the Cape of Good Hope. Th«" KoUouches, who belong to the D^n^-Dindji^ stock, bum their dead on funeral piles, in the man- ner of the Greeks and Hindoos, and collect the ashes into skin bottles which they hang on the trees. The Hares formerly lamented over their deceased friends by means of songs and groanings. A man, who had lost his brother, sang, weeping : S^ tchil6 k\\k ne-ron nu'a I S^ tchil£, nu£ na-yinU ! " " My younger brother, the celestial reindeer allures but to deceive thee I My younger brother, return to earth ! " A brother, lamenting the loss of a sister^ sang: " JViw tch6 Moitma uiilin ani f S^ tiiti *J taU fu yiwa rinVxn, «y .' 8« tUti t'Qtsd yan yiritil'% ah* tti 0y ! " In the river, whose course the great isle turns. My sister has, unknown to me, dtialt of the little wave, alas ! My little sister who ccmtemned the little net, alas I " In carrying the corpse of a hunter round the tents, in a hasty course, they affected disorder, and a pretended flight, sounding a rattle and singing at. the same time : :>__iS^*^.-".^j?v\^'!*r»Bn?»«rr - tdtwin '"^'"* *•»•*»•• */wt wMtM Why «r. ,hou come to thi. earth to hunt the Which hast caused thy death ? But if they celebrate the death of an enemy, they vary the funeral theme Dknk-Dindjie Indians. " ruteM iiMlU t'u kki ituK ' Kofii-ita ninn n»dutek« tU UU f" 'The fogs of the Glacial Sea descend on the waters The great sea groans over his fate, alas ! for the enemy of the Flat-country will never return thither safe and sound. "• fep^l^l I*** •* "^ "•" •"»oma»o«rD»»».DIiu«M, «,T. .K* : '^ '"^f iluU i.o»Um«.tfof him. Uin«»t for hlin, wyln,, Ak, 1,,^ , „, ^^ y^ ^ JanmUli uOi.. ». 18, * ' ( 71» *<• CTHtinued. ) TWO SCOTTISH HEROES Part HI. Still a fair pretexfwas wanting, either for actions against tnVse invited guests, or for further prolonging their stay in London. But to allow \hem to return to Scotland just now was not to be thought of; with or withouKan excuse, they must be detained until something blameworthy should be detected in some of them. During their stay in London \hese Presbyterian mini.sters were require)! by His Majesty to attend service in tbe Royal Chapel, where the great ones the Anglican Churc'.i used the oppor-^ tunity to explain to those benighted Scotchmen the superiority of the Epis- copal system. The first of these ser- mons was preached by Dr. Barlow, wh makes another appearance in the narj tive, and it was characterized by seme of theministers as a " confutation/f his text." The preacher of the /econd confoanded the doctrine of tho' Presby- terians with that of the Papists. The third undertook to prove, torthe amaze- ment of the ministers, fromi the st'lrer trumpets of the Jewish y«conomy, that the right of convoking ecclesiastical councils lay with the Gnristian monarch. The fourth made th/king the modern Solomon, and fimher consulted the taste of his royaLmiditorby crying, con- cerning Presbvieries, Dcntm, dcnvn with them. Decocously theministers listened to these harangues. But a further trial was to bo^ut to their patience. When the festival of St. Michael was to be celebiHted in the Royal Chapel, they all.^nd the two Melviiles especially, re required to be present. James, on entering the chapel, suspected a design upon their patience, and whis- pered as much to his unc)fe. Resound- ing music, and an altar' furnished with closed books, empty ^^hal ices and un- lighted candies, we^ about as suitable in Popish eyes asiney were preposter- ous in the eyes pi these Presbyterians. A Romish prii^e, present on the occa- sion, remarksd, at the close of the ser- vice, that he " did not see why the Romish and English churches should not unitfiv' and one of his attendants exclain^d, " There is nothing of the mass/Wanting here but the adoration of the 'nost." On returning to his lodg- s, Andrew Melville relieved his afed spirit by composing some Latin ses, suggested by the scene h< had jusi witnessed, of which the following is said to be an old translation, which, though flat, conveys the meaning. Why stand there on the Royal Altar hie Two closVl books, blind lights, two basins drie ? Doth England hold God^ mind and worship closs, \ Blind of herNsight, and buried in her dross ? Doth she, wifh Chajjel put in Romish dress. The purple wftore relij; 'o ;.«ly express ? These verse^.tipon w ,ich the author's subsequent eai^lv c;»veer was made to hinge, were unat'^^cNntably conveyed to the king, and immediately made a ground of legal acVion. Ridiculous as it may appear, he wak summoned, with- out delay, before theV)rivy council of England, to answer Abt the grievous charge of having written these lines. He frankly owned them,\xplained the circumstances in which theV^were writ- ten, and disclaimed any consciousness of guilt in the matter. But, iK he was to be considered a criminal, he appealed, as a Scotchman, from the courts of l^g- land to those of his native coum B5 MONOGRAPH OF THE D^Nfe-DlNDJlfi INDIANS.* BY THE RKV. E. PETITOT, OHLAT MISSIONARY, ETC., KTC. TIIANSX.ATKD BY DtiUCLAii BRVMNIR. (CoHtinued.) III. Traditions and Observances of the Dene- Dtndjii in Their Relations either to the Natural Law or to the Mosaic Law. I have already so far exceeded the limits I had set myself in these prole- gomena to the D^n^-Dindji- Diction- ary, that I must pass rapidly over this third part of my dissertation, which should and might be the most volum- inous. I find myself under the neces- sity of giving only a brief sketch of a few D^n^-Dindji^ traditions, which seem to me to approach closely the Mosaic recital, and of omitting a still greater number. I do not pretend to identify the D^n^-Dindji^ with the Hebrews ; that would be temerity. But the candid reader will perhaps find in what follows a convincing proof of the primitive and Mosaic revelations, as well as of the probative strength of tradition ; besides which it is very significant as to the re- lations which the D^n^-Dindji<^ have had with Asia, and perhaps even with the Hebrews themselves. Five hundred years only separate Moses from Homer ; twelve hundred divide him from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle ; besides, these heathen writers had the advantage of living in a country not far from Palestine and Egypt, the theatre of the high achievements of the • Monographie des I)infe-Dindji6, par Le R. P. E. Petitot, Missionaire Oblat de Marie Im- tnaculee, Officier d'Academie, i^c, &c., Parus. Hebrews. Well, there is less resem- blance between the doctrines of these sages, the dogmas of Paganism and the Holy Scriptures, than between the tra- ditions of our Din^-Dindji^ and these same Scriptures. And this in the face of the fact that our Indians are obscure and ignorant bavages, relegated to the extremities of the earth, destitute of every graphic method of transmitting their reminiscences, and reduced, for possibly more than three thousand years, to depend only on the oral tradi- tions of their ancestors. If there is not in this single fact an entirely providential end and design — a ray of light which will, perhaps, illumine the whole past, and the still obscure origin of the Redskins — then I admit that their presence in America is to me a positive enigma, and I will cease henceforth to concern mvself with it. Summary of Monta^nais Traditions. The tradition oftheDtMit's of Churchill shows us at the beginning of time the great bird Idi, which prodm cs ihunder, the sole living being in the world, and brooding over the waters by which all was covered. He descended on the sea, touched it with his wings, and at once the earth leaped from the bottom of the waters and swam upon their sur- face. The bird Ldi then caused all beings to issue from it, with the excep- tion of man, who was born of the dog, as already said. For this reason the 3(^ U6 Df.ne-Dindjie Indians. D6n^8 have a horror of the flesh of this animal.