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When any one dies in winter, the body is placed on a scaffold till summer, when it is interred. The Nascopies do not feast on the "viscera" of their victims, nor do I believe the inhabitants of India, or of any other country under heaven, ever did. The Nascopies depend principally on the rein-deer for subsistence, a dependence which the erratic habits of these animals render extremely precarious.
The Nascopies, surrounded by kindred tribes, are strangers to the calamities of war, and are consequently a peaceful, harmless people; yet they cherish the unprovoked enmity of their race towards the poor Esquimaux, whom they never fail to attack, when an opportunity offers of doing so with impunity.
In their intercourse with us the Nascopies evince a very different disposition from the other branches of the Cree family, being selfish and inhospitable in the extreme; exacting rigid payment for the smallest portion of food. Yet I do not know that we have any right to blame a practice in them, which they have undoubtedly learned from us. What do they obtain from us without payment?
The Nascopies have the same religious belief as their kindred tribes in every other part of the continent. They believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, the Ruler of the universe, and the Author of all good. They believe, also, in the existence of a bad spirit, the author of all evil. Each is believed to be served by a number of subordinate spirits.
They do not even carry home the game; that duty also falls to the lot of the female, unless when the family has been starving for some time, when the men condescend to carry home enough for immediate use. The horrid practice still obtains among the Nascopies of destroying their parents and relatives, when old age incapacitates them for further exertion.
Of all the Indians I have seen, the Nascopies seem most averse to locomotion; many of them grow up to man's estate without once visiting a trading post.
The Nascopies, or mountaineers of Labrador, speak a mixture of Cree and Sauteux, the former predominating.
The Indians inhabiting the interior of Ungava, or, it may be said with equal propriety, the interior of Labrador, are a tribe of the Cree nation designated Nascopies, and numbering about one hundred men able to bear arms. Their language, a dialect of the Cree or Cristeneau, exhibits a considerable mixture of Sauteux words, with a few peculiar to themselves.
The Esquimaux do not share their provisions as the Nascopies do, although they relieve each other's wants when their means can afford it: each individual engaged in the chase retains his own game, his claim being ascertained by distinctive marks on the arrows.
Nothing: not a shot of powder, not a ball, not a flint. But whatever may be said of their conduct towards the whites, no people can exercise the laws of hospitality with greater generosity, or show less selfishness, towards each other, than the Nascopies. The only part of an animal the huntsman retains for himself is the head; every other part is given up for the common benefit.
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