30 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 56 



A FAMILY ANECDOTE 



When Arthur, my interpreter, was a little boy, a lot of youngsters used to 

 get together and some old man or old woman would tell them anecdotes and 

 folk-lore stories. One of them is as follows : 



Arthur's mother narrowly escaped death by a big moose once. The moose 

 kills dogs by stamping with the fore feet or kicking with the hind feet. The 

 Indian women went out with the dogs to bring home a lot of cached caribou 

 meat. They dragged the meat over the snow, wrapped up in caribou-skin. A 

 moose appeared at the cache and all the dogs went after him. The women did 

 not want to kill the moose, but they tried to do so because they could not get 

 the dogs away. So they fastened a knife to a stick and tried to spear it. The 

 moose ran toward Arthur's mother and planted both fore feet in front of her 

 but she sat humped up and kept perfectly motionless, and the moose turned 

 away without harming her. If she had moved he would have trampled her to 

 death. 