* Among these same cariboo-eaters of Churchill, the girls, arrived at the age of their first separation, veil their head and shoulders with a large straw bon- net, and from that time assume the name of women. At the critical time the women and young girls are banished from the pres- ence of men ; they are forbidden to ap- proach whatever has life or serves for human food, or even to pass by the paths or fish lakes. They are brought to bed without any foreign help and are then separated from their husband for fourteen days. These Indians cut their hair in sign of mourning, and lament for the dead in a squatting posture. Their mourn- ing lasts for a }-^ar. This is Hearn's account. The traditions of the Montagnais or Chippewa D^n^s begin with man. They represent him as the single and only one of his species on earth. He ap- peared on it ''n the season of fruits, that is, in autumn. He manifested his need of a helper like himself, by showing that it was impossible for him to make the net-work for his snow-shoes after having completed the wooden frame ; because, says tradition, the netting of snow-shoes being a woman's work, the first man could not have had even an idea of such an operation. This con- ception could only have emanated from the brain of a woman. Now a pullet as white as snow came to man's help. During his sh rp, and in six days, she completed the snow-shoes ("av) and, at the end of the si.xth day transformed herself into a woman, to become the insepariible companion of man. The word "ay, snow-shoe, means also ana- • See Samuel Hearn, " A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort," &c. Speaking of the incubation of waters by the Spirit cf God, at the beginning of time, the Talmud employs as a comparison the manner in which the dove broods over its young. thema, cessation, obstacle. This word appears to have been chosen designed- ly to symbolize, in this parable, the condition of arrest and speculation in which man found himself before the creation of woman. The Montagnais tradition shows us man, as head of the world, giving names to all animals and to every ob- ject. The life of man attained so extra- ordinary a longevity that the first men, say our Indians, could die only when their feet came to be worn out by walk- ing, and their throats worn into holes by eating. There existed, from the beginning, a race of very powerful giants. One of them, who was married and had a son, placed two brothers, the only couple then existing, on a high and beautiful land ; he gave them provisions for a journey and two magic arrows, which would kill every kind of animal fit for the food of man. But he expressly for- bade them, under pain of the greatest misfortunes and death, to touch the ar- rows which they had discharged in order to take them up again, for they would themselves return to the hand which had let them fly. They promised faith- fully ; but in spite of their word, and of the remonstrances of his elder brother, the younger stretched out his hand for the arrow he had fired against a squir- rel fierched on a tree. Then the latter carried it off" into the air, caus- ing its loss. One misfortune followed another. He was deceived by a woman who took him down into the eyrie of the great thunder-bird Olbali. He in his fury would have given the man as food to his son, but the eaglet had pity on his youth. He took him under his wings to hide him fvom the anger of his father, to whom he declared that he would throw himself from his eyrie to the ground rather than consent to the man's death. On this account, Orel- fxiU, the father, allowed him to live. The eaglet gave him a few feathers from his wings; then, taking him on his Dene-Dindjie Indians. 37 '47 cans- owed >man ie of in n as pity r his of the to the Wrel- ive. ers his shoulders, he taught him to fly. " If thou canst fly three times round my eyrie by thine own strength," said he to him, " then thou shalt be fit to return to thy first country." The man, help- ed by the eaglet, succeeded, and saw his own country again. This tradition, relating at length, al- though under the form of an apologue, the fall and restoration of man, reminds us instinctively of that passage in Deuteronomy, which is also taken in a parabolic sense : "He (God) found him (the Hebrew people) in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilder- ness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, bccr-nh them on her wings." (Song of Moses, Deuteronomy, xxxii., lo-ii.) Before being brought into the eagle's nest by the woman the man had torn her clothing, and from her bopom had escaped a host of maleficent and gnawing animals, such as mice, weasels, squirrels, martins, etc., which spread over the earth to bring evil on man. This recalls the fable of Pandora. The name of this celestial woman is Dluni-ttd-naltay (bosom full of mice). It may be observed also that the arrow, the incidental cause of man's misfortunes, iscalled kkinhy the Hares, a word signifying pear or apple in Montagnais ; and that the name of the squirrel, kUe, kit, kiti, has the same root as the name of the serpent in Louc heux, klan. It is thus that in Latin a slight difl"erence distinguishes the name of apple from that of evil. At the beginning of time, says an- other Chippewa tradition, a deluge of snow took place in the month of Septem- ber. It changed into an inundation, after the mice*, by piercing through the •The mouse whose name is klo, glu, glune, dltini, according to dialect (the same root as the na »es of the serpent and sf)uirrel, malignant animals) passes among the f{ires for the symhol bottle which contained the heai, had determined on pouring it over the earth. This heat melted in an instant all the snov;, which cov.^red the earth to the tops of the highest firs, and it raised so greatly the level of the waters that they inun- dated our planet and rose above the Rocky Mountain?. A single man, an old man, who had foreseen this catastrophe, had vainly warned his countrymen. " We will seek refuge in the mountains," they said. They were drowned there. He himself had built a. large canoe, and began to sail about, collecting on his passage all the anin.als which he met. But, as he could not live long in this frightful condition, he made the beaver, the otter, the muskrat and the Arctic duck dive by turns in search of the earth. The latter alone returned Viith a little mud in its claws. The old man placed the mud on the surface of the waters, spread it with his breath, and having placed on it successively, during six days, all the animals, he landed in turn, when this small quantity of mud had as- sumed the form and consistency of an immense island. Other D^n^s say that the old man first let loose the crow — which, finding a supply of food in ihe corpses floating on the water, did not return — then the dove {dzar), which returned twice after having made the circuit of the earth. Having been sent a third time, it re- turned in the evening, tired out, and holding in its foot a green branch of fir. It is well to remark here that the majority of the Redskins possess the tradition of the Universal Deluge. The Crees and Sauteux have exactly the same tradition as the Dt^n^s. I have shown elsewhere that the Esquimaux or genius of death. The mouse is the Hevil, say the Hares ; and they will noi. sleep in a house containing them, l>t'cause then it is like a tomb, they say. 1 hey kill mice wherever they find them. 3i 148 Denb,-Dindji5 Indians. hold one. almost similar. It is known that the Tlascalians, who believe with our D6n^-D.indji6 that the earth is flat, admit two catastrophes in the world : the one which happened in the time of Tt;spi* or Coxco.x ; the other by the wiad and tempests. We shall again discover this latter belief in