ANTHROPOLOGY. 183 
that Sinchl»p’s howling foretells the arrival by the next day of 
somebody, ei-her friend or foe, provided he only howls three times. 
The wo:ship which our Indians rendered to the sun, consisted in 
raising up towards the sun a morsel of meat or roots before eating 
them, and saying, “ Sun, have pity of us, that animals and fruits 
may grow abundantly.” In their particular distresses each one 
prayed to whatever first met his eyes, whether a tree or a stone. 
In worshipping the sun, our Indians were not as fervent as the 
Blackfeet are even now; who, not satisfied with offering a parcel 
of their food, very often cut off large pieces of flesh from their 
bodies and offer them to their Natésa (the sun), particularly when 
they go to war. I asked an old man, well nigh a hundred years of 
age, if he prayed when he was young, and how he prayed. “Oh! 
ves,” he answered, “every morning my mother took me into the 
9 woods, and having found a dry pine-tree, broken and rotten from 
old age, she told me, ‘My son, go and rub yourself against that 
tree, and pray? And so I did, saying, ‘ʻO my good tree! have 
pity of me, and let me live as long as you have lived; and I re- 
peated always the same prayer ; my mother did the same at another 
tree not far from mine, until our sore shoulders compelled us to 
put an end to our prayers.” 
Generally the prayers of our Indians consisted in asking to live 
à long time, to kill plenty of animals and enemies, and to steal 
the greatest number of horses possible; and this was the only 
‘stance when to steal was not a fault, but a great merit and bra- 
very, since no man could ever hope to become a chief unless he 
had killed at least seven Blackfeet, and stolen twelve horses. 
As it happens rather often that both people and animals are 
willed by lightning, so they regarded it as an evil genius; and the 
rainbow was for them nothing else than the same lightning looking 
Wn for prey amongst the people ; they believed that the only 
Means to avoid being killed, was to move off immediately and to 
8° and encamp at some miles’ distance. 
à OTE. — The above is from a letter of Father Mengarini to Geo. 
ibbs, Esq. ; though written some years ago, it is published for 
n first time in the ‘* Journal of the Anthropological Institute of 
ew York,” Vol. i, p. 81, 1871. 
: Pog Gibbs states that the frog-wife story exists in a modified 
Mong the Nisquallies and other tribes also, as does much of 
PIRN ining mythology of the Rocky Mountains Flatheads. It 
noticeable that the Mexicans, according to Garva, quoted by 
