We arrived at Fort Providence and found our stores safe and in good order.  There being no certainty when the Indian who was to accompany me to our house would arrive, and my impatience to join my companions increasing as I approached it, after making the necessary arrangements with Mr. Weeks respecting our stores, on March the 10th I quitted the fort with two of our men who had each a couple of dogs and a sledge laden with provision.  On the 13th we met the Indian near Icy Portage who was sent to guide me back.  On the 14th we killed a deer and gave the dogs a good feed; and on the 17th at an early hour we arrived at Fort Enterprise, having travelled about eighteen miles a day.  I had the pleasure of meeting my friends all in good health after an absence of nearly five months, during which time I had travelled one thousand one hundred and four miles on snowshoes, and had no other covering at night in the woods than a blanket and deer-skin with the thermometer frequently at minus 40 degrees and once at minus 57 degrees, and sometimes passing two or three days without tasting food.

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CHAPTER 9.

CONTINUATION OF PROCEEDINGS AT FORT ENTERPRISE.  SOME ACCOUNT OF THE COPPER INDIANS.  PREPARATIONS FOR THE JOURNEY TO THE NORTHWARD.

CONTINUATION OF PROCEEDINGS AT FORT ENTERPRISE.  SOME ACCOUNT OF THE COPPER INDIANS.

March 18, 1821.

I shall now give a brief account of the Copper Indians termed by the Chipewyans Tantsawhotdinneh, or Birch-rind Indians.  They were originally a tribe of the Chipewyans and, according to their own account, inhabited the south side of Great Slave Lake at no very distant period.  Their language, traditions, and customs, are essentially the same with those of the Chipewyans but in personal character they have greatly the advantage of that people, owing probably to local causes or perhaps to their procuring their food more easily and in greater abundance.  They hold women in the same low estimation as the Chipewyans do, looking upon them as a kind of property which the stronger may take from the weaker whenever there is just reason for quarrelling, if the parties are of their own nation, or whenever they meet if the weaker party are Dog-Ribs or other strangers.  They suffer however the kinder affections to show themselves occasionally; they in general live happily with their wives, the women are contented with their lot, and we witnessed several instances of strong attachment.  Of their kindness to strangers we are fully qualified to speak; their love of property, attention to their interests, and fears for the future made them occasionally clamorous and unsteady; but their delicate and humane attention to us in a season of great distress at a future period are indelibly engraven on our memories.  Of their notions of a Deity or future state we never could obtain any satisfactory account; they were unwilling perhaps to expose their opinions to the chance of ridicule.  Akaitcho generally evaded our questions on these points but expressed a desire to learn from us and regularly attended Divine Service during his residence at the fort, behaving with the utmost decorum.