In my Canoe, July, 1846.
Winnipeg is the first lake of importance which the traveller _passes
through_ on his way up the Mississippi from Crow-Wing, and it is a
namesake of the great northern lake. The banks of the river throughout
this long distance do not average more than about ten feet in height,
and are all the way covered with a stunted growth of trees, where the
birch, the elm, the pine, and the spruce mostly predominate. It is so
exceedingly winding here, that by making a portage of fifteen rods, you
may often save some three or four miles of canoe travel. The stream
varies from an eighth to half a mile in width; sometimes shallow and
rapidly running over a rocky bed, sometimes widening into a shallow
lake, and sometimes deep, and running sluggishly through a soil of clay
or sand, and almost blocked up with snags.
The meaning of Winibigoshish, or Winnipeg, is, the grand reservoir, or
depôt of water. The lake is fifteen miles in length and perhaps ten in
width. It is nearly round, has no islands, but a gravelly and sandy
bottom, and is surrounded by a handsome beach; the water is clear and
shallow, and it contains no fish but those that I have elsewhere
mentioned as peculiar to this section of the Mississippi. The
surrounding country is a dead level, composed of continuous woods, which
are every where interspersed with lakes and rice swamps, where
unnumbered waterfowl have lived and multiplied for centuries.
The only inhabitants that we found on the shores of Winnipeg, were three
bands of Chippeways, numbering in all about one thousand souls. We
pitched our tent in the midst of their encampment, or village, and
managed, so far as I was concerned, to spend a day and night among them
quite pleasantly. Immediately on my arrival there, I heard something
about a contemplated bear hunt. It happened to be the month when this
animal performs its annual journey to the south, whence it returns in
October. A number of them had already been killed, and there was a
crossing place on the Mississippi, where a good marksman might take one
almost at any time. I found that there were but two men going on the
hunt, and, as a present of tobacco soon initiated me into their good
graces, the party of course was increased to three. We started at sunset
and descended to the crossing place in a canoe, where we ambushed
ourselves in one of the wildest recesses in the forest, seated on a
mossy rock that commanded an opening between the trees, while our canoe
was hidden by a willow that bent gracefully over the stream. It was a
clear, still night, but quite dark, as there was no moon. Here we spent
a number of hours, without uttering a word; but listening meanwhile to
the dismal shriek of an owl, or the silvery dropping of the dew on the
gently flowing river. Finally, however, one of the Indians tapped me on
the shoulder, and pointed to a large black object, which I saw was a
bear just wading into the water, directly on the opposite side from
where we were seated. I had been told not to fire until the signal was
given, and so the following five minutes seemed longer than an ordinary
hour, to my impatient mind. The bear took it quite leisurely, not
dreaming that an enemy was so near. But just as his feet touched the
bottom on our side of the stream, the Indians gave me a nod, and raising
our several guns, we all three fired at the poor animal, who dropped
into the water quite dead, creating around him a crimson pool. We
shipped the animal on board the canoe, paddled to the village, and
hanging it on the high limb of a tree, retired to our several wigwams
and slept until morning.
On making my appearance among the Indians after breakfast, I found that
I was to witness the ceremony which invariably follows the capture of a
bear. I ought to remark in this place, that the animal in question was
supposed by Morrison to weigh three hundred pounds. The Indian who had
first _touched_ the bear with his hand, (according to a universal custom
among the Chippeways,) was the one who claimed it as his own. When he
had taken off the skin, he presented it to a brother hunter, who from
that moment considered himself under obligations to return the
compliment at the earliest moment after his next successful hunt. The
animal was then dressed, and the four quarters hung up in our hunter’s
wigwam, that being the only portion allotted to him by custom; while the
head, back-bone, and ribs, the feet, the heart, liver, and fat, were all
served up for a feast. A red feather was then sent to all the principal
men in the village as an invitation, which they understood to be to a
bear feast, while the _common_ class of men were verbally invited, women
and children being denied the privilege of participating. At the
appointed hour the guests made their appearance, in a neighboring grove,
each one carrying in his hand a wooden bowl or dish. After they were
comfortably seated in a large circle, a bag of ka-nick-a-nick and
tobacco was circulated, and a cloud of fragrant smoke ascended to the
sky,—for the Indians invariably commence their ceremonies by smoking.
