peo NaN ae Os to Mg NA gE ee

MORICE] FUR TRADER IN ANTHROPOLOGY 67

of the Divinity. But Nepa, “Father of Men,” and Nto-Mutih,
“Celestial Chief,” are also quite often used today.

As to our word “spirit,” the Carriers have always rendered it
by nz, and they have besides terms corresponding to our “‘phan-
tom” and “ghost.’’ With them the soul is called nezel when con-
sidered as animating the body, netsen when believed to be straying
away from its normal seat, the body, and nezul when death has
parted it therefrom. At any rate, it is under that name that the
disembodied remnants of man are said to be wandering in the
world of spirits after death.

Speaking of oaths, McLean ascribes to the Carriers the
formula “the toad hears me.”’ I am almost tempted to question
his seriousness. Those Indians said in his time: Vuttwre suzittsai,
God listens to me, or Yuttwre nat edesni, I say it before God.
I have myself oftimes heard that archaic form used by old people.
Never, of course, any reference to toad or frog.

Yet such are the sources of information which some anthro-
pologists would fain palm off as respectable authorities upon un-
suspecting students! And all of these mistatements in one of
McLean’s meagre pages!

The same fur trader furthermore has it that

owing to the superstitious notions of the people, the chiefs are still feared
on account of the magical powers ascribed to them.1°

It is, he goes on to say,

firmly believed that they can, at will, inflict disease, cause misfortunes of
every kind and even death itself.

There is not one word of truth in this, and it is a matter of the
greatest wonderment to me that an intelligent man, as McLean
no doubt was, could have confounded the chiefs of the tribe with
its medicine-men, or shamans. Only to these this statement fully
applies. The fact that our author really, but erroneously, confuses
the two is exemplified immediately after. ‘The shadow of a chief,
or medicine-man,” he then expressly says by an abuse of language
truly incomprehensible.

19 Tbid., 293.

Lc NGS NRT ce —

a