, and numerous
other articles, as well as too often for the pernicious fire-water, to
obtain even small quantities of which they will frequently dispose of
the skins which it has cost them many weeks to obtain with much hardship
and danger. These Wood Indians are peaceably-disposed, and can always
escape the attacks of their enemies of the prairies by retreating among
their forest or lake fastnesses. They obtain their game by various
devices, sometimes using traps of ingenious construction, or shooting
the creatures with bows and arrows, and of later years with firearms.
They spear the fish which abound in their waters, or catch them with
scoop and other nets. Although their ordinary wigwams are of the shape
already described, some are considerably larger, somewhat of a bee-hive
form, covered thickly with birch-bark, and have a raised dais in the
interior capable of holding a considerable number of people. The
best-known of these Forest Indians are the Chippeways, who range from
the banks of Lake Huron almost to the Rocky Mountains, throughout the
British territory.

THE PRAIRIE INDIANS.

To the south of the tribes already mentioned, are the large family of
the Dakotahs, who number among them the Sioux, Assiniboines, and
Blackfeet, and are the hereditary enemies of the Chippeways, especially
of their nearer neighbours, the Crees and Ojibbeways. These Dakotahs
occupy the open prairie country to the south of the Saskatchewan, and
are the most northern of the Prairie Indians. In summer, they wear
little or no clothing; and possessing numerous horses, hunt the
buffaloes, or rather bisons, on horseback, armed with spears and bows
and arrows. They are fiercer and more warlike than their northern
neighbours, and have long set the whites at defiance. The buffalo
supplies them with their chief support. The flesh of the animal dried
in the sun, or pounded with its fat into pemmican, is their chief
article of food; while its skin serves as a covering for their tents, a
couch at night, or for clothing by day, and is manufactured into bags
for carrying their provisions, and numerous other articles. Physically,
they are superior to the Wood Indians. They are both hunters and
warriors; and though they may occasionally exchange the buffalo robes--
as the skins are called--for firearms; they seldom employ themselves as
trappers, or attend to the cultivation of the ground.

The greater number of the tribes further to the so