102 
little ones have their load, or their sledge, to accustom them early to 
fatigue; and they try to stimulate them to see who will carry or drag 
the most.” i 
Snow-shoes, the dog-sled, the toboggan, and the bark canoe (the 
last as a model for our cedar and basswood canoes), all these the 
Canadian aborigines have contributed to our civilization. Snow- 
shoes for winter travel were almost universal outside of the Pacific 
and Arctic coasts.” They varied in shape from tribe to tribe, the 
Cree and some of their neighbours preferring broad oval forms, 
whereas the northern and Cordillera Indians made them narrower 
and more pointed. Since the w^ebbing of an ordinary snow-shoe 
becomes matted with slush when the temperature rises above the 
freezing point, the Indians of Little Whale river, on the east coast 
of Hudson bay, occasionally made a form without webbing by join- 
ing together two pieces of board. These wooden shoes suggest 
skis, but they were flat in front, not upturned, and being also too 
broad and short to glide over the surface of the snow, needed to be 
lifted at every step like the ordinary snow-shoe. The true ski was not 
known in America, although the toboggan may perhaps be considered 
a double or multiple ski adapted for transport. 
The sled was restricted to the Eskimo, and to neighbouring 
tribes like the Kutchin who followed their example. The usual form 
had no handle-bars, but consisted merely of two heavy wooden run- 
ners bound together by crossbars of wood or bone. The runners 
were shod with bone plates or with frozen turf (sometimes both), 
which were coated with water or blood before each day’s march to 
produce an icy film that offered little friction against the snow. 
Eastern and northern Canada substituted the toboggan for the 
sled, but the plains’ and British Columbia natives had neither. It is 
true that both the plains’ and the Cordillera Indians, like other 
tribes, occasionally used a large hide after the manner of a toboggan, 
lashing their goods inside it to be dragged by women or dogs; but 
they never made the real toboggan of long, slender planks, lashed 
side by side and turned up at the front, that was the typical vehicle 
1 “Jesuit Relations ” vfil. vii, pp. 109-111. 
2 They were used, however, by the Eskimo from Mackenzie River delta westward. 
Turner, L. il.: "Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory”; Eleventh Ann. 
Rept., Bur. Am. Etlin., 1889-90, p. 312 (Washington, 1894). Even to-day the Algonkins on some of 
the rivers tributary to the Ottawa use a wooden snow-shoe, made from a single board cut to the 
shape of the ordinary webbed shoe. 
