272 
The southern Alontagnais wore practically the same costume — 
robe, breech-cloth, leggings, and moccasins — as the tribes in the Mari- 
time Provinces, like whom, also, they generally went bareheaded in 
winter, wliile pnjtecting their arms witli detachable sleeves pinned in 
front and behind. But the harsher climate in the interior of the 
Labrador peninsula compelled the Naskapi, and some of the more 
northern Montagnais, to adojit the tailoi'ed shirt of the coastal 
Eskimo, and to fit it occasionally with a liood for winter nse. The 
Xaskapi nearly always adorned these shirts with geometrical patterns, 
which tliey printed in red (now in paints of various colours) by means 
of curious stamps carvefl from bone or antler. 
Neither the Montagnais nor the Naskapi possessed any true 
tribal organization. Each was divided into a number of small bands 
that were interrelated by marriage, but politically quite distinct and 
in possession of separate hunting areas. Even these bands had no 
organized government, for though certain individuals might be 
designated chiefs, they wielded little or no authority. In the wars 
waged by the Montagnais against the Micmac and Irocpiois it was 
a general council of the warriors that decided the plan of campaign, 
and in the actual fighting each man was practically a law unto him- 
self, although the leaders generally arrayed their forces in definite 
order before an attack. The weapons of the Montagnais were clubs, 
spears, bows and arrows, and knives to cut off the heads or remove 
the scalps of fallen foes. A few warriors may have adopted the shields 
covered with moosehide, and the coats of mail fashioned from wooden 
slats, which the Iroquois often used to protect their bodies against 
arrows; for it w-as from the Iroquois that the Montagnais learned to 
fortify their camps with barricades of trees. The Naskapi, wdio 
fought only wdth the Eskimo, used tlie same w^eapons as the Montag- 
nais (wdiich, indeed, served both tribes for hunting even more than 
for war), but dispensed with the clul), the armour, and the shield. 
They seem to have made no prisoners except perhaps women, wdiom 
the hunters probably took for waves, wdiereas the Montagnais imbibed 
all the ferocity of their Iroquois foes, and savagely inflicted on male 
captives the most cruel tortures in their pow-er. 
Alontagnais and Naskapi wmmen carried their babies in bags 
( “ moss-bags ”). not in the wooden cradles jDrefei'red by the Algonkian 
peoples around them. Girls in the more northern tribe enjoyerl 
