But the more northern tribes were nomads: people shifting their abode from place to place in pursuit of game or trade.

Unlike the people of the south and west (though these only grew potatoes) they were not agriculturists: the only vegetable element in their food was the wild rice of the marshes, the sweet-tasting layer between the bark and the wood of certain trees, and the fruits or fungi of the forest or the lichen growing on the rocks.

Though these people might in summertime build some hasty wigwam of boughs and moss, their ordinary dwelling place was a tent.
The Wood Indians, or Opimitish Ininiwak, of the Athapaskan group (writes Alexander Henry, sen.) had no fixed villages; and their lodges or huts were so rudely fashioned as to afford them very inadequate protection against the weather.

The greater part of their year was spent in travelling from place to place in search of food.

The animal on which they chiefly depended was the _hare_--a most prominent animal in Amerindian economy and tradition.