the tradi- tions of the Hares, and especially of the Loucheux. The Yellow Knife D^n^s have told me that they practised auricular con- fession to their jugglers, when they were seized with any malady, because they believe that sin is the cause of our in- firmities, and that we cannot be cured before getting rid of the sin by con- fessing it. The Montagnais believed they sinned by eating of an unclean animal, such as the dog, the crow, the marten, etc. The AthabaskaChippewas have pic served the remembrance of a marvel- lous child, whicii was brought up by a young girl, who wished to lead them into a fair land. It disap)peared, pro- mising them that it would hasten to their assistance whenever they should invoke its aid. The Chippewas have practised till the present day the separation of per- sons of the female sex who are in a cri- tical condition. Th"^ traditions of the Dog-rib and Sla 'C Hi^nds relate that it was an old man with wnite hair who made the earth ; that he had two sons whom he placed on the earth in the season of fruits; that he forbade them to eat of green fruit, and ordered them to eat only of black fruit. The youngest son having diso- beyed his father by eating the forbidden fruit, he drove him from his presence, as well as the elder brother and all their children. The Indians, therefore, say proverbially : " The fathers have eaten • This word is purely Dene. Tf»p\ means I swim in Montagnais. In the dialect uf the Rocky Mountain Indians, di»p\, or tetpi, signi- fies he swims, or the swimmer. green fruit and the children's teeth are set on edge." They have the same tradition of the Deluge as the Montagnais. Further, they share with the Hares the belief thai formerly a young man was swal- lowed by a large fish, which vomited him up alive at the end of three days. The separation of women and girls suffering from illness is pushed among these savages to the extent of cruelty. Tt is not allowed to them to live in the marital or paternal tent ; they are even excluded from the camp and compelled to live alone, during this period, in a hut made of branches. Their head and chest are concealed by a long hood which does not allow them to be seen. They can neither cross nor follow the ordinary paths, nor pass over the trail of animals, nor take a place in the family canoe. It i'j still less allowed them to sit upon the skins which are used for the men's beds, or to make use of any household utensil. Drink they receive by means of a pipe made of a swan bone. In this condition the woman takes the name with a double meaning of ttsa-tlini, which equally means, " she who wears the hood," and " she who has the sickness." This arises from the persuasion held by our Indians, that this natural infirmity of the woman is the cause of illness and death for the man. The D^nti-Dindji^ take their wives only fron> their own tribe ; they have no repugnance to ally themselves with their sister-in-law or their niece. On the contrary, the relationship of a wo- man with their deceased wife seems to them a sufficient reason to take her for the second marriage. But they have an aversion to connections be- tween other blood relations. They have the greatest repugnance to handle the corpse, or the bones of the dead, and never make use of any article belonging to one decease ' When any one enters on his last agonies, they hasten t(j knock down Denk-Dindjif. Indians. 3y ¥ % the tent lest the moribund should die there, which would render it anathema, that is tabooed. Among the Slaves and Hares, a hunter never deposits the blood of an animal killed in the chase in the same place as the members of the animal, but he collects it in the paunch of the animal and hastens to bury it in the snow, at some distance from the food. The Hares allege that a beneficent giant, who was once their protector, gave them this precept, even with regard to the blood of the beaver. Among these same Indians, as well ^? among the Dog-ribs, several persons ';jple about eating blood, the in- lestines, the fcetus, and certain parts of the animal killed in hunting." They do not fail to question us touching the lawfulness of such food, when they are admitted to holy baptism. In certain tribes, the women abstain from bear flesh. The D^n^-Dindji6 have no term in their vocabulary by which to name their male and female cousins, whet^her cousins gernian, or those of any degree. They ca!) them all by the name of brothers ^r sisters. They are equally the words brother and general sense ; but they terms to designate the j V 'gcT children. Orphans, '•! the habit ol adopting, •)f father and mother to those who ha.e brought them up. In the D6n^ language the words uncie and aunt are derivatives of the word5» Dene-Dindjie Indians. The two brothers dJsf^beyed the order ; the younger laid hold of the arrow which he had fired. But the latter, darting forward, led them to the summit of a conical mountain which rose to heaven. " Scarcely had they arrived, when they heard a subterranean and mocking voice saying : 'Well, my friends, vour language is no longer alike.' They • would have abandoned their arrow, but it was difficult to do so, for the arrow kept ascending. Suddenly, having reached the very top of the mountain, they found a multitude of men. ' What are we going to do here ? ' they said to one another ; ' this mountain is, in truth, very hard and solid, but it is too small for the whole of us.' Then they made fire, and as there were asphalt mines there, the bitumen burned, the rocks burst with a frightful noise,andthe multitude became affrighted. Suddenly the high mountain disappeared. It changed into an immense plain. The men, terrified and no longer under- standing each other, dispersed in every direction. They fled each his own way. The nations were formed. It is Mnce that time, it is said, that we no longer speak the same language. " There existed a man who dwelt in a porcupine's den. He became black there, and was about to be burned. All at once He who sees before and behind {Enna-gu"ini) struck their land with his thunder ; he delivered the man by opening to him a subterranean passaj^ e towards the strange land. The man was called without fire or country {Kron-edin) ; we call him also Rat'onni (the traveller). Having looked at Enna-gu'ini, he saw him who had passed into the middle of the fire and was afraid. ' Ah ! my grandfather, I am afraid of thee,' he said to him. • Not at ail, my grandson,' said the giant, ' I am good, and do not destroy men ; remain with me,' and the Traveller, the Man without country, remained with Him who sees before and behind, who placed him on his shoulder, carried him in his hands, put him in his mittens. He killed elks and beavers for the man. ' He who wears out heaven with his head {Va-na- kfwi-odinza) is my enemy,' he acknow- ledged to him one day, ' his young people are numerous ; one day he will kill me and then thou wilt see my blood redden the vault of heaven.' The man became sad. ' Come,' continued Enna-gu"ini ' I see him who is advanc- ing, let us go to meet him.' He gave to the Man without country an enormous beaver's tooth : ' Hold,' he told him, ' hide thyself here, I am about to go to fight the wicked giant ; here is a weapon, hold it high and firm.' He set out. " A moment after the monster was heard struggling in the grasp of Him who sees. Long they fought ; but the evil giant was getting the best of it, when Him who sees cried out, * Oh ! my son, cut, cut the nerve of his leg.' The Man without fire cut the nerve, the giant fell prostrate and was killed. I_is wife and children shared the same fate. This is. why we do not eat the nerve of the leg. " ' It is good, my son, go away,' then said Him who sees. ' If ever thou dost perceive the sky to redden, then they shall have shed my blood. Hold,' he added, ' here