nent animal
in Amerindian economy and tradition. This they took in springes. From
its skin they made coverings with much ingenuity, cutting it into
narrow strips and weaving this into the shape of a blanket, which was
of a very warm and agreeable quality.

The Naskwapi Algonkins of inland Labrador were savages that led a
wandering life through the bare, flat parts of that country,
subsisting chiefly upon flesh, and clothing themselves with the skin
of the caribou, which they caught in pitfalls or shot with the bow
and arrow. "Very few sights, I believe, can be more distressing to the
feelings of humanity than a Labrador savage, surrounded by his wife
and five or six small children, half-famished with cold and hunger in
a hole dug out of the snow and screened from the inclemency of the
weather by the branches of the trees. Their whole furniture is a
kettle hung over the fire, not for the purpose of cooking victuals,
but for melting snow" (James M'Kenzie).

A description of the tents of the Kris or Knistino (Algonkins of the
Athabaska region), written by Alexander Henry, sen., applies with very
little difference to all the other tribes dwelling to the east of the
Rocky Mountains.[11]

[Footnote 11: See also p. 249.]

These tents were of dressed leather, erected with poles, generally
seventeen in number, of which two were tied together about three feet
from the top. The first two poles being erected and set apart at the
base, the others were placed against them in a slanting position,
meeting at the top, so that they all formed nearly a circle, which was
then covered with the leather. This consisted of ten to fifteen
dressed skins of the bison, moose, or red deer, well sewed together
and nicely cut to fit the conical figure of the poles, with an opening
above, to let out smoke and admit the light. From this opening down to
the door the two edges of the tent were brought close together and
well secured with wooden pegs about six inches long, leaving for the
door an oval aperture about two feet wide and three feet high, below
which the edges were secured with similar pegs. This small entrance
did well enough for the natives, who would be brought up to it from
infancy, but a European might be puzzled to get through, as a piece of
hide stretched upon a frame of the same shape as the door, but
somewhat larger, hung outside, and must be first raised by the hand of
the incomer.

Such tents were usually spacious, measuring