Ce? a 
MURDOCH.] GOVERNMENT. AQT 
by themselves find the Way, but the Dog must guide them to the Land 
of the Souls.” The body is usnally laid out at full length upon the 
ground. Among the ancient Greenlanders,' however, and in the Yukon 
region the body was doubled up. In the latter region the body was laid 
onits side in a box of planks four feet long and raised on four sup- 
ports? or wrapped up in mats and covered with rocks or driftwood. 
The custom of inclosing the dead in a short coffin, to judge from the 
figures given by the latter writer in Pl. v1. of his report, appears also 
to prevail at the mouth of the Kuskokwim. In the island of Kadiak, 
according to Dall and Lisiansky,* the dead were buried. 
GOVERNMENT. 
In the family—t can hardly do better than quote Dr. Simpson’s 
words, already referred to (op. cit. page 252), on this subject: **A man 
seems to have unlimited authority in his own hut.” Nevertheless, his 
rule seems to be founded on respect and mutual agreement, rather than 
on despotic authority. The wife appears to be consulted, as already 
stated, on all important occasions, and, to quote Dr. Simpson again 
(ibid.): ‘Seniority gives precedence when there are several women in 
one hut, and the sway of the elder in the direction of everything con- 
nected with her duties seems never disputed.” When more than one 
family inhabit the same house the head of each family appears to have 
authority over his own relatives, while the relations between the two 
are governed solely by mutual agreement. 
In the village —These people have no established form of government 
nor any chiefs in the ordinary sense of the word, but appear to be 
ruled by a strong public opinion, combined with a certain amount of 
respect for the opinions of the elder people, both men and women, and 
by a large number of traditional observances like those concerning the 
whale fishery, the deceased, etc., already described. In the ordinary 
relations of life a person, as a rule, avoids doing anything to his neigh- 
bor which he would not wish to have done to himself, and affairs 
which concern the community as a whole, as for instance their relations 
with us at the station, are settled by a general and apparently infor- 
mal discussion, when the opinion of the majority carries the day. The 
majority appears to have no means, short of individual violence, of en- 
forcing obedience to its decisions, but, as far as we could see, the mat- 
ter is left to the good sense of the parties concerned. Respect for the 
opinions of elders is so great that the people may be said to be practi- 
cally under what is called “simple elder rule.”° Public opinion has 
'Egede, Greenland, p. 149, and Crantz, vol. 1, p. 237. 
2Dall, Alaska, pp. 19, 145, and 227. 
3 Petroff, Report, p. 127. 
4 Alaska, p. 403, and Voyage, p. 200. 
5Compare, among other instances, Capt. Holm’s obzervations in East Greenland: ‘Som Overhoved i 
Huset [which is the village] fangerer den eldeste Mand, naar han er en god Fanger, ete."’ (Geogr. 
Tids., vol. 8, p. 90.) 
