CHAP. xi. TETE DE BOULE AFFECTION. 169 



their husbands or children to their burying places if they 

 die a long way off? ' 



' Yes, in winter always ; in summer sometimes, not 

 always.' 



A singular instance of Indian affection or superstition 

 regarding the body of a deceased relative or friend 

 occurred among the Tete de Boule Indians,* on the 

 St. Maurice. A young fellow went out hunting in his 

 canoe, alone, and was absent for several days longer than 

 his mother, a widow, expected ; she became anxious, and 

 finally set out in search of him. She knew the lakes 

 well where he was gone to hunt, and examined them 

 one after the other. After three days' search, she saw a 

 canoe on the opposite side of a lake. Paddling towards 

 it, she found her son lying on the sand in front of his 

 canoe, shot through the heart. His gun had evidently 

 gone off as he was lifting it out, the cock having pro- 

 bably caught the bar of the canoe. The mother wrapped 

 the .body of her son in birch-bark and brought it for 

 a distance of thirty miles to her lodge. The country 



The Tete de Boule Indians hunt about the headwaters of the St. Maurice, 

 a large tributary of the St. Lawrence, draining a considerable area of country 

 between Montreal and Q,uebec. They were once a numerous and formidable 

 people, but small-pox, that terrible devastator of the Indian race, and rum, 

 the white man's swift agent of destruction, has so greatly reduced their 

 numbers, that they do not now exceed thirty families. They have the 

 curious custom of placing near the graves of their departed friends, which 

 are generally neatly covered with birch-bark, a small pile of fire-wood, for 

 the use of the spirits of the dead, on their journey to the happy hunting- 

 grounds. The Indians of the interior and the prairies place tobacco and 

 wild rice in or near the graves of their relatives, and thus provide for 

 their comforts on the long journey to the land beyond the setting sun. 

 The superstition is of the same character, but displayed in a different 

 manner. 



