Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 
SECTION II 

SERIES III DECEMBER 1916 Voix 

The Canadian Snowshoe. 
By THOMAS DRUMMOND. 
Presented by DUNCAN C. Scott F.R.S.C. 
(Read May Meeting, 1916.) 
It is impossible to give definite historical information about 
the Canadian snowshoe before the advent of the whiteman, and 
nothing absolute can be said as to its origin. Indian legends however 
tell us something about the subject, and one of these legends in a 
condensed form is given. 
“In the winter when the swamps and muskegs and barrens 
harden in the cold, and the lakes congeal into ice, and the ground is 
covered with a thick mantle of snow, then the Wendigo, the cannibal 
frost-fiend, holds sway, and he skims swiftly over the surface of the 
snow on his fleet snowshoes carrying cold and terror wherever he goes. 
He watches for the lone hunter or trapper who, belated in the woods, 
makes camp at nightfall, cleans the snow away, spreads balsam boughs 
upon the ground and rests before a cheerful fire. After darkness 
-comes the moon, and the air becomes colder and colder as it rises, 
the frost crystals sparkle like diamonds in the bright light, the northern 
lights rush crinkling across the sky, and the trees crack and snap in 
the clear frosty air like the discharge of artillery. Then the poor 
mortals shiver with fear and they say the Wendigo is abroad, and they 
pile wood upon the dying fire to keep him away till the morning comes, 
when the fiend retires baffled and defeated.”’ 
The snowshoe naturally originated in rude forms and in these rude 
forms is known elsewhere than in North America, as for instance in 
Norway and northern Asia. Very primitive forms are also reported 
from Japan, Korea and The Caucasus. These latter appliances are 
what might be called emergency showshoes, roughly and quickly 
made for special and exceptional cases where heavy snowfalls have 
occurred in unusual places, and they are interesting as examples of the 
_ ingenuity of different aborigines under independent conditions. They 
