[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: "I made a fire, and by melting snow boiled my kettle."
(_Page 33._)]
SADDLE, SLED AND
SNOWSHOE:
PIONEERING ON THE SASKATCHEWAN
IN THE SIXTIES.
BY
JOHN McDOUGALL,
Author of "Forest, Lake and Prairie: Twenty Years of Frontier
Life in Western Canada," etc.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. E. LAUGHLIN._
TORONTO:
WILLIAM BRIGGS,
WESLEY BUILDINGS.
MONTREAL: C. W. COATES. HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS.
1896.
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-six, by WILLIAM BRIGGS, at the
Department of Agriculture.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Old Fort Edmonton--Early missionaries--Down the Saskatchewan by
dog-train--Camp-fire experiences--Arrival at home--Daily occupations
CHAPTER II.
A foraging expedition--Our hungry camp--A welcome feast--Dogs, sleds
and buffalo bull in a tangle--In a Wood Cree encampment--Chief Child,
Maskepetoon and Ka-kake--Indian hospitality--Incidents of the return
trip
CHAPTER III.
Scarcity of food--The winter packet--Start for Edmonton for the
eastern mails--A lonely journey--Arrive at Fort Edmonton--Start for
home--Camping in a storm--Improvising a "Berlin"--Old
Draffan--Sleeping on a dog-sled en route--A hearty welcome home
CHAPTER IV.
Trip to Whitefish Lake--Mr. Woolsey as a dog-driver--Rolling down a
side hill--Another trip to Edmonton--Mr. O. B. as a passenger--Perils
of travel by ice--Narrow escape of Mr. O. B.--A fraud
exposed--Profanity punished--Arrival at Edmonton--Milton and
Cheadle--Return to Victoria
CHAPTER V.
Mr. Woolsey's ministrations--An exciting foot-race--Building
operations--Gardening--Stolen (?) buffalo tongues--Addled duck eggs
as a relish--A lesson in cooking--A lucky shot--Precautions against
hostile Indians
CHAPTER VI.
The summer brigade--With the brigade down the Saskatchewan--A
glorious panorama--Meet with father and mother on the way to
Victoria--Privations of travel--A buffalo crossing--Arrival at
Victoria--A church building begun--Peter Erasmus as interpreter
CHAPTER VII.
In search of the Stoneys--An Indian avenger--A Sunday at Fort
Edmonton--Drunken Lake carousals--Indian trails--Canyon of the Red
Deer--I shoot my father--Amateur surgeons--Prospecting for
gold--Peter gets "rattled"--A mysterious shot--Friends or
foes?--Noble specimens of the Indian race--A "kodak" needed--Among
the Stoneys--Prospecting for a mission site--A massacre of
neophytes--An Indian patriarch--Back at Victoria again
CHAPTER VIII.
Provisions diminishing--A buffalo hunt organized--Oxen and Red River
carts--Our "buffalo runners"--Meet with Maskepetoon--Maskepetoon
shakes hands with his son's murderer--An Indian's strange
vow--Instance of Indian
watchfulness--"Who-Talks-Past-All-Things"--Come upon the buffalo--An
exciting charge--Ki-you-ken-os races the buffalo--Peter's exciting
adventure--Buffalo dainties--Return home--War parties--Indian
curiosity--Starving Young Bull's "dedication feast"--Missionary labors
CHAPTER IX.
The fall fishing--A relentless tooth-ache--Prairie and forest
fire--Attacked by my dogs--A run home--A sleepless night--Father
turns dentist--Another visit to Edmonton--Welcome relief--Final
revenge on my enemy
CHAPTER X.
Casual visitors--The missionary a "medicine man"--"Hardy dogs and
hardier men"--A buffalo hunt organized--"Make a fire! I am
freezing!"--I thaw out my companion--Chief Child--Father caught
napping--Go with Mr. Woolsey to Edmonton--Encounter between Blackfeet
and Stoneys--A "nightmare" scare--My passenger scorched--Rolling down
hill--Translating hymns
CHAPTER XI.
Visited by the Wood Stoneys--"Muddy Bull"--A noble Indian
couple--Remarkable shooting--Tom and I have our first and only
disagreement--A race with loaded dog-sleds--Chased by a wounded
buffalo bull--My swiftest foot-race--Building a palisade around our
mission home--Bringing in seed potatoes
CHAPTER XII.
Mr. