OF BRITISH AND RUSSIAN AMERICA 305 



Hudson's Bay Company's employes The natives retain the use of the bag to 

 a late period, say until the child passes a year, during which time it is never 

 taken out except to change the moss. To this practice, continued to such an 

 •age, I attribute the turned in toes and rather crooked legs of miny of these In- 

 dians. A child is not weaned until another takes its place, if the mother has 

 milk to give it, and it is no unusual thing for an Indian woman of these tribes 

 to suckle a child three or four years old, even with a baby at her other breast 

 at the time. Respecting the food of infants, the routine is as follows : If the 

 mother has milk they suck so long as she yields it; otherwise, mashed fish, 

 chewed dried meat, or any other nutritious substance that can be had from a not 

 very extended variety is given. A curious and superstitious custom obtains 

 among the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib tribes, of not cutting the nails of female in- 

 fants till they are four years of age. Their reason for this is, that if they did so 

 earlier the child would, when arrived at womanhood, turn out lazy, and be un- 

 able to embroider well in porcupine quill work, an art which these Indians are 

 very skilful in, and are justly proud of. Another extraordinary practice is their 

 giving no nutriment to infants for the first four days after birth, in order, as they 

 say, to render them capable of enduring starvation in after life, an accomplishment 

 which they are very likely to stand often in need of. 



It is difficult to determine exactly the age of puberty. In boys it commences 

 about twelve. Indeed, they endeavor, as soon as they can, to pay their addresses 

 to the sex, and marry, generally, at from sixteen to twenty years of age. To 

 fix the period for girls is still more difficult. They marry sometimes, but not 

 often, at ten, and have their menses about thirteen. The women are capable of 

 bearing children from fourteen to forty-five, a long portion of their lives, but in 

 it very few infants are produced. Families on an average contain three children, 

 including deaths, and ten is the greatest number I have seen. In that instance 

 the natives found it so unusual that they called the father " Ilon-nen-na-be-ta," 

 or the Father of Ten. Twins I have heard of but once. The proportion of 

 births is rather in favor of females, a natural necessity, as it is the women among 

 these tribes who have the shortest lease of life, and there is from various causes 

 a much greater mortality among the girls than among the boys. The period of 

 uterogestation is rather shorter than in Europeans, and seldom exceeds the nine 

 months. Premature deliveries are very rare, and the women experience but 

 little pain in child-birth, a few hours repose, after the occurrence, being sufficient 

 to restore nature. 



The duration of life is, on an average, short. Many children die at an early 

 age, and there are feAV instances of the great longevity that occurs not unfre- 

 quently in more temperate climates. Karely does one of the Tinneh reach the 

 " three score years and ten"' allotted to man, though an instance or two of passing 

 this age has occurred within my own knowledge. A Slave woman died at Fort 

 Simpson, in the autumn of 1861, who had already borne three children when 

 Sir Alexander McKenzie, in 1789, descended the river bearing his name. Sup- 

 posing that she had married at sixteen, and was confined once every three years, 

 a high average for this people, she would have been ninety-seven years of age 

 at the time of her death. For some years prior to her demise she was perfectly 

 bed-ridden, and sadly neglected by her relatives, who evidently fancied that she 

 bad troubled them long enough. She lay solitary and forsaken in a miserable 

 camp, composed of a rude shelter and bed of pine brush, her only covering a 

 tattered caribou-skin robe. Such was the malignity of her disposition, even in 

 "articulo mortis," that she reviled at nearly every adult, and struck with a stick 

 at all the children and dogs that passed by her den. 



The Tinneh are far from a healthy race. The causes of death proceed rather 



from weakness of constitution and hereditary taint than from epidemic diseases, 



though, when the latter do come, they make great havoc. Want of proper and 



regular nutriment and exposure in childhood in all probability undermine th-ir 



20 s 66 