The next step was to place upon a fire in their midst a large kettle
containing the remnants of the bear, which were to be boiled to a kind
of soup, without the least particle of seasoning. While this was
cooking, one of the orators of the day delivered a speech, wherein he
thanked the Great Spirit for telling his red children where to find the
bear, and concluding with some remarks upon the characteristics of the
animal. When the bear chowder was done, it was equally distributed among
the assembled crowd, and each one required to eat the whole that was
placed before him, and this too without a ladle or lifting his dish, but
on his hands and knees in the common attitude of a bear. The bones were
then all replaced in the kettle and deposited in some safe place; to
neglect this part of the ceremony would be to anger the Great Spirit,
who would not allow the giver of the feast to kill another bear.
Among the stories which I heard at Lake Winnipeg, was the
following,—given to me by an aged chief as a fact, but which I cannot
consider in another light than as a legend. It illustrates, however, the
influence of dreams upon the savage mind. An Indian named Otneagance
(Little Shoulder), while hunting after deer, on a cold winter day, came
to the margin of this lake, where he built a fire and spent the night.
He had a dream, and thought that he was crawling under ground, for the
purpose of rescuing a human being from death. On opening his eyes in the
morning, he was greatly surprised to see a woman on the ice a short
distance off. She was standing near an air-hole, and wailing on account
of her child, a little boy, who had fallen through and must inevitably
perish. Soon as the hunter heard the woman’s story, he dove into the
hole, saw the child a great distance off, holding out its hands, swam to
it, and in a few minutes placed it in its mother’s arms—alive. “And
yonder,” said the chief, pointing to a little mound, “is the resting
place of that good mother, and before you stands that boy—changed to a
trembling reed. As to my saviour, Otneagance, he has, for many moons,
been a resident in the Hunting Grounds of the Blessed.”
Speaking of the dead reminds me of the Winnipeg grave-yard. The
Chippeway mode of treating their dead, is to envelop the body of their
friend in a bark box, which they expose upon a scaffolding, supported by
four poles, and surmounted with a piece of skin or cloth as a flag.
After the body has remained there until all decomposition is at an end,
they then bury the bones, placing at the head of the grave a portion of
the best food at that time in their possession. They afterwards cover
the hillock with bark, somewhat after the manner of a roof, leaving at
one end a little window or door, for the departed spirit to enter, when
it comes to take away its bones, on a certain mysterious day, to which
the living all look forward with reverence. When a friend dies, for one
whole year thereafter they place food and tobacco periodically upon his
grave; and all the articles that he left behind are venerated and
cherished, as if endowed with life. Their manner of mourning for the
dead ordinarily is, to paint their faces black, but when their friend is
taken away by violence, they wail and mutilate their bodies. It is a
part of their religion to protect from sacrilege and exposure the
remains of their departed friends, and the survivors are constantly
repairing every ruin that accident or time may bring upon the graves of
their kindred. The grave-city that attracted my attention at Winnipeg,
consisted of seventy-six bark houses like those that I have described.
In fifty-two of them reposed the ashes of fourteen families who were
butchered, at midnight, by a Sioux war party. In five of them were
buried a mother and four daughters, who lost their lives while fishing
on the lake, in frail canoes, that were swamped by a sudden storm. In
seventeen of them lay the remains of as many warriors who were attacked
by a Sioux party of two hundred,—they fought in a single trench, for one
whole day, but were finally overcome and destroyed.
The melancholy impression which these brief facts left upon my mind, as
I stood in that wilderness grave-yard, I could not easily dissipate.
What a strange contrast in every particular did it present to the
grave-yards of the civilized world! Not one of all this multitude had
died in peace, or with a knowledge of the true God. Here were no
sculptured monuments, no names, no epitaphs;—nothing but solitude and
utter desolation.