MENTAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS. 117

men, the evenings and meal-times were usually made lively by their sallies
concerning the natives we had left, or the mimicking of some peculiarity
in the speech or garb of absent individuals. Hearne observes that this
joviality of his would-be morose Chippewayans does not leave them even in
times of prolonged fasting or great bodily exertion. Nay, the old explorer
goes even so far as to confess that “examples of this kind were of infinite
service to me, as they tended to keep up imy spirits on those occasions
with a degree of fortitude that would have been impossible for me to have
done had the Indians behaved in a contrary manner’”!.

Are they hospitable? No, declare Franklin and Richardson; yes, assert
Th. Simpson and John West. On behalf of the negative side Franklin writes:
“It could not be expected that such men should display in their tents
the amiable hospitality which prevails generally among the Indians of this
country. A stranger may go away hungry from their lodges, unless he possesses
sufficient impudence to-thrust, uninvited, his knife into the kettle, and help
himself#.” Richardson’s statement in this respect is so much like Franklin’s
that the former author must have had the latter’s book before him when he
wrote that “hospitality is not a virtue which is conspicuous among the Dog-
ribs.” He then reproduces in slightly different terms Franklin’s remark about
helping oneself uninvited, ending by the identical observation also recorded
by the latter that “the Tinné hold it to be mean to say much about a piece
of meat®.”

The above is in line with Dall’s statement concerning the easternmost
Loucheux that “avarice appears strongly in their characters*.”

On the other hand, the Rev. John West, a Church of England minister
who was a perfect stranger to the Indians he mentions, has the following in
his journal under date 17th July, 1823: “The next day we passed Cape
Churchill and came to a tent of Chipewyan or Northern Indians. The question
was not asked if we were hungry, but immediately on our arrival the women
were busily employed in cooking venison for us®.” Thomas Simpson, who
was not partial to the natives in general, has the same tale to tell. “These
| kind people were delighted to see us and offered us food’, he writes of the
Hare Indians he met®. When strangers, even whites who are supposed to be
more of a source of revenue than anything else, are thus treated by untutored
savages, it may be safely guessed that the first explorers I have quoted from
have not the entire truth on their side. Dr. King goes even so far as to
declare in an outburst of enthusiasm prompted by the treatment he received

* Op. cit., p. 70.

2 Op. cit., vol. Il, p. 52.

3 Op. cit., vol. Il, p. 18.

* «Travels on the Yukon’, p. 194.

* “The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, pp. 165—66.
2 OO, Oii, > Bile Pa