Even the goose, though so simple a bird, is notoriously known to forsake her eggs, if they are breathed on by the Indians.
The smaller species of birds which make their nest in the ground, are by no means so delicate, of course less care is necessary to snare them. It has been observed that all birds which build in the ground go into their nest at one particular side, and out of it on the opposite. The Indians, thoroughly convinced of this, always set the snares on the side on which the bird enters the nest; and if care be taken in setting them, seldom fail of seizing their object. For small birds, such as larks, and many others of equal size, the Indians only use two or three hairs out of their head; but for larger birds, particularly swans, geese, and ducks, they make snares of deer-sinews, twisted like packthread, and occasionally of a small thong cut from a parchment deer-skin.
[BJ] The Indians, both Northern and Southern, have found by experience, that by boiling the pesogan in water for a considerable time, the texture is so much improved, that when thoroughly dried, some parts of it will be nearly as soft as spunge.
Some of those funguses are as large as a man's head; the outside, which is very hard and black, and much indented with deep cracks, being of no use, is always chopped off with a hatchet. Besides the two sorts of touchwood already mentioned, there is another kind of it in those parts, that I think is infinitely preferable to either. This is found in old decayed poplars, and lies in flakes of various sizes and thickness; some is not thicker than shammoy leather, others are as thick as a shoe-sole. This, like the fungus of the birch-tree, is always moist when taken from the tree, but when dry, it is very soft and flexible, and takes fire readily from the spark of a steel; but it is much improved by being kept dry in a bag that has contained gunpowder. It is rather surprising that the Indians, whose mode of life I have just been describing, have never acquired the method of making fire by friction, like the Esquimaux. It is also equally surprising that they do not make use of the skin-canoes. Probably deer-skins cannot be manufactured to withstand the water;[110] for it is well known that the Esquimaux use always seal-skins for that purpose, though they are in the habit of killing great numbers of deer.
[110] The Eskimos met with on the banks of the Kasan River in 1894 make their canoes entirely of deer-skin parchment.
[111] The positions of these two lakes are not exactly known, but they doubtless lie near the regular Indian canoe route from the north Bay of Lake Athabasca to Great Slave Lake. The latter lake lies fourteen miles W. or S.W. of Noo-shetht Lake.
[112] On Hearne's map the position of Noo-shetht Whoie or Newstheth tooy Lake in relation to the streams in the country is very indefinite, but on the Pennant map it is shown on a stream which flows northward into Great Slave Lake. In King's "Journey to the Shores of the Arctic Ocean," vol. ii. p. 289, a copy of an Indian map of a canoe route northward from Lake Athabasca is published. Most of this route is down the Copper Indian (Yellow Knife or Rock) River, which flows into Great Slave Lake a short distance east of the mouth of Slave River, and one of the lakes there shown is Tazennatooy or Muddy Water Lake, while another is Newstheth tooy, the lake here referred to.
[BK] Though I was a swift runner in those days, I never accompanied the Indians in one of those chaces, but have heard many of them say, that after a long one, the moose, when killed, did not produce more than a quart of blood, the remainder being all settled in the flesh; which, in that state, must be ten times worse tasted, than the spleen or milt of a bacon hog.
[113] Thee-lee-aza River is called Theetinah River (Blue Fish River?) on the Pennant map, and Petitot speaks of it as a tributary of T'ezus or Snowdrift River, which also empties into the south side of Great Slave Lake.
[114] The latitude of this lake had been determined by Hearne as 61° 30' north, as previously stated on p. 127, and he had placed it on his map in latitude 61° 15' north. In making the journey to the Coppermine River and back to the lake, he had occupied a little more than a year, having left it on April 18th, 1771, and returned to it on April 29th, 1772.