ter. Here the
unhappy wretch remains in solitude till the fuel and provisions are
exhausted, and then dies. Should the tribe be in their encampment when
an Indian dies, the deceased is buried, sometimes in the ground, and
sometimes in a rough wooden coffin raised a few feet above it. They do
not now bury guns, knives, etcetera, with their dead, as they once did,
probably owing to their intercourse with white men.

The Supreme Being among the Indians is called Manitou; but He can
scarcely be said to be worshipped by them, and the few ideas they have
of His attributes are imperfect and erroneous. Indeed, no religious
rites exist among them, unless the unmeaning mummery of the medicine
tent can be looked upon as such. Of late years, however, missionaries,
both of the Church of England and the Wesleyans, have exerted themselves
to spread the Christian religion among these tribes, than whom few
savages can be more unenlightened or morally degraded; and there is
reason to believe that the light of the gospel is now beginning to shine
upon them with beneficial influence.

There is no music in the soul of a Cree, and the only time they attempt
it is when gambling--of which they are passionately fond--when they sing
a kind of monotonous chant, accompanied with a noisy rattling on a tin
kettle. The celebrated war-dance is now no longer in existence among
this tribe. They have wisely renounced both war and its horrors long
ago. Among the wilder inhabitants of the prairies, however, it is still
in vogue, with all the dismal accompaniments of killing, scalping,
roasting, and torturing that distinguished American warfare a hundred
years ago.

The different methods by which the Indian succeeds in snaring and
trapping animals are numerous. A good idea of these may be had by
following an Indian in his rounds.

Suppose yourself, gentle reader, standing at the gate of one of the
forts in Hudson Bay, watching a savage arranging his snow-shoes,
preparatory to entering the gloomy forest. Let us walk with this Indian
on a visit to his traps.

The night is very dark, as the moon is hid by thick clouds, yet it
occasionally breaks out sufficiently to illumine our path to Stemaw's
wigwam, and to throw the shadows of the neighbouring trees upon the pale
snow, which _crunches_ under our feet as we advance, owing to the
intense cold. No wind breaks the stillness of the night, or shakes the
lumps of snow off the branches of the neigh