[304] CHAP. IX. 



A short Description of the Northern Indians, also a farther 

 Account of their Country, Manufactures, Customs, &c. 



An account of the persons and tempers of the Northern Indians — They possess 

 a great deal of art and cunning — Are very guilty of fraud when in their 

 power ^ and generally exact more for their furrs than any other tribe of 

 Indians — Always dissatisfied^ yet have their good qualities — The men in 

 general jealous of their wives — Their marriages — Girls always betrothed 

 when children^ and their reasons for it — Great care and confinement 

 of young girls from the age of eight or nine years old — Divorces common 

 among those people — The women are less prolific than in warmer coun- 

 tries — Remarkable piece of superstition observed by the women at 

 particular periods — Their art in making it an excuse for a temporary 

 separation from their husbands on any little quarrel — Reckoned very 

 unclean on those occasions — The Northern Indians frequently^ for the 

 want of firings are obliged to eat their meat raw — ^ome through neces- 

 sity obliged to boil it in vessels made of the rind of the birch-tree — A 

 remarkable dish among those people — The young animals always cut 

 out of their dams eaten^ and accounted a great delicacy — The parts of 

 generation of all animals eat by the men and boys — Manner of passing 

 their time^ and method of killing deer in Summer with bows and 

 arrows — Their tents, dogs^ sledges, i5c. — Snow-shoes — Their partiality 

 to domestic vermin — Utmost extent of the Northern Indian country — 

 Face of the country — Species of fish — A peculiar kind of moss useful for 

 the support of man — Northern Indian method of catching fish, either 

 with hooks or nets — Ceremony observed when two parties of those people 

 meet — Diversions in common use — A singular disorder which attacks 

 some of those people — Their [305] superstition with respect to the death 

 of their friends — Ceremony observed on those occasions — Their ideas of 

 the first inhabitants of the world — No form of religion among them — 



Remarks on that circumstance — The extreme misery to which old age 



297 



