32 THE PRAIRIE INDIANS. 



with birch bark, and have a raised dais in the interior capable 

 of holding a considerable number of people. The best known 

 of these Forest Indians are the Chippeways, who range from 

 the banks of Lake Huron almost to the Rocky Mountains, 

 throughout the British territory. 



THE PRAIRIE INDIANS. 



To the south of the tribes already mentioned, are the large 

 family of the Dakotahs, who number among them the Sioux, 

 Assiniboines, and Blackfeet, and are the hereditary enemies 

 of the Chippeways, especially of their nearer neighbours, the 

 Crees and Ojibbeways. These Dakotahs occupy the open 

 prairie country to the south of the Saskatchewan, and are the 

 most northern of the Prairie Indians. In summer, they wear 

 little or no clothing ; and possessing numerous horses, hunt 

 the buffaloes, or rather bisons, on horseback, armed with 

 spears and bows and arrows. They are fiercer and more war- 

 like than their northern neighbours, and have long set the 

 whites at defiance. The buffalo supplies them with their 

 chief support. The flesh of the animal dried in the sun, or 

 pounded with its fat into pemmican, is their chief article of 

 food ; while its skin serves as a covering for their tents, a 

 couch at night, or for clothing by day, and is manufactured 

 into bags for carrying their provisions, and numerous other 

 articles. Physically, they are superior to the Wood Indians. 

 They are both hunters and warriors ; and though they may 

 occasionally exchange the buffalo robes as the skins are called 

 for fire-arms, they seldom employ themselves as trappers, or 

 attend to the cultivation of the ground. 



The greater number of the tribes further to the south pos- 

 sess horses, and hunt the buffalo and deer. Some are even 