is my staff ; before sleeping, plant it beside thy pillow, and when anything painful shall come to thee, cry to me.' " He went off, and the Man without place remained sad. When anything vas difficult to him, when malignant animals tormented him, he climbed up a fir and called his great father. Him who sees behind and before, and immediately the latter heard his voice. When he went to bed he planted the Giant's staff at his pillow, and then returned in dreams to the house of his mother, " As to her, she wept for him as dead, for he never saw his country more. He Dene-Dindjte Indians. ^3 »53 then dost they old,' jefore How, come thout thing ^nant ed up Him and /oice. the then f his followed a beautiful young girl and married her. The pork he changed into baked flour, and the fat into vapor. He rendered the food very fat. Suddenly it happened that the sky be- came red. The Man without fire or place then remembered the word spoken to him, and burst into sobbing. He ran through the woods crying, ' Oh ! my Great father, Alas ! Alas ! ' " At the end he rose no more, no longer did he command any one. He dug himself a grave in a hillock on an island, and said, • when I die, it is there you shall put rny bones.' That is the end." It would be too long to relate the whole history of Kron-edin, which has several phases or chapters. It tells that his wife was so fair that several aspirants disputed for her and carried her off from the Man without country. This is the rea.son she is called L' at' a-na-tsandl (she for whom they dispute). On her account Kron- edin was obliged to go into a foreign country, following the sea-coast ; but, arrived at a strait, his wife was carried off from him by a powerful man, named Yamonk'a, or the whitening horizon. The Man without country fought with him, took back his wife, and with her several other women whom he also married. By L' at' a-na-tsandi he had an only son, Chia"ini (the hunter) who, in turn, had a large number of sons and one daughter. The tradition continues : "The hun- ter's sons killed a worthy man one day. ' He desired our death ' they thought, and prevented it by killing him ; but he did nothing of the kind ; he was a very worthy man. •' As soon as they were no longer seen, they fled and dwelt alone on an island. From that time they lived there, separated from other men. One of them having left his retreat to return omong his equals, heard suddenly some ane cryinp to him, ' My eldest brother whom you killed, has charged me to tell you this : You killed me all combined, in me you put to death a very worthy man I It is my eldest brother who tells you so.' "On hearing these words the hunter's son fled ; he returned to his brothers and reported what he had heard. ' The younger brother of him whom we have put to death,' he said, ' cried to me : " Wretch, you have killed a worthy man, a very worthy man.'" " Then they took fright, they fled far from that place ; they abode among the nations, but alone, always apart. ' Who- ever shall confront us and shall turn from us his looks, that man detests us, let us kill him,' said these men to one another." This tradition of the Hares refers expressly to the D^n6-Dindji6, since they claim among their heroes the an- cestors of the murderers, Chid'ini and Kron-edin ; but as it is a notable crime that is here referred to, an unceasing remorse and a panic terror, followed by a shameful flight, we might conceive that the self-respect of our Indians would have an interest in somewhat di.sguising the tradition, by representing the murder as the work of another nation. The preceding tradition has so much stranger a character, as its details are in palpable contradiction to the present manners and customs of the Hares and Loucheux. Thus, these Indians do not dig tombs in the mountains ; they have no servants whom they can command ; and it is evident that they could not even have such ideas if they had not at one time lived in another country besides their frightful deserts, and, consequently, that their narratives have a real foundation. I omit a host of other legends, per- suaded that these are sufficient, and I close what relates to the Hares by cit- ing one of their traditions, which they have given me as among the most recent. »5* Dkne-Dtndjie Indians. " It was," they said, " whilst we lived on the edge of the sea. A young boy built a canoe, and every day he steered out to sea and disappeared. His pa- rents being in the greatest uneasiness on account of these pranks, the child said to his mother : ' Ah ! mother, in the open sea there exists an island, to which I go in my canoe. It is so love- ly, so lovely, that whatever thou canst say, I must return. It is there that the invisible woman lives.' Thus he spake, and a few days after had again dis- appeared. His father and mother were ill deep grief; they vainly sought him on the edge of the sea. They could not succeed in finding him. " During their sleep he returned : ' Mother,' he said to them, ' why do you search for me ? You must go to the place^to which I resort. Why do you weep over me ? ' ' Well, it is good,' they said to one another, ' when he has grown up we will act according to his words.' " In the meantime his neighbors set themselves in search of the beauti- ful land of which the child had spoken to them ; but they saw nothing of it and remained incredulous. " However, the little fisher-boy be- came a man, and still said the same thing. At the same time he performed wonderful acts. ' You must go to that fair land,' he constantly said, ' in that island where lives the invisible wo- man. There you shall want neither food nor fish.' But they thought he lied. The father alone said : ' It is my son who speaks thus, he cannot lie. Let us do what he tells us.' ' Yes,' continued his mother, ' let us imitate him, let us imitate him. Our neigh- bors hate us, but no matter, let us imitate him.' " Whei 'fore all that they said was treated . lies by the other men. In the eyes of all they passed for fools. Nevertheless, they lived with us, but all did not believe them. Some only believed them and discovered the fair land. This is the reason we say as a proverb : ' He who is hungry and eats, that man is filled ; but he who, seeing food, leaves it on one side, that man runs the risk of going a long time without eating.' This is what we say since that time." Summary of the Loucheux Traditions. I here omit the Loucheux legends which are identical with those of the Montagnais or the Hares, to mention succinctly only the narratives which present to us something new. The first of the Dindji6 traditions is somewhat different from the narrative in Genesis, although there may be found in it its leading features. " In the beginning of the world, two brothers lived alone on earth, and they went naked. The eldest, displeased with his younger brother, struck him with an arrow and killed him ; then in despair at the sight of his crime, he fled far from the paternal home and they never saw him more. " The father and mother of the two brothers (the tradition does not say who they were) both very old, had a third son. He, constantly occupied with thinking of the death of his brother and the disappearance of the elder, began to search for the latter and also disappeared. This is the story of his adventures : '' After having long journeyed, he arrived on the shores of a great lake covered with aquatic birds. In the midst of the waters and on their sur- face, he perceived what looked like the head of a man, and he hid himself to watch. It was a hunter for game. This man kept himself immovable in the water, concealing his head under a tuft of rushes ; then, when the aquatic birds approached, he seized them by the feet, and draving them under Dene-Dindjie Indians. ¥5 •55 le two it say had a [cupied .f his of the latter ; the ?d, he It lake In the Ir sur- Ike the Lself to game. Ible in Inder a jiquatic am by under water, twisted their necks.