.
There was a great want of provision this season, and both the Companies
had much difficulty to provide a bare sufficiency, for their different
brigades of canoes. Mr. Smith assured me that after the canoes had been
despatched he had only five hundred pounds of meat remaining for the use
of the men who might travel from the post during the summer, and that
five years preceding, there had been thirty thousand pounds in store
under similar circumstances. He ascribed this amazing difference more to
the indolent habits which the Indians had acquired since the commercial
struggle commenced, than to their recent sickness, mentioning in
confirmation of his opinion that they could now, by the produce of
little exertion, obtain whatever they demanded from either
establishment.

At the opening of the water in spring, the Indians resort to the
establishments to settle their accounts with the traders, and to procure
the necessaries they require for the summer. This meeting is generally a
scene of much riot and confusion, as the hunters receive such quantities
of spirits as to keep them in a state of intoxication for several days.
This spring, however, owing to the great deficiency of spirits, we had
the gratification of seeing them generally sober. They belong to the
great family of the Chipewyan, or Northern, Indians; dialects of their
language being spoken in the Peace, and Mackenzie's Rivers, and by the
populous tribes in New Caledonia, as ascertained by Sir Alexander
Mackenzie in his journey to the Pacific. They style themselves generally
_Dinneh_ men, or Indians, but each tribe, or horde, adds some
distinctive epithet taken from the name of the river, or lake, on which
they hunt, or the district from which they last migrated. Those who come
to Fort Chipewyan term themselves Saw-eessaw-dinneh, (Indians from the
rising sun, or Eastern Indians,) their original hunting grounds being
between the Athabasca, and Great Slave Lakes, and Churchill River. This
district, more particularly termed the Chipewyan lands, or _barren
country_, is frequented by numerous herds of rein-deer, which furnish
easy subsistence, and clothing to the Indians; but the traders endeavour
to keep them in the parts to the westward where the beavers resort.
There are about one hundred and sixty hunters who carry their furs to
the Great Slave Lake, forty to Hay River, and two hundred and forty to
Fort Chipewyan. A few Northern Indians also resort to the posts at