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without knowledge of their inveterate nomadic habits
_ and of their pristine innocence. What we call society
_ and even primitive political organization were things
_ nonexistent with them. There is no society among
_ wild non-gregarious animals, nor are they organized
_ with a view to commandment or subjection. With all
_ due respect to our fellow men called the Sékanais, or
_ Mountaineers, such were their conditions considered
from the viewpoint of their relations to one another.

Formerly, they scarcely possessed the notion of a

chief. The oldest, or mentally brightest, individual

of a group of related hunters, he who knew how to
secure the most plentiful supply of game, was the

_headman of one of those fractions into which the

tribe was divided. On him devolved the privilege,
not of commanding and being obeyed in general—
authority being unknown amongst them—but of
deciding on the place of the next camp in the forest,
or on the mountain, how to conduct a hunting expedi-
tion and when the band was to break camp.

With them “nothing was simpler or more expe-
ditious than the contraction of marriage. Whenever a
young hunter had made up his mind on mating, with
scarcely any previous courting he would in the day time
simply ask the girl of his choice:

“ “Will you pack my beaver snares for me?’

“To which, if she refused him, she would make
answer:

““No; there are plenty of women; ask another.’

“But if the maid was agreeable, she would at once
answer without any conventional blushes:

“Perhaps, ask my mother.’

“Upon which the lad would not ask her mother, but
the girl would immediately tell her about it. Then,
following her parent’s advice, she would hasten to erect