* The hunter at last left the water, and the man who was watching him recognised in him his own brother. He clasped him in his arms ; made him acknow- ledge him, and asked permission to enjoy his company during a certain time, which was granted. " The hunter led his younger brother into his abode, and informed him that the Great Father had originally given him two celestial wives. ' Now re*ire into thy land with thy wives,' he had said to him, ' and obey me. In thy journey thou shalt meet with a Urait between two seas ; the strait is frozen, but thou shalt forbid thy wives to pass over the ice ; they must take the portage by land.' Thus their Great Father said, and the man promised to obey. He then left for his country with his two celestial wives. Arrived at the end of the land he perceived the sea on each side and the strait before him. As the water was frozen, he crossed it on foot. The night having come the man wished to camp, but his two wives did not ap- pear. ' They have made the passage by land over the portage,' he said to himself ; but nothing of the kind. He soon saw them arriving on the ice of the strait, in spite of the prohibition of the Great Father. Whilst they were thus entangled, the ice sunk under their feet and they were engulphed, for it was in autumn and the ice was still thin. " The man returned in sadness to the Great Father, and asked him for new wives. He gave him two others, two wives from heaven, of perfect beauty, but invisible to the eyes of a mortal. The one was called Vakkray-ttsega (woman of light, or woman of morning). 'This kind of hunting is very common in China. The hunter there conceals his head in an empty calabash, which appears to float on the water. It is the more strange to find this mode of hunting known by our Dindjie, as they do not practise it, and it is unknown in North America. May we not have in this a remem- brance of the country which they occupied before reaching America ? the other Jia-t/segeg (woman of darkness, or evening.) It was to them the man had led his younger brother. The lat- ter did not see them at all at first, but he could notice that they left the tent alternately, and when they returned each brought the product of her labor. When the woman of light left, it caused day, but when she returned to take the place of her rival, who in turn left, it became night.* " The younger brother spent six days with the elder, and every day could see the two wives a little better ; but he never saw them except incompletely and from behind. ' My younger brother,' said the elder to him, 'since thou canst enjoy a sight of my celestial wives, it is a proof that they have a regard for thee, for thou must know that they are invisible to every mortal ; as for my- self, I am immortal since the day I left for the moon. It was then that the Great Father gave me these sacred wives. Now, I entrust them to thee, for I have no longer any concern for them.' And the elder brother disap< peared. " The younger lamented the disap- pearance of his brother, but he could do nothing. He lived then with the two wives whom his elder brother had given him, but without maintaining any familiarities with them. ' What do they do when they go out,' he said to himself. Before taking either of them to wife he wished to prove, and so watched them. " The evening being come, Ra-ttsega left her husband and night came on. Shortly after the man followed the steps * The Montagnais relate the same peculiarity of the celestial and divine bird OrelbaU. When the male returns to the nest, then it is day ; but when it is the female, night succeeds. This fable recalls to some extent what Rabbi Becha) says in the Talmud, upon Chapter xxiv. of Deuteronomy, to know how Moses could distin- guish day from night, when he was on Mount Sinai. The Jewish doctor answers : when God taught him the writttn law, then he recognized that it was day ; but when he taught him the or(U hw, then n^ht arrived. r'r^'~t^:^.rzri,23mTria'ii-i'is~-ca!rK!ttxrmr-e!Sjrsvr,ya^ IS6 Dene-Dindjie Indians. of his wife. Horror I He saw her standing in a swamp of black and nox- ious water, defiled by a black serpent, {klam) whose embraces she received. The man returned terrified, but he dis- sembled. " The day arrived, Ra-tttegce returned to the lodge, as if nothing had hap- pened, and Yakkray-ltsegct left him. The jealous husband watched her also. He found her engaged in suckling pullets whiter than the snow. He smiled at this sight and was satisfied. " Some time after the two wives arrived at the lodge, bearing in their arms their progeny, which they care- fully concealed from their husband. But in the absence of his wives he raised the veil which concealed the children. Those of the woman of light were beautiful little boys with white skin ; they had pretty aquiline noses, perforated and adorned with swan's quills. The man regarded these beautiful children and covered them again, smiling. ' I adopt them,' he said. " He then uncovered the children of the woman of darkness. Ah ! these were men-serpents, black and hideous, with frightful mouths like animals. The man seized his arrows and piti- lessly killed the monsters. " When the mother returned, she was moved with rage at the sight of the death of her children, and, shamed at being discovered, she sought first to destroy the man, but not succeeding, she left him for ever. She has never been seen since.* " But the man kept the woman of light for his sole and legitimate wife and it is from this couple we are descended." *My narrator added, that when the Dindji6 learned, nearly a century ago, that a company of merchants had arrived in their country, in their ignorance of what a company was, and taking it for a woman, they imagined for a long time that it was the woman of darkness, return* ing to visit them for evil. This fabolott* trwlition pretents a great re* The reader will easily discover in this recital a mixture of Genesiac ideas, with the much more recent fact of :he immigration of the Dindji^to the Amer- ican continent. The recollection of a strait and of the sea is to be found in a great many of the legends of all the tribes of the D^nd-Dindji^. Perhaps in the apologue of the two semblance to the Talmudic fable of Lilx* given by Rab Ben- Sira.and by the Spe&ulum ardtna ( Cracow 1597) according to the Synagoga Judaica (chap, iv. fol. 80). LiltM, or the woman of darkness (from the root Ltl, nieht), was, as the Rabbin say, the first companion whom God created for Adam, and He made her of the earth like him, which is the reason, they say, that it is written in Genesis : " Male and female created he them ! " And that, before the text in which it is said : "It is not good for man to be alone," a kind of con- tradiction which the Rabbin thus explain : Lilx*, or Adam's fint wife, was rebellious and dis- obedient to him ; she escaped far from him by flying off into space, by virtue of the tctra- grammaton which she invoked. She then became the mother of Shedim or demons, of whom she procreated a hundred every day, killing the children who ;vere bom to her. The Jews call this first woman, cause of all evil, screech owl, Lamia, or demon, and mother of demons. This may be seen in several pas- sages of the Talmudic Lexicon and in Medrasch. After the disappearance of Lxli$, God took Chava, or Eve, from one 01' Adam's sides, and gave her to him for a wife, because he did not think it good for man to be left alone on earth. Chava was submissive to the first man, and be- came the mother of mortals. This is how the rabbinical reveries explain the origin of man- kind. What would further imply a similitude of origin between the Dtn^ legend and the Talmudic fable is. i. The division of the most northern of these Indians into white and black. 