The way was difficult, full of swamps and fallen timber. Ground-hogs were seen, and a number of them captured, and before long a deer was killed. They were now high up in the mountains, and were marching through the snow. The country became very rough and they travelled along precipices, while snow-covered peaks frowned on them from above. On these mountains, according to their guides, were many animals, which, “from their description, must be wild goats.” The timber grew very large.
On this day their guide hurried ahead, leaving the laden white people to follow, and when it grew dark the men were anxious to stop for the night, but Mackenzie pushed on, and at last reached a village where he saw fires with people cooking over them. He entered a house and shook hands, and the people directed him to go to a large house, where he was cordially received and fed with roasted salmon. A little later they were regaled on salmon roes, pounded fine, beaten up and flavored with something bitter, which we may conjecture to have been soap ollalie. The natives here were capturing salmon with their dip nets and by weirs. They were kindly and hospitable, and had very strong beliefs and feelings with regard to their fish. Mackenzie declared that they never taste flesh, and that one of their dogs having swallowed part of a bone left at the camp-fire was beaten by his master till he disgorged it. A bone having been thrown into the river by one of Mackenzie’s people, a young man dived, brought it up and put it in the fire, and then proceeded to wash his polluted hands. The chief of the tribe declined to let the white men have a canoe because they had with them some deer meat, which, if put in the canoe on their river, would cause the fish to leave the river, so that the people must starve. Mackenzie asked what he should do with the meat, and the Indian told him to give it to a native present who belonged to a tribe of flesh eaters. The canoe was then loaned them.
These people seemed to belong to a different family from the Chipewyans; at least Mackenzie says their language appeared to have no resemblance to that of the Atnahs. Seven natives with two canoes took the explorers and their baggage down the river. They travelled fast, and the skill of the Indians greatly impressed Mackenzie, who says: “I had imagined that the Canadians who accompanied me were the most expert canoemen in the world, but they are very inferior to these people, as they themselves acknowledge, in conducting those vessels.”