158 
of cooking his own meals except in the hunting field. ^ Similarly, 
few women accompanied their husbands to the chase except as on- 
lookers or to participate in a drive. Each sex had its own duties 
which it performed without question. Close companionship 
developed a mutual affection between husband and wife that 
increased with the birth of children, of whom all Indians were 
extremely fond; and the inferior status of women seems to have been 
no obstacle to happy family life. The natives were probably just 
as industrious as Europeans, although their mode of life was different 
and periods of intense activity alternated more frequently with 
days of comparative idleness. 
These days of idleness gave op]K)rtunity for many distractions 
and amusements. Some games were restricted to men, some to 
women, and in a few both sexes participated. Prominent among the 
amusements of men were athletic contests such as wrestling, running 
(horse-racing on the plains in more recent times), archery, hoop and 
stick, and a peculiar form of spear-tlirowing called snow-snake, 
practised in winter on the snow. Lacrosse, now so popular in 
America, had its home in the eastern section of the continent from 
Hudson bay to the gulf of Alexico, and the Micmac and Malecite 
Indians of the Maritime Provinces played an indigenous form of 
football. The Eskimo also enjoyed football, played in a slightly 
different way, and by women as strenuously as by men. Otlier ball 
games such as shinny were mainly women’s pastimes, though played 
occasionally by men or by men and women together in certain tribes. 
For indoor amusement there were quieter pastimes like juggling, cat’s 
cradle, and the ring-aiul-pin game. 
More popular than any of these distractions were games of chance 
or guessing that appealed to the gambling instincts of the natives. 
Mackenzie thus describes the dice game that was prevalent all over 
eastern Canada; “The instruments of it consist of a platter or dish 
made of wood or bark and six round or s(iuare but flat pieces of metal, 
wood, or stone, whose sides or surfaces are of different colours. These 
are put into the dish, and after being for some time shaken together 
are thrown into the air and received again in the dish with consider- 
able dexterity, when by the number that are turned up of the same 
mark or colour the game is regulated. If theie shoidrl be equal 
1 The Kutchin of tlie upper Yukon river wore an exception; they allotted the cooking to the men. 
