MARRIAGE. 251

The above will, I hope, suffice to carry conviction to the most skeptical,
and will spare me the trouble of quoting from Mackenzie1, Hooper?, Richard-
son’, Keith+, and others, all of whom corroborate Hearne.

Other Ways of Contracting Marriage.

A fifth way of contracting marriage was even more expeditious. A man
would simply rush towards the object of his covetousness, seize her by the
hair, and drag her to his tent®. This was especially done to strangers, or
people of a different tribe. For a long time this method was openly practised
by the Yellow-Knives with regard to the Dog-Rib women, to such an extent
that, urged at last to action by the energy of despair and the instinct of the
preservation of their homes, the long suffering Dog-Ribs had to fall on their
whilom persecutors.

A sixth method was-less violent and apparently more honest, though
little more honourable for the dignity of woman. It consisted in purchasing
her from her parents or guardians. Two or three dogs, a certain quantity of
furs or dressed skins, or again some utensils and such trifles as had some
value in the eyes of the natives were generally the price of the transaction
in the north. But even in these cases people had sometimes to remember
that in primitive society might is right*, inasmuch as a female who had been
bought out could subsequently be won back in the course of a wrestling
contest by the very party who had sold her.

This misfortune almost befell the great Matonabbee himself, when an
Indian insisted on taking one of his eight wives by force “unless he complied
with his demands, which were that Matonabbee should give him a certain
quantity of ammunition, some pieces of iron-work, a kettle, and several other
articles; every one of which Matonabbee was obliged to deliver or lose the
woman; for the other man far excelled him in strength” ’. Hearne, who relates
the occurrence, adds that the leader “was more exasperated on this occasion
as the same man had sold him the woman no longer ago than the nineteenth
of the preceding April”.

‘ He says in his unpublished Journal: “They often fight for their women; the strongest
carries off the woman by the hair of her head. Their way of fighting is by pulling by the
hair to bring their opponent to the ground, and there he is held until he gives up all claim
to the woman” (In Masson’s “Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest’, vol. Il,
pp. 107—108, footnote). Huc says also (op. cit., p. 298) that on the day of a wedding among
the Tatars a simulated combat takes place, which ends in the carrying off of the bride.

? “Tents of the Tuski’, p. 308.

> “Arctic Searching Exploration”, vol. II, pp. 15 and 24.

* Masson, vol. II, p. 91.

’ Hearne, op. cit., p. 123.

‘ “That the weak ought to submit to the strong seems to be a general maxim with
them” [the Yellow-Knives] (Keith, in Masson’s vol. Il, p. 107).

7 Hearne, op. cit., p. 110.