Journals, стр. 13

reach to the middle of their thighs. Some of them are decorated with an embroidery of very neat workmanship with porcupine quills and the hair of the moose, coloured red, black, yellow, and white. Their upper garments are sufficiently large to cover the whole body, with a fringe round the bottom, and are used both sleeping and awake. Their leggins come half way up the thigh, and are sewed to their shoes: they are embroidered round the ancle, and upon every seam. The dress of the women is the same as that of the men. The former have no covering on their private parts, except a tassel of leather which dangles from a small cord, as it appears, to keep off the flies, which would otherwise be very troublesome. Whether circumcision be practised among them, I cannot pretend to say, but the appearance of it was general among those whom I saw.

Their ornaments consist of gorgets, bracelets for the arms and wrists, made of wood, horn, or bone, belts, garters, and a kind of band to go round the head, composed of strips of leather of one inch and an half broad, embroidered with porcupine quills, and stuck round with the claws of bears or wild fowl inverted, to which are suspended a few short thongs of the skin of an animal that resembles the ermine, in the form of a tassel. Their cinctures and garters are formed of porcupine quills woven with sinews, in a style of peculiar skill and neatness: they have others of different materials, and more ordinary workmanship; and to both they attach a long fringe of strings of leather, worked round with hair of various colours. Their mittens are also suspended from the neck in a position convenient for the reception of the hands.

Their lodges are of a very simple structure: a few poles supported by a fork, and forming a semicircle at the bottom, with some branches or a piece of bark as a covering, constitutes the whole of their native architecture. They build two of these huts facing each other, and make the fire between them. The furniture harmonises with the buildings: they have a few dishes of wood, bark, or horn; the vessels in which they cook their victuals are in the shape of a gourd, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and of watape, 6 fabricated in such a manner as to hold water, which is made to boil by putting a succession of red-hot stones into it. These vessels contain from two to six gallons. They have a number of small leather bags to hold their embroidered work, lines, and nets. They always keep a large quantity of the fibres of willow bark, which they work into thread on their thighs. Their nets are from three to forty fathoms in length, and from thirteen to thirty-six inches in depth. The short deep ones they set in the eddy current of rivers, and the long ones in the lakes. They likewise make lines of the sinews of the reindeer, and manufacture their hooks from wood, horn, or bone. Their arms and weapons for hunting, are bows and arrows, spears, daggers, and pogamoggans, or clubs. The bows are about five or six feet in length, and the strings are of sinews or raw skins. The arrows are two feet and an half long, including the barb, which is variously formed of bone, horn, flint, iron, or copper, and are winged with three feathers. The pole of the spears is about six feet in length, and pointed with a barbed bone of ten inches. With this weapon they strike the reindeer in the water. The daggers are flat and sharp-pointed, about twelve inches long, and made of horn or bone. The pogamagon is made of the horn of the reindeer, the branches being all cut off, except that which forms the extremity. This instrument is about two feet in length, and is employed to despatch their enemies in battle, and such animals as they catch in snares placed for that purpose. These are about three fathom long, and are made of the green skin of the rein or moose-deer, but in such small strips, that it requires from ten to thirty strands to make this cord, which is not thicker than a cod-line; and strong enough to resist any animal that can be entangled in it. Snares or nooses are also made of sinews to take lesser animals, such as hares and white partridges, which are very numerous. Their axes are manufactured of a piece of brown or grey stone from six to eight inches long, and two inches thick. The inside is flat, and the outside round and tapering to an edge, an inch wide. They are fastened by the middle with the flat side inwards to a handle two feet long, with a cord of green skin. This is the tool with which they split their wood, and we believe, the only one of its kind among them, They kindle fire, by striking together a piece of white or yellow pyrites and a flint stone, over a piece of touchwood. They are universally provided with a small bag containing these materials, so that they are in a continual state of preparation to produce fire. From the adjoining tribes, the Red Knives and Chipewyans, they procure, in barter for marten skins and a few beaver, small pieces of iron, of which they manufacture knives, by fixing them at the end of a short stick, and with them and the beaver’s teeth, they finish all their work. They keep them in a sheath hanging to their neck, which also contains their awls both of iron and horn.

Their canoes are small, pointed at both ends, flat-bottomed and covered in the fore part. They are made of the bark of the birch-tree and fir-wood, but of so slight a construction, that the man whom one of these light vessels bears