324 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



A CKEE VILLAGE. 



The ordinary wigwams, skin tents, or " lodges " of the Tinne and Crees are 

 exactly alike in form, being extended on poles set up in a conical manner ; but 

 as a genei-al rule the tents of the latter are more commodious and more fre- 

 quently suppHed with a fresh lining of the spray of the balsam-fir. They also 

 occasionally erect a larger dwelling of lattice-work, covered with birch-bark, in 

 which forty men or more can assemble for feasting, debating, or performing- 

 some of their religious ceremonies. The entire nation of the Eythinyuwuk cul- 

 tivate oratory more than their northern neighbors, who express themselves more 

 sim])Iy and far less fluenfty. 



Vapor baths are in common use with the Crees, and form one of the chief 

 remedies of their medicine-men. The operator shuts himself up with his patient 

 in the small sweating-house — in which red-hot stones besprinkled with water, 

 and having a few leaves of a species of prnnics strewed around them, produce 

 a damp atmosphere of a stifling heat — and shampoos him, singing all the time a 

 kind of hymn. As long as the medicine-man can hold out, so long must the 

 patient endure the intense heat of the bath, and then, if the invalid be able to 

 move, they both plunge into the river. If the patient does not recover, he is at 

 least more speedily released from his sufferings by this powerful remedy. 



The Crees are a vain, fickle, improvident, indolent, and ludicrously boastful 

 race. They are also great gamblers, but, instead of cards or dice, they play 

 with the stones of a species of 7:)nmi<s. The difficulty lies in guessing the num- 

 ber of stones which are tossed out of a small wooden disli, and the hunters 

 will spend whole nights at this destructive sport, staking their most valuable 



