178 ASIATIC TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA. 



The Canciclian. and many other American nations use no other sort of 

 boats. The paddles of the Tongusi are broad at each end ; those of 

 the people near Cook's River and of Onalaska are of the same form." 

 Sauer and Mackenzie refer to the insensibility to cold of the 

 Tungus and Tinneh respectively. The former, referring to the dress of 

 the Tungus, says : " Their winter dress is the skin of the deer or wild 

 sheep, dressed with the hair on; a breast-piece of the same which 

 ties round the neck and reaches down to the waist, widening 

 towards the bottom, and neatly ornamented with embroideiy and 

 beads ; pantaloons of the same materials, which also furnish them 

 with short stockings, and boots of the legs of rein-deer, with the hair 

 outward ; a fur cap and gloves. Their summer dress only differs in 

 being simple leather loithout the hair." Referring to the Chipweyans 

 or Athabascans, Mackenzie writes : " There are no people more 

 attentive to the comforts of their dress, or less anxious respecting its 

 exterior appearance. In the winter it is composed of the skins of 

 deer and their fawns, and dressed as fine as any chamois-leather, in 

 the hair. In the summer their apparel is the same, except that it is 

 prepared without tlie hair. Their shoes and leggings are sewed 

 together, the latter reaching upwards to the middle, and being sup- 

 ported by a belt. The shirt or coat, when girded round the waist, 

 reaches to the middle of the thigh, and the mittens are sewed to the 

 sleeves or are suspended by strings from the shoulders. A ruff or 

 tippet surrounds the neck, and the skin of the head of the deer forms 

 a curious kind of cap. A robe made of several deer or fawn skins 

 sewed together covers the whole." The same author, speaking of the 

 Dogribs, refers to the elaborate ornamentation of the breast-piece and 

 other parts of their dress ; and other travellers have described it in 

 like terms. Santini dwells upon the fanciful and tasteful designs 

 wrought with coloured percupine quills in which the Tungus indulged, 

 and their coronet or head-band of leather, oi-namented with em- 

 broidery and feathers. To the latter, Mackenzie makes reference also 

 in connection -with the Dogribs ; and many writers have celebrated 

 the ingenuity in quill-work of the whole Tinneh family, who were 

 probably the teachers of this art to the populations of North America. 

 Finally, although this is a matter not of dress, but of food, both the 

 Tungus and the Tinneh are in the habit of eating the undigested 

 food, principally lichen, in the stomach of the deer, which they mix 

 with berries and other ingredients, as Sauer and Hearne respectively 



