MARRIAGE. 255

7° The father-in-law and any of his brothers will be called szaz, and
either the mother-in-law or her sisters will be known as spiz.

8° Maternal cousins of both sexes are szit to their correlative male
cousin and santé, if male, or szit, if female, to their correlative female cousin,
whilst paternal cousins are always called brother or sister in the indefinite
mode, as among the Jews.

9° Stcai does duty for a grandchild of either sex and also for the other
offspring alluded to in the first remark. In the same way, brother-in-law and
sister-in-law receive the common appellation sre.

10° A woman says slaerh when addressing or speaking of the wife of
her husband’s brother, and both women are known collectively as ¢/cerhkhe}.

11° The Sékanais and some other mountain tribes have but one word
to designate the wife and the husband, much after the manner of our own
neutral term consort. ’

Before bringing this section to a close, we must not forget to remark
that the levirate was in full force amongst all the tribes. At the death of a
man, his widow passed first under the guardianship and then into the possession
as wife of his surviving brother, if he had any?. This law suffered no exception.

Unholy Gratifications.

As Father Petitot very truly remarks, our people taken as a whole are
entirely averse to incest*. Hearne admits himself that, while among the Crees
it is not at all uncommon for one brother to make free with another bro-
ther’s wife or daughter, “this is held in abhorrence by the Northern Indians” *.
Unfortunately there are exceptions to most rules, and the latter author in
speaking of incestuous unions feels warranted to couple with the name of the
Crees those of the Athabascans and of the Neheaway, by which he evidently
means the Nahanais. Of these he could not possibly know save through
people of a different tribe, a generally very unreliable channel, as the rival
aboriginal groups are constantly depreciating each other. He goes so far as
to say that “many of them cohabit occasionally with their own mothers, and
frequently espouse their sisters and daughters. I have known several of them
who, after having lived in that state for some time with their daughters, have
given them to their sons, and all parties been perfectly reconciled to igi,

The fact that he means to speak from personal knowledge would brand
his statement as unreliable as far as it affects the Nahanais, and I would
therefore be tempted to disbelieve it, were it not that another authority says

1 In all the foregoing native terms the initial s- stands for “my”.
2 See Gen., XXXVIII, 8; Deut., XXV, 9, 10.

3 Autour du Gd. L. des Esclaves, p. 289.

“ Op. cit., p. 130.

5 Ibid. p. 130, footnote.