214 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

only fifty-five years ago Richardson expressly declared that “when to fur
traders first penetrated to the Elk River, the Athabascans had only a small
breed of dogs useful for the chase, but unfitted for draught; and the women
did the laborious work of dragging the sledges?”’.

As to the make up of these sledges, it has little changed since Hearne’s
time. Owing to the fact that the boards of which they almost entirely consist
were originally made with no other tool than a knife, they hardly ever exceeded
five or six inches in width, rendering two, sometimes three, of them necessary.
Nowadays the Déné sleighs are never made of more than two planks, and
often one suffices.

Nothing simpler, it would seem, than the composition of these vehicles.
Yet their construction demands some skill on the part of the workman. In the
first place, it must be understood that, in order to prevent the possibility of
friction with the frozen surface with which the toboggan is constantly brought
in contact, not a nail enters into its make up. Babiche lines or leather thongs
take their place, and the birch or larch boards are literally sewed together
with that material, while several cross-bars are similarly secured on the upper
side of the same. These bars serve at the same time to strengthen the vehicle
and to fasten the ground-lashing to which the load is tied by means of other
strips of leather.

Nor should we forget that, with a view to lessening all obstacles to
easy traction, all the babiche stitches in the ground boards must be made so
that they will not go through, thus leaving a perfectly smooth surface under-
neath. And then there is a certain knack of bending properly the forepart,
so that the carriage will not dive into light snow, but, on the contrary, slide
over the inequalities of the trail and the many hard snowdrifts encountered
on the open plains and Barren Grounds.

Sam. Hearne states that the women-sledges were not less than twelve
or fourteen feet long, and sixteen inches wide in his time. It would seem that
the modern Dénés are more considerate for the welfare of their dogs than
their fathers were for that of their women. For — in the west at least — few
toboggans are now more than ten feet long. The thickness of the planks has
remained the same: slightly over a quarter of an inch. But they are hardly
ever more than twelve inches wide.

Modern Sledges and Sleighing.

These sledges are now drawn by three or four dogs, harnessed in single
file, by means of leather collars filled with hay or other material and a moose
skin band which, passing over the back, holds up the traces, while another
under the breast prevents — not always successfully — the dog from escaping.

' The late Dr. Brinton, for one, does not seem to have been aware of this fact when he
wrote of the dog: “he aided somewhat in hunting, and in the north as an animal of draft”
(“The American Race’, p. 51).