238 THE WINTUN. 
which consists of a long robe or mantle made of the feathers of different 
birds, arranged in rings or bands, and the head surmounted by a plume of 
the longest eagle feathers, the whole presenting a brilliant and gaudy ap- 
pearance. In the scalp dance (hupchu'-na) a scalp was hoisted on top of a 
pole, on the head of an effigy made in the human figure. As each village 
deputation came to the top of the hill they formed in line, danced down 
hill, and around the pole, chanting and whooping, and after all the villages 
had assembled they danced around it together, yelling and discharging 
arrows at the effigy. That village was accounted victorious that lodged 
the most arrows in it. 
Between the Nummok and the Norbos tribes there existed a tradi- 
tional and immemorial friendship, and they occupied a kind of informal 
relation of cartel. This cartel found its chief expression in an occasional 
ereat gift dance (dir’-yu-pu-di). There is a pole planted in the ground, 
near which stands a master of ceremonies dancing and chanting continu- 
ously while the exercises are in progress. The visitors come to the brow of 
the hill as usual, dance down and around the village, and then around the 
pole, and as the master of ceremonies announces each person’s name he 
deposits his offering at the foot of the pole. Of course, a return dance is 
celebrated soon after at the other village, and always on these occasions 
there is displayed a great rivalry of generosity, each village striving to out- 
do the other, and each person his particular friend in the neighboring vil- 
lage. An Indian who refuses to join in the gift dance is despised as a base 
and contemptible nigeard. 
A Wintiin generally pays nothing for his wife, but simply “takes up 
with her”, though the headman usually has a comely maiden selected for 
him and pays her parents money. 'This makes the marital relation extremely 
loose and easily sundered. The chief may have two or more wives, but 
when one of his subjects attempts to introduce into his lodge a second part- 
ner of his bosom there frequently results a tragic scene. The two women 
dispute for the supremacy, often in a desperate pitched battle with sharp 
stones, seconded by their respective friends. ‘They mal each other's faces 
with savage violence, and if one is knocked down her friends assist her to 
regain her feet, and the brutal combat is renewed until one or the other is 
