34 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. V. 



and her brothers knew that the animal was nobody else than her hus- 

 band who, man by the daytime, became dog during the night. 



For her relations with the brute, the woman was abandoned, and in due 

 course of time she bore six little dogs, which she kept in a satchel. One 

 day that she came back from a visit to her rabbit-snares, she noticed foot- 

 prints as of children on the hearth. Desirous of learning whence they 

 proceeded, she attached a long cord to the lacing-string of the sack con- 

 taining her little ones and, telling them that she was going again to visit 

 her snares she left, but merely went to hide herself a short distance off 

 behind a bush. The little dogs believing themselves alone and unseen, 

 came out of their sack, when their mother pulled the cord, thereby closing 

 it against three, two males and one female, who had come out transformed 

 into boys and girl respectively. Those that remained dogs she aban- 

 doned, while the two boys became powerful hunters and, marrying their 

 sister, were the ancestors of the Dog-Rib tribe.^ 



Here ends in the original text of Petitot what that branch of the Den6 

 family regards as its national legend. One particular of some sociologi- 

 cal importance we seem justified in inferring from the above, viz.: that 

 polyandry did not seem repulsive to the social notions of the Dog-Ribs, 

 any more than their congeners, the Tse'kehne, deemed it, until a recent 

 date, inconsistent with propriety. That the former tribe is too exclusive 

 in its appropriation of the tale is shown by the fact that the Tsiy>joh'tin 

 possess a tradition substantially the same as that just related, and all the 

 main details of which are identical with those of the Carrier story. 

 Among the Tsi|>[oh'tin, the lodge is simply replaced by the t^iz^9n or 

 subterranean hut, while the bear-berries of the Carrier myth are with 

 them a species of tuberculous root, of which they are particularly fond. 



The Hare Indians, another Dene tribe^, share with the Kutchin, the 

 northernmost division of that exclusive family, the belief in a tradition 

 according to which " they formerly dwelt very far away in the west and 

 beyond the sea, in the midst of a very powerful nation among which 

 magicians used to transform themselves into dogs or wolves during the 

 night, while they became men again during the day. These people had 

 taken wives from among the Dene^." The Kutchin describe that nation 

 as very immoral and going almost naked. According to Petitot, the 

 same Indians believe also in the existence, on the Asiatic continent, of a 

 nation of dog-men, the upper part of whose body they state to be that of 



• Traditions indiennes dii Canada Nord-Onest, par V Abb^ E. Petitot, p. 301. 

 ^ Habitat : Mackenzie, Anderson and MacFarlane Rivers. 

 ^ Essai stir Torigine des DenS-Dindji^ ; Paris, 1876, p. xxviii. 



