him by pinching him and throwing old shoes at him. Finally he is led to the room where his fiancee is sitting, covered from head to foot in a voluminous sheet of brightly colored silk. The bridegroom hands the ring to his future mother-in-law, who, in turn, presents it to her daughter. He is then allowed to peep for a brief moment into the face of the girl who is to be his wife. Usually she holds in her mouth chewed cocoanut which she spits into the face of the man who ere long will be her lord and master. The boy and girl who are soon to be wed, have, more than likely, never seen each other before in all their lives. The ceremony takes place the next morning. A little tent is erected and in the middle of this a fire fed with ghee-clarified butterand sandal wood is kept burning. The bride sits in front of this fire, so closely enveloped in a large sheet that she is quite invisible. The bridegroom sits by her side. Directly in front of them sits the priest who is to marry them, with the fire burning between him and the marriage party. When the priest declares that the auspicious time, ascertained by a study of the horoscopes of the two contracting parties, has arrived, he begins to chant mantrams. These exhortations are worded in Sanskrit and admonish the wife regarding her duties to her husband, and the husband respecting his duties to his wife. When this exhortation is finished the bride's hand is placed in that of the groom by her father, thereby signifying that he has given her away in marriage. While the boy holds the hand of the girl, the Brahmin priest pronounces them man and wife, and blesses their wedlock. The two young folks are then made to walk several times around the sacred fire, holding each other's hands. This symbolizes their comradeship in the years that are to come. The young bride is then carried to the home of her husband's parents in a covered palanquin, amidst a shower of coins which are eagerly picked up by the beggars who accompany the procession.

He

Early marriage and the poverty of the family, which demands that all hands must do something toward contributing their quota to the household exchequer, shorten the boyhood period. But the youth of India, so long as he remains a boy, does engage in considerable fun and frolic, although to an outsider his life may seem to be colorless. plays "hop, skip, and jump,” “hop scotch,” and cricket—which, in some ways, is like the American game of "baseball.” The boys of India love to play marbles, but they handle the marbles differently from their American brothers. They hold the marble against one finger, pull back the finger and shoot the marble from it, a good deal as an American boy handles a sling-shot. The sling-shot, by the way, is very little used in India, since the boys' religion prohibits killing of

WHERE WEALTHY EAST INDIAN CHILDREN LIVE

birds. A game frequently played and much enjoyed, is "kabadi," which, in many respects, resembles "black man." The visit of the "monkey-man" to town means to the East Indian lad what the circus does to the Occidental boy. The "monkey-man" usually has a big dog and a little monkey. The two animals perform tricks to amuse the children, who beg their parents for "pies" (a "pie" is the East Indian equivalent for about one-sixth of an American cent) to pay for the fun.

Sometimes the monkey-man has a number of monkeys with him.

If a boy of India plays some boyish prank-steals a watermelon or breaks a pane of glass-he is handcuffed, locked up with criminals of the deepest dye, and finally sent to jail, where he becomes contaminated by his surroundings and degenerates into a rascal. There are no fatherly juvenile court judges in India. Not long ago a boy was arrested in one of the large cities for pilfering a melon. He was tried with as much solemnity as if he had been a professional safeblower who had looted a bank, and was sentenced to six weeks hard labor in the penitentiary.

Perhaps the greatest difference between the boys of India and America lies in the fact that, while the lad of the United States may rise to any eminence, accomplish anything he may set out to do, the little brown boy on the opposite side of the world, just under his feet, has few opportunities. Hundreds of East Indian young men have journeyed to other countries to learn the Western ways of doing things, and, as they go back home and teach their countrymen how to farm and manufacture goods and teach children by modern methods, the people of India are waking up and trying to better their condition. They are founding good schools, where the boys, and even the girls, of India may be taught by competent teachers, and as they are becoming better educated, they are living better. So the life of the boy in India is gradually coming to be brighter and easier, and the time will come, before long, when he will have just as many opportunities and advantages as the American youth.

THE THOMPSON INDIANS

A

BY HARLAN I. SMITH

Of the American Museum of Natural History

an

RCHAEOLOGICAL work, which I conducted in the southern interior of British Columbia for the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, has taken me into the territory of the Thompson Indians at various seasons and for varying periods. This expedition offered me excellent opportunity to become personally acquainted with many of these Indians, and it is necessary to get so acquainted with any people before one can learn of their inner life or even of their most common everyday habits and customs. Although I have traveled through their country with them by pack-horse and by canoe, slept on a saddle blanket thrown upon the ground, as they were doing all around me, and eaten from the common camp kettle, yet much of their religious life, their symbolism, and their reasons for things, I should not know were it not that I have met a frontiersman' who has studied these people by scientific methods while living among them for the past twenty years as the husband of one of the women of the tribe.

The Thompson Indians live in the southern interior of British Columbia, mostly east of the coast mountains. The country is part of the rolling plateau which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the Coast Range and these Indians have their villages in the valleys near the streams, notably the Fraser and its tributary, the Thompson, from which the tribe has been named. They are also in the Nicola Valley, which was named from one of the great Indian chiefs. The Nicola empties into the Thompson and here the streams have cut down into the rolling plateau until they seem to be flowing between mountains. From Ashcroft, the point where the gold hunters take the old Caribou Trail for the north, the Canadian Pacific Railroad follows the banks of the Thompson River and later goes for a distance down the more beautiful canyon of the Fraser, thus cutting directly through the country of these

1 This man, Mr. James A. Teit, assisted the members of the Jesup Expedition in many indis pensable ways, and furnished for publication, as the fourth memoir of the expedition, a manuscript giving a very full description of the ethnology of these people. To this manuscript I am indebted for many points which were not clear to me when I was among the Indians; but most of all I am under obligations to Mr. Teit for introducing me to the Indians as his friend, which made me also their friend.

Indians. The railroad is responsible for a rapid change in these people from hunters and fishers to herders and farmers, and from it also the visitor can easily reach their villages.

The high mountains to the west cut off the moist ocean winds and consequently the country is so dry that, before these people could practice agricultural pursuits to any great extent, they had to learn irrigation. There is so little rain that earth covering a framework of poles and fir branches was formerly used for the roofs of their permanent winter houses. The summers are hot but there are rather cold winters with some snow, which I imagine gives more vigor to these natives than is possessed by the Coast Indians who do not need to work so hard to provide thier food.

Unlike the tribes of the coast, who had such an abundance of the few staples-cedar, seal, salmon, and shell-fish-that they depended almost exclusively upon them, these people, before the days of the railroad, which was completed through their country less than twenty-five years ago, had to resort to a great variety of natural resources. First among them may be mentioned the deer, which furnished them with skins for clothing, flesh for food, and bone and antler for implements. The sagebrush bark was used for textile fabrics. Salmon were taken for food in the rivers, and berries and roots were obtained in the mountain valleys. Many objects were made of stone.

The physical type of the people is interesting. They are a little shorter than the other tribes of the northwest coast, but, as the average