importunity for everything they see.  I never saw men who either received or bestowed a gift with such bad grace; they almost snatch the thing from you in the one instance and throw it at you in the other.  It could not be expected that such men should display in their tents the amiable hospitality which prevails generally amongst the Indians of this country.  A stranger may go away hungry from their lodges unless he possess sufficient impudence to thrust uninvited his knife into the kettle and help himself.  The owner indeed never deigns to take any notice of such an act of rudeness except by a frown, it being beneath the dignity of a hunter to make disturbance about a piece of meat.

As some relief to the darker shades of their character it should be stated that instances of theft are extremely rare amongst them.  They profess strong affection for their children and some regard for their relations who are often numerous, as they trace very far the ties of consanguinity.  A curious instance of the former was mentioned to us and so well authenticated that I shall venture to give it in the words of Dr. Richardson’s Journal: 

A young Chipewyan had separated from the rest of his band for the purpose of trenching beaver when his wife, who was his sole companion and in her first pregnancy, was seized with the pains of labour.  She died on the third day after she had given birth to a boy.  The husband was inconsolable and vowed in his anguish never to take another woman to wife, but his grief was soon in some degree absorbed in anxiety for the fate of his infant son.  To preserve its life he descended to the office of nurse, so degrading in the eyes of a Chipewyan as partaking of the duties of a woman.  He swaddled it in soft moss, fed it with broth made from the flesh of the deer and, to still its cries, applied it to his breast, praying earnestly to the great Master of Life to assist his endeavours.  The force of the powerful passion by which he was actuated produced the same effect in his case as it has done in some others which are recorded:  a flow of milk actually took place from his breast.  He succeeded in rearing his child, taught him to be a hunter and, when he attained the age of manhood, chose him a wife from the tribe.  The old man kept his vow in never taking a second wife himself but he delighted in tending his son’s children and, when his daughter-in-law used to interfere, saying that it was not the occupation of a man, he was wont to reply that he had promised to the Great Master of Life, if his child were spared, never to be proud like the other Indians.  He used to mention too, as a certain proof of the approbation of Providence that, although he was always obliged to carry his child on his back while hunting, yet that it never roused a moose by its cries, being always particularly still at those times.  Our informant* added that he had often seen this Indian in his old age and that his left breast even then retained the unusual size it had acquired in his occupation of nurse.