2. The suspicious fear which they have for the species of beetle which we call, I know not why, goblin (Lamia) Lamia obteura. Our Indians call this rascally insect Lla-tiut^e (He from whence cometh evils) and whenever they see it, thsy kill it without mercy ; because, they say, at the beginning of time the Lamia pronounced this oracle: "DM kkeoyinti utaUtti," (men must die). They conceived as deep hatred as the Jews for their Lamia or screech owl Lilit, against which, says the author already quoted, the latter do not fail to warn their women when in childbirth, lest the mother of evil spirits should secure the death of the newly bom child and transform it into a young demon. I'o prevent this they make use of a charm which consists of four words; Adam, Chmv, thnt^ Denr-Dindjie Indians. ¥7 »57 er in ideas, )f :he \mer- n of a nd in ill the le two given by (Cracow a (chap. the root the first lam, aitd ich is the Cienesis : !" And ! "It U 1 of con- n : Lili*, and dis- n him by the tetra- she then ;mons, of irery day, her. use of all id mother pas- led rasch. took ides, and did not on earth. , and be- how the of man- wives, who here represent good and evil, and may be an explanatory parable of the mixture of the children of Seth with the children of Cain, there may be &«en the reason for the division of the Loucheux into two castes, the Ettchian-krl, or people of the right, and the Nattsin-kri, or people of the left. These two castes, so far from being opposed to each other, have on the contrary for their object to prevent the D^n^-Dindji6 from abandoning them- selves to intestine feuds ; for an Ettchian cannot marry a woman of his own caste, but must seek for her in the camp of the Nattsin-kri, and vice versa. The Ettchian-kri are reputed to be white men, because, say the Loucheux, they feed on fish and the flesh of the rein- deer. The Nattsin-kri, or people of the left, on the contrary, are held as blacks, because they take as their food the elk or moose deer. This is the explana- tion given me by the Dindji6 of this national division. It is also ascertained that the Lou- cheux attribute to the first wife the same carnal connection with the serpent as is admitted by all ancient mythologies. The mystery which passed at the begin- ning in the terrestrial Paradise, and which, by the fall of the woman, sullied the source of all mankind, has been interpreted by all ancient races by the carnal conjunction of the Serpent-god with the mother of men. So believed the Greeks and the Scandinavians, the Romans and the Cingalese, the blacks of Nigritia and those of Dahomey. The Rabbis themselves recognized, in the race of giants destroyed by the Deluge, the fruit of the connection of ¥M\ Angels with the daughters of men.* This free commentary on the fall of man may explain why antiquity, even Pagan, has always believed that a pure virgin, mother of a pure God, could alone rule over and crush the serpent. " Jam redit et Virgo • * occidet el serpens," says Virgil. Now, does not this common accord among all nations deserve considera- tion, or at least some study ? The Church, besides, has not pronounced upon the nature of the fall. Whatever it may have been, the fact is averred among all nations, and all admit that we issue from a poisoned source. We may remark, also, the analpgy which the name of the woman in He- brew, ischa, presents to that of the ser- pent in India, schein, and in Arabia scheitan, or schatan, where this name is applied to the demon also. The Lou- cheux call magic schian. May there not be a conformity and an association of ideas in these di'Terent words, form- ed from the same root ? * Htbrtv AntiqHiiitt, Fbvius Josephus. (To be continued). <>*•♦«« fe^ti.^ National prosperity and commercial depression. National pr^perity, to be developed as fully as otho- circumstances will ad- mit of, must be accompanied by peace. The effect of waV is more injurious to the countries enVaged in it than to other nations ; but\the greatest degree of prosperity in anV country will be likely to exist amidXuniversal peace. It is not uncommon, it^ommercial cir- cles, to regard war bwween foreign countries as calculated toYromote pros- perity elsewhere, the mereVprospect of hostilities being consideredVs likely to give an impetus to trade, wh\ch by ac tual war would be further inprove The cause of this impression 1| to found in the opinion commonlyVn tained as to the benefit to be dedVed from an advance in prices. That /un- ion is not philosophically corren, »d to understand the actual resul/ of W state of affairs under considaration, it' is necessary to dissociate th/ question of value from price. Prosperity exists exactly m propor tion to the product of indistry. What- ever reduces the quantify produced re- duces the general weM-being to that extent. To the natic»s engaged in it, war may be regard^ as effecting the most serious reducMon in the fruits of industry, and war wtween foreign coun- tries is perhaps n/xt, in effect, in a like direction. Thy countries actually at war produce tlyft commodities necessary for the comfort and convenience of the community in much smaller quantities than suchy^ountries are capable of do- ing when^at peace. The production of war ma^rial, in addition to the with- draWl of effective strength from or- dinary industrial pursuits, necessarily causes a scarcity of commodities, which will be felt in those countries which are at peace. It mayAit that the existing war creates an unosual demand for com- modities for thy^use of the countries in- volved in it, or by cutting off the supply of commodines ordinarily supplied by the belligei'ents to other nations, other sources ^1 supply are found, and an unusua/ demand from these sources sprinaS up. The result, however, is, thatxtie total quantity of useful com- modities available for distribution thfroughout the world is decreased, he fact thai the products of a country not at war are capable of being main- tained at their former level— the num- ber of laborers not being reduced — will not prevent a reduction in the substan- tial well-being of its inhabitants, be- cause the scarcity of commodities abroad will reduce the quantity that can be procured in exchange for the roducts of labor at home. Thus, if ainst exports of grain a country usu- altor imports from a belligerent certain me^s or manufactures, the reduction in tne quantity produced of these will enhance their value, and for the ordi- nary qMintity of grain, a smaller quan- tity of netals or manufactures must be acceptedX The production at new sources oiXsupply will not remove the general defiwency of commodities, be- cause industn applied to new pursuits is withdrawn tVpm others, and while an adjustment of \he proportions of all products will b^likely to result, the short quantity of aU combined will not be overcome untilMie return of peace sets free for employment in useful pur- suits the industry whio^, during war, is engaged in the manufacture of war en- gines, and, directly or\ndirectly, in warfare. The existence ofVar is there- fore inimical to national prbsperity as //r MONOGRAPH OF THE DfeNfe-DlNDJife INDIANS.