174 
applied only at certain seasons, as in snininer, or at certain epochs 
in life, as at puberty or on the death of relatives. Thus among some 
British Columbia tribes no mourner might approach a river where 
the salmon were running. Other prohibitions were incumbent at 
all times and on every individual in the tribe. Often their exact 
significance was lost in antiquity, and their only sanction a vague 
feeling that violation was anti-social and would bring ill-luck to the 
individual or the community. Yet there were many taboos, par- 
ticularly those relating to animals and fish, for which the sanction 
was clear ami the purpose definite. The eastern Indians prohibited 
the throwing of beaver bones to the dogs lest the beaver spirit should 
resent the indignity shown to its incarnated forms and withdraw 
them altogether from the hunters’ reach. For a similar reason no 
refuse might be cast into the salmon rivers of the Pacific coast, and, 
in certain parts of the Arctic, no caribou meat could be cooked on 
the sea ice when tlie Eskimo were hunting the seals. Violation of 
all such taboos was sin, and sin brought punislnnent, from which 
the British Columl)ia and plains’ Indians saw no way of escape 
unless the supernatural powers mercifully yielded to entreaty and 
consented to overlook the transgression. But in eastern and north- 
ern Canada many natives believed that public confession would blot 
out the ofi’ence,^ and the Iroquoians sometimes made a white dog 
their scapegoat, casting their sins upon this victim after strangling 
it in sacrifice to the unseen powers. 
It was not sufficient merely to avoid giving offence to the sujier- 
natural i^owers. The Indians needed their active aid. Sometimes 
they could obtain this by prayer alone, and in trouble or in danger 
the natives from one end of Canada to tlie other had recoui’se to 
prayer, calling on tlie supernatural powers for aid and protection.- 
An old plains’ Indian would often ascend a hill at daybreak and 
beseech the sun-father to bless the people in the tents below. In 
time a few prayers became stereotyperl into formula and so degen- 
erated into incantations; but usually the supernatural world appeared 
too close and too real for mere formal incantations to provirle the 
necessary emotional satisfaction 
1 C/. Boas, F. : “ Tha Eskimo of Baflin Land and Hudson Bay”; Antli. Papers, Am. Mu.s. Nat 
Hist., vol. XV, p. ]20 (lOai): Keilli in Masson: Op. cit., ii, p. 127. 
2 Cf. ‘‘Jesuit Relations,” vol. vi, p. 205. 
