312 
modern heliograph, and columns of smoke dampened at intervals with 
a blanket, passed the warning from camp to camp whenever foes were 
lurking in the neighbourhood. A warrior who dreamed of killing an 
enemy regarded the dream as a prophecy, enlisted a band of volun- 
teers, and (with the consent of the military society or soldiers’ coun- 
cil) sallied out to capture scalps and horses. Paintings on the outsifle 
of his tent ]iortrayed his exploits, and the eagle feathers in his war- 
bonnet recorded the number of enemies he had slain. Women danced 
around the scalps that his party brought back to camp, and older 
warriors recited their own exploits to encourage the younger genera- 
tion. In communities infected by such war passion, and devoid of an 
hereditary class of chiefs and nobles, valour and success in l>attle 
offered the surest road to honour and high rank. 
No people, however, can devote itself exclusively to war and 
hunting; there are many activities and events in the daily life of a 
camp that call for public recognition and public ceremonies. The 
Assiniboine gave names to their childre)! in a pleasing ceremony tliat 
closely resembled the (3jibwa ceremony on such occasions; an old 
man, or a prominent warrior, took the infant in his arms and con- 
ferred on it a name ostensibly derived from a propitious dream, or 
from a successful feat in battle; all the assembled relatives and frieinls 
then embraced the child in turn and added their benefliction. In 
the latter half of the nineteenth century parents distributed gifts 
when their daughters reached maturity, and, at the marriage of their 
children, arranged formal processions of their relatives to beai' jnesents 
of food and clothing, and to lead strings of horses, between the tipis 
of the groom’s parents and the bride’s.^ In earlier days there seems 
to have been no marriage ceremony; the suitor made his offer through 
the medium of an old man, and the girl moved over to his lodge at 
night,- if her parents accepted the bride price. 
Funeral rites were more elaborate tlian marriage rites, as in 
nearly all Indian tribes. Occasionally the Assiniboine cremated their 
dead,‘^ or deposited notable warriors on the surface of the ground 
iLowie: Op. cit., p. 40. 
SD'enig: Op. cit., p. all. 
3 a. “ This morning his body was burned according to their way, they making a great feast 
for him y* did now after y‘ y® fle.=h was binned his Bones were taken and buried with Loggs set up 
round of aVjout ten feet Long." The Kelsey Papers, p. 12. 
