4 
to his neighbour, and the unsmoked pipe would circulate round until it reached the 
leader of the delegation again. He then made another long speech, emphasizing the 
necessity of goodwill between the two bands, relit the pipe, and offered it a second 
time to the chief. In the end the chief always accepted it, saying ‘ Peace,' and the 
two parties then discussed the terms of compensation” (James Walker). 
To aid him in his duties the chief had an assistant or servant 
( mijenoe , or, less commonly, oshkabewis) , nowadays elected, but formerly 
appointed by the chief himself from among his relatives, whom he could 
naturally trust more than outsiders to carry out his wishes. The assistant 
conveyed messages for the chief, and supervised the arrangements at all 
feasts, when he painted his arms red to signify that he might legitimately 
handle bloody meat, although the actual cooking devolved upon the women. 
The entire band owned all the hunting territory, and likewise all the 
fishing places and maple groves; for the land was not subdivided, except 
temporarily, among the different families. The hunting season was the 
winter from November until the end of March, during which period the 
Parry Island natives dispersed into individual families (or at times, per- 
haps, into tiny groups of two and three families) to pursue the moose, 
and, after the coming of Europeans, to trap foxes and other fur-bearing 
animals. One old man, Jim Nanibush, an Ottawa Indian, claimed that 
there was no preliminary agreement governing their dispersion; in the 
fall of the year each family merely travelled about within the territory of 
the band until it found a promising hunting-ground that had not been 
already occupied, where it “ squatted ” for the winter. Another old man, 
James Walker, who had passed his boyhood near Orillia with a small, 
isolated group of Potawatomi of whom his father was leader, said that 
the hunters arranged their respective hunting-grounds in council beforehand. 
“ Every fall the hunters of our group assembled, and my father asked one of 
them where he proposed to hunt and trap during the winter. ‘ I propose to build a 
lodge in such and such a valley,' the man would answer. My father then interrogated 
the others in turn and thus arranged where each family should go. The families 
did not return to the same hunting-grounds winter after winter, but moved from one 
to another according to their wishes, always keeping, of course, within the territory 
of the group.” 
Two other men, Pegahmagabow and Jonas King, gave similar accounts. 
About the end of September, they said, when the people were storing their 
birch-bark bags of cranberries in running water, or else in October, when 
they gathered for the trout fishing, the hunters assembled and agreed 
among themselves where each family should hunt during the ensuing winter. 
Then, about the end of November, they scattered to their individual 
grounds, constructed winter camps, and patrolled their districts to find 
out the best places for game and to notify other families that the district 
had been occupied. Families that happened to be absent at the time of 
the general meeting travelled around in the months of November and 
December until they found unoccupied territory. 
Inquiries among other Parry Island Indians confirmed these state- 
ments, in so far at least that the ownership of all land was vested in the 
entire band, and that the individual families, 1 or groups of two and 
1 Family here means a man, his wife and their children, and any parents, unmarried brothers or sisters who 
might be living with them. 
