Through the years, the Eskimo has fared better than the Indian. It would seem that the London Directorate of the H.B. Co. expected its servants within the Arctic Circle in the days that are past to do almost a Creator's part and make all things of nothing. The scanty provisions and trading goods from England which filtered in thus far were to be given to the Indians in exchange for furs, while the Factor and his people were largely expected to "live on the country."
Cannibalism was not unknown. The winter of 1841-2 was an especially hard one. On the 18th March, 1841, J. William Spence and Murdock Morrison were dispatched with the winter express from Fort Good Hope to Fort Macpherson. During the second night out, while they were asleep in the encampment, they were knocked on the head by four starving Indian women, immediately cut to pieces, and devoured. It is further reported that these women previously had killed and eaten their husbands and all their children except one little boy. Of the two murdered Scots they ate what they could that night and made pemmican of what was over, reporting afterward that one was sweet but that the other, tasting of tobacco, was not so good.
Father Petitot gives us another glimpse of that awful winter. His naïve words are, "_Chie-ke-nayelle,_ a Slavi from Fort Norman, was a winning fellow, handsome, gracious, the possessor of a happy countenance. On his features played always a smile of contentment and innocence. In his youth he had eaten of human flesh during the terrible famine of 1841. He killed his young daughter with a hatchet-blow, cooked her like flesh, and ate her as a meat-pate. It is said that after one has partaken of human flesh, the appetite for it often returns. I hasten to add that _Chie-ke-nayelle,_ in spite of the soubriquet _mangeur de monde_ which is irrevocably rivetted to his name, has not succumbed to such an appetite. He is indeed an excellent Christian. Nevertheless, I would not like to camp with _Chie-ke-nayelle_ in time of famine."
Another starvation story related by the good Father is not quite so ghastly. He tells us of one "M. Finlaison of burlesque memory," who, when all provisions were out, took his fiddle and, calling the men of his fort before the door of his empty larder, played to them a Scottish reel. That was their dinner for the day,--instead of meat they had sound. The narrator adds, "In America they would have lynched the too-jovial Scotchman. In the Northwest the good half-breeds laughed and applauded the master."