MICHELSON. ] WHAT PEOPLE DID WHEN ONE DIED. 431 
felt as badly as possible, for they had but one sister. Soon they 
began to ask each other, ‘How about taking some one to be our 
sister?’’ they said to each other. ‘‘Then we should again have a 
sister. As much as we thought of our sister, we should think just as 
much of the one we chose,” they said to each other. “Oh, it might 
be a good thing if we did that,” they said to each other. They began 
to make preparations to select another one to be their sister and to 
attend to their (own) sister (by giving an adoption-feast). They 
made brand new clothing. 
When the time came, word was sent abroad, ‘‘They are taking 
(some one) to be their sister,’ so it was told abroad. ‘‘ Any one may 
go there and eat, any one who wants to may eat,’’ was said among 
themselves. 
The people (went over) to see whom they should choose to be their 
sister. The next day they were summoned. They only ate. That, 
it is said, is what they did. Then that woman was dressed in finery. 
She was in fine apparel. Nothing could be said to the man whose 
wife she had been. As soon as the people had eaten, they departed 
one by one. That is what they did, it seems, long ago. 
Soon their father, it seems, spoke to them. ‘‘Now my sons, you 
have made it that much harder for your sister as you have not 
attended her husband,” they were told by their father. ‘‘For you 
say, ‘We are fond of our sister,’”” ‘True,’ they said. Then they 
attended to that man. They summoned their brother-in-law to 
attire him in fine clothing. On his arrival they made a scalp-lock for 
him, making him, it appears, a widower free from death-ceremonies. 
And it is a fact that they dismissed him to marry any one. That is 
what they said to their brother-in-law, it seems. And that is one 
regulation which some one told when an adoption-feast is held. Of 
course I do not know very much about it. It is only when one adopts 
another (that one knows) how it is. What they have been doing is 
really not a blessing. 
That is how one knows about that adoption-feast and widowhood. 
And recently thus they have been doing it. It seems that the reason 
they do this is that then the dead can come straight to Aiyapa ‘ti’ 
when an adoption-feast is held. If an adoption-feast is not held no 
one, it is said, comes straight to wherever we go. That is why these 
Indians do that. That is why the same story is especially told over 
and over about these two brothers Wi'sa‘ki'“* (and Aiyapa' ti’). 
These Indians use the same (story) when the speakers begin to speak 
to the dead and to those adopted. When they begin speaking to 
them they all speak about it. 
“Now as the manitou changes the seasons of this earth, and as he 
continues to make his earth green, and as he continues to make his 
