STILL PRE-EUROPEAN TIMES

In his second encounter with an adversary, fate was not
so favorable to him. About the year 1780, an influential
member of the Naskhu’tin sub-tribe happened to die near
the confluence of the Blackwater River with the Fraser,
where those aborigines had but recently a village. As the
loss of the Indian was much felt, his relatives consulted the
shaman, who declared that Tsalekulhyé was responsible
for his death. Bent on vengeance, his friends, in great
numbers, started armed cap-d-pie for what is now called
the Stuart River.

The natives were not at that time so sedentary as they
are to-day. As we have already seen, they shifted their
winter quarters as the need of fuel required, though,
as spring opened, the ancestors of the population now
stationed near the southern end of Lake Stuart moved
generally to the mouth of Beaver Creek, some five miles to
the south-west of the outlet of that lake. There they sub-
sisted mainly on small fish, carp and trout, with an occa-
sional duck or goose, until the middle of August, when
they transferred their penates exactly to the outlet of the
lake, where they set their weirs and traps. Finally, late in
September, they migrated again up the lake, and dispersed
themselves along the shores and on the several islands,
where the women caught whitefish and trout in the pre-
serves allotted them by hereditary right, while the men
trapped the various fur-bearing animals.

Early in the spring of 1780, or thereabouts, those Indians
were camped in three large detachments on the upper
course of the Stuart River. Their southermost party occu-
pied a site still pointed out, slightly above Hay Island,
when a canoe came up with the alarming news, gathered
from friendly Indians, that a large force of Naskhu’tins
was on its way up to avenge its dead. Tsalekulhyé was
then visiting his swan snares, and had repeatedly been told

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