101 
up a tin can or other object that would serve as a drum, and the others 
danced around. Finally they removed their capes and awaited the little 
presents that were invariably forthcoming . 1 
Besides dances adults enjoyed a number of games, some of them similar 
to those of the children. There was the popular moccasin game, the plate, 
bone, awl, and bunch of grass games, woman’s ball, and lacrosse . 2 On wet 
days adults and young alike amused themselves inside the wigwams with 
cat’s cradles . 3 
Peace has now prevailed among the Lake Huron Ojibwa for several 
generations, and their old war customs are fast passing from memory. 
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were in frequent con- 
flict with the Iroquois, whom they finally pushed out of the territory 
between lakes Huron and Erie. The Parry Islanders call all the Iroquois 
Nodawe , “ Snakes,” a name which they explain by the following legend: 
“ In what is now Collingwood there once lived a man and his wife who had two 
rflons and a daughter. The daughter married, and her husband, who was a very 
jealous man, proposed to hunt in a certain district some distance away. But her 
■parents were afraid that he might kill her, and sent one of her brothers along with 
her. The two men and the girl camped near a lake that was infested with snakes. 
■One day when her brother was hunting the girl’s husband ordered her to 'bring him 
a snake. Going down to the shore of the lake she met a man, who said to her 
* What do you want? ’ ‘ My husband has sent me to get a snake,* she answered. He 
gave her one, which she carried home and left outside the wigwam. When her hus- 
band asked her if she had brought the snake, she told him that she had left it outside. 
He went out and looked at it, then said very angrily ‘I don’t want a snake like this. 
I want a big one.’ The girl returned to the lake and, meeting the same man, said 
to him ‘ It is a big snake that my husband wants.* He gave her a big snake, which 
she dragged* to the camp and again left outside the wigwam. But her husband only 
became angrier and said ‘This snake is not big enough. Bring me a bigger one.’ So 
for the third time she returned to the lake and told the man that her husband was 
not satisfied ‘ He only wants to kill you,’ the man said. ‘ Remain with me. You 
must not go home.* 
The woman remained. Her brother missed her when he returned from his hunt- 
ing and asked her husband ‘Where is your wife?’ ‘I do not know,* the hudband 
answered. The two men followed the girl’s trades to the lake and looked out over 
the water. Then she rose from the middle of the lake and told her brother what had 
happened. ‘Return to our parents,’ she said to him. ‘Bid them come hither at 
this same season next year.’ 
Exactly a year later her parents came to the lake, and their daughter rose from 
the water, bearing on one arm a girl baby, on the other a boy. She said to her 
parents ‘Take these children and raise them. When they grow up let them marry 
one another, for whoever else marries either of them will die.* 
The children married each other when they grew up and had 1 a numerous 
progeny, the Nodawe, or Iroquois, who killed and ate the Ojibwa from lake Superior 
to Temogami. At last the Ojibwa, the Potawatomi, and the Ottawa all combined 
to attack them. They confined ten young boys and five girls in separate huts to 
fast, placing the boys under the supervision of one old man and the girls under the 
supervision of another. Every time one of the boys or girls had a diream he told 
the old man, who carefully weighed its meaning. If the dream was propitious he 
said to the child ‘Your dream was good, my grandchild. Some day it will help you.’ 
And if the dream was unpropitious he said ‘ Your dream was evil, my grandchild. 
Put out your tongue and I will scrape it away with a knife of cedar. Then throw 
the knife into the fire.’ So every morning the children narrated their dreams 
1 This is considerably different from the Women’s Dance bo popular among the United States Ojibwa, See 
Densmore, F.: “Chippewa Music"; Bur. of Am. Ethn., Bull. 45, pp. 192 ff . (Washington, 1910). 
1 The Parry Islanders played these games in exactly the same ways as the United States Ojibwa. See Dens- 
snore, F.: ‘Chippewa Customs"; Bur. of Am. Ethn., Bull. 86, pp. 114-119 (Washington, 1929). 
* Different cat's cradle figures had the following names: beaver, otter, deer, snapping turtle, and partridge foot. 
