The lover, if his suit is accepted, must perform a year's service for his bride. The wooing is in this wise: early some morning he enters the abode of the fair one's father, and without speaking a word proceeds to bring water, prepare food, and to heat the bath-room. In reply to the question why he performs these services, he answers that he desires the daughter for a wife. At the expiration of the year, without further ceremony, he takes her home, with a gift; but if she is not well treated by her husband, she may return to her father, and take with her the dowry. The wealthy may have several wives, but the property of each wife is distinct. They are nomadic in their inclinations and traverse the interior to a considerable distance in pursuit of game.
The Atnas are a small tribe inhabiting the Atna or Copper River. They understand the art of working copper, and have commercial relations with surrounding tribes. In the spring, before the breaking up of ice upon the lakes and rivers, they hunt reindeer, driving them into angle-shaped wicker-work corrals, where they are killed. In the autumn another general hunt takes place, when deer are driven into lakes, and pursued and killed in boats. Their food and clothing depend entirely upon their success in these forays, as they are unable to obtain fish in sufficient quantities for their sustenance; and when unsuccessful in the chase, whole families die of starvation. Those who can afford it, keep slaves, buying them from the Koltschanes. They burn their dead, then carefully collect the ashes in a new reindeer-skin, enclose the skin in a box, and place the box on posts or in a tree. Every year they celebrate a feast in commemoration of their dead. Baer asserts that the Atnas divide the year into fifteen months, which are designated only by their numbers; ten of them belong to autumn and winter, and five to spring and summer.
TINNEH CHARACTER.
The Tinneh character, if we may accept the assertions of various travelers, visiting different parts under widely different circumstances, presents a multitude of phases. Thus it is said of the Chepewyans by Mackenzie, that they are "sober, timorous, and vagrant, with a selfish disposition which has sometimes created suspicions of their integrity. They are also of a quarrelous disposition, and are continually making complaints which they express by a constant repetition of the word edmy, 'it is hard,' in a whiny and plaintive tone of voice. So indolent that numbers perish every year from famine. Suicide is not uncommon among them." Hearne asserts that they are morose and covetous; that they have no gratitude; are great beggars; are insolent, if any respect is shown them; that they cheat on all opportunities; yet they are mild, rarely get drunk; and "never proceed to violence beyond bad language;" that they steal on every opportunity from the whites, but very rarely from each other; and although regarding all property, including wives, as belonging to the strongest, yet they only wrestle, and rarely murder. Of the same people Sir John Franklin says, that they are naturally indolent, selfish, and great beggars. "I never saw men," he writes, "who either received or bestowed a gift with such bad grace." The Dog-ribs are "of a mild, hospitable, but rather indolent disposition," fond of dancing and singing. According to the same traveler the Copper Indians are superior, in personal character, to any other Chepewyans. "Their delicate and humane attentions to us," he remarks, "in a period of great distress, are indelibly engraven on our memories." Simpson says that it is a general rule among the traders not to believe the first story of an Indian. Although sometimes bearing suffering with fortitude, the least sickness makes them say, "I am going to die," and the improvidence of the Indian character is greatly aggravated by the custom of destroying all the property of deceased relatives. Sir John Richardson accuses the Hare Indians of timidity, standing in great fear of the Eskimos, and being always in want of food. They are practical socialists, 'great liars,' but 'strictly honest.' Hospitality is not a virtue with them. According to Richardson, neither the Eskimos, Dog-ribs, nor Hare Indians, feel the least shame in being detected in falsehood, and invariably practice it if they think that they can thereby gain any of their petty ends. Even in their familiar intercourse with each other, the Indians seldom tell the truth in the first instance, and if they succeed in exciting admiration or astonishment, their invention runs on without check. From the manner of the speaker, rather than by his words, is his truth or falsehood inferred, and often a very long interrogation is necessary to elicit the real fact. The comfort, and not unfrequently even the lives of parties of the timid Hare Indians are sacrificed by this miserable propensity. The Hare and Dog-rib women are certainly at the bottom of the scale of humanity in North America. Ross thinks that they are "tolerably honest; not bloodthirsty, nor cruel;" "confirmed liars, far from being chaste."
