Great mountains approached
near to the west of their course. They appeared to be sprinkled with
white stones, called by the natives "spirit stones"--indeed over a
great part of North America the Rocky Mountains were called "the
Mountains of Bright Stones"--yet these brilliant patches were nothing
more wonderful than unmelted snow.
A few days later the party encountered Amerindians of the Slave and
Dog-rib tribes, who were so aloof from even "Indian" civilization that
they did not know the use of tobacco, and were still in the Stone Age
as regards their weapons and implements. These people, though they
furnished a guide, foretold disaster and famine to the expedition, and
greatly exaggerated the obstacles which would be met with--rapids near
the entrance of the tributary from Great Bear Lake--before the salt
water was reached.
The canoes of these Slave and Dog-rib tribes of the Athapaskan (Tinne)
group were covered, not with birch bark, but with the bark of the
spruce fir.
The lodges of the Slave Indians were of very simple structure: a few
poles supported by a fork and forming a semicircle at the bottom, with
some branches or a piece of bark as a covering. They built two of
these huts facing each other, and made a fire between them. The
furniture consisted of a few dishes of wood, bark, or horn. The
vessels in which they cooked their victuals were in the shape of a
gourd, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and made of _watape_.
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