Crossing The Bay, At The Bottom Of Which These Buildings Stand, We Landed
At A Canadian Village Of Half-Breeds.
Here were one or two wigwams and a
score of log-cabins, some of which we entered.
In one of them we were
received with great appearance of deference by a woman of decidedly Indian
features, but light-complexioned, barefoot, with blue embroidered leggings
falling over her ankles and sweeping the floor, the only peculiarity of
Indian costume about her. The house was as clean as scouring could make
it, and her two little children, with little French physiognomies, were
fairer than many children of the European race. These people are descended
from the French voyageurs and settlers on one side; they speak Canadian
French more or less, but generally employ the Chippewa language in their
intercourse with each other.
Near at hand was a burial ground, with graves of the Indians and
half-breeds, which we entered. Some of the graves were covered with a low
roof of cedar-bark, others with a wooden box; over others was placed a
little house like a dog-kennel, except that it had no door, others were
covered with little log-cabins. One of these was of such a size that a
small Indian family would have found it amply large for their
accommodation. It is a practice among the savages to protect the graves of
the dead from the wolves, by stakes driven into the ground and meeting at
the top like the rafters of a roof; and perhaps when the Indian or
half-breed exchanged his wigwam for a log-cabin, his respect for the dead
led him to make the same improvement in the architecture of their narrow
houses.
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