273 
making and dressing dolls, an amusement rare among Indian children, 
and probably stimulated by the neighbouring Eskimo. Adolescent 
girls of both the Montagnais and Naskapi tribes passed a ]ieriod in 
seclusion, and boys fasted to obtain the blessings of the unseen world. 
Parents gave away their daughters in marriage without any cere- 
mony, and without much consideration for their wishes; but a son- 
in-law had to serve his wife’s parents for a year before he could take 
back his wife to his family. The Alontagnais wrapped their dead 
in birch bark, buried them in the ground, and held a memorial feast ; 
but the Naskapi deposited them on scaffolds or susi)ended them from 
trees, adopting burial in the ground only after their contact with 
Europeans.^ 
The Naskapi and the Montagnais believed vaguely in a great 
sky god to whom they occasionally offered smoke from their pipes. 
Of more concern to them, however, were the numberless supernatural 
beings whom they postulated in the world around them, and the 
souls of the animals on which they depended for their food su]i))ly. 
They strove to avoid giving offence to these animals by the observ- 
ance of various taboos, and they trusted to the guardian spirits 
acquired in dreams, and the fancied po^vers of their medicine-men, to 
ward off attacks from malicious spirits and to sliield them from the 
sorcery of their fellowmen. An early Jesuit missionary regarded 
tliese two peoples as the most siq^erstitious of all Indians on account 
of the abnormal credence they ]>laced in dreams and visions, although 
in reality they were no more credulous than other tribes. Medicine- 
men conjured up their familiars inside cylindrical lodges (just as tlie 
witch of Endor conjured up Samuel for Saul), and inquired from 
them the cause of some tribesman’s sickness, or the broken taboo 
that was responsible for the scarcity of game. To prove the genuine- 
ness of their calling they sometimes allowed themselves to be lashed 
— hands, body, and feet — with stout caribou thongs, released them- 
selves l)y jugglery, and cast out the thongs to the awe-struck specta- 
tors, Lay Indians frequently divined their success or failure in the 
chase by scrying, or by the marks on the scorched shoulder-blarle of 
1 See Turner, L. : " Etlinology of the Unp;ava District, Hudson Bay Territory”; Eleventh Ann. 
Kept., Bureau of Ain. Ethn., p. 272 (Washington, 1804). .lames McKenzie, writing of the, Xaskapi who 
frequentcfl the southern roast of the Labrador iieninsuia in 1808, .said that they buried their dead in 
the ground, with the utensils and wearing apparel they might need in the after life (McKenzie, James: 
“The King’s Posts”; in Masson, ii, p. 418). Tlio Montagnais often raised iheir dead on .seuffolds, bui 
only in winter, apparently, and as u prelimiuarv to burial in the ground (” Jesuit Relations,” vol. v, 
PP.' 129-131). 