According to Harmon, one of the earliest and most observing travelers among them, the Tacullies "are a quiet, inoffensive people," and "perhaps the most honest on the face of the earth." They "are unusually talkative," and "take great delight in singing or humming or whistling a dull air." "Murder is not considered as a crime of great magnitude." He considers the Sicannis the bravest of the Tacully tribes.
But the Kutchins bear off the palm for honesty. Says Whymper: "Finding the loads too great for our dogs, we raised an erection of poles, and deposited some bags thereon. I may here say, once for all, that our men often left goods, consisting of tea, flour, molasses, bacon, and all kinds of miscellaneous articles, scattered in this way over the country, and that they remained untouched by the Indians, who frequently traveled past them." Simpson testifies of the Loucheux that "a bloody intent with them lurks not under a smile." Murray reports the Kutchins treacherous; Richardson did not find them so. Jones declares that "they differ entirely from the Tinneh tribes of the Mackenzie, being generous, honest, hospitable, proud, high-spirited, and quick to revenge an injury."
TRIBAL BOUNDARIES.
Accurately to draw partition lines between primitive nations is impossible. Migrating with the seasons, constantly at war, driving and being driven far past the limits of hereditary boundaries, extirpating and being extirpated, overwhelming, intermingling; like a human sea, swelling and surging in its wild struggle with the winds of fate, they come and go, here to-day, yonder to-morrow. A traveler passing over the country finds it inhabited by certain tribes; another coming after finds all changed. One writer gives certain names to certain nations; another changes the name, or gives to the nation a totally different locality. An approximation, however, can be made sufficiently correct for practical purposes; and to arrive at this, I will give at the end of each chapter all the authorities at my command; that from the statements of all, whether conflicting or otherwise, the truth may be very nearly arrived at. All nations, north of the fifty-fifth parallel, as before mentioned, I call Hyperboreans.
To the Eskimos, I give the Arctic sea-board from the Coppermine River to Kotzebue Sound. Late travelers make a distinction between the Malemutes and Kaveaks of Norton Sound and the Eskimos. Whymper calls the former 'a race of tall and stout people, but in other respect, much resembling the Esquimaux.' Alaska, p. 159. Sir John Richardson, in his Journal, vol. i., p. 341, places them on the 'western coast, by Cook's Sound and Tchugatz Bay, nearly to Mount St. Elias;' but in his Polar Regions, p. 299, he terminates them at Kotzebue Sound. Early writers give them the widest scope. 'Die südlichsten sind in Amerika, auf der Küste Labrador, wo nach Charlevoix dieser Völkerstamm den Namen Esquimaux bey den in der Nähe wohnenden Abenaki führte, und auch an der benachbarten Ostseite von Neu-Fundland, ferner westlich noch unter der Halbinsel Alaska.' Vater, Mithridates, vol. iii., pt. iii., p. 425. Dr. Latham, in his Varieties of Man, treats the inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands as Eskimos, and in Native Races of the Russian Empire, p. 289, he gives them 'the whole of the coast of the Arctic Ocean, and the coast from Behring Strait to Cook Inlet.' Prichard, Researches, vol. v., p. 371, requires more complete evidence before he can conclude that the Aleuts are not Eskimos. Being entirely unacquainted with the great Kutchin family in the Yukon Valley, he makes the Carriers of New Caledonia conterminous with the Eskimos. The boundary lines between the Eskimos and the interior Indian tribes 'are generally formed by the summit of the watershed between the small rivers which empty into the sea and those which fall into the Yukon.' Dall's Alaska, p. 144. Malte-Brun, Précis de la Géographie,