98 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. chap. xxvu. 



juice of some herb, or gunpowder, is rubbed into it, so as 

 to make the mark permanent. Natives of the coast 

 informed me that the women were also often tattooed, 

 but I did not see any with the marks visible. 



The few accounts which have been written of the 

 Nasquapees refer to bands of this people living many 

 hundred miles from one another, and therefore great 

 differences may exist in their habits and customs. Mr. 

 John McLean * describes those who hunted in that portion 

 of the Peninsula which is styled Ungava ; he considers 

 them to number 100 men capable of bearing arms, or about 

 500 souls in the band. In his opinion they have there the 

 same religious belief as the kindred tribes in other parts 

 of the continent. They believe in a good and bad spirit, 

 each of which is supposed to be served by a number of 

 subordinate spirits. Like the heathen Montagnais, they 

 believe in spirits of the air, the forest, the lake, the river, 

 &c., all of which are supposed to be propitiated by simple 

 sacrifices, requiring little or no self-denial. 



Mr. McLean describes the Nasquapees of Ungava as 

 very averse to locomotion, many of them growing up to 

 man's estate without once visiting a trading port. Before 

 the establishment of Fort Chimo at Ungava, they were in 

 the habit of assembhng in the interior and delivering 

 their furs to an elderly man of the tribe, who proceeded 

 with them to the King's Posts or Esquimaux Bay (Hamil- 

 ton Inlet) and traded them for such articles as they 

 required. As with other northern Indian tribes, the Slaves 

 and Eabbit-skins excepted, so with the Nasquapees, the 



* Notes of a Ticenty-Jive Years'' Service in the Hudson s Bay Territory, by 

 John McLean, 1849. 



