Note 50 — INTRODUCTION TO THE VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

This day, Jan. 11. 1772, as the Indians were hunting, some of them saw a strange snow-shoe track, which they followed, and at a considerable distance came to a little hut, where they found a young woman sitting alone. They brought her to the tents; and, on examining her, found that she was one of the western Dog-ribbed Indians, and had been taken prisoner by the Arathapescow Indians in the summer 1770; and, when the Indians who took her prisoner, were near this part in the summer 1771, she eloped from them, with an intent to return to her own country; but it being so far off, and, after being taken prisoner, having come the whole way in canoes, with the winding of rivers and lakes, she had forgot the way; and had been in this little hut ever since the first setting in of the fall. By her account of the moons past since her elopement, it appears to be the middle of last July when she left the Arathapescow Indians, and had not seen a human face ever since. She supported herself very well by snaring of rabbits, partridges, and squirrels, and was now in good health and flesh; and, I think, as fine a woman of a real Indian, as I have seen in any part of North America. She had nothing to make snares of but the sinews of rabbits’ legs and feet, which she twisted together for that purpose; and of the rabbits’ skins had made herself a neat and warm winter’s clothing. The stock of materials she took with her when she eloped, consisted of about five inches of an iron hoop for a knife; a stone steel, and other hard stones as flints, together with other fire-tackle, as tinder, &c.; about an inch and half of the shank of the shoeing of an arrow of iron, of which she made an awl. She had not been long at the tents, when half a score of men wrestled to see who should have her for their wife. She says, when the Arathapescow Indians took her prisoner, that they stole on the tents in the night, when the inhabitants were all asleep, and killed every soul except herself and three other young women. Her father, mother, and husband were in the same tent with her, and they were all killed. Her child, of about five months old, she took with her, wrapped in a bundle of her clothing, undiscovered, in the night. But, when arrived at the place where the Arathapescows had left their wives, which was not far off, it being then day-break, these Indian women immediately began to examine her bundle; and having there found the child, took it from her and killed it immediately. The relation of this shocking scene only served the savages of my gang for laughter. Her country is so far to the Westward, that she says she never saw any iron, or other kind of metal, till taken prisoner; those of her tribe making their hatchets and chisels of deers’ horns, and knives of stone and bone; their arrows are shod with a kind of slate, bones, and deers’ horns; and their instruments, to make their wood work, are nothing but beavers’ teeth. They have frequently heard of the useful materials the nations to the east of them are supplied with from the English; but, instead of drawing nearer to be in the way of trading for iron work, &c. are obliged to retreat farther back, to avoid the Arathapescow Indians, as they make surprising slaughter amongst them every year, both winter and summer. Hearne’s MS. Journal.