STARVING INDIANS. 147 



commendable prudence, immediately bought two 

 animals, for which he paid a few pounds of ammu- 

 nition and some tobacco. 



On the morrow Gaytchi Mohkamarn concluded 

 it was time to look after his wife, who had now 

 starved for nearly four days, and after breakfast 

 went off with some meat for her ; the rest spent the 

 day in cutting up the animals bought the day before. 

 Next morning Gaytchi Mohkamarn turned up again, 

 with wife and dog- sleigh, with effects, moving to 

 camp by the animals he had killed, and reported that 

 a good many Indians would shortly arrive on their 

 way to join him. All were in a starving condition, 

 not having tasted food for several days, and their 

 prospects for the remainder of the winter were very 

 unpromising, for no buffalo could be found. It 

 seemed that our party, by the greatest good luck in 

 the world, struck exactly the place where the only 

 buffalo left in the district were at the time. 



During the day family after family came in — 

 a spectral cavalcade : the men, gaunt and wan, 

 marching before skeleton dogs, almost literally skin 

 and bone, with hide drawn tightly and unpadded 

 over " crate and basket, ribs and spine ;" dragging 

 painfully along sleighs as attenuated and empty of 

 provisions as themselves. The women and children 

 brought up the rear, who, to the credit of the men, 

 be it recorded, were in far better case, indeed 

 tolerably plump, and contrasting strangely with the 

 fleshless forms of the other sex. Although the 

 Indian squaws and children are kept in subjection, 



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