320 
women alike. Tlie l^lackfoot, on the conti’ary, seem to have encour- 
aged their young men to j^ractise seduction, anrl then scorned the 
women who yielded to their aflvances, and, if they were married, 
mutilated and even killed them. The name given to a boy at birth 
lasted only until his first war-party, when his comrades conferred 
on him a new name, often in mockery. This name, too, he discarded 
later in favour of one more befitting his manhood years; but even 
his manhood name was not always ])ermanent. being subject to 
change at will. While still very young every boy adopted another of 
about his own age to be his inseparable comj^anion, and this Damon 
and Pythias relationship lasterl all through their lives. Several other 
plains’ tribes were familiar with the same custom, but seem to have 
observed it less systematically. 
Like the Assiniboine, the Blackfoot often deposited their dead 
in trees, but they did not perform any subsequent ceremony over the 
fallen bones. Men and women who had been prominent in their 
communities, they laid out on hill-tops inside their tents, after 
weighting tiown the edges of the skin with stones. Many of the 
“tent-rings” still visible on the prairies are, therefore, burial-rings, 
not the sites of ancient camps. ^ Women, and sometimes men, lacer- 
ated themselves at funerals, and widowers commonly assuaged their 
grief by going immediately on the war-path. - 
Each of tlie military societies of the Blackfoot, which were 
known collectively as All-Comi'ades, had either one or two leaders 
who sat in the tribal council when the bands united during the early 
summer. As in the militarv societv of the Assiniboine, these leaders 
arranged for the policing of the camp,’^ the organization of the buf- 
falo hunts, and the guarding of the tribe on the march. There were 
ten or twelve military societies in each tribe, some of which opened 
their ranks to a limited number of women. Alembership was by 
purchase oidy, but a man generally passed automatically from one 
society to the next, at intervals of four years, by selling the regalia 
1 In the nineli'onth rentury, and prohalily also in the eipliteenth, the "Rlackfoot sometimes wrapped 
their dead in robes, fleposited them amone rocks, or on solitary cliffs, and covered them with 
logs. Maximilian in Tluvaites, vol. 22, p. 121, 
2 Wissler states that in more recent time.s a Blackfoot suffering from an incurable di.sease would 
frequently run amok, though without mania, and attempt to kill as many people as he could, even his 
own family, before taking his own life. He regards this as a variant, and in some re.spects, a sur- 
vival, of taking to the war-path (Wissler, C. : *' 'I'lie Social Life of the Blackfoot Indians”; Antli. 
Parsers, Am. Mus. Nat, HLst., vol. vii, p. 32 (New York, 1912)). Cocking remarks that "The .^sinepoet 
(.\s3iniboine) Native.s are oftentimes guilty of suicide, on very childish grounds”; "An Adventurer 
from Hudson Bay,” i). 112. 
3 “ They appear to be under proper discipline, and obedient to their T.eadcr, wlio orders a party 
of Horsemen Evening and Morning to reeonitre” ; "York p’actory to the Blaekteet Country,” p. 339.' 
