AFTER 1000 YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 10

AFTER 1000 YEARS.

INDIANS iITTIiE CHANGED

WINNIPEG, December 3

Despite long association with missionaries and traders and other associations with the white race, a tribe of Canadian Indian* on James Bay, in the northern part of Ontarie, have changed but little in the past 1000 years." This is the statement of Dr: Truman Michclson, ethnologist of the Smithsonian Institute, who spent a summer with them.

Dr. Michclson says the James Bay tribe probably is nearer than any other Indian tribe to the primitive Algonquins who peopled Eastern North America for centuries before white men arrived. Their language, customs, folklore and mythology have altered but little. They still worship two ancient gods. One is Chuckabash, the Man-in-the-Moon god, whose feat of ensnaring the sun is reminiscent of ancient Greek tales. The other is Weesakayjack, malicious trickster god of Indian mythology. It is the ethnologist's theory that this primitive people has preserved so nearly intact its old ways because of its isolation in a region that only in recent years has been opened up by a railroad.