[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: "Here one of the bravest of our men was slain." (_Page
152._)]
PATHFINDING ON PLAIN
AND PRAIRIE:
STIRRING SCENES OF LIFE IN THE
CANADIAN NORTH-WEST.
BY
JOHN McDOUGALL,
Author of "Forest, Lake and Prairie," "Saddle, Sled and
Snowshoe," etc.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. E. LAUGHLIN._
TORONTO:
WILLIAM BRIGGS,
WESLEY BUILDINGS.
MONTREAL: C. W. COATES. HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS.
1898.
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, by WILLIAM BRIGGS, at the
Department of Agriculture.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
"Thin leather homes"--Drudgery of the Indian women--Occupations of
the men--Hunting parties and scalping forays--Triumphs of endurance
CHAPTER II.
Camping in the snow--Our costume--Brilliant sunrise effects--Maple
and her pups found at last--Striking example of "dog sense"--The Fort
Garry packet
CHAPTER III.
We visit Edmonton--Nature's grand cathedral--Adventure with a buffalo
bull--A trip to Pigeon Lake--Racing with dog-teams--An infidel
blacksmith--Old Joseph proves an unerring guide--Caching our
provisions
CHAPTER IV.
Epidemic breaks out among the Indians--Snow-blindness--I take to me a
wife--Our modest dowry--My father officiates as a Stationing
Committee--Fearful mortality among the Indians--Our journey to Pigeon
Lake--The epidemic attacks our camp--A rude hospital--An exciting
buffalo hunt--Chased by a maddened bull--Narrow escape
CHAPTER V.
Our caravan moves on--Difficulties of packing--Oliver's adventures
with a buffalo--Novel method of "blazing" a path--Arrival at Pigeon
Lake--House-building--Abundance of fish--Indians camp about the
Mission--I form many enduring friendships--Indians taught fishing
with nets
CHAPTER VI.
We are visited by a band of Crees--Our guests steal away with a bunch
of horses--Stonies set out in hot pursuit--Little William's
strategy--Horses recaptured--We begin farming operations--Arrival of
Mr. Steinhauer--Home to Victoria again--A memorable Sabbath--My gun
bursts--Narrow escape--My mother's cares and anxieties--Home-made
furniture
CHAPTER VII.
I travel with Maskepetoon's camp--Effects of environment on the
Indians--Nature's grandeur and beauty--Degradation through
paganism--The noble Chief Maskepetoon--Indian councils--On the fringe
of the buffalo herds--Indian boy lost--A false conjurer--The lad
recovered
CHAPTER VIII.
The "Thirst Dance"--"Tobacco messages"--The head conjurer--"Dancing
lodges"--The rendezvous--The "idol tree"--Meeting of the head
conjurer and the chief of the warriors--An anxious moment--Building
the "temple"--Self-torture, dancing and sacrifices--The festival
concluded--Romantic situation for our camp
CHAPTER IX.
Our great camp a study of native types--I attend a "wolf feast"--A
disgusting orgie--Paul and I start for home--Our horses
stampede--Difficult tracking--Enormous herd of buffalo--Home again
and all well--Party of half-breeds from the Red River settlement
visit our Mission--Father returns, bringing a brother and sister from
Ontario
CHAPTER X.
We return to Pigeon Lake--"Scarred Thigh" exchanged for
"Blackfoot"--Planting Gospel seed--We organize a buffalo hunt--A
moose chase--The buffalo as a "path-finder"--We encounter a hostile
camp--All night on guard--My friend Mark's daring exploit--Wood
Stonies visit the Mission--Gambling, polygamy and superstition among
the Indians
CHAPTER XI.
We return to Victoria--War parties abroad--Father's influence over
the Indians--We organize a big fresh meat hunt--David's first buffalo
hunt--Mark's adventure with a war party--Surrounded by
wolves--Incidents of our journey--Preparing for the winter
CHAPTER XII.
A visit to Whitefish Lake--A devoted Indian missionary--Mark and I go
out after buffalo--Mark proves himself a brilliant hunter--Our camp
visited by wolves--Muddy Bull's generosity--We reach home with full
loads of meat
CHAPTER XIII.
