Quadrupeds. 7995 



deer use their feet only for this purpose. Indeed when the horns would 

 be necessary the males would have already lost them, and a supple- 

 mental addition would be required to the hypothesis of the females 

 clearing a space for the males to graze on, as the gentler sex, at that 

 period, reversing human fashions, wear the horns instead of their lords. 

 The barren-ground reindeer furnishes the principal support of the 

 Yellow-knife, Dog-rib and Hare Indians, and has the same value to 

 them the moose has to the other branches of their nation. Their 

 clothing for winter is made out of fawn-skins, dressed with the hair on, 

 and consists of capotes, gowns, shirts, leggins, mittens, socks and robes, 

 which are warm and when new nice looking. Hides which are so much 

 perforated by the larvae of the Qi^strus as to be unfit for any other purpose 

 are converted into habiche, to make which the skin is first divested of 

 hair and all fleshy matter; it is then with a knife cut into the desired 

 thickness, the operation beginning in the centre of the skin. There 

 are two sizes of this article, the larger being used for barring sleds and 

 for the foot-lacing of snow-shoes, the smaller as a species of thread 

 for sewing leather, for the fine netting of snow-shoes, and for lacing 

 fishing and beaver nets. 



Bufialo. The strong-wood variety, which comes so far north and 

 east as about twenty miles from the mouth of Little Buffalo River, 

 near Fort Resolution, Great Slave Lake, is found most numerously in 

 the vicinity of the salt plains of Salt River. It is unknown throughout 

 the country inhabited by any of the Slave tribes, and the point men- 

 tioned above may be considered as its furthest limits. It is of larger 

 size than the plain variety, of darker colour and more thickly furred. 

 The Chipewyans eat its flesh and make robes and parchment from the 

 hides. The horns are made into powder-flasks, and are used for 

 mounting knives and awls ; the tail mounted on a wooden shank, orna- 

 mented with goose or porcupine quills, is used as a fly-flapper. From 

 its scarcity this animal does not contribute materially to the tribes 

 under consideration. 



Musk Ox {Ovibos moscliatus). This small but powerful animal is an 

 inhabitant of the Barren-grounds and Arctic Coast, from 61° N. It 

 frequents wild rocky situations, and possesses the agility of the antelope, 

 between which and the buffalo it appears to form a connecting link. 

 During the winter it feeds on lichens and in the summer on grass. 

 From its remote habit it is of little service to the Chipewyan tribes, 

 and though the Yellow-knives, Dog-ribs and Hare Indians sometimes 

 hunt it, yet as it is very fierce, and the flesh is strongly impregnated 

 with the flavour of musk, it is not much looked after. The calfskins 



