CHAPTER 9.
CONTINUATION OF PROCEEDINGS AT FORT ENTERPRISE.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE COPPER INDIANS.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE JOURNEY TO THE NORTHWARD.
CONTINUATION OF PROCEEDINGS AT FORT ENTERPRISE.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE COPPER INDIANS.
March 18, 1821.
I shall now give a brief account of the Copper Indians termed by the Chipewyans Tantsawhotdinneh, or Birch-rind Indians.

They were originally a tribe of the Chipewyans and, according to their own account, inhabited the south side of Great Slave Lake at no very distant period.

Their language, traditions, and customs, are essentially the same with those of the Chipewyans but in personal character they have greatly the advantage of that people, owing probably to local causes or perhaps to their procuring their food more easily and in greater abundance.

They hold women in the same low estimation as the Chipewyans do, looking upon them as a kind of property which the stronger may take from the weaker whenever there is just reason for quarrelling, if the parties are of their own nation, or whenever they meet if the weaker party are Dog-Ribs or other strangers.