ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 127

Its economic importance was not so marked among the northern Dénés,
and only a few stragglers ever crossed the Rocky Mountains to the westward.
Hearne describes it as very plentiful around Lake Athabasca in 1772, and in
1789 Mackenzie wrote that on both sides of the Horn Mountain, by about
62° N. lat., “there are very extensive plains which abound in buffaloes and
moose deer.” Nay, J. B. Tyrrell expressly states that some used to stay as
far north along the Mackenzie River as lat. 6492.

Everybody is familiar with the tremendously large number of their herds,
when the great American prairies literally trembled under the thumping of
‘their hoofs and the whole horizon seemed to be obscured by their mane
encompassed heads and humps. In January 1821, the Rev. J. West had at one
time not less than 10.000 in his sight between Qu’Appelle and the Red River,
and he had not been on the look-out for any®. But such was the telling effect
of fire-arms on their numbers that, as early as 1858, Father De Smet wrote
that, though not yet extinct in Kansas, they were becoming quite rare across
the plains of that State+. All naturalists know the rest. Needless to insist on
the now practically total extinction of that noble animal. Our illustration
representing a corner of the Canadian prairies strewn with their bones® will
also tell of the effectiveness of native ingenuity in this connection.

Some sort of a survivor is now occasionally found in the woodland
buffalo or bison (Bison athabascw, Rhoads), a few bands of which live in
secluded spots within the country bounded by the Peace, Slave and Buffalo
Rivers. C. Whitney estimates their present numbers at between 150 and 300
head®. In its retirement this buffalo has grown more rounded in form than
its plain congener, and, as if to suit the special climatic conditions of its
present existence, a kind Providence has provided it with a thicker and
darker robe.

Smaller Game.

But we must not tarry too long on the buffalo considered as a factor
in the economics of the Dénés. It is but fair to remark that it never attained
in their estimation half the importance acquired by the reindeer. We have
now hardly space left us to more than enumerate the minor specimens of
venison game, whence our aborigines derived their food and raiment, and
which they still hunt with the same perseverance to this day.

These are: the common mountain sheep (Ovis montana, Cuv.), Dall’s
mountain sheep (O. Dallii, Nelson), the mountain goat (Capra americana,

' Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 222.

2 “Catalogue of the Mammalia of Canada”. Proc. Can. Inst., vol. VI, p. 70.

° “The Substance of a Journal’, p. 41.

+ «New Indian Sketches”, p. 76.

° See chapter on Hunting.

6 “Qn Snow-Shoes to the Barren Grounds”, p. 117. London, 1896. That author opines
for the first number, a circumstance which shows the extreme scarcity of that animal.