| PAGE | ||
|---|---|---|
| [CHAPTER I] | The Country and its People | [9] |
| [CHAPTER II] | Some Occupations of Indian Tribes | [16] |
| [CHAPTER III] | Social Life among Indian Tribes | [22] |
| [CHAPTER IV] | The Social Life of the Eskimo | [28] |
| [CHAPTER V] | The Eskimo as a Hunter | [36] |
| [CHAPTER VI] | Tales told by the Eskimo | [52] |
NATIVE TRIBES OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
CHAPTER I
The Country and its People
The “Old World” was startled in 1493 by the great navigator Columbus, who returned with wonderful narratives concerning the “New World” of North America, whose native population he called “Indians” because, strange as it may seem to us, he thought that by sailing west he must come to the land of India. At the present day scientists are at a loss to account for the origin of Eskimo and North American Indian tribes; sometimes the former are connected with the European cave dwellers, who did such beautiful work in bone and ivory toward the end of the old Stone Age. Whatever may have been the origin of countless numbers of Indians, comprising hundreds of tribes, we may be certain that they had inhabited the continent from a very remote period, for in very deep old layers of soil one may find stone axes and arrowheads, which are side by side with human remains and the bones of extinct species of the horse.
Not one little book, but many large ones, would be required in order to give an account of all the Eskimo and Indian tribes of British North America, to say nothing of the vast numbers of tribes watched over by the United States. So we shall have to content ourselves with a glimpse at the lives of a few tribes inhabiting country which lies between the extreme north of North America and a boundary line passing from the south of Vancouver Island through the Great Lakes, to the south of the St. Lawrence estuary.
Eskimo tribes on the west coast of Greenland are under Danish rule, while Eskimo and Indian people of Alaska are subject to control by the U.S.A. Hence we shall concern ourselves chiefly with the “Central” Eskimo of Hudson Bay, Baffin Land, Davis Strait, and Labrador; while with regard to Indian tribes we may select just a few of those which lie wholly, or to some great extent, within British territory.