ON THE NORTH-WESTERN TRIBES OF CANADA. 245 



takes care that tliey are not imposed upon. There is an Indian Agent 

 stationed on their reserve, who twice a week doles out to them the 

 Government rations, consisting of excellent fresh beef and good flour; and 

 there is also a farm instructor, who has charge of the farming stock and 

 implements, and does what he can to induce these warriors and hunters 

 to farm. 



They have also residing among them a missionary of the Church of 

 England, who visits them in their teepees, and does his best to collect 

 their little blanketed children to school, giving two Government biscuits 

 to each scholar as a reward for attendance. But the people are evidently 

 averse to all these things, which are being done for their good. Their 

 only idea of the white man seems to be that of a trespassing individual, 

 who has more in his possession than he knows what to do with, and may 

 therefore fairly be preyed upon. 



The dress of these people consists, as with other wild Indians, of a 

 breech-clout, a pair of blanket leggings, beaded moccasins, and a blanket 

 thrown loosely, but gracefully, over one or both shoulders. They wear 

 their long black hair in plaits, hanging vertically, one plait on each side of 

 tlie face, and one or more at the back. Some of them knot their hair on 

 the top of the head ; and some, I noticed, wore a coloured handkerchief 

 folded and tied round the temples. This, I believe, is one distinguishing 

 mark of the Navajo Indians in New Mexico. Very often the leggings 

 and moccasins are dispensed with, and the man appears to have nothing 

 on except his grey, white, or coloured blanket. The women wear an 

 ordinary woman's dress of rough make and material, and short in the 

 skirt, next to the skin, leggings and moccasins, and a blanket round the 

 shoulders. Ornaments are worn by both sexes, but chiefly by the men. 

 They consist of brooches and earrings made of steel, necklaces and brace- 

 lets made of bright-coloured beads, bones, claws, teeth, and brass wire, 

 and finger- rings, also of brass wire, coiled ten or twelve times, and cover- 

 ing the lower joint of the finger. Every finger of each hand is sometimes 

 covered with these rings. Both men and women paint the upper part of 

 the face with ochre or vermilion. The people live in ' teepees,' conical- 

 shaped lodges, made of poles covered with tent cotton, in the summer, 

 and in low log huts, plastered over with mud, in winter. They 

 depend for their subsistence almost entirely on the rations supplied by 

 Government. They keep numbers of ponies, but seem to make little use 

 of them beyond riding about. They keep no cattle or animals of any 

 kind beyond their ponies and dogs. The latter are savage, and are said 

 to be descendants of the wolf and the coyote, with which animals they 

 still often breed. They seem to have no manufactures ; they make no 

 canoes, baskets, &c., but they know how to prepare the hides and skins of 

 the animals they kill, and they make their own clothing, saddles, bows 

 and arrows, and moccasins. Some of the women do very excellent bead- 

 work. Bridles they do not use ; a rope or thong fastened to the pony's 

 lower jaw takes the place of a bridle ; their whips are a short stout stick, 

 studded with brass nails, and provided with two leathern thongs as lashes 

 at one end, and a loop for the wrist at the other, Their bows are of 

 cherry wood, strung with a leathern thong, and their arrows of the 

 Saskatoon willow, winged with feathers, and pointed with scrap-iron, 

 filed to a sharp point. The shaft of the arrow has four shallow grooves 

 down its entire length. 



