210 LABRADOR 
In winter the frock has a hood, and the moderate coat of 
hair which the summer skins bear is allowed to remain on, 
usually turned inside. For extreme weather this sort of 
frock is made without a hood, so that a hooded frock with 
hair outward can be put on over it. Sleeping-bags of 
caribou skin are commonly used. 
Many of the Chimo Indians have lately adopted trousers 
for winter wear, but the little band of George River people 
under Chief Ostinitsu still prefer leggins and the bare thigh. 
No foreign language is yet spoken by this group, nor do 
they use ordinarily either bread or salt. 
Although well off for guns, the chief means of support 
of this band are those of the prehistoric period. In fa- 
vourable years the deer-spear alone furnishes the main living. 
When the great migration is on, hundreds and sometimes 
thousands of caribou are speared on the lake and river 
crossings, without the firing of a shot. The smaller game 
and birds are taken largely in snares and wooden traps. 
Nets of their own making, either of sinew or twine, are 
their most dependable means, rarely failing for long of 
taking food during a large part of the year. Even in the 
last months of winter, the time of graver straits, they rest 
their forlorn hope, not on the gun or steel trap or fishing 
gear of trade, but on the unfailing wooden hook of ancient 
days. 
All in all, the life of these people remains singularly un- 
changed. It may be doubted whether another such survival 
of the purely primitive hunter, at the same time of so high a 
personality as that of the savage of temperate America, 
is to be found in any part of the world. The caribou are 
to them what the buffalo were to the Indians of the plains. 
