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Oct CANADA DEPARTMENT OF MINES Hon. T. A. Crerar, Minister; Charles Camsell, Deputy Minister NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CANADA W. H. Collins, Acting Director BULLETIN No, 78 Anthropological Series, No. 17 The Ojibwa Indians of Parry Island, Their Social and Religious Life BY Diamond Jenness OTTAWA J. O. PATENAUDE, I.S.O. PRINTER TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTfY 1935 Price, 25 cents i 5 1959 CANADA DEPARTMENT OF MINES Hon. T. A. Crerar, Minister; Charles Camsell, Deputy Minister NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CANADA W. H. Collins, Acting Director BULLETIN No. 78 Anthropological Series, No. 17 The Ojibwa Indians of Parry Island, Their Social and Religious Life BY Diamond Jenness LIBRARY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CANAJQlA •'v-,. J. 0. PATENAUDE, I.S.O. PRINTER TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY 1935 Price , 25 cents * CONTENTS Page v Preface CHAPTER I Social organization 1 CHAPTER Economic 10 life CHAPTER Man II III and nature 18 CHAPTER IV Beings of the supernatural world 29 CHAPTER V Man's contact with the supernatural world CHAPTER 47 VI Medicine-men and their practices 60 CHAPTER The grand medicine VII society 69 CHAPTER VIII Taboos, medicines, and witchcraft 79 CHAPTER IX The cycle of Appendix —H 4294 life and death 90 112 PREFACE • * ,.*.>• ‘ , This report on the Social and Religious Life of the Parry Island Indians is the product of seven weeks’ investigation on that island during the summer of 1929. The principal Indians consulted were: Francis Pegahmagabow: an Ojibwa of about thirty-seven years of age, apparently full-blood, whose father and grandfather had been chiefs at Parry island. His father died when he was a child, and he was raised by a relative at Shawanaga reserve, 18 miles farther north, but later attended a school in Parry Sound. He enlisted in a local battalion at the beginning of the Great War and served until the armistice, winning the military medal, with two bars, and other decoraDuring the two years preceding the war, and for two years tions. afterwards, he cruised around the Great Lakes as a seaman on a vessel belonging to the Department of Marine and Fisheries that was inspecting the lighthouses, and during this period he came into contact with other Ojibwa bands. Being of profoundly meditative temperament, he began to write down the lore of his people, but later lost the notebooks in which he had jotted down their customs and traditions. He was elected chief of the Parry Island Indians after he returned from the war and held the position for two years, when he stirred up some opposition by urging the old men and women to narrate in the council house the earlier customs of the people. Although comparatively young, and more travelled than most of the Indians, he was more saturated with their former outlook on life than the majority and more capable of interpreting the old beliefs. Occasionally his interpretations may have been a little more advanced than the average Indian would have given, yet they were a logical development of the lay beliefs such as were possible to any philosophically minded Ojibwa before the coming of Europeans. John Manatuwaba: also an Ojibwa, native to Parry years of age and apparently full-blood. isla