MODE OF LIFE AND DRESS. 267 



have reaped a good harvest. A few of them are furnished with 

 nets, hooks, and hnes, and work industriously during the summer 

 months. The soil, at the places where they remain during that 

 season, is unfit for cultivation, and as none of the whites attempt 

 cultivation, the Indians would be hardly more fortunate. One 

 year the government sent them a number of bushels of potatoes to 

 plant, as an experiment. The Indians cut them up at once, and 

 thanked the agent for being so good as to send them supplies, hop- 

 ing that they would send more the next year. Hunger has re- 

 duced them as a tribe, though a few are haughty and troublesome 

 at times. It is impossible to civilize them to any great extent, 

 and there are but few schools, and these only in the lower prov- 

 inces where there are also a few reservations. 



There has recently been appointed, by the government, an In- 

 dian agent who is now hard at work trying to better the condition 

 of these poor, unfortunate people, and make it possible for each 

 family to become sober and industrious and earn its own living in 

 a thrifty way; but their nature rebels against most all treatment, 

 and they prefer the nomadic existence of their fathers, or the uncer- 

 tainties of the chase, and are delighted to roam at will and fish the 

 stream, thus gaining an uncertain sort of existence from year to 

 year until at last they disappear and are heard from no more. 

 Disease very seldom attacks an Indian. Such diseases as small- 

 pox and measles are the most prevalent, — for the former they are 

 vaccinated freely by the government agent while he is on the coast. 

 The aged and infirm are disposed of as speedily as possible, being 

 left to starve and die or turned off upon anybody who will under- 

 take to care for them. Often in the summer time large forest fires 

 occur, but these are rarely caused by the Indians, as many seem 

 to think. An Indian is very careful on this point, since it would 

 be a great offence to be guilty of wilful destruction of the " hunt- 

 ing grounds." 



I dare not say much concerning the dress of the Indians. They 

 wear anything and everything. Old garments and new garments, 

 thick and heavy, brown, white, or black ; leather or sealskin boots, 