A run to Edmonton--Mr. Hardisty and other Hudson's Bay Company
officers spend New Year's with us--Sports and amusements--Our party
sets out for Mountain House--I experience a "scare"--Intense cold--A
cunning dog--Mishaps to a cariole--In the foot-hills--My first view
of the Rockies--Hearty reception at Mountain House--Back to Victoria
CHAPTER XIV.
Home occupations--A course of lectures--Mark and Jimmie as
_raconteurs_--Mark's success as a deer-killer--A buffalo chase on a
dog-sled--Our first child is born--Chickens at eight shillings apiece!
CHAPTER XV.
David and I visit Lac la Biche--High-priced seed wheat--Our party
sets out for Pigeon Lake--Old Joseph--Paul Chian--Samson--Our larder
depleted--We organize a bunt--Precarious living--Old Paul proves
himself a skilful guide--Samson tells of a tragic murder by
Blackfeet--We move cautiously--Broiled owlets as a delicacy--I shoot
an elk--Little Paul's flint-lock hangs fire--Samson's brilliant
hunting feats--Feasting on antlers
CHAPTER XVI.
Samson and I go on a moose hunt--Samson's clever tracking--He comes
up with the moose and tries a shot--No bullet in the gun--Two
dejected hunters return to the camp--We have better luck next
time--Roses make a thorny path--We disturb a band of wolves--Samson
stampedes them with his riding-whip--"Firing Stony" and I go
hunting--I bring down a noble elk--Novel method of fishing
CHAPTER XVII.
Our camp visited by a band of Mountain Stonies--My schooling in the
university of frontier life--Back to our Mission again--Limited
_cuisine_--Home-made agricultural implements--We visit Victoria--Off
to Fort Carlton for Mission supplies--Inquisitive Chippewyans--My
eldest sister married to Mr. Hardisty, of the Hudson's Bay
Company--The honeymoon trip to Mountain House--Rival
sportsmen--Charging a flock of wild geese at full gallop--Return to
Pigeon Lake--Our work extending
CHAPTER XVIII.
Father visits our Mission--A dream that proved a portent--Drowning of
Mr. Connor--"Straight fish" diet--We are visited by a war party of
Crees--I am given a problem to solve--Francis and I set out to seek
fresh provisions--Feasting on fat bear steaks--A lonely
Christmas--Mr. Hardisty visits us--We in turn visit Mountain House--A
hard winter in the Saskatchewan country--Rations on short
allowance--A run to Victoria--David and I have a hard
experience--Father and mother as "good Samaritans"
CHAPTER XIX.
We start out to hunt for buffalo--Fish and frozen turnips--A depleted
larder--David's bag of barley meal--At the point of starvation--We
strike Maskepetoon's camp--An Indian burial--Old Joseph dying--We
leave the camp--Generous hospitality--A fortunate
meeting--Frostbites--A bitterly cold night--Unexpected
visitors--Striking instance of devotion--I suffer from snowshoe
cramp--Arrival at Victoria--Old Joseph's burial--Back to Pigeon Lake
CHAPTER XX.
My brother a "ready-made pioneer"--Hunting rabbits--Two roasted
rabbits per man for supper--I find my friend, Firing Stony, in a
flourishing condition--Poisoning wolves--A good morning's sport--I
secure a wolf, two foxes and a mink--Firing Stony poisons his best
dog--I enjoy a meal of bear's ribs--I meet with a severe
accident--Samson treats me to a memorable feast
CHAPTER XXI.
Alternate feasting and fasting--We start out on a buffalo hunt--Old
Paul brings down a fine moose--Providential provision--Enoch Crawler
kills another moose--Magnificent landscapes--Entering the great
treeless plains---Wonderful mirages--We come upon the tracks of
buffalo--Our men shoot a huge grizzly--Charging a bunch of cows--A
lively chase--Samson's plucky plunge over a bank after the buffalo--I
chase and kill a fine cow--The camp busy killing and making
provisions--Guarding against hostile Indians
CHAPTER XXII.
