106 



Journal of a froyage through the 



have a considerable influence on the opinion of the men in 

 every thing except their own domestic situation. 



These Indians are excellent hunters, and their exercise 

 in that capacity is so violent as to reduce them in general 

 to a very meagre appearance. Their religion is of a very- 

 contracted nature, and I never witnessed any ceremony 

 of devotion which they had not borrowed from the Kniste- 

 neaux, their feasts and fasts being in imitation of that peo- 

 ple. They are more vicious and warlike than the Chepe- 

 wyans, from whence they sprang, though they do not pos- 

 sess their selfishness, for while they have the means of 

 purchasing their necessaries, they are liberal and gener- 

 ous, but when those are exhausted they become errant 

 beggars : they are, however, remarkable for their honesty, 

 for in the whole tribe there were only two women and a 

 man who had been known to have swerved from that vir- 

 tue, and they were considered as objects of disregard and 

 reprobation. They are afflicted with but few diseases, 

 and their only remedies consist in binding the temples, 

 procuring perspiration, singing, and blowing on the &ick 

 person, or affected part. When death overtakes any of 

 them, their property, as I have before observed, is sa- 

 crificed and destroyed ; nor is there any failure of lamen- 

 tation or mourning on such occasion : they who are more 

 nearly related to the departed person, black their faces, 

 and sometimes cut off their hair ; they also pierce their 

 arms with knives and arrows. The grief of the females 

 is carried to a still greater excess ; they not only cut their 

 hair, and cry and howl, but they will sometimes, with the 

 utmost deliberation, employ some sharp instrument to se- 

 parate the nail from the finger, and then force back the 

 flesh beyond the first joint, which they immediately am- 

 putate. But this extraordinary mark of affliction is only 

 displayed on the death of a favourite son, an husband, or 

 a father. Many of the old women have so often repeated 

 this ceremony, that they have not a complete finger re- 

 maining on either hand. The women renew their lamen- 

 tations at the graves of their departed relatives for a long 

 succession of years. They appear, in common with all 

 the Indian tribes, to be very fond of their children, but 

 they are as careless in their mode of swadling them in 

 their infant state, as they are of their own dress : the child 

 is laid down on a board, of about two feet long, covered 

 with a bed of moss, to which it is fastened by bandages, 



