58 Mackenzie’s Voyages

wore long hair and beards, and others were closely cropped
with a single tress hanging down behind. The younger
men had removed all the hair from their faces by extraction.
Both sexes wore caribou-skin parkas, with leggings that
came halfway up the thighs, and moccasins, all very neatly
decorated with porcupine quills, and the hair of the moose,
coloured red, black, yellow and blue. Gorgets and bracelets
of wood and horn, belts, garters, and head-bands, the latter
embroidered with quills, and stuck round with the claws of
bears, were typical ornaments. “Their cinctures and garters
are formed of porcupine quills, woven with sinew in a style
of peculiar skill and neatness, to which are attached fringes
of leather strips, worked round with hair of various colours.
Their mittens are also suspended from the neck in a position
convenient for the reception of the hands.”

Their semicircular huts, built facing each other across a
fire, were in tepee style, the side facing the fire being open,
the back covering consisting of branches and pieces of
bark. Fishing-nets were observed to be from three to forty
fathoms in length and from thirteen to thirty-six inches in
depth. The bow and arrow, fishing-hooks, spears, daggers,
clubs, raw-hide snares, stone axes, and awls, were in general
use among them. Iron obtained in traffic from the Chipewyans
had been converted into knives. ‘Their canoes were of birch,
and so light that one man could easily carry one of them
overland. They were really one-man canoes, but capable
of holding two. From their information it appeared that
large bodies of Indians inhabited the mountains on the east
side of the river.

The tribesmen promised to await the return of the
expedition until the fall at this point, now known to the
world as the location of the Fort Norman oil wells. Soon
after embarking Great Bear Lake River was passed. Its