As to the Lake of the Woods district, before the smallpox, in 1781, ravaged this country and completed what the Nodwayes by their warfare had gone far to accomplish, this part of the country was very densely inhabited. One of the Company's factors reported, in 1736, that a tribe lived beyond the range of mountains, who had never known the use of fire-arms, for which reason they were made slaves of by the Assiniboines and Crees. He declared he had beheld several of this tribe "who all wanted a joynt of their little finger, which was cut off soon after birth." "The Migichihilinons, that is the Eagle Ey'd Indians," reported Middleton, one of the Company's captains, "are at two hundred Leagues Distance; the Assinibouels inhabit the West and North; they are reputed to be the same Nation because of the great affinity of their language. The name signifies Men of the Rock. They use the Calumet and live at two hundred and fifty Leagues Distance. They paint their Bodies, are grave and have much Phlegm, like _Flemings_." He also enumerates the Michinipic Poets, or Men of Stone, of the Great Lake; but I am inclined to think these two are of the same tribe. [Illustration: INDIAN WITH TOMAHAWK.] [Sidenote: The Crees.] The Crees, or Christineaux, were the earliest as well as the most numerous tribe which had dealings with the Company. They sprang from the same stock as the Ojibways, Chippewas or Saulteurs, who with the Assiniboines inhabited the vast interior of the country to the west of the Bay. Their language, according to one of the early traders, was less copious and expressive than their mother tongue. They were deficient in many direct terms for things, often expressing themselves in approximate phrases, whereas the Ojibways would have an exactly corresponding term ready at command. The Crees appear not to have possessed the custom of totems, so that it was often difficult for members of the tribe to trace their ancestry back for more than two or three generations. [Sidenote: Their mode of living.]