MENTAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS. 115

“that, notwithstanding the frequent violations of the rights of property they
witnessed among the traders, and but too often experienced in their own
persons, they scrupulously avoided committing a single theft. To so great a
degree of self-denial do they carry this principle even to the present time,
that they will rather fast several days than consume a particle of provision
which does not belong to them, even where there exists a certainty of re-
placing it. We had proof of this strict probity at Fort Reliance, both at regards
the Chipewyan and Copper Indians, who were starved to the number of fifty
with abundance of provision within their reach. Nor was this the effect of
conscious weakness, since their number exceeded two hundred, while our
whole force at that time consisted of a dozen individuals only”!

Finally, I may perhaps be permitted to reproduce here what I wrote in
another work concerning the Sékanais. “Parmi eux, un traiteur de fourrures
pourra quelquefois aller tendre ou visiter ses piéges et ses collets, laissant
son magasin ouvert sans craindre le moins du monde pour ses marchandises.
Entre temps, un chasseur indigéne viendra peut-étre s’approvisionner de ce
dont il aura besoin 4 méme le stock du traiteur absent; mais il ne manquera
jamais ou bien d’en avertir le propriétaire 4 son retour, ou bien d’y laisser
un €quivalent exact en pelleteries’’?.

I know also of a Nahanais who, after having painfully trodden a
distance of about twelve miles along a rough forest trail, scrupulously
retraced his steps on perceiving that he had been given a bunch of matches
over and above what he had paid for at the trading post. I cannot help
wondering what the white man then thought of his own boasted civilization
compared with the primitive simplicity which prompted an act entailing
such personal inconvenience, in order that restitution might be made of an
article hardly worth more than a few cents, and which had not been stolen.

Scinduntur Doctores.

And yet, as all rules suffer exceptions, or indeed perhaps on account
of that diversity of appreciations based on different circumstances and too
hasty judgments to which I have already referred, we should probably add
a slight shadow to this picture of the Dénés’ honesty. According to Thomas
Simpson, the Loucheux, whom he describes as “distinguished from every
other Indian tribe with which we are acquainted by the frankness and candour
of their demeanour’*®, demanded and received for several years a gift or
“blood-money” from the Eskimos on account of a fellow tribesman whom
they claimed to have died of wounds resulting from a previous encounter

1 “Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Arctic Ocean”, vol. II, pp. 35—36.
London, 1836.
® Au Pays de l’Ours Noir, pp. 115—16.
* “Narrative of the Discoveries’, p. 100.