The vast Boreal forest south of the Arctic tundra provided little for its inhabitants. Mostly fishermen or nomadic hunters of moose and caribou, Sub-arctic Indians traveled by toboggan, birchbark canoe, or snowshoe.
Firearms, introduced by the French, brought easier hunting and fostered
the fur trade for tribes such as the Cree, but also encouraged warfare.
Nine-tenths of the Chipewyan, at one time the largest Athapaskan-speaking
tribe of the central Subarctic, died of smallpox in 1781.
Today they number about 5,000.
