io6 



Sport and Life. 



pleasant, laughter-loving Kootenais and Kootenays. They were 

 also by far the most unsophisticated and primitive aborigines I had 

 ever met. A breech cloth, a string of blue and red glass beads 

 round their necks, and a curiously-shaped conical white felt hat, 

 adorned with mink and sable tails, being the only clothing the males 

 sported, while the women wore a nightgown-like garment of coarse 

 sacking imported by astute Fry from Walla Walla. Their teepees 

 were picturesquely situated under a grove of fine old cottonwood 

 trees. Outside each tent, resting on light trestles, one saw one or 

 two canoes lying bottom upwards and covered with mats or boughs 



A KOOTENAY INDIAN PINE BARK CANOE. 

 The shape is peculiar to this tribe. 



to prevent the sun from cracking the frail bark of which they are 

 constructed. Their shape was peculiar to the tribe, and very pretty 

 "lines" these craft possessed. Both prow and stern, slightly 

 turned up, were pointed and shaped similar to the ram of an iron- 

 clad. When not too heavily laden neither touched the water, so 

 that only the broad rounded bottom of the canoe rested on the 

 surface, making the craft a crank but swift traveller. 



Several of the younger bucks understood Chinook, that hotch- 

 potch of French, English, Spanish, with a good many Indian terms 

 thrown in, which used to assist intercourse between the whites and 

 the numerous tribes of the Pacific Slope. My wants were soon 



