ON THE NOKTH-WESTEKN TBIBES OF CANABA. 247 



were done, so that she might come in and get her share ; but he sent 

 word back that he was in no hurry. Parents do not often punish their 

 children, but sometimes, in a fit of ill-temper, will beat them cruelly. 

 They are more cruel to their wives than to their children. While I was 

 making these notes a Sarcee woman came into the lodge with her nose 

 cut off; her husband had done it as a punishment for her keeping 

 company with another man. 



Medicine. 



The Sarcees are not considered to be much versed in the use of medi- 

 cinal roots and herbs ; they are much more ready to take the white man's 

 medicine than are their neighbours, the Blackfeet. 



Among themselves they depend chiefly on magic and witchcraft for 

 recovery from sickness. There are about a dozen so-called ' medicine- 

 men ' in the camp, but most of them are loomen. Chief among them is 

 an old squaw named ' Good Lodge.' They are always highly paid for 

 their services, whether the patient recovers or not. A medicine-man 

 when called in to see a sick person will first make a stone red-hot in the 

 fire, then touch the stone with his finger, and with the same finger press 

 various parts of the patient's body, to ascertain the locality and character 

 of the sickness. Then he will suck the place vigorously and keep spitting 

 the disease (so he pretends) from his mouth. This is accompanied by 

 drum -beating and shaking a rattle. The Sarcees do not bleed or cup, 

 but they blister (often quite efficaciously) by applying the end of a piece 

 of burning touchwood to the affected part. They also use the vapour- 

 bath. To do this a little bower, about three feet high, is made of pliable 

 green sticks, covered over closely with blankets. Several stones are 

 heated red and placed in a small hole in the ground inside the bower; 

 and over these the patient sits in a state of nudity and keeps putting 

 water on the stones, which is supplied to him by an attendant from, 

 without. When thoroughly steamed, and almost boiled, he rushes out, 

 and plunges into cold water. This treatment sometimes efiects a cure, 

 but more often induces bad results and death. The vapour-bath, as 

 above described, is used very extensively by Indians of many different 

 tribes ; some, however, omit the plunge into cold water. 



Burial Customs. 



I had a good opportunity to investigate the burial customs of these 

 people. Riding across the prairie with a young Englishman who had 

 spent several years in the neighbourhood, we came upon a 'bluff,' or 

 small copse, of fir and poplar trees, covering some two or three acres of 

 ground. We suspected it was a burial-ground, and, dismouting from 

 our horses, entered it. No sooner had we done so than we found our- 

 selves in the midst of the dead — the bodies wound up in blankets and 

 tent-cloth, like mummies, and deposited on scaffolds from six to eight 

 feet from the ground. Four or five of these bodies could be seen from 

 one point, and others became visible as we pushed our way through the 

 tangled underbrush. A little baby's body, wrapped up in cloth, was 

 jammed into the forked branch of a fir-tree about five-and-a-half feet from 

 the ground. The earth was black and boggy and the stench nauseous. 

 Here and there lay the bleached bones and tangled manes of ponies that 

 bad been shot when their warrior owners died — the idea being that the 

 equine spirits would accompany the deceased persons to the other world, 



