NORTHERN OCEAN 321 



family would in a short time communicate it to the whole 

 tribe ; but, on the contrary, the disease is never known to 

 spread. In the younger sort it always attacks the hands and 

 feet, not even sparing the palms and soles. Those of riper 

 years generally have it about the wrists, insteps, and posteriors ; 

 and in the latter particularly, the blotches, or boils as they 

 may justly be called, are often as large as the top of a man's 

 thumb. This disorder most frequently makes its appearance 

 in the Summer, while the Indians are out on the barren ground ; 

 and though it is by no means reckoned dangerous, yet it is so 

 obstinate, as not to yield to any medicine that has ever been 

 applied to it while at the Company's Factory. And as the 

 natives themselves never make use of any medicines of their 

 own preparing, Nature alone works the cure, which is never 

 performed in [338] less than twelve or eighteen months ; and 

 some of them are troubled with this disagreeable and loathsome 

 disorder for years before they are perfectly cured, and then a 

 dark livid mark remains on those parts of the skin which have 

 been affected, for many years afterwards, and in some during life. 

 When any of the principal Northern Indians die, it is 

 generally believed that they are conjured to death, either by 

 some of their own countrymen, by some of the Southern 

 Indians, or by some of the Esquimaux : too frequently the 

 suspicion falls on the latter tribe, which is the grand reason 

 of their never being at peace with those poor and distressed 

 people. For some time past, however, those Esquimaux who 

 trade with our sloops at Knapp's Bay, Navel's Bay, and Whale 

 Cove, are in perfect peace and friendship with the Northern 

 Indians ; which is entirely owing to the protection they have 

 for several years past received from the Chiefs at the Company's 

 Fort at Churchill River.* But those of that tribe who live so 



* In the Summer of 1756, a party of Northern Indians lay in wait at 

 Knapp's Bay till the sloop had sailed out of the harbour, when they fell on 

 the poor Esquimaux, and killed every soul. Mr. John Bean, then Master of the 

 sloop, and since Master of the Trinity yacht, with all his crew, heard the guns 



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