decision. The wife alone therefore is charged with all the work of the household; she washes, mends, cooks, builds the cabins, tills and sows the fields, cuts the wood, etc. ; so too she appears old at thirty or thirty-five years. As for the men, except for the hunts that they make from time to time, they lead an entirely idle life; they talk, smoke, play cards or hide the ball under the slipper, and that is all.
When a child is to be named, the parents make a great feast; they send to each of the guests, by way of invitation, a little scrap of tobacco leaf or a small stick; this is their manner of inviting. After the meal, the eldest of the family proclaims the name, which generally has reference either to some distinguishing mark, or to some dream of the child's, or to some good or evil characteristic by which he may have made himself known. With boys, this ceremony takes place when they attain their seventeenth year. They have to undergo beforehand a very strict fast of seven or eight days, during which the parents recommend to their child to pay great attention to dreams that the Great Spirit may send him, which are to reveal his future destiny; he will know if he is to be a great chief or a good hunter by the number of animals that fall beneath his hatchet or of scalps won from the enemy in his dreams. The animal that appears to him is to become his manitou or totem, and all his life long he must bear some token of it about him; claw, tooth, tail or feather, it matters not what.
The caste of false ministers of religion among the Indians is known under the name of Big Medicine; those who belong to it form a band by themselves. Each of them is provided with a bag, which contains sundry roots and me dicinal plants, to which they pay a sort of worship. They guard the utmost secrecy as to their beliefs, and are very close about admitting new members. They dance and sing a great deal in their reunions, and give one another hard knocks, squeezing their medicine bags under their arms. One very noteworthy thing which I have from several eyewitnesses, is that they confess themselves conquered and