258 THE AMERICAN MOOSE 



the Rocky Mountains.''' The Dog-Ribs live in the 

 timber country between Great Bear and Great 

 Slave Lakes, less than three hundred miles south of 

 the Arctic Circle. 



According to this legend, Naba-Cha, "the Big 

 Man," lived west of the Mackenzie River in a 

 wigwam made of three hundred great caribou 

 skins. Each day he consumed a whole moose, or 

 two caribou, or fifty partridges, for he was one of 

 the largest men who ever lived. Now Naba-Cha 

 was cruel and quarrelsome. When he was not on 

 warlike forays into distant parts, he was playing 

 the tyrant over those of his own household estab- 

 lishment. Ithenhiela, "the Caribou-Footed," a 

 young Cree, whom the Big Man had brought 

 back as a slave from one of his marauding expedi- 

 tions into the South Country, was the especial 

 victim of the bad man's oppression. 



Hottah, the moose, finally told Ithenhiela of a 

 country far in the west, through which the mighty 

 Tes- Yukon flowed, a river almost as great as the 

 great Mackenzie. Once beyond the Tes- Yukon 

 the young Cree could find safety under the benign 

 protection of the good Nesnabi, the only man in 

 all the world whom Naba-Cha feared. 



""The Fireside Stories of the Chippwyans, ** by James Mackintosh 

 Bell, in Journal oj American Folk-Lore^ 1903* P« 80. 



