a headdress of the bear clan of the Nîsqá. Whether it is the only headdress he does not state distinctly, but I infer that it is. It represents the owl surrounded by small human heads, called "claw-men," probably because each head rests on a sort of claw. The legend is that a chief had a son who by constant crying irritated his father, until he drove the boy out of the house, saying: "The white owl shall fetch you." With the boy his sister went out; and the owl did fetch not him, but her, and had a son by her. When her son grew up she sent him home to her mother, telling him "to carve a headdress in the shape of an owl for use in his dance, and to sing" a song which his father, the owl, made for him. The owl and the woman then disappeared.[1] What may be the explanation of the discrepancy between name and emblem here I do not know. A conjecture is of very little value; but it may conceivably have originated from the coalescence of two clans, the bear and the owl, of which the latter traced its descent from an owl.
But even if we were to establish the original position of the totem as ancestor, the problems offered by these interesting tribes would be very far from solved. The manitou-idea dominates not merely the conception of the totem, or crest, but the entire social life of the tribes. Some peoples eat their totem-animal as a solemn religious act: nobody thus eats his manitou. Consequently the sacrificial meal is wanting; and this, I need not remind you, is a part of the totem-superstition in its most complete form, on which great stress has been laid in anthropological speculation. More important still in this connection is the position of the secret societies, which have attained a growth exceeding anything known elsewhere. Indeed, the societies can hardly be called secret. They include women, and even children, as well as men. Their sessions are held throughout the winter, and in public; and from
- ↑ Ibid., p. 324.