A busy camp--Process of butchering and drying meat--How pemmican is
made--Our camp in peril--Chasing a herd of buffalo up a steep
bank--Mark scores a point on me--We encounter a war party of
Blackfeet--A fortunate rain-storm--A mirage gives us a false
alarm--Unwritten laws as to rights of hunters
CHAPTER XXIII.
Into the timber country again--Craving for vegetable food--Wild
rhubarb a treat--I shoot a big beaver--My horse objects to carrying
it--A race for the life of my child--Terrific fight between my dogs
and a huge wolverine--Reach Pigeon Lake and find father
there--Anxiety felt for our party--A meagre bill of fare--A visit to
Victoria--I narrowly escape drowning--Father leaves for Ontario,
taking with him my three sisters--Francis leaves us to return to
Victoria--My varied offices among the Indians
CHAPTER XXIV.
Our first interment--Jacob's tragic death--Hostile Flatheads in quest
of horses, scalps and glory--Stonies attacked by a party of
Blackfeet--A hot fusilade--Mark's father is killed--Destitution
prevalent--Hunting lynx--My dogs seized with distemper--All have to
be shot--Another provision hunt organized--Among the buffalo--I
narrowly escape being shot--Heterogeneous character of our
camp--Mutual distrust and dislikes--United by fear of a common
foe--The effects of Christianity
CHAPTER XXV.
Through new country--"Greater Canada"--Antelopes--Startling effects
of mirage--War parties keep us on the alert--Remarkable speed of a
plain Cree--A curious superstition--A Cree's gruesome
story--Returning with carts fully loaded--Followed by hostile
Indians--I sight and chase a "sitting" bull--My shot wounds
him--Paul's son thrown under the brute's feet--Firing Stony's clever
shot to the rescue--We arrive at the Mission--Road-making
CHAPTER XXVI.
Another visit to Victoria--Fall in with a war party of Kootenays and
Flatheads--Samson and I go moose-hunting--A Sabbath afternoon
experience--A band of moose enjoy Sabbath immunity--I start out to
meet father returning from the East--The glorious Saskatchewan
Valley--Call at Fort Pitt--Equinoctial storms--Entertained by a
French half-breed family--Meet Mr. Hardisty and one of my
sisters--Camp-fire chat--Meeting with father--Rev. Peter Campbell and
others with his party--Father relates his experience in the
East--Rev. Geo. Young sent to Red River Settlement and Rev. E. R.
Young to Norway House
CHAPTER XXVII.
Father pushes on for home in advance--Hard times for the
"tenderfeet"--A plunge into icy water--My brother David gallops into
camp--His high spirits prove infectious--Kindness of the Hudson's Bay
Company--Oxen sent to help us in to Victoria--A mutinous
camp-follower--My threat of a sound thrashing subdues the
mutineer--Our long journey is ended--Adieu to my readers
ILLUSTRATIONS.
"Here one of the bravest of our men was slain" ... Frontispiece
"The brilliant flashes of the aurora light"
"My cap ... falling right in the face of the bull, for the moment
blinded him"
"I saw more buffalo than I had ever dreamed of before"
"I went at him with firebrands"
"Rising up I let drive at the larger of the two"
"Down we ran, and chased them across the full length of the bar"
"We carried the haycocks in between us on two poles"
"And now I ... tapped his nose for him so effectually that he was
stunned"
"I succeeded in getting hold of the end of a tree"
"With unerring aim he shot the bull through the head"
"He was a funny-looking specimen as he picked himself up out of the
icy stream"
PATHFINDING ON PLAIN AND PRAIRIE.
CHAPTER I.
"Thin leather homes"--Drudgery of the Indian women--Occupations of
the men--Hunting parties and scalping forays--Triumphs of endurance.
It was during the last days of January, 1865, in the story of my
experiences in our great Canadian West, that I parted company for a
time with my readers in "SADDLE, SLED AND SNOWSHOE." We were
domiciled for the night in Muddy Bull's lodge. The weather was
intensely cold. I believe I am safe in saying that all through
January the mercury never rose above 10° below zero, and that it
ranged from this down to 50° below.
