144 A JOURNEY TO THE 



1 77 1, their own families. In defence of them they will exert their 

 ^^" utmost influence ; but when their own relations are guilty of 

 the same crime, they seldom interfere. This partial conduct 

 creates some secret, and several open enemies ; but the gene- 

 rality of their neighbours are deterred, through fear or super- 

 stition, from [io8] executing their revenge, and even from 

 talking disrespectfully of them, unless it be behind their backs ; 

 which is a vice of which almost every Indian in this country, 

 without exception, is guilty. 



Notwithstanding the Northern Indians are so covetous, and 

 pay so little regard to private property as to take every advan- 

 tage of bodily strength to rob their neighbours, not only of 

 their goods, but of their wives, yet they are, in other respects, 

 the mildest tribe, or nation, that is to be found on the borders 

 of Hudson's Bay : for let their affronts or losses be ever so 

 great, they never will seek any other revenge than that of 

 wrestling. As for murder, which is so common among all 

 the tribes of Southern Indians, it is seldom heard of among 

 them. A murderer is shunned and detested by all the tribe, 

 and is obliged to wander up and down, forlorn and forsaken 

 even by his own relations and former friends. In that respect 

 a murderer may truly be compared to Cain, after he had killed 

 his brother Abel. The cool reception he meets with by all 

 who know him, occasions him to grow melancholy, and he 

 never leaves any place but the whole company say " There 

 goes the murderer ! " The women, it is true, sometimes 

 receive an unlucky blow from their husbands for misbehaviour, 

 which occasions their death ; but this is thought nothing of : 

 and for one man or woman to kill another out of revenge, or 

 through jealousy, or on any other account, is so extraordinary, 

 that very few are now [109] existing who have been guilty of it. 

 At the present moment I know not one, beside Matonabbee, 

 who ever made an attempt of that nature ; and he is, in every 

 other respect, a man of such universal good sense, and, as an 

 Indian, of such great humanity, that I am at a loss how to 



