They also speak of Weettako, a kind of vampire or devil into which those who have fed on human flesh are transformed.
Whilst at Carlton I took an opportunity of asking a communicative old Indian of the Blackfoot nation his opinion of a future state; he replied that they had heard from their fathers that the souls of the departed have to scramble with great labour up the sides of a steep mountain, upon attaining the summit of which they are rewarded with the prospect of an extensive plain, abounding in all sorts of game and interspersed here and there with new tents pitched in agreeable situations.

Whilst they are absorbed in the contemplation of this delightful scene they are descried by the inhabitants of the happy land who, clothed in new skin-dresses, approach and welcome with every demonstration of kindness those Indians who have led good lives, but the bad Indians, who have imbrued their hands in the blood of their countrymen, are told to return from whence they came and, without more ceremony, precipitated down the steep sides of the mountain.
Women who have been guilty of infanticide never reach the mountain at all but are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes with branches of trees tied to their legs.

The melancholy sounds which are heard in the still summer evenings and which the ignorance of the white people considers as the screams of the goat-sucker are really, according to my informant, the moanings of these unhappy beings.
The Crees have somewhat similar notions but, as they inhabit a country widely different from the mountainous lands of the Blackfoot Indians, the difficulty of their journey lies in walking along a slender and slippery tree laid as a bridge across a rapid stream of stinking and muddy water.
The night owl is regarded by the Crees with the same dread that it has been viewed by other nations.

One small species, which is known to them by its melancholy nocturnal hootings (for as it never appears in the day few even of the hunters have ever seen it) is particularly ominous.

They call it the cheepai-peethees, or death bird, and never fail to whistle when they hear its note.