Chapter Four.
War Prevails.
It would seem, at times, as if there were really some sort of spiritual communication between people whose physical frames are widely sundered.
For at the very time that the Eskimos, in their remote home on the ice-encumbered sea, were informally debating the propriety of making an unprovoked attack on the Dogrib Indians—whom they facetiously styled Fire-spouters—the red men were also holding a very formal and solemn council of war as to the advisability of making an assault on those presumptuous Eskimos, or eaters-of-raw-flesh, who ventured to pay an uncalled-for visit to the Greygoose River—their ancestral property—every spring.
One of their chiefs, named Nazinred, had just returned from a visit to the river, and reported having met and fought with one of the Eskimos.
Immediately on hearing this, the old or head chief summoned the council of war. The braves assembled in the council-tent in solemn dignity, each classically enveloped in his blanket or leathern robe, and inflated, more or less, with his own importance. They sat down silently round the council fire with as much gravity as if the fate of nations depended on their deliberations,—and so, on a small scale, it did.
After passing round the pipe—by way of brightening up their intellects—the old chief held forth his hand and began in a low voice and deliberate manner.
“My braves,” said he, “those filthy eaters-of-raw-flesh have, as you know, been in the habit of coming to Greygoose River every spring and trespassing on the borders of our hunting-grounds.”