VIII 

 THE NORTHLAND INDIAN AS HE IS 



CHIPEWVAN has many claims to distinction. Built sub- 

 stantially upon one of the numerous rocky points which 

 break the one hundred and fifty miles of Athabasca 

 Lake's north-shore line, it is the most picturesquely situ- 

 ated and most populous oasis in this silent white country. 

 It is headquarters of one of the four districts into which 

 this vast fur-bearing land of one million square miles is di- 

 vided by the Hudson's Bay Company ; the chief forward- 

 ing-point for the merchandise which the company sends 

 in for trade, and the fur the Indians send out as pay; a 

 general distributing post-office of the four yearly mails 

 which reach this land, where man is but a mere track upon 

 the snow, and not above one hundred of the roughly ap- 

 proximated ten thousand read English writing. It is the 

 most important Northland mission of the Roman Catho- 

 lic Oblates Fathers, and it is practically the northern 

 boundary of the Cree and the southern boundary of the 

 Montagnaise Indian family, which in its various branches 

 spreads towards the Arctic Ocean. 



Nothing commanded my earnest attention more com- 

 pletely than this mission of the Oblates Fathers, with its 

 bishop, three brothers, six nuns, forty school-children, and 

 a saw-mill. Here, hundreds of miles from skilled labor, 

 they have whipped out the planks for their church, in- 

 vented a written language, somewhat after the Egyptian 



