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 21