CHAPTER IV

WITH BRUTES
[1890-1900]

F COURSE, with the number of posts under
aes it would not have been practical for Father
Morice to hold missions, or revivals, in every
little village. The natives of a region would generally
congregate in one of the chief places blessed with a
sufficiently large church, and there benefit by the
ministrations of the priest. Such were, south of
Stuart Lake, Natléh, the village near Fort Fraser,
where he repaired three times a year; Fort George,
which he visited twice during the same lapse of time,
and Stony Creek, the inhabitants of which gathered
every fall at Fraser Lake, where they improved their
opportunity to make their yearly provision of salmon.
Salmon was then, and remained some time after,
the staple food, the daily bread, of both Carriers and
Babines, while the Sékanais, either from sheer neces-
sity or from tribal dislike, despised fish and lived on
venison. Solid weirs were made to bar off the outlets
of those lakes to which salmon were going to spawn,
and the fish was caught every morning by the thousand
through traps connected with openings in the weir,
whereto the former had access but wherefrom there
was no escape.

The women would cut the fish open in such a way
as to produce four thin slices, which were spread out
and exposed to the action of air and smoke. After which
the whole stock, which to the Indian represented the
year’s harvest, was housed in aerial caches to which

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