GETTING MARRIED

GETTING MARRIED

The young brave asked her father for her hand in marriage and worked out what he would trade her father for her.

The groom to be and his family starts work on the wedding vase. The wedding cannot take place until it is finished. The wedding would take place, day or night, when the wedding vase was finished.

The bride will begin having talks with the women of the longhouse. The Conjuror, or medicine man, on the mythology of totemism and its social, religious doctrines, that the person and the organizations of the tribe are one and all under the protecting and fostering of the spirit or being, who will protect individuals only, and those who protect the people of the tribe only. These beings are commonly called fetishes, which are regarded as powerful, spiritual allies of their possessors. The guardian is inherited, or rather the clan or gentile guardian is inherited or rather acquired by birth and it may not be changed at will. On the other hand, the personal guardian is obtained through the rite of vision, in dream or a trance, and it must be preserved at ail hazards as one of the most precious possessions.

The fetish is acquired by personal choice, by purchase, by inheritance or from some chance circumstance or emergency. It can be sold or discarded at the will of the possessor, in most cases. The exception is where a person has entered into a compact with some evil spirit or being that, in consideration, the said spirit undertakes to perform certain obligations to this man or woman and in default of which the person forfeits his right to live. As had been said, the Indian intelligence regards all things, animals, water, earth, trees, stones, the heavenly bodies, even night and day and such properties as light and darkness, as possessing animation and the power of volition. It is, however, that most tribes believe that many of these are under some spell or potent enchantment.

The rock and trees are confidently believed by many of us to be the living tombs of imprisoned spirits, resembling the dryads of Greek folklore, so that it is not difficult for him to conceive intelligence, more or less potent, in any object, no matter how uncommon. Indeed, the more uncommon, the greater the probability if its being the abode of some powerful intelligence, incarcerated for revenge or some similar motive, by the spell of a mighty enchanter. The fetish is, in short, a mascot, a luck bringer.

The civilized person, one might say, who attaches a swastika or small charm to his or hers watch, chain or bangle, is unconsciously following in the footsteps of many of our ancestors. With this difference, that the idea that luck, resides in the trinket is weak in the civilized mind, whereas in the minds of the Indians,, luck, resident in the fetish, is a powerful and living thing, an intelligence which must be placated with prayer, feast and sacrifice. The fetish of the Conjuror or medicine man usually consists of the skins of beasts, birds, serpents, roots, bark, powder and numerous other objects. The fetish must be altogether divorced from the idea of religion proper, with which it has little or no connection, being found side by side with religious phases of many types. The fetish may be a bone, a feather, an arrowhead, a stick, carved or painted, a next

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