Produced by Avinash Kothare, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. HTML version by Al Haines. OWINDIA: _A TRUE TALE OF THE MACKENZIE RIVER INDIANS_, NORTH-WEST AMERICA. By Charlotte Selina Bompas THE STORY OF OWINDIA. A pretty open spot on the bank of the Great Mackenzie River was the place where Owindia first saw light. One of the universal pine forests formed the back ground, while low shrubs and willows, with a pleasant, green carpet of mossy grass, were the immediate surroundings of the camp. The banks of the Mackenzie often rise to a height of sixty feet above the river. This was the case in the spot where Michel the Hunter had pitched his tent, or "lodge" as it is called. A number of other Indians were camped near, led thither by the fish which is so abundant in our Northern rivers, and which proves a seldom failing resource when the moose or reindeer go off their usual track. The woods also skirting the river furnish large supplies of rabbits, which even the Indian children are taught to snare. Beavers too are most numerous in this district, and are excellent food, while their furs are an important article of trade with the Hudson Bay Company; bringing to the poor Indian his much prized luxury of tea or tobacco, a warm blanket or ammunition. As the Spring comes on the women of the camps will be busy making "sirop" from the birch trees, and dressing the skins of moose or deer which their husbands have killed in the chase. There are also the canoes to be made or repaired for use whenever the eight months' fetters of ice shall give way. Thus we see the Indian camps offer a pleasant spectacle of a contented and busy people; and if they lack the refinement and luxuries of more civilized communities, they have at all events this advantage,--they have never learnt to need them.