same fellow afterwards
stripped and joined in the ceremony.

I did not learn that the Indians worship any other god by a specific
name. They often refer however to the Keetchee-Maneeto, or Great Master
of Life, and to an evil spirit, or Maatche-Maneeto. They also speak of
Weettako, a kind of vampire or devil into which those who have fed on
human flesh are transformed.

Whilst at Carlton I took an opportunity of asking a communicative old
Indian of the Blackfoot nation his opinion of a future state; he replied
that they had heard from their fathers that the souls of the departed
have to scramble with great labour up the sides of a steep mountain, upon
attaining the summit of which they are rewarded with the prospect of an
extensive plain, abounding in all sorts of game and interspersed here and
there with new tents pitched in agreeable situations. Whilst they are
absorbed in the contemplation of this delightful scene they are descried
by the inhabitants of the happy land who, clothed in new skin-dresses,
approach and welcome with every demonstration of kindness those Indians
who have led good lives, but the bad Indians, who have imbrued their
hands in the blood of their countrymen, are told to return from whence
they came and, without more ceremony, precipitated down the steep sides
of the mountain.

Women who have been guilty of infanticide never reach the mountain at all
but are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes with branches
of trees tied to their legs. The melancholy sounds which are heard in the
still summer evenings and which the ignorance of the white people
considers as the screams of the goat-sucker are really, according to my
informant, the moanings of these unhappy beings.

The Crees have somewhat similar notions but, as they inhabit a country
widely different from the mountainous lands of the Blackfoot Indians, the
difficulty of their journey lies in walking along a slender and slippery
tree laid as a bridge across a rapid stream of stinking and muddy water.
The night owl is regarded by the Crees with the same dread that it has
been viewed by other nations. One small species, which is known to them
by its melancholy nocturnal hootings (for as it never appears in the day
few even of the hunters have ever seen it) is particularly ominous. They
call it the cheepai-peethees, or death bird, and never fail to whistle
when they hear its note. If it does not reply to the whistle by its
hootings