In our lodge, which was one of the best, with ordinary travelling
costume on, a blanket or a robe over our shoulders, and a brisk fire
in the centre of the tent, we were passably cosy; but even then we
had to turn around every little while and "warm the other side."
Great bright, brisk fires were kept up in those "thin leather homes"
of our Indian people, entailing a vast amount of work upon the women
and girls of the camps. Gradually, by example, perhaps, more than
precept, we brought about a lessening of the labor of the women; but
in the meantime, during the cold winter months, the furnishing of
wood to keep those huge fires going gave them constant employment.
It must be said, however, they accepted the labor and drudgery with
cheerful alacrity, and could be seen at all hours of the day
stringing over the hills and across the plains with dogs and horses
and travois, their own backs loaded to the utmost carrying capacity
with wood.
The life of an Indian woman in those early days was, indeed, an
extremely busy one. Packing and unpacking dogs and horses, making
camps, providing wood, making and mending moccasins and wearing
apparel, cooking, cutting up, drying and pounding meat, rendering
grease, chopping bones to get out the marrow fat, making pemmican,
stretching, scraping and dressing buffalo hides to make robes or
leather--a long, tedious process, in which not only the brains of the
worker were needed in order to excel, but also those of the dead
animals as well--kept her going early and late. Besides all this,
the manufacturing of saddles, travois, tents and shagganappi also
devolved upon the women; and yet, notwithstanding all this, they
seemed, generally speaking, to be contented and happy, and with true
feminine resource still found time to give to attire and adornment,
and the practising of all those mysterious arts which have charmed
and magnetized the other sex, doubtless through all the past of our
race. No wonder these women and girls were at a premium, and cost
all the way from a blanket up to a band of stolen horses! The more
of them a man had, then the greater man was he.
Nor was the life of the male Indian altogether that of a sinecure.
Somehow or other the idea has gone abroad that these Indians led a
very lazy life. But if the man who thought this had spent some time
with either wood or plain Indians, and had accompanied them on their
hunting and war expeditions, he would have materially changed his
views.
To follow a wood hunter on foot from before daylight in the short
days, through brush and copse and heavy timber, over big hills and
across wide valleys, on and on for many miles, sometimes until noon
or late in the afternoon before a "kill" is made; or, having started
game, to run for miles at a terrific pace, hoping to head off the
quarry and at last secure a shot; then, having killed, to butcher or
secure from wolf, or coyote, or wolverine the desired meat and strike
as straight as possible for the camp, sometimes many, many miles
distant, with thick forest and dense darkness now intervening; or it
may be to have all the labor and exhaustion of such a chase without
the chance of a shot, reaching camp late at night wearied and
disappointed. To continue this for days, sometimes feasting and
again famishing--and all this not from choice but of necessity--could
be counted no easy matter. It is not for fun, but life; health,
income, influence, honor, respect, all these are dependent on your
efforts.
It may be with the same wood hunter you start a prime buck moose or
elk during those glorious days in the beginning of autumn, and he
bounds away in his strength and swiftness. Your Indian says, "We
must run him down," and leads off in long, regular strides, and for a
time you feel as if your lungs were in your throat and your heart is
beating a double tattoo. Over and under fallen timber, down
precipitous banks, up steep hills, and it takes some time for you to
"catch your second wind," and to brace up your will and say to
yourself, "I am also a man," and then settle down like your Indian to
steady work.
He, however, is doing more than you, who are but following him. He
is noting lay of land and direction of wind, calculating in order to
cut across where your game may have gone around, watching the tracks,
gauging the distance the buck is ahead of you, noting the settling of
the earth at edge of pool or creek where the big fellow left his
tracks as he ran. and you are encouraged and spurred on, or
contrariwise, as the crafty hunter tells you in hushed tones what he
knows.