* peace ful pur- Iwar, is »rar en- ctly, in there- srity as BY THE REV. E. PETITOT, OBI.AT MISSIONARY, ETC., ETC. TkANSLATRO BY DOUGLAS BKYMNKR. {Continued.) The deluge of the Loucheux is iden- tical with that of the other D6n^8, and even with that of the Crees. Their tradition informs us, further, that the great canoe of their Noah, Etcekho he had neither fire nor tinder box. His wife, for whom there were many struggles and who was often carried off, was called L'at'a-tsandia ; she was very beautiful, though old, but with- kren, floated upon the waters, until their i out children, for her husband had evaporation by the effects of the wind killed her only son. Not far from and heat. Then only he stopped on | their tent rose a > linted rock ; there the summit of a high mountain, which his son concealeu himself, doubtless they have pointed out to me in the through fear of his father. Krwon-alan Rocky Mountain range, and for which ; scaled the mountain, bearing in his reason they call it 71-Aa«» fnbuleux," the ctrrying off of Sarah is a (isict fre- quently found in the History of the Egyptians. However arbitrary and far fetched may be cer- tain of the identifications presented by this Ixxik between Biblical facts and Egyptian chronolo- gies, I must here remark that the history of the man without fire, which approximates to ihat of Abraham, holds a prominent place in the ex- treme North of America, and that the fact of the carrying off of his wife is there frequently repeated. Dene-Dindjie Indians. 5b 271 that I kmong pjt temf* lad fre- Iptians. Ibe cer- \\? bocik Ironolo- of the li'nat of Ihi.' ex- Ifact of liuently the Hares, and which is the explana- tion of the lunar festival which the D^n^-Dindji6 celebrate in spring. Its description will end this work : " Etsifgi is so named because, when verj' young, they rubbed him with the dung of the musk ox to give him a magic spirit. He was found at the edge of the water in a wooden trough, by an old woman who brought him up. Having grown up, he was a very power- ful magician and yet the mildest of men. He only called them his broth- ers, and even when angry his anger had no consequences. The power of Et siege -vi^s not that of wh'ch our jug- glers boast. It was a power of whose nature we- ;e now ignorant. It produced marcis by the help of a staff or rod." Others say with a reindeer's horns. " Now at that time we lived in the midst of a strange nation which had made us slaves. We call them Dhctnan (public wonen).* This nation was rich ; it possessed metal, cloths, cattle ; but it plotted our destruction. We laughed at them, for they went naked, and regaled themselves by eating dog. Such was the food which they forced us to take ; but Etsiege never aie of it. They shaved the head and wore false hair. We were so miserable among them that we could laugh only in the pericardium of a reindeer or into a bladder, for fear of being heard by onr persecutors ; for they always thought we were turning them into ridicule. " Etaiegt^ assembled the, mei; his brothers. He collected them into ar army, and resoh'ed to fight his enemies, and then to fly to the steppes of the sea coasts. He armed his snow-shoes with two horns, and left his tent as well a the old woman who had brought him u^' ; he abandoned all he possessed and entered by night the houses of his •In Hare Vr-nini (the other etirth), no doabt supplying the'vord inhabitants — that is, the in- hahitwif'. of the other earth, of the coritinent which we have left. brothers, that he might there perform the magic operation which was to deliver them. In the middle of their village a young man bound by the spirit bounded backwards and forwards through the tents. It is the magic which we called akrey anischiiv (the young mar magic). Eisi^.ge perceiv- ing him, fastened on his snow-shoes armed with horns and leaped upon the young man, who carried him though the tents of his enemies. The magic young m.dn ran and leaped, turning and carrying Etsi^,g^ in his course. He slaying with his horns all the Dhoenan massacred them entirely. Then that very night they heard a great clamor in the country of our enemies. The old woman lamented on the edge of the path, crying 'Ah 1 if my sons lived, if my sons still lived ! netchra krakraw antschiw : this very night the magic young man has killed them all.' Yet Elsi4g^ was not beaten ; he had im- molated a little white bitch \*{olle) with its blood he had rubbed his tent, and during the night the blood flowed into all the houses. Everywhere was heard only these cries : 'Alas ! alas ! my son is bathed in his blood ! ' " The chief of the Dhoenan, named Tatsan-eko (the crow who runs), was weary and reflected. He pronounced only these words : ' Elknni yta ensiri — ' He has eaten our fetich (animal-god).' " Then EtsUgl upset all the pretty wooden dishes of Patsan-eko and set them on fire. In faking flight, he saw on a scaffold fi 3 goat skins, and ap- propriated them. All his brothers went with him towards the place in which they had originally lived. But as they were somewhat slow of setting ofif, the crow who runs pursued them. They reached the shores of the sea, > n which f""-'*" waves as high as mountains. Ehiigi struck the water with his staff and of»ened a passage for them. 'This * Elsewhere it is !»id that it was a small rein- decr(«w); othen say an ermine («o*). 51 272 Deng-Dindjie Indians. way, this way, my brothers ! ' he cried. They all followed him, and he easily made them cross the sea dry hod. They all landed on the other shore. Then he, alone on the edge of the sea, raised anew his staff and with it struck the earth. Immediately, the beam which sustained it giving way, the water inundated the terrestrial disc and desi oyed all the Dhosnan. " The evening being come Etsiigi (the Hares name him Koisidafi — he who works with the staff) said to his brothers : ' Our country is still far off, but calm yourselves, I am about to bring it nearer.' Thus saying, he took the fawn of a reindeer {sit), and having killed it, he pulled out the nerve of the leg. ' You will not eat this,' he said. By virtue of this magic act earth drew a little nearer. When the evening came, it was not very far off. Etsiigi then returned to his brothers, who told him : ' The children have nothing to eat, and the men are without provi- sions.' "Now there was an immense multi- tude. For several days they had cast fishing lines and hooks, but had taken nothing. A great serpent had trans- formed all the fish into rocks, into the great desert, into the frozen earth. Etsiege repaired to the side of the water, and spoke only these words, sighing : ' Etinu ! yakki, ichine, kk^tla se"t Mn- nenl ttsen naxviga, yeri beron du t'a nit- iayint'an? — 'What ! I shall have led my brotheis to the foot of heaven, into the country of my ancestors. Why is the sea now closed against us ? ' He said only these words, and immediately fish abounded. •' In the arid desert they met another nation of powerful men. They were dressed in caps of wood, and in cloth ing covered with scales. It was not easy, therefore, to defeat them. How- ever, the Dindji^ set out to fight them ; but seeing their great multitude the brothers of Etsiigi said to him : ' Speak thou alone, Etsiege, and then we will see what will happen below,' for he stood on the summit of a high moun- tain. Etsiigi said to them : * Place me in my traineau and throw me from the top of the mountain into the midst of my enemies.' They obeyed. Now, when his traineau began to roll on the slopes of the mountain it produced a dreadful noise, like that of several thunders. The enemy with caps of wood were in such terror that they took flight, and the Dii\dji^ slaughtered them. "Etsiigi had a younger brother named NidhocvTig tfi (he who is clothed with the white magic coat). In concert with his brother, he mas- sacred our enemies, but not by fighting them. Clothed with a long coat of ermine skin, he swung constantly an instrument suspended at the end of a thong. He swung whilst speaking ; but we no longer know what he said or what he did. The first time we saw you swinging your censers and praying softly, we thought you were doing some- thing analogous. Well, by this speak- ing and this waving NedhcBve"ig ii"i massacred our enemies. " One day, among others, so great a crowd gathered together that they were in terror. Nevertheless, they put them- selves on the defensive ; but we had the worse and fled. When Etsiigi per- ceived the turn the battle took, he stood upon the mountain, pronouncing his accustomed magic woi'ds. His brother, clothed with the white dress, swung his instrument, speaking in a low tone. Suddenly Etsiigi set himself to leap in the form of a cross above each of the shoulders of his brother, pronouncing every time the single word, 'Isck,'* and every time he said it an enemy bit the dust. They perished in this way till the last, for all day the two brothers • The Indians have been unable to give me the meaning of this monosyllable ; it is a word which has been lost in their language, like this phrase, "Notma tHmkn$,*' repsjated by the man in white clothing. Dene-Dindjie Indians. 