INDIAN QUARRELS. 273 



endeavours of officers of the Company to establish 

 friendly intercourse. They are mutually afraid ; but 

 the Esquimaux are now nonplussed by the guns of 

 their adversaries. They say that they only entertain 

 hatred against the Loucheux of Fond du Lac, and 

 constantly meet and converse with those of the 

 Mackenzie, although with an intervening distance, 

 each probably standing in suspicious fear of the 

 other; but with the Indians of the Peel River the 

 case is very different. " War to the knife " exists 

 between them and the Esquimaux. There is a 

 tradition accounting for this, which, although vague, 

 I think worthy of mention. 



Many winters ago, how far back is uncertain, the 

 two races were friends, and used to hunt together. 

 On one of these occasions, when a large party was 

 assembled, a few of the Indians, who, with a number 

 of the Esquimaux, had been detached from the main 

 body, did not return with them. The Esquimaux 

 said that they had become separated ; but this was 

 not credited by the friends of the missing, who 

 believed them to have been treacherously murdered. 

 Dissembling their intentions, they parted from the 

 others, and returning by night, attacked and killed 

 many of them : the feud has since that period been 

 constantly kept alive by alternate outrages. 



