CHAP. XXVII. HABITS OF THE XASQUAPEES. 99 



women are the slaves of the men. ' When they remove 

 from camp to camp in the winter, the women set out first, 

 dragging sledges loaded with their effects, and such of the 

 children as are incapable of walking ; meantime the men 

 remain in the abandoned encampment, smoking their 

 pipes, until they suppose the women are sufficiently far 

 advanced on the route to reach the new encampment ere 

 they overtake them.' The horrid practice still obtains 

 among the Nasquapees of killing their parents and re- 

 latives when old age leaves them incapable of exertion. 

 ' I must,' says Mr. McLean, ' do them the justice to say, 

 that the parent himself expresses a wisli to depart, 

 otherwise the unnatural deed would probably never be 

 committed ; for they in genei'al treat the old people 

 with much care and tenderness.' When anyone dies in 

 the winter, the body is placed on a scaffold until 

 summer, when it is interred. They depend for their 

 subsistence almost exclusively upon the reindeer, and 

 if they miss these animals in their annual migrations, 

 they are hable to suffer all the horrors of starvation 

 in an almost arctic winter. The reindeer not only 

 supphes them with food, but from its skin they make 

 their clothing and tents. Their winter dress consists of a 

 jacket of deer-skin, worn with the hair next to the body, 

 and a coat of. the same material reaching to the knees, 

 with the hair outside. Leather breeches, leggings, and 

 moccasins protect the lower extremities ; and the hands 

 and arms are defended from the intense cold of those 

 regions by gloves and gauntlets, reacliuig as far as the 

 elbows. When in- full dress, they wear a cap richly 

 ornamented with the claws of the bear and tlie eagle. 



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