Bowdoin Boys in Labrador - An Account of the Bowdoin College Scientific Expedition to Labrador led by Prof. Leslie A. Lee of the Biological Department by Jr. Jonathan Prince Cilley
page 27 of 84 (32%)
page 27 of 84 (32%)
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slowly learning to use. They loaf on their supplies during the summer,
hunting only enough to furnish themselves with meat, and then starve during the winter if game happens to be scarce. Measurements were made of some twenty-five of this branch of the Kree tribe, hitherto unknown to anthropometric science, and a full collection of household utensils peculiar to their tribe was procured. Several of the Nascopee tribe were with them, the two inter-marrying freely, and were also measured. The latter are not such magnificent specimens of physical development as the Montagnais, but their tribe is more numerous and seems, if anything, better adapted to thrive in Labrador than their more attractive brothers. The only remains of their picturesque national costume that we saw, was the cap. The women wore a curious knot of hair, about the size of a small egg, over each ear, while the men wore their hair cut off straight around, a few inches above the shoulders. In point of personal cleanliness, these people equal any aborigines we have seen, though their camp exhibited that supreme contempt for sanitation that characterizes every village except the Hudson Bay Co.'s posts on the Labrador coast, whether of Indians, Esquimaux or "planters," as the white and half-breed settlers are called. Some curious scenes were enacted while the professor was trading for his desired ethnological material. With inexhaustible patience and imperturbable countenance, he sat on a log, surrounded by yelping dogs, and by children and papooses of more or less tender ages and scanty raiment, playing on ten cent harmonicas that had for a time served as a staple of trade, struggling with the dogs and with their equally excited mothers and sisters for a sight of the wonderful |
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