sauteux

Updated: June 14, 2025

Along the communication from Montreal to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, following the Peace River route, we first meet with the Sauteux tribes, who extend from the Lake of the Two Mountains to Lake Winnipeg; then the Crees to Isle

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

An erroneous opinion seems to have gone abroad regarding the variety of languages spoken by the Indians. There are, in reality, only four radically distinct languages from the shores of Labrador to the Pacific: Sauteux, Chippewayan, Atna and Chinook. The Cree language is evidently a dialect of the Sauteux, similar in construction, and differing only in the modification of a few words.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

It is a general opinion among Christians, that there exists no nation or people on earth who are entirely ignorant of a Supreme Being. I shall contrast the language of this tribe with that of the Sauteux or Ojibbeway, and let the reader judge for himself.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

The Sauteux, of all other tribes, are the most tenacious of their own superstitions; and it would require all the zeal and patience and perseverance of the primitive teachers of Christianity to wean them from them.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory : Volume II.

They appear more prone to sudden bursts of passion than most Indians I have seen, and quarrel often and abuse each other in the most scurrilous terms. With the Sauteux, Crees, and other tribes on the east side of the mountains, few words are uttered before the blow, often a fatal one, is given; whereas, with the Takellies, it is often many words and few blows.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

It is well known that they eat their food, whether fish or flesh, generally in a raw state; hence their appellation, "Ashkimai," in the Cree and Sauteux, means, eater of raw meat, and is doubtless the origin of the name Esquimaux first applied by the earlier French discoverers, and since then passed into general use.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory : Volume II.

The features of the Crees are not so strongly marked as those of the Sauteux, although they are a kindred people; yet they are as easily distinguishable from each other, as an Englishman from a Frenchman. There is none.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

We now experienced constant bad weather, never completing a day's sailing without interruption from some cause or other; and in consequence of these delays, it was found necessary to curtail our allowance of provisions. On the 20th, we pitched our tents near a camp of Sauteux, from whom the men procured a small quantity of sturgeon, in exchange for some articles of clothing.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.

This was very different entertainment from what I had been led to expect in the morning; would it had been my lot to be always so agreeably deceived! The village of the Lake of Two Mountains is inhabited by two distinct tribes of the aborigines viz. the Iroquois and the Algonquins; the latter are a tribe of the Sauteux nation, or Ojibbeway, and live principally by the chase.

John McLean - Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory: Volume I.