Those who were able came to the fort and received
relief, but many who had retired with their families to distant corners
to pursue their winter hunts experienced all the horrors of famine. One
evening early in the month of January a poor Indian entered the
North-West Company's House, carrying his only child in his arms and
followed by his starving wife. They had been hunting apart from the other
bands, had been unsuccessful and, whilst in want, were seized with the
epidemical disease. An Indian is accustomed to starve and it is not easy
to elicit from him an account of his sufferings. This poor man's story
was very brief; as soon as the fever abated he set out with his wife for
Cumberland House, having been previously reduced to feed on the bits of
skin and offal which remained about their encampment. Even this miserable
fare was exhausted and they walked several days without eating, yet
exerting themselves far beyond their strength that they might save the
life of the infant. It died almost within sight of the house. Mr.
Connolly, who was then in charge of the post, received them with the
utmost humanity and instantly placed food before them; but no language
can describe the manner in which the miserable father dashed the morsel
from his lips and deplored the loss of his child. Misery may harden a
disposition naturally bad but it never fails to soften the heart of a
good man.
HIS ACCOUNT OF THE CREE INDIANS.
The origin of the Crees, to which nation the Cumberland House Indians
belong, is, like that of the other aborigines of America, involved in
obscurity; but the researches now making into the nature and affinities
of the languages spoken by the different Indian tribes may eventually
throw some light on the subject. Indeed the American philologists seem to
have succeeded already in classing the known dialects into three
languages:
1. The Floridean, spoken by the Creeks, Chickesaws, Choctaws, Cherokees,
Pascagoulas, and some other tribes who inhabit the southern parts of the
United States.
2. The Iroquois, spoken by the Mengwe, or Six Nations, the Wyandots, the
Nadowessies, and Asseeneepoytuck.
3. The Lenni-lenape, spoken by a great family more widely spread than the
other two and from which, together with a vast number of other tribes,
are sprung our Crees. Mr. Heckewelder, a missionary who resided long
amongst these people and from whose paper (published in the Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society) the above classification is taken,
states that the Lenape have a tradition amongst them of their ancestors
having come from the westward and taken possession of the whole country
from the Missouri to the Atlantic, after driving away or destroying the
original inhabitants of the land whom they termed Alligewi.
