50 INTRODUCTION TO THE 



miles # ; and that his Indian guides were well apprized 

 of a vast tract of continent stretching farther on in 

 that direction is certain from many circumstances 

 mentioned in his journal ; one of which, as besides 

 establishing this fact, it presents us with a very strik- 

 ing picture of savage life, has been transcribed in 

 the following note.t 



* The Hudson's Bay Company have a trading post called Hud- 

 son s House, above five hundred miles up the country, in lat. 

 53 0' 32", and in long. 106 27' 30". 



f This day, Jan. 11. 1772, as the Indians were hunting, some 

 of them saw a strange snow-shoe track, which they followed, and 

 at a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they found a 

 young woman sitting alone. They brought her to the tents ; and, 

 on examining her, found that she was one of the western Dog- 

 ribbed Indians, and had been taken prisoner by the Arathapescow 

 Indians in the summer 1770; and, when the Indians who took her 

 prisoner, were near this part in the summer 1771, she eloped from 

 them, with an intent to return to her own country ; but it being so 

 Jar off> and, after being taken prisoner, having come the whole 

 way in canoes, with the winding of rivers and lakes, she had forgot 

 the way ; and had been in this little hut ever since the first setting 

 in of the fall. Ify her account of the moons past since her elope- 

 ment, it appears to be the middle of last July when she left the 

 Arathapescow Indians, and had not seen a human face ever since. 

 She supported herself very well by snaring of rabbits, partridges, 

 and squirrels, and was now in good health and flesh ; and, I think, 

 as fine a woman of a real Indian, as I have seen in any part of 

 North America. She had nothing to make snares of but the sinews 

 of rabbits' legs and feet, which she twisted together for that pur- 

 pose ; and of the rabbits' skins had made herself a neat and warm 

 winter's clothing. The stock of materials she took with her when 

 she eloped, consisted of about five inches of an iron hoop for a 

 knife ; a stone steel, and other hard stones as flints, together with 

 other fire-tackle, as tinder, &c. ; about an inch and half of the 

 shank of the shoeing of an arrow of iron, of which she made an 

 awl. She had not been long at the tents, when half a score of men 

 wrestled to see who should have her for their wife. She says, when 

 the Arathapescow Indians took her prisoner, that they stole on the 

 tents in the night, when the inhabitants were all asleep, and killed 

 every soul except herself and three other young women. Her 

 father, mother, and husband were in the same tent with her, and 

 they were all killed. Her child, of about five months old, she 

 took with her, wrapped in a bundle of her clothing, undiscovered, 

 in the night. But, when arrived at the place where the Arathapes- 



