As the
day advanced the heat became so oppressive that each pulled off his coat
and ran till sunset when we halted with two men who were on their return
to Moose-Deer Island. There was a beautiful Aurora Borealis in the night;
it rose about North by West and divided into three bars, diverging at
equal distances as far as the zenith and then converging until they met
in the opposite horizon; there were some flashes at rightangles to the
bars.
March 7.
We arrived at Fort Providence and found our stores safe and in good
order. There being no certainty when the Indian who was to accompany me
to our house would arrive, and my impatience to join my companions
increasing as I approached it, after making the necessary arrangements
with Mr. Weeks respecting our stores, on March the 10th I quitted the
fort with two of our men who had each a couple of dogs and a sledge laden
with provision. On the 13th we met the Indian near Icy Portage who was
sent to guide me back. On the 14th we killed a deer and gave the dogs a
good feed; and on the 17th at an early hour we arrived at Fort
Enterprise, having travelled about eighteen miles a day. I had the
pleasure of meeting my friends all in good health after an absence of
nearly five months, during which time I had travelled one thousand one
hundred and four miles on snowshoes, and had no other covering at night
in the woods than a blanket and deer-skin with the thermometer frequently
at minus 40 degrees and once at minus 57 degrees, and sometimes passing
two or three days without tasting food.
...
CHAPTER 9.
CONTINUATION OF PROCEEDINGS AT FORT ENTERPRISE.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE COPPER INDIANS.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE JOURNEY TO THE NORTHWARD.
CONTINUATION OF PROCEEDINGS AT FORT ENTERPRISE. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE
COPPER INDIANS.
March 18, 1821.
I shall now give a brief account of the Copper Indians termed by the
Chipewyans Tantsawhotdinneh, or Birch-rind Indians. They were originally
a tribe of the Chipewyans and, according to their own account, inhabited
the south side of Great Slave Lake at no very distant period. Their
language, traditions, and customs, are essentially the same with those of
the Chipewyans but in personal character they have greatly the advantage
of that people, owing probably to local causes or perhaps to their
procuring their food more easily and in greater abundance. They hold
women in the same low estimation as the Chipewyans do, looking upon them
as a kind of property which the stronger may take from the weaker
whenever there is just reason for quarrelling, if the parties are of
their own nation, or whenever they meet if the weaker party are Dog-Ribs
or other strangers. They suffer however the kinder affections to show
themselves occasionally; they in general live happily with their wives,
the women are contented with their lot, and we witnessed several
instances of strong attachment. Of their kindness to strangers we are
fully qualified to speak; their love of property, attention to their
interests, and fears for the future made them occasionally clamorous and
unsteady; but their delicate and humane attention to us in a season of
great distress at a future period are indelibly engraven on our memories.
Of their notions of a Deity or future state we never could obtain any
satisfactory account; they were unwilling perhaps to expose their
opinions to the chance of ridicule. Akaitcho generally evaded our
questions on these points but expressed a desire to learn from us and
regularly attended Divine Service during his residence at the fort,
behaving with the utmost decorum.
This leader indeed and many others of his tribe possess a laudable
curiosity which might easily be directed to the most important ends; and
I believe that a well-conducted Christian mission to this quarter would
not fail of producing the happiest effect. Old Keskarrah alone used
boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity and state that he
could not credit the existence of a Being whose power was said to extend
everywhere but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man.
The aged sceptic is not a little conceited as the following exordium to
one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with
anyone who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man in one of his
communicative moods related to us the following tradition: The earth had
been formed but continued enveloped in total darkness, when a bear and a
squirrel met on the shores of a lake; a dispute arose as to their
respective powers, which they agreed to settle by running in opposite
directions round the lake, and whichever arrived first at the starting
point was to evince his superiority by some signal act of power. The
squirrel beat, ran up a tree, and loudly demanded light which, instantly
beaming forth, discovered a bird dispelling the gloom with its wings; the
bird was afterwards recognised to be a crow. The squirrel next broke a
piece of bark from the tree, endowed it with the power of floating, and
said, "Behold the material which shall afford the future inhabitants of
the earth the means of traversing the waters."
The Indians are not the first people who have ascribed the origin of
nautics to the ingenuity of the squirrel. The Copper Indians consider the
bear, otter, and other animals of prey, or rather some kind of spirits
which assume the forms of these creatures, as their constant enemies and
the cause of every misfortune they endure; and in seasons of difficulty
or sickness they alternately deprecate and abuse them.
Few of this nation have more than one wife at a time and none but the
leaders have more than two.
