393 
partial to fish, and depended for their main supply of food on the 
herds of barren-ground caribou, which they snared in pounds and 
speared in lakes after the manner of the Chipewyan and Yellowknife, 
Unlike tliese tribes, however, they were afraid to spend more than 
a few days at a time on the treeless barrens because of tlie lack of 
fuel, and in their brief incursions generally carried a supply of fire- 
wood. The net they used for fishing was not made of babiche, like 
the Chipewyan fishnet, but of willow bark, like the net of the Slave 
and Hare ; and thougli their usual dwelling was a conical, skin-covered 
tipi indistiguishable from the lodge of the Yellowknife or Chipew- 
yan, for winter they occasionally built rectangular huts of poles and 
brush, after the manner of the tribes along the Mackenzie river. They 
wore the usual costume of shirt, breech-cloth, leggings, and moccasins, 
but followed the practice of the Hare in separating the leggings from 
the moccasins. Like the Hare and Slave, again, they treated their 
wives with kindness, regardless of whether or not they had seized 
them from other men by wrestling; but they showed less consideration 
than the Slave for the aged and infirm, whom they often abandoned 
quite pitilessly to perish. 
In other Athai^askan tribes a man dropped his name only at the 
birtli of his first child (being known henceforward as the “ father of 
so and so ”) ; the Dogrib seem to have changed their names with 
each successive child. They made petty offerings to local spirits, 
especially to spirits supposed to haunt lakes and rapids, placed their 
main reliance on guardian s]Dirits acquired in dreams, and required 
their medicine-men to prophesy and to indict and cure diseases — 
traits that were common to all the northern Athapaskans. The 
scaffolds on which they deposited their dead carried streamers to 
amuse the shades of the deceased and retain them near their resting 
places; mourners, as usual, destroyed all or most of their property, 
and the women gashed themselves in token of their grief. A year 
after the funeral they uncovered the remains, renewed their death 
chants, and held a memorial feast. 
The present number of the Dogrib hardly exceeds 750. It may 
have reached 1,250 in pre-European times. ^ 
1 Mooney: Op. cit., p. 20. Petitot sa;\’.=; thaf 1,200 Doarili frerpiented Foft Pae in 18.50, bnt a 
strange epitlemic known as tlie "Fort Rae sickness” reduced their number to 788; Autotir du grand 
lac dos Ksclaves, [i. 180. 
86950-26.’, 
