130 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

less certain that on two occasions those he saw thus attacked stood in a con-
fused mass, shifting their positions to make an occasional lunge at a too
impetuous dog.

Despite the general belief of the Indians, Whitney doubts that a musk-ox
ever charges man, and Pike covertly sneers at what he evidently deems the
unfounded fears of his native companions. My own experience in analogous
fields is that the Indians are past masters in the art of reading nature’s book,
whether its subject be the animate or the inanimate kingdom. In his ‘‘Narra-
tive of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage”, Sir John Ross
depicts a musk-ox charging him, and, in explanation, he writes in his text
that the animal “made a sudden dart at us... We avoided the attack, by
dodging behind a large stone which was luckily near us; on which, rushing
with all its force, it struck its head so violently, that it fell to the ground
with such a crash that the hard ground around us fairly echoed to the sound”’.
Which goes to prove that, not only does the musk-ox know how to charge,
but there is even considerably of the ram instinct in him. It is not there-
fore without reason that Richardson calls it a “redoubtable animal’’?.

Feathered Game.

Feathered game is fairly plentiful in the north and at times exceedingly
abundant. Prominent among the permanent class are at least four kinds of
grouse, partridges or chickens, and two species of ptarmigans, mountain birds
whose plumage, naturally gray with white spots, turns entirely white in winter.
As I am not writing a catalogue of the pennated fauna of North America, |
must be excused from entering into more details, or even simply enumerating
the various species of wild fowls which contribute towards the sustenance of
the Déné.

In the south the Navahoes and the Apaches have the wild turkey (Me-
leagris americana), which they have known for centuries and which the former
even claim to have formerly kept in a semi-domesticated state, though they
now abstain from eating its flesh®. According to Washington Matthews they
extend that sort of taboo to all aquatic birds, such as geese or ducks‘.

Their northern kinsmen are not so exclusive. Indeed they cannot afford
to be so, especially as water-fowl swarm in their country at a time when other
alimentary resources fail them. Furthermore, owing to their migratory habits,
these birds stay seldom more than a month in any place, except north of the
57th. degree of N. latitude, in the chosen spots where they have their chief
breeding grounds. Among these are considerably more than a dozen species

* Op. cit., p. 350.

? Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 323.

’ “Navaho Legends”, p. 244.

4 “Ichthyophobia”, in Journal of Amer. Folk-Lore, p. 1906.