182 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

they are sometimes “propitiated by all sorts of grimaces and obeisances”!.
It is remarkable that a different observer should express himself in identical
terms with regard to the Dénés of the northern American wastes. “They
frequently propitiate them by speeches and ceremonies”, writes Dr. R. King,
“and if they succeed in slaying one, they treat it with the utmost respect,
speak of it as of a relation, offer it a pipe to smoke, and generally make a
speech in exculpation of the act of violence they have committed in slay-
inp atte

Under no circumstance will a dog or a menstruating woman be allowed
to touch it, nor will the father of twins have anything to do with it, however
indirectly, as long as both of them are alive. A dog is an unclean animal,
and men and women so circumstanced are likewise legally impure. Hence
the fear lest the fellows of their victim be so irritated by unclean contact that
in the future they should stubbornly avoid the traps or snares of the party
guilty of such a slight.

As soon as game has been secured, it is not allowed to pass a night
in its entirety, but must have some limb, the hind or fore paws, cut off.

If the entrapped or snared animal is a bear, the natives will be careful
not to swallow its patella bone. Lest any unclean animal, dog, wolf or fox,
should be tempted to defile it by contact, the hunter will see to it that it is
hung up out of its reach.

Schoolcraft writes of the North American Indians in general that “it is
common to preserve the head-bones and garnish them in some way as me-
morials of hunter triumph’®. Among the Dénés and the other aborigines that
I know personally, the reason of this observance is not venatorial vainglory,
but simply respect for the surviving fellows of the game dispatched, and a
fear lest the bones be desecrated by unhallowed contact. In the case of a
bear, those tribes simply leave its skull stuck up on the fork of a tent pole,
or in the branches of a tree‘,

The objects chosen as trophies are the tail of the smaller animals,
such as martens, minks, and the like, and the quill feathers of the larger
birds, eagles, hawks, grouse, woodpeckers, etc.

* Sir Geo. Simpson, “Narrative of a Journey round the World”, vol. I, p. 266.

? Op. cit., vol. II, p. 168.

* “Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge”, vol. Ill, p. 62.

“ So do all the Giljaks of northeastern Asia. “Upon all sides, scattered through the woods,
were skulls of bears, poised upon the stumps of small trees from four to six feet above the
ground. These were intended as some kind of offering to the native gods, and, when newly
placed in position (we afterward learned), were sprinkled with tobacco, berries, roots, and other
articles” (Bush, “Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-Shoes”, p. 124). Bush is slightly astray when he
conjectures that those objects were offered to the “native gods”. Before the reader has more
than half perused this work, he will be in a position to guess that they must have been
offerings intended to propitiate the entire bear gens,