82 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., 30, 1928

I have myself seen, and been called upon to bless, a few of them. In every case, the raison d’étre was the same: the privilege for the relatives of the Carrier girl to utilize the preserves of the bridegroom.

Now is it unreasonable to surmise that what was done in my time, and what I know to have happened before, must have taken place in the case mentioned by Harmon? It seems to me that logic, not imagination, will immediately suggest perfect parity between the two epochs. Analogy has still some sort of cogency when it is a question of reasoning and deducting.

Would Mr. McLeod “imagine” for a moment that the two widows of that Sékanais belonged to his own tribe? If so, he might tell me what those inveterate nomads (three perfect strangers) were doing in a village of sedentary Carriers. And would it not be a climax that would tax the good-will of the most credulous to “imagine”? two Sékanais women acting as the voluntary slaves of their joint husband’s relatives (what were these, too, doing in that strange place?) and daily packing, as mentioned by our trader- author, the relics of their late lord and master? For any one who knows the relative status of the two tribes it is preposterous to merely think of this.

One last observation before I close. My critic exultantly ex- claims, and prints in italics lest we forget:

It was the relatives of the deceased who made use of cremating, and those relatives of the deceased were, like the deceased, Sikanni.®

Ergo, he adds by way of a tu quoque sting: ‘‘ ‘Disastrous distrac- tion’ is certainly not peculiar to me.”

I confess that I would be stunned by the blow were it not for a little particular which Mr. McLeod has forgotten, or never knew. A Sékanais marrying into the Carrier tribe had absolutely no standing in it, and could take part in no public feasting or cere- monial distributing, until he had adopted one of its gentes, differ- ent from that of his wife. This done, all the members of that gens, wherever they might be, as I wrote almost forty years ago,®

8 Am. ANTHROP., 28: 569. °° “The clans or gentes outstepped the village limits” (The Western Dénés; their Manners and Customs, Proc. Can. Inst., 142; Toronto, 1890).