30 WOOD INDIANS. 



laughter among themselves ; and in seasons of prosperity, ap- 

 pear good-humoured and merry. The women, however, are 

 doomed to lives of unremitting toil, from the time they be- 

 come wives. They are compelled to carry the burdens, and to 

 cultivate the ground, when any ground is cultivated, for the 

 production of potatoes, maize, and tobacco. The men con- 

 descend merely to manufacture their arms and canoes, and to 

 hunt ; or they engage in what they consider the noblest of 

 employments, waging war on their neighbours. The women, 

 indeed, are often compelled to paddle the canoes, sometimes to 

 go fishing, and to carry the portable property from place to 

 place, or an overload of game when captured. 



Intelligent as the Indian appears, it is evident that he has 

 cultivated his perceptive powers to the neglect of his spiritual 

 and moral qualities. His senses are remarkably acute. His 

 memory is good ; and when aroused, his imagination is vivid, 

 though wild in the extreme. He is warmly attached to he- 

 reditary customs and manners. Naturally indolent and sloth- 

 ful, he detests labour, and looks upon it as a disgrace, though 

 he will go through great fatigue when hunting or engaged in 

 warfare. 



WOOD INDIANS. 



The northern tribes are known as Wood Indians, in contra- 

 distinction to the inhabitants of the open country, the Prairie 

 Indians, who differ greatly from the former in their habits 

 and customs. All the tribes of the Athabascas, as well as 

 those to the south of them, known as the Algonquins, are 

 Wood Indians. They are nearly always engaged in hunting 

 the wild animals of the region they inhabit, for the sake of 

 their furs, which they dispose of to the agents of the Hudson 

 Bay Company and other traders, in exchange for blankets, 