Then, by and by, after an hour or two, or three, perhaps, of such
work, you stand beside the fallen carcase and wipe your forehead and
wish you had a dozen towels; but while your exultations and
congratulations are hot within you, a word of caution comes from the
Indian beside you: "The sun is low and the camp is far; let us
hurry," and the work of butchering and skinning the meat goes on,
till presently, with a load of meat on your back, you start for the
distant camp. Suppose, as you tramped and climbed and panted, some
one had said, "What a lazy life yours is," you would have shouted
back, "No, sir; not in any sense is this a lazy life!"
Or it may be your hunter friend is in for a "fur hunt," and you start
with him to make a line of dead-falls for marten, or to hang a
hundred or so of snares for lynx. The snow is deep, and at every
step several pounds of it fall in on your snowshoe; but from early
morn until late in the evening you tramp and toil, chopping and
stooping and grunting over snare and deadfall, and when night is on,
having carried your provisions, blanket and kettle all day, besides
the baits for dead-falls and snares for lynx traps, you dig away the
deep snow, cut some wood and make a fire for the night. While the
fire burns, you doze and chill, and pile on fuel and wait for
morning, only to repeat yesterday's work, and so on, until, having
made a big detour and hung your snares and carefully fixed your
deadfalls, you in three or four days reach home. Then in a short
time you must visit all these, and in the intervening days make your
forays for food. No one who has tried this manner of obtaining a
living will pronounce it a lazy life.
But suppose you were with some plain or buffalo Indians, and, as was
about the average condition in the winter time, the buffalo were from
fifty to two hundred miles from your camp--the rigor of the winter
and the condition of grass and wood forbidding the camp moving any
nearer to them--the hunting parties had constantly to be organized
and the meat and robes brought from long distances home. Under such
circumstances the hunter not only had to undergo great hardships, but
also to run very great risks. Storms on the bleak, treeless plains,
with deep snow, and travel of necessity slow and difficult, were
indeed as "the powers of the air" and darkness to encounter and
overcome, and the really indolent man was not in it when such work
was engaged in.
Then it was incumbent upon every able-bodied man, under the code of
honor of the time, to make an annual or bi-annual or even more
frequent foray for horses and scalps. These trips generally took
place in the spring and fall. With the melting of snow and ice in
spring, or the making of the same in autumn, parties large and small
would be made up. Each with lariat and a few pairs of moccasins,
and, if possessed of a gun, with as much ammunition as he could
obtain, or armed with bow and quiver full of shod arrows, in the dead
of night these men would start for the enemy's country, depending on
sustaining life by the chase on their way. Journeying on, sometimes
by day and sometimes by night, fording rapid streams and swimming
wide rivers, what signified the breaking up of the season or the
plunge into ice-cold water of river and swamp to them? These must be
considered as trifles. By and by, when the enemy's presence is felt
there will come the weary watching and waiting, amid cold and hunger,
for cunning and strategy are now pitted the one against the other,
and endurance and pluck must back these up or the trip will be a
failure. One, two, three hundreds of miles of steady tramping, with
your camp always facing in the direction of where your enemy is
supposed to be. Every day or night the scouts, making thrice the
distance covered by the party, keep up their constant effort to
discover and forestall counter war-parties, or to find the enemy's
camp; and when this is found sometimes to hang for days on its
movements, and, following up, watch for a favorable spot and time
either to make a charge or to steal in under cover of storm or
darkness and drive off bands of horses. Then in either case to start
for home, and push on regardless of weather so long as men and horses
will hold out.
After a successful raid those long runs for home were great tests of
horse-flesh and human endurance. With scalded legs, blistered feet
and weary limbs, and with eyes heavy for want of sleep, these men,
now exultant with victory, would vie with each other in the race for
camp. A lazy man assuredly had no place in such trials of endurance
and of hardship. Furthermore, upon the men and boys of the camp
devolved the care of the horses. The herding and guarding of these
gave many a weary tramp or ride, and many a night in cold and storm,
without sleep or rest. And finally, the constant need of protecting
their camps from the wily enemy was a source of permanent worry, and
always rested as a heavy responsibility upon these men.