Its want of depth is
compensated however by its diameter which frequently exceeds three feet.
It is covered with moose-skin parchment, painted with rude figures of men
and beasts having various fantastic additions, and is beat with a stick.
The seeseequay is merely a rattle formed by enclosing a few grains of
shot in a piece of dried hide. These two instruments are used in all
their religious ceremonies except those which take place in a
sweating-house.
A Cree places great reliance on his drum and I cannot adduce a stronger
instance than that of the poor man who is mentioned in a preceding page
as having lost his only child by famine, almost within sight of the fort.
Notwithstanding his exhausted state he travelled with an enormous drum
tied to his back.
Many of the Crees make vows to abstain from particular kinds of food
either for a specific time or for the remainder of their life, esteeming
such abstinence to be a certain means of acquiring some supernatural
powers, or at least of entailing upon themselves a succession of good
fortune.
One of the wives of the Carlton hunter, of whom we have already spoken as
the worshipper of Kepoochikawn, made a determination not to eat of the
flesh of the Wawaskeesh or American stag; but during our abode at that
place she was induced to feed heartily upon it, through the intentional
deceit of her husband who told her that it was buffalo meat.
