THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS AND THEIB FOLK-LORE 307 



Their territorial hunting rights, which are their 

 most valued possessions, are not the father's to be- 

 queath. These hereditary rights are vested in the 

 woman, and the hunter only acquires the use of them 

 by marriage. The legitimacy of the succession to the 

 grounds, which is doubtless the object aimed at by 

 the practice, is thus assured. 



They bury their dead within sight of a portage and 

 overlooking a lake, and will often carry the bodies 

 some distance to reach an appropriate burial-place. 



The hearts of brave fathers or successful hunters 

 have been known to have been eaten by their children 

 for the purpose of imbibing their courage. 



They regard death as the first stage of a journey 

 which they symbolically describe as walking up the 

 rainbow. 



Father Dablon, who in 1660 ascended the Saguenay 

 in search of the Northern Ocean, tells in his Journal of 

 a disease that was quite common in his time among 

 the Montagnais Indians. The victim suddenly be- 

 came a hypochondriac, his disease developing into a 

 mania. In its succeeding stage the insane was seized 

 with such rabid hunger for human flesh that he 

 sprang like a famished wolf upon all that he met. 

 " In proportion," says the good Father, " as he finds 

 wherewith to glut this hunger, it grows like thirst in 

 dropsy, and accordingly the Indians never fail to kill 

 at once any one seized with this disease." 



Up to this day, in the northern part of the interior 

 of Labrador, unfortunates who lose their reason in 

 the woods, or who become hysterical or epileptic, are 

 believed to be possessed of the devil, and their death 



