236 BULLETIN, PUBLIC MUSEUM, MILWAUKEE [Vol. 19 



/ of some extra-human power. Consequently, it is the shaman who goes into 

 trances and mystifies by jugglery, not the priest." 



THE MACKENZIE AREA 



While ethnographic information is scanty for this area, that available 

 definitely places these peoples in the Northern Tradition. Here is a people 

 with a strong hunting complex and no agriculture. As would be expected, 

 planting, harvesting, and fertility rites are absent. However, neither are the 

 religious rites focused on curing. In the first place this is an area in which 

 religious rites are exceedingly rare. In fact, the only ceremonial recorded is 

 the potlatch given for prestige purposes among such tribes as the Kutchin 

 and Tanaina located near the Northwest Coast and an obviously borrowed 

 trait from them. With the weak development of formal religion, however, 

 went a strong shamanistic complex with the shamans the most powerful 

 men in the tribe. As one traveler among the Kutchin described it (Kirby, 

 p. 419), "Altars, or rites of religion, they had none, and before the traders 

 went there there was not even an idea of a God to be worshipped. Medicine 

 men they had, in whose power they placed implicit faith; and whose aid they 

 they had, in whose powers they placed implicit faith; and whose aid they 

 dearly purchased in season of sickness or distress." Osgood (1936, p. 156) 

 points out that "Shamans have both great influence and status among the 

 Kutchin, a fact with which practically all observers have been impressed. 

 Tliese medicine men form the dominating group in the economic and in- 

 tellectual activities of the native world." In summary it may be said that 

 the MacKenzie region follows the Northern Tradition to the point of being 

 considered a type area. 



THE WOODLAND AREA 



The Northern Tradition hypothesis also holds well for the Central 

 Woodland peoples, for example, the Chippewa. Inasmuch as the culture has 

 been previously delineated in this report it is sufficient to state that it con- 

 forms to the Northern Tradition at all points. Turning to the Eastern Wood- 

 lands, early information on the New England tribes is such that the hy- 

 pothesis cannot be adequately tested. However, among such eastern Cana- 

 dian tribes as the Naskopi and Montagnais, the hypothesis holds well. The 

 only apparent exception to the domination of the Northern Tradition in the 