5^ *73 ting »• bit kers rord Ithis Ithe did nothing but the one swing his in- strument and the other leap in the form of a cross.* The same Etsi^gi cr Kotsidat'i, was invoked by the Hares and the Lou- cheux in all difficult occurrences, for he always showed himself to be their pro- tector. They name him also Sa-kke- dene (the man in the moon), Sa-kke- wila, Sa-wela and Si-z/e-dhidie (he who resides in the moon). The nane is in allusion to his sudden disappearance from above this earth. The Yellow Knives, who call him Oisint'esh, say that, having scaled a mountain, he shut himself up in a magic tent, and that he was never seen to come out again. The Loucheux and Hares have another version. After having recalled the Tact that he was found as a very 1 small child at the water side by a troop j of young girls, of whom one brought him up, and that the chief of their | enemies, the Crow who runs, adopted i him as his son, they relate that this powerful child took great care of his I adoptive parents, and nourished them | in a mysterious manner, although they had no good-will to him. They even detested him. " One day he asked these men that they should separate for him the shoulder and the fat of the en- trails of all the animals that he should procure them. T'alsan-4ko would not consent. 'That child is far too vain,' he observed. Then the child with- drew in anger. ' I shall go away,' he said to his mother, ' for these men are bad and ungrateful. After my de- parture they will all die ; as for you, if you would save your life, observe my precepts. This evening, when night shall have come, close your tent, sus- pend to the ridge, in a bladder, the blood of the animal which I shall kill, • We have here again a repetition of the Akrey ant$ehiu\ or young man leaping and bounding, of which the tradition spoke before. It ii now one of the forms of jugglery in use among the Lowcheux and the Hares. and tie the dog outside of the house. The shoulder of the reindeer, which is here, cut up without breaking the bones, and place it outside of the tent. As for me, I go •'.way into the moon, where those who hate me shall see me.' As his mother mourned : ' Be quiet, v/eep no more,' added he ; 'I am not worthy of pity ; sleep to-morrow and the day after, and then follow me.' He bowed his head, and before leaving added : ' When the man shall die, the star shall pale,' and fled. " V/hen night arrived they obeyed him. His parents carefully closed their tent, placed the animal which he had killed above the door, and outside they tied the dog. They had the shoulder of the reindeer cooked and cut up, tak- ing good care not to break the bones. That done, they ate the food and lay down to sleep. The powerful child was still with them. " Then from the ridge of the tent rose a great smoke and the child dis- appeared. He had set out for the moon. Sudden' 'hat star paled, and there rose a vio vind which came sweeping like a whirlwind among the tents of the enemy. Tiii st car- ried off the tents and the men, u ishi-d them against trees and rocks where they were all massacred by this formid- able spirit. At this sight T aisan-iko exclaimed : ' Ah ! it is the tied child who is the cause of it. He has placed in the air his chaldron full of blood, and the spirit (the wind) has come.' " That same night all the enemies died. As to the magic child, taking his vase full of blood, the skin of the slain animal («e), and the little dog which had been left at the door, he took flight to the moon, where we can still see him." There exist a great number of ver- sions of the history of Etst4g4 and of the inhabitant of the moon. Each of them contains several marks of the his- tory of Moses. B p .^5 274 Dene-Dindjie Indians. Festival of the Vernal Equinox. Conformably to the preceding tradi- tion, the D^n6-Dindji6 of the Macken- zie celebrate the following solemnity. At the new moon of the month called the Rut of the Reindeer (March-April), and at nightfall, in each tent the lean meat is cut up and set to roast in the heated ground ; the" it is made up in bundles, by packing it into game bags, which each man loads on his back. These preparations completed, all the male adults of the clan meet in a chief tent, their hands armed with staffs and their loins girt in the attitude of travel- lers. They place themselves around the fire in the posture of people ex- hausted with marching. Then rising one after the other, and leavmgthe tent in procession, half bent, as if succumb- ing to the load of their cut-up food, they traverse the paths traced around the tents, singing : " Ouf s^dha ! klodat- S0I4, eti-kH-t'^ nondat' aU ! ttsu-chiw yl^nl" — "Alas! oh, mouse with pointed snout (shrew mouse), leap twice above the earth in the form of a cross ! Oh ! wooded mountain, come ! " Sos?>ing, the Hares of the River, for it is oi" them I am speaking here, penetrate in o the first tent they reach, they eat the/e in common, and in haste, a part of the contentsof their game bags. Then, rush- ing out immediately, they reform their procession, running into each of the huts, in which they renew their feast. The Slave D^n^s of Great Bear Lake make no procession around the tents They content themselves with eating in common in the same lodge their lean minced meat, singing from time to time: "Oh! shrew mouse, we have passed (or rather we have issued from) above thy croup ! " The D^n^s of the Rocky Mountains, who perform this ceremony at every renewal of the moon, repeat as a re- frain, with the accompaniment of a rat- tle : " KlodalsoU, et'P, ni-na-din tla ! ku $4-ya I " " Shrew mouse, leap above the earth in the form of a leaper ! Yet a little longer ! " The last word has a double sense, and means also, now cheer up ! little fawn / The Hares of the woods, instead of walking, drag themselves, as if over- whelmed with a heavy load. They per- form this ceremonj only it the time of the moon's eclipses, and, looking up to heaven, cry: " EniH hu ! klodatsoU ; n4. kla t'e na-sik'in! ttsu-chiw yeng4 ! " — " How heavy it is ! oh ! shrew moiioe, over thy back thou hast loaded ire ! Wooded mountain, come ! " The Dindjii^ leave their lodges as if concealing themselves ; they prowl from tent to tent furtively, in haste, and with an air of perplexity, hurHng at the same time tvo or four arrows stained red. This is what they call Randja kkekraw ttsitchilandja. That done, they sing:^ " Klag-datha, nan kket'o-ju nikki4 an- ashoskray ! a^chuha!*^ — " Yellow mouse, pass quickly upon earth in the form of a cross ! aechuha I " They celebrate this festival only at the vernal equinox. Finally, the Hares of the Steppes, or K'a-tcho gottin^., believing that the moon is in suffering, since she has disap- peared, and in order to obey the pre- scribed rule of the Sa-w4ta, sing r " KlodatsoU, ni kla t'4 anasettini ! ttsu- chiiyenge-onna ttchir^-dinz^g^ !" — "Oh ! mouse with the pointed snout, thou hast thrown me o er thy lack (/»-• CJSO g ■^s|Sjj iR ^ B — 2 -U -u Ul ^1 <^ •^ s.s^.:<-= Jr'>L . . . . rt : :•«■ ::3 ■ rt.S'So -u rt •■* o -5 -ti ■=! ~ .J< ■= : u :