359 
earlier half of the century, but were driven westward by the Black- 
foot. In dress, customs, and religion they resembled the plains’ 
tribes far more than they did the tribes of British Columbia, except 
perhaps certain bands of the Interior Salish. They had no clans or 
elan crests, no secret societies or masked dances, and no division into 
grades or castes. Their dress, like that of the plains’ tribes, was 
entirely of skin, consisting of moccasins, leggings, a breech-cloth (for 
women a tunic), and a shirt or jacket; their dwellings were conical 
tents covered with buffalo hide or rush mats; and their cooking 
utensils were vessels of birch bark. The Lower Kootenay made also 
water-tight baskets of split roots, an art they probably learned from 
the neighbouring Salish, for the bark canoes and dug-outs of both 
the Lower and the lipjier Kootenay were indistinguishable from 
Interior Salish craft. Wood-carving, however, was almost unknown 
among them, and the realistic figures which they painted on their 
garments, their tents, ami even their persons, followed the style of 
painting among the plains’ Indians, not the styles of the Pacific 
coast. 
Society was as simple among the Kootenay as among the migra- 
tory tribes of eastern Canada. There was no chief governing the 
entire tribe, or either of its two divisions; but every band had its 
leader, who was supported by an informal council of the older men. 
One of his sons generally succeerled him, in spite of the fact that the 
Kootenay seem to have reckoned descent through the female line. 
For war, and for the annual buffalo hunt across the mountains, they 
followed the Salish custom of electing a special chief whose office 
terminated with the return of the expedition. Women and children 
captured in war (mainly from the Blackfoot) were kept as slaves, 
but treated mildly and sooner or later absorbed into the tribe. 
Of the social and religious life of the Kootenay we have no 
detailed account. We know that they were inveterate gamblers, that 
they practised polygamy, securing their wives by purchase, and that 
the women carried their babies on their backs in highly ornamented 
wooden cradles not unlike those used by the women on the plains. 
Both boys and girls underwent the usual seclusion at adolescence, 
the boys, and often the girls also, seeking through dreams the pro- 
tection of guardian spirits. Medicine-men, who exerted considerable 
influence in the different bands, and often occupied larger tents than 
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