If this mock modesty worked for morality one might well accept it, but the old folks say that it operates quite the other way. It has at all events put an end to any possibility of them taking a bath.
Maybe as a consequence, but of this I am not sure, none of these Indians swim. A large canoe-load upset in crossing Great Slave Lake a month after we arrived and all were drowned.
Like most men who lead physical lives, and like all meat-eating savages, these are possessed of a natural proneness toward strong drink.
An interesting two-edged boomerang illustration of this was given by an unscrupulous whiskey trader. While travelling across country he ran short of provisions but fortunately came to a Chipewyan lodge. At first its owner had no meat to spare, but when he found that the visitor had a flask of whiskey he offered for it a large piece of Moose meat; when this was refused he doubled the amount, and after another refusal added some valuable furs and more meat till one hundred dollars worth was piled up.
Again the answer was "no."
Then did that Indian offer the lodge and everything he had in it, including his wife. But the trader was obdurate.
"Why didn't you take it," said the friend whom he told of the affair; "the stuff would have netted five hundred dollars, and all for one flask of whiskey."
"Not much," said the trader, "it was my last flask I wouldn't 'a' had a drop for myself. But it just shows, how fond these Indians are of whiskey."
While some of the Chipewyans show fine physique, and many do great feats of strength and endurance, they seem on the whole inferior to whites.
Thus the strongest portager on the river is said to be Billy Loutit's brother George. At Athabaska Landing I was shown a house on a hill, half a mile away, to which he had carried on his back 450 pounds of flour without stopping. Some said it was only 350 pounds, but none made it less. As George is only three-quarters white, this is perhaps not a case in point. But during our stay at Fort Smith we had several athletic meets of Indians and whites, the latter represented by Preble and the police boys, and no matter whether in running, walking, high jumping, broad jumping, wrestling, or boxing, the whites were ahead.