d from the camp, and take up their abode in
huts of branches. They wear long hoods, which effectually conceal the
head and breast. They may not touch the household furniture nor any
objects used by men; for their touch "is supposed to defile them, so
that their subsequent use would be followed by certain mischief or
misfortune," such as disease or death. They must drink out of a swan's
bone. They may not walk on the common paths nor cross the tracks of
animals. They "are never permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or
lakes, or near the part where the men are hunting beaver, or where a
fishing-net is set, for fear of averting their success. They are also
prohibited at those times from partaking of the head of any animal, and
even from walking in or crossing the track where the head of a deer,
moose, beaver, and many other animals have lately been carried, either
on a sledge or on the back. To be guilty of a violation of this custom
is considered as of the greatest importance; because they firmly believe
that it would be a means of preventing the hunter from having an equal
success in his future excursions."[232] So the Lapps forbid women at
menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where the fishers are in
the habit of setting out their fish;[233] and the Esquimaux of Bering
Strait believe that if hunters were to come near women in their courses
they would catch no game.[234]

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Tinneh or Dene
Indians; customs and beliefs of the Carrier Indians in regard to
menstruous women.]

But the beliefs and superstitions of this sort that prevail among the
western tribes of the great Dene or Tinneh stock, to which the
Chippeways belong, have been so well described by an experienced
missionary, that I will give his description in his own words. Prominent
among the ceremonial rites of these Indians, he says, "are the
observances peculiar to the fair sex, and many of them are remarkably
analogous to those practised by the Hebrew women, so much so that, were
it not savouring of profanity, the ordinances of the Dene ritual code
might be termed a new edition 'revised and considerably augmented' of
the Mosaic ceremonial law. Among the Carriers,[235] as soon as a girl
has experienced the first flow of the menses which in the female
constitution are a natural discharge, her father believed himself under
the obligation of atoning for her supposedly sinful condition by a small
impromptu