In the springtime they would probably get goose eggs and some form of maple sugar through the Indians.

From the summer to the autumn there would be an abundance of wild fruits and nuts, but for the rest of the year it would be a diet almost entirely of flesh or fish.

As a stand-by there was probably _pemmican_, made in times of plenty from fish, from bison meat and fat, or from the dried flesh of deer or musk oxen; but tea, coffee, bread, biscuits, and such like accessories were absolutely unknown to them, in fact they lived exactly as the Amerindians did.

Their habitations, of course, were the tents or houses of the natives, or what they made for themselves.
In order to pitch an Indian tent in winter it was first necessary to search for a level piece of dry ground, and this could only be ascertained by thrusting a stick through the snow, down to the ground, all over the proposed plot.

When a suitable site had been found the snow was then cleared away down to the very moss, in the shape of a circle.