INDIAN WOMEN AND THEIR WILES. 477 



a few nights." The Indian hunters at Fort Confidence either could not or 

 would not construct caches sufficiently strong to resist the wolverine. Dr 

 Rae, however, brought "more skill, or more industry, to the task. After 

 a successful excursion he constructed a safe meat-cellar, by cutting a hole in 

 the ice, covering it thickly with snow, and then pouring water over all, 

 until the frost had rendered the whole a solid mass. 



The Dog-rib Indians who inhabit the country around Fort Confidence 

 are merry and good-natured, but indolent, improvident, and dreadfully men- 

 dacious. As liars, they are probably unsurpassed by the most accomplished 

 practitioners in China or Hindustan. Here also, as in other countries, 

 " woman, lovely woman," commands considerable respect for her charms, and 

 for the use she makes of them. In the spring of 1849, a number of the Martin 

 Lake Indians brought supplies of fresh meat to Richardson's camp, at which 

 a number of Indian women of the Dog-rib tribe were then residing. The 

 strangers carried the venison intended for the white men neatly packed on 

 sledges ; but, besides, each man carried a knapsack on his back, filled with 

 a number of the choicest pieces of the meat, to be consumed on the return 

 journey to Martin Lake. " The first act of the new-comers was to run the 

 loaded sledges at once into the store-house, which was open to receive them, 

 but as they arrived in succession, the (Dog-rib) women from the camp 

 generally pressed in, and throwing their arms around a young hunter, with 

 much kindness of manner, would say to him, ' It is long since we have 

 seen you, my relation ; how have you fared since we have met 1 You are 

 a generous man ! ' and so on. While his attention was thus engaged, and 

 before he could free himself from the unwashed sirens, whose unwonted 

 softness of speech never led him to suspect either ridicule or plunder, one of 

 the females, having cut the strings of his knapsack, would carry it off, amidst 

 the laughter of the crowd. The young fellow thus despoiled of his provisions, 

 however much he might be vexed in secret, was obliged to join openly in the 

 mirth ; and the expression of face of some of the youths thus preyed upon, 

 as they endeavoured to force a smile in their distress, was irresistibly comic." 

 Among these tribes, the women, who are regarded as the natural property 

 of the strong, are often moved from one tent to another, without apparently 

 regarding compulsory transference to the home and the affections of a new 

 husband — who has been lucky enough to thrash their old one — as a hardship. 



" All kinds and creatures stand and fall 

 By strength of prowess, or of wit." 



And SO the good old rule, the simple plan, sufiiceth stiU the Indians of British 

 North America. 



And yet it has never been proved beyond question by any Arctic explorer 

 that these Indian tribes of the remote north of America are bound by any 



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