9 
Laurentiaii Shield — together with the very similar Maritime Prov- 
inces and Newfoundland, harboured numerous small bands of Indians 
all of whom spoke dialects of a common tongue, subsisted solely on 
fish and game, and migrated from place to place along the waterways 
in birch-bark canoes during the summer months, and with toboggans 
and dog-teams during the winter. Agricultural peoples, organized 
into more or less settled communities, occupied the fertile lowland 
of Ontario between the Oreat Lakes and its continuation along the 
St. Lawrence valley south of the Laurentiaii Shield. Westward, on 
the prairies, were migratory hunting tribes again, but there the chase 
centred around the buffalo, elk. and antelope instead of the caribou, 
moose, and rabbit; fishing disappeared; conical skin tents replaced 
the birch-bark wigwam; and instead of heavily-laden canoes or tobog- 
gans thi’eading their way up the rivers, the dogs dragged on poles — ■ 
“ travois ” — over the treeless plains, whatever the Indians could not 
carry on their own backs. The Pacific coast was another region of 
settled habitations. There the natives clustered into villages of plank 
houses near the mouths of salmon rivers, or in bays frequented by 
seals, otters, and other sea-mammals. Society was divided into grades 
according to hereditaiy rank; life was enriched by many elaborate 
festivals, and art, particularly the ]iainting and carving of enormous 
boards and poles of cedar, flourished in every community. The 
inhabitants of the plateau region between the Hockies and the coast 
were for the most part immigrants from across the mountains, who 
either preserved their old customs and institutions with such modi- 
fications as their new environment suggested, or adopted j^ai t of the 
culture of the coast tribes with whom they came into contact. The 
Kootenay, for example, used to recross the Pockies every summer to 
hunt the buffalo with other plains’ tribes, whereas the Tahltan 
Indians of the Stikine river, in the north of British Columbia, took 
over the clan organization and religious rites of the Tlinkit Indians 
at its mouth, but preserved their old language and maintained a 
certain measure of contact with their kinsmen across the divide. The 
great basin of the Mackenzie river supported a scanty population 
that resembled in many respects the migratory tribes of eastern Can- 
ada, but was even more primitive because of the more limited 
resources of its territory, and its isolation from centres of more 
advanced culture. Finally, the Arctic and sub-Arctic shores main- 
S61159— 2i 
