Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/845

Rh were the property of the grown-up male children, as well as of the father, and could be gambled away by any one of them. The lodge seems to have been secured to the widow and children on the death of the father. The women inherited the kettles and other utensils, besides their saddles, blankets, "parfleshes," etc. The horses, canoes, weapons, etc., went to the male children if they were of age. In early times the dead man's relatives would swoop down upon the lodge soon after his death and appropriate the property substantially at their will. If the dead man left no relatives, the "strong man" of the tribe took possession of his property.

The Kootenays paid a worship to the sun, and they believed in the existence of spirits in everything animate and inanimate; even little stones, bits of rag, shavings of wood, have their spirits. These spirits can go anywhere, through glass, wood, or any substance, as through air. The touch of them causes death and disease. At the death of Indians their spirits may enter into fishes, bears, trees, etc.; in fact, into anything animate or inanimate. When a man is alive his spirit may exist in the form of a tomtit, a jay, a bear, a flower, etc. The spirits of the dead can return and visit their friends. In olden times sacrifices appear to have been made to the spirits of the mountains and of the forests to secure success in hunting, and to appease them when they were angered. Their language is supposed to differ from the ordinary Kootenay. A great or strong man has many spirits. The spirits were supposed to come often at the prayer of the medicine men, in the form of birds or the like. A tree is pointed out in the Kootenay region, in northern Idaho, from which Indians have jumped off on two successive occasions, in obedience to the promise of the medicine men that they should be able to fly like birds if they did so. Certain death, of course, awaited them. The shamans treated the sick by pressure upon various parts of the body, by pinching, etc.; practiced bloodletting, and pretended to extract the cause of the malady by suction with the mouth.

In the astronomy of the Kootenays the moon is regarded as a man and the sun as a woman. There was no sun in the beginning, and, after the Indians had vainly-endeavored to discover it, the coyote was successful in making it rise above the mountains. Another version makes the chicken hawk cause the sun to rise. The coyote, getting angry, shoots an arrow at the sun, but misses, sets the prairie on fire, and has to run for dear life. The moon is said to have been found by the chicken hawk. A legend about the man in the moon may be of European origin. The stars are mostly Indians, who from time to time have got up into the sky. The Great Bear was an Indian woman, who sometimes was very angry; and the stars in her tail are Indians whom she has seized.