23 Journal of a Voyage through the 



horn, or bone. Their arms and weapons for hunting, arc 

 bows and arrows, spears, daggers, and pogamagans, or 

 clubs. The bows are about five or six feet in length, and 

 the strings are of sinews or raw skins. The arrows are 

 two feet and an half long, including the barb, which is 

 variously formed of bone, horn, flint, iron, or copper, 

 and are winged with tly*ee feathers. The pole of the spears 

 is about six feet in length, and pointed with a barbed bone 

 of ten inches. With this weapon they strike the rein-deer 

 in the water. The daggers are flat and sharp-pointed, 

 about twelve inches long, and made of horn or bone. The 

 pogamagon is made of the horn of the rein-deer, the 

 branches being all cut off, except that which forms the ex- 

 tremity. This instrument is about two feet in length, and 

 is employed to dispatch their enemies in battle, and such 

 animals as they catch in snares placed for that purpose. 

 These are about three fathom long, and are made of the 

 green skin of the rein or moose-deer, but in such small 

 strips, that it requires from ten to thirty strands to make 

 this cord, which is not thicker than a cod-line ; and strong 

 enough to resist any animal that can be entangled in it. 

 Snares or nooses are also made of sinews to take lesser 

 animals, such as hares and white partridges, which are 

 very numerous. Their axes are manufactured of a piece 

 of brown or grey stone from six to eight inches long, and 

 two inches thick. The inside is flat, and the outside 

 round and tapering to an edge, an inch wide. They are 

 fastened by the middle with the flat side inwards to an 

 handle two feet long, with a cord of green skin. This is 

 the tool with which they split their wood, and we believe, 

 the only one of its kind among them. They kindle fire, 

 by striking together a piece of white or yellow pyrites and 

 a flint stone, over a piece of touchwood. They are uni- 

 versally provided with a small bag containing these mate- 

 rials, so that they are in a continual state of preparation 

 to produce fire. From the adjoining tribes, the Red- „ 

 Knives and Chepewyans, they procure, in barter for mar- 

 tin skins and a few beaver, small pieces of iron, of which 

 they manufacture knives, by fixing them at the end of a 

 short stick, and with them and the beaver's teeth, they 

 finish all their work. They keep them in a sheath hanging 

 to their neck, which also contains their awls both of iron 

 and horn. 



