128 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

a branch lodge alongside their own primitive habita-—
tion, and in the evening the affianced (such was he
after the proposee’s answer) would, on entering it, hand
her his beaver snares. Without further ceremony, —
they were man and wife.”’”°

Not any more elaborate was the Sékanais mode of |
disposing of the dead. These were not burnt as among
the Carriers and Babines; but if the band was on the >
move, as happened very often, the rudimentary shelter —
which protected the sick was, after death, lowered on
his prostrate form and the people would hasten to an-
other locality. If the deceased was an influential per-
son, the Sékanais would wrap up his remains in furs or
dressed skins, and leave them resting on a sort of scaff-
olding erected on the branches of two contiguous
trees. Our missionary remembers seeing some of these
aerial graves on the Finlay. To-day ecclesiastical —
burial, the blessing of a minister of religion on one’s ©
last resting place, is as highly prized of the Sékanais
as was formerly a scaffold sepulture. There was a
poor woman in Bear Lake who, in the heart of winter, —
packed several days the frozen body of her child, so as
to have it interred where the missionary was to bless its
grave at the time of his next visit.

Because of those visits and rather frequent com- —
merce with the Carriers, who are regarded as in every —
way superior, the Sékanais men, at least those who
trade at Fort McLeod, understand the language of
those Indians fairly well. Yet Father Morice had to
be interpreted for the sake of the women and young
people. Their own dialect, not a little different, be-
longing as it does to the eastern division of the Déné—
Indians, is much less complicated, and their spiritual

20 Morice, The Western Dénés, their Manners and Customs, p. 122;
ap. Proceedings, Canadian Institute; Toronto, 1890.