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When a man died in winter it was not unusual to kill one or more 
of the dogs that dragged his toboggan and to lay them beside their master. 
A white dog was buried with a prominent chief even down to modem 
times. Yet there were certain dogs that the Indians refrained from 
sacrificing because they seemed to possess exceptional intelligence. These 
animals, they say, foresaw the arrival of strangers and lay for hours 
facing the quarter from which they approached; then, without barking, 
they wakened the entire camp as the strangers drew near. A dog of 
this character could even distinguish between death and unconsciousness, 
or the death that does not endure, but issues in life again; for if a man 
were unconscious only it would lie quietly beside him, whereas if he were 
really dead it would raise its head and howl. 
Widows and widowers covered their faces with black paint, but other 
mourners merely daubed a black spot on each cheek or a black line from 
ear to ear across the nose. All alike left their hair unbraided and 
unkempt. No one might look back when returning from a funeral lest 
the soul of the deceased should look back also and entice away his soul 
to the land of spirits; and those who had handled the corpse immediately 
fumigated their bodies with sage. The period of mourning lasted about 
ten days, except for the widow and widower, who mourned from nine 
months to a year, living in solitary wigwams and eating neither fresh 
meat nor fresh fish. A widower might not hunt, for the Indians believed 
that death had tainted him and the animals would smell the contagion. 
Grown up relatives carried him food, or, when he was absent from his 
lodge, his dead wife’s sister, whom he would probably marry when his 
term of mourning expired; but little children "were forbidden to approach 
his wigwam. 
A widow underwent more restrictions than a widower, and was 
regarded with greater fear. Little children fled at her approach, and some 
Indians even thought that the taint of death attached to her mysterious 
qualities as a woman killed the very grass and trees around her wigwam, 
and that a child who crossed her fresh tracks might be crippled for life. 
Her period of mourning was sometimes extended to as long as three 
years; and if she failed to show the proper marks of grief until her release, 
if she bound up her hair or dressed in clean neat garments, the relatives 
of her dead husband might tear the clothes from her. Whereas a widower 
carried a “ spirit ” bundle only when he moved camp, and at other 
times left it hung up inside his wdgwam, a widow had to carry one every- 
where she went. Primarily it contained a lock of hair from the head of 
her dead husband, or nails from his fingers or toes; but from time to time 
she added to it fragments of wood that her husband had chopped, pieces 
of cloth or leather, and beadwork that she either made herself or received 
as presents. In theory the bundle was intended to comfort her, to make 
her feel that her husband had not entirely gone from her. Therefore at 
night, when she laid it down, she sometimes placed a little food beside it 
to feed the invisible but never far-distant shadow. 
A widow (and a widower also) generally obtained release from her 
mourning, and thereby liberty to remarry, at one of the annual “ feasts of 
the dead,” although if the relatives of her dead husband were well-disposed, 
