100 
wrestled and ran races, shot at a ball or hole in the top of a tree, and 
pitted themselves against each other in various trials of endurance and 
skill. The father and the older men watched their performances and 
selected a husband, who was not always the most successful athlete, because 
the Indians prized a modest and quiet bearing and regarded the bold, noisy 
youth, however brave and skilful, as the victim of an evil manido . 
Married women enjoyed a considerable amount of freedom, although 
their lives were full of drudgery, especially in early times when the Ojibwa 
were more migratory and depended almost entirely on fishing and hunting. 
Husbands were generally faithful to the marriage tie and might kill a 
seducer on the spot; more often they simply abandoned an offending wife 
and wandered away to another district, thereby avoiding any occasion for 
a blood-feud. The women participated freely in all the social activities 
that attended the gathering of the families, the feasts and dances that 
followed a fruitful rice harvest, a successful sugar or fishing season, and 
the killing of the first large game in the fall of the year. 
The Parry Islanders remember the following dances, in addition to 
those held by their medicine-men. Some of these dances may have origin- 
ated in comparatively recent times. 
(1) Begging or Dog Dance: a number of men and women dressed in various 
costumes and painted their faces in odd patterns. Carrying knives, war-clubs, 
war-bonnets, and other paraphernalia they visited the various wigwams in 
turn. While one man beat a water-drum the others danced around inside 
the lodge and pretended to club the inmates, singing: 
“ The dogs are dancing, begging for something to eat.” 
As soon as they received some food they departed for the next wigwam.i 
(2) War Dance: a number of men decked themselves in fighting array and with 
their bows and arrows, clubs, and knives staged a mimic battle. 
(3) Pipe Dance: this was performed by one man alone, holding in his hand a 
stone hatchet-pipe, or, in more recent times when such pipes were no longer 
procurable, an imitation war-club 2 or a caribou horn with pendant dew- 
claws. In. the old form of the dance the performer had to assume as far as 
possible the shape of a pipe. Today he waves each arm aloft alternately 
and flings himself on to his knees. 
(4) Snipe Dance: another dance performed by men singly. The dancer carried 
nothing in his hands, but merely hopped along the ground after the manner 
of a snipe. 
(5) Rock Bass Dance: men and sometimes women performed this dance together, 
imitating the movements of a rock bass approaching a cliff. They danced 
forward with their hands behind their backs, stopped, and danced backward 
with their hands quivering at their sides. 
(6) Southern Dance: performed by a m,an or woman singly. The dancer jigged 
on each foot alternately, leaped around with a whoop to face in the opposite 
direction, and repeated the jig. The dance is said to have been introduced 
from the south. 
(7) Women’s Dance: as performed a few years ago during the sugar-making 
season this was an impromptu surprise party and dance for the purpose of 
receiving some trifling presents. Several women dressed up. covered their 
heads with capes, and 1 visited the different wigwams. One of them picked 
1 Cf. Densmore, F.: Chippewa Music, II, Bull. 53, Bur. of Am. Ethrt., pp. 228-9 (Washington, 1913). 
1 Two such clubs are illustrated in Johnson, F.: “Notes on the Ojibwa and Potawatomi of the Parry Island 
Reservation, Ontario”; Indian Notes, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, vol. 6, No. 3, July, 
1929, p. 206. 
