NORTH-WEST CONTINENT OF AMERICA:

I found two women employed in rolling up the dead body of a man,
called the White Partridge, in a beaver robe, which I had lent him. He
had received four mortal wounds from a dagger, two within the collar-
bone, one in the left breaft, and another in the {mall of the back, with two
cuts acrofs his head. The murderer, who had been my hunter through-
out the winter, had fled; and it was pretended that feveral relations
of the deceafed were gone in purfuit of him. The hiftory of this un-
fortunate event is as follows:—

Thefe two men had been comrades for four years; the murderer had
three wives; and the young man who was killed, becoming enamoured
of one of them, the hufband confented to yield her to him, with the
referved power of claiming her as his property, when it fhould be his
pleafure. This conneétion was uninterrupted for near three years, when,
whimlical as it may appear, the hufband became jealous, and the public
amour was fufpended. The parties, however, made their private aflig-
nations, which caufed the woman to be fo ill treated by her hufband, that
the paramour was determined to take her away by force; and this project
ended in his death. This is a very common practice among the Indians,
and generally terminates in very ferious and fatal quarrels. In confequence
of this event all the Indians went away in great apparent hurry and con-

fufion, and in the evening not one of them was to be feen about the fort.

The Beaver and Rocky Mountain Indians, who traded with us in this
river, did not exceed an hundred and fifty men, capable of bearing
arms; two thirds of whom call themfelves Beaver Indians. The latter
differ only from the former, as they have, more or le{s, imbibed the cuf-

U toms

PAS

1793-

ebruary.

Se an