We are to make the acquaintance of other Northern delicacies,—­beaver-tails, moose-nose, rabbits’ kidneys, caribou-tongues, and the liver of the loche, an ugly-looking fish of these waters.  But the whitefish remains the staple; the fish-harvest here is as important a season as Harvest Home elsewhere.  At the fishery, whitefish are hung upon sticks across a permanent staging to dry and freeze; an inch-thick stick is pierced through the tail, and the fish hang head downwards in groups of ten.  This process makes the flesh firmer if the days continue cool, but if the weather turns mild as the fish are hanging they acquire both a flavour and a smell exceedingly gamy.  This is the “Fall Fishery.”  Winter fishing is done through holes in the ice, the net being spread by means of a long thin pole.  The handling of net and fish is terrible work in the bitter cold.

As a whole, Canadian Indians are more independent than those of the United States, and certainly they have been more fairly dealt with in Canada than in the sister Republic.  There is in the Dominion to-day an Indian population of 110,000.  The amount expended last year by Canada from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for her Indian Department was $1,358,254.  The Canadian Government has sedulously kept faith with its Indians and has refrained from pauperizing them by pap-feeding or ration-folly; very largely to-day the Canadian Indian plays the game off his own bat.

Into the sturdy and intelligent faces of the Fond du Lac Indian we look, seeking in vain any trace of “the wild Red Man.”  The raison d’etre of these annual “treaty-payment parties” is merely the acknowledgment on one side and the recognition on the other that the Northern Indian is a British subject protected by and amenable to British law.  In addition to the present of five dollars per head each year, the Canadian Government sends in by the Indian Agent presents of fishing twine and ammunition, with eleemosynary bacon for the indigent and old.  The chiefs strut around in official coats enriched with yellow braid, wearing medals as big as dinner-plates.

From Edmonton northward to Fort Chipewyan the Indians are all Crees.  At Fort Chipewyan the northern limit of the Crees impinges on the southern limit of the Chipewyan, but here at Fond du Lac the Indians are all true Chipewyans.  The Chipewyan wife is the New Red Woman.  We see in her the essential head of the household.  No fur is sold to the trader, no yard or pound of goods bought, without her expressed consent.  Indeed, the traders refuse to make a bargain of any kind with a Chipewyan man without the active approbation of the wife.  When a Chipewyan family moves camp, it is Mrs. Chipewyan who directs the line of march.  How did she happen to break away from the bonds that limit and restrain most Red brides?  This is the question that has troubled ethnologists since the North was first invaded by the, scientific.  We think we have found the answer.