Volume 1

232 FIRE IN CAMP—PEMMICAN—ANOTHER TRIP.
Dec. 1st. I set two small nets under the ice at the
entrance of Panbian river, ph. An Indian tent of five
families took fire ;
it was burned to the ground and everything
consumed. They had just taken debts to the amount
of nearly 200 skins. The powder was saved, but never one
skin of the goods'' will be paid by them. We now were
obliged to eat pemmican. I had a few bags remaining
from last spring, which had been lying all summer in a
heap covered with a leathern tent, and never had been
stirred or turned, in a damp storehouse. I was apprehensive
it
was spoiled, from the complaints made by my friends
about the bad quality of the Lower Red river pemmican,
but was surprised to find every bag excellent. This was
clear proof to me that the bad pemmican must have come
from another quarter— I suspect Portage la Prairie, as I am
confident my method of mixing and preparing it is good.
My men having finished cutting our stock of winter firewood
on the 5th, began to cut 3,000 stockades, eight feet in
length, to inclose my potato-field. loth. As an Indian
was firing his gun to-day she burst and shattered his left
hand in a shocking manner. We have nothing but
tough and lean bulls to eat, and the X. Y. not even that.
lyth. I shot a shelldrake in the small pond in the river
that was still open. Maymiutch shot at Mr. Langlois, at
the hills ; the ball stuck in the house between two women,
his own niece and Payet's woman. 21st. Lac la Pluie
Indians arrived for men to go en derouine. 2jd. Cows
begin to appear, but the great scarcity of grass keeps
them always on the walk in search of food.
Dec. 2/j.tJi. I set out early on horseback and with a cariole,
and Lambert also in the same manner, on a visit to
Mr. Cotton" at [the confluence of?] Riviere aux Liards
with Riviere du Lac Rouge, that establishment being under
" That is, the value of one of the 200 beaver skins for which these five
families vi^ere in debt for goods received by them on credit.
•'^
Mr. Cotton had come into the country recently, and was at Fond du Lac
Superieur in 1805. I have not identified Henry's R. aux Liards satisfactorily ;