NORTHERN INTERIOR OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

that he was the man especially wanted by the southerners
He therefore hastened to rejoin his friends in the lower
encampment.

Doubtful of their ability to resist the aggressors, the
members of that party decided to move up and join the
other two allied bands. But a heavy snow-storm came on,
which caused a slight postponement cf their departure.
This delay sealed their fate. All of a sudden, a great
outcry was raised on the top of the bank, and, before the
Stuart Lake people could take in the situation, arrows
were whizzing about, spears flying in all directions, and
war-clubs stunning right and left, amidst the most hideous
yells and vociferations of the attacking party. Two
tenezas, or headmen, were among the assailed. Both of
them were slain and mutilated, as well as other less con-
spicuous members of the band, while most of the women
the Naskhu’tins could lay hands on were taken prisoners
and enslaved. As to Tsalekulhyé, the involuntary cause
of the disaster, he took to the water, and was on the point
of escaping, when he was recognized, killed and horribly
mutilated.

Such had been the swiftness of the enemy’s movements,
and the consequent confusion of the assailed, that the former
had but two persons wounded during the whole affray.

Among Tsalekulhyé’s relatives present on the spot were
four brothers, the youngest but one of whom, a lad of
possibly fifteen summers, named Nathadilhthcelh, succeeded
in swimming across the river, loaded, at first, with a sister
and a brother only a few years old, whom, to save himself
and sister, he had to let go and condemn toa watery grave.
He is the same whom we will see called MWat-de-gorge in
the old Hudson’s Bay Company journals. Both his elder
brothers were killed before his own eyes, and, while he bade
his sister run as fast as her legs would carry her along the

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