bustle of attending enterprise and trade.

Chapter II

Lesser Slave River And Lesser Slave Lake.

It is unnecessary to inform the average reader that the Lesser
Slave River connects the Lesser Slave Lake with the Athabasca;
any atlas will satisfy him upon that point. But its peculiar
colouring he will not find there, and it is this which gives
the river its most distinctive character. Once seen, it is easy
to account for the hue of the Athabasca below the Lesser Slave
River; for the water of the latter, though of a pale yellow colour
in a glass, is of a rich burnt umber in the stream, and when blown
upon by the wind turns its sparkling facets to the sun like the
smile upon the cheek of a brunette. Its upward course is like
a continuous letter S with occasional S's side by side, so that
a point can be crossed on foot in a few minutes which would
cost much time to go around. Its proper name, too, is not to
be found in the atlases, either English or French. There it
is called the Lesser Slave River, but in the classic Cree its
name is Iyaghchi Eennu Sepe, or the River of the Blackfeet,
literally the "River of the Strange People." The lake itself
bears the same name, and even now is never called Slave Lake
by the Indians in their own tongue. This fact, to my mind,
casts additional light upon an obscure prehistoric question,
namely, the migration of the great Algic, or Algonquin, race.
Its early home was, perhaps, in the far south, or south-west,
whence it migrated around the Gulf of Florida, and eastward
along the Atlantic coast, spreading up its bays and inlets,
and along its great tributary rivers, finally penetrating by
the Upper Ottawa to James's, and ultimately to the shores of
Hudson Bay. I know there is strong adverse opinion as to the
starting-point of this migration, and I only offer my own as
a suggestion based upon the facts stated, and as, therefore,
worthy of consideration. Sir Alexander Mackenzie speaks of the
Blackfeet "travelling north-westward," and that the Crees were
"invaders of the Saskatchewan from the eastward." Indeed, he says
the latter were called by the Hudson's Bay Company's officers at
York Factory "their home-guards." One thing seems certain, viz.,
that the Crees got their firearms from the English at Hudson
Bay in the 17th century. Thence that great tribe, called by
themselves the Naheowuk, but by the Ojibway Saulteaux the
Kinistineaux, and by the voyageurs Christineaux, or, more