A belief of the Naskapi Indians of the Labrador Peninsula
In the interior between Ungava Bay and Hudson's Bay is a distant country where no Indians will
go under any consideration for the following reason. There is range of big mountains pure white
in colour formed neither of snow, ice, nor white rock, but of caribou hair. They are shaped like
a house and so they are known as Caribou House. One man of the Petisigabau band says there
are two houses. In this enormous cavity live thousands upon thousands of caribou under the
overlordship of a human being who is white and dressed in black. Some say there are several of
them and they have beards. He is master of the caribou and will not permit anyone to come
within some one-hundred and fifty miles of his abode, the punishment being death. Within his
realm the various animals are two or three times their ordinary size. The few Indians who have
approached the region say that the caribou enter and leave their kingdom each year, passing
through a valley between two high mountains about fifteen miles apart. And it is also asserted
that the deer hair on the ground here is several feet in depth, that for mile around the cast-off
antlers on the ground form a layer waist deep, that the caribou paths leading back and forth there
are so deep as to reach a man's waist, and that a young caribou going along in one would be
visible only by its head.
