MEAT NEEDED FOR MEN AND DOGS 137 



the Chipewyans look on the Caribou as a thing 

 sent solely to them by \The Spirit, to feed 

 and clothe them through winter. Caribou are 

 essential to the existence of those people, 

 for the Chipewyans depend largely, almost com- 

 pletely, on them for winter food, though other- 

 wise absolute poverty is relieved by limited stores 

 of frozen fish, and what few fish are netted below 

 the ice. If one hears complaints at all, it is that 

 not enough Caribou can be found : never that 

 they have too many and would leave some to 

 waste. There is greater use for large quantities 

 of meat than one, at first thought, might imagine. 

 Indians are voracious eaters at all times, parti- 

 cularly in the intense cold winter weather, and 

 they eat Caribou meat extravagantly when they 

 have it, and eating it, and it solely, three or four 

 times a day, as they often do, a single animal is 

 soon devoured. Then, too, and this is the chief 

 factor to be borne in mind, Caribou are exten- 

 sively used for dog-feed whenever procurable in 

 numbers. If an Indian has ten sled-dogs to feed, 

 one carcass cut into portions will barely feed 

 them for three nights ; the number of dogs is 

 more often twenty, sometimes thirty or more, 

 and the call on the food-supply accordingly 

 greater. So it will be seen that, though Indians 

 kill large numbers of Caribou, they have a 

 definite need for them in a land where food is not 

 bought ; where red men wrest a livelihood from 

 rivers and lake-waters, virgin wildernesses, and 

 dreary snow- wastes ; and where to be without 

 food is to die. 



It is hardly necessary to say that the flesh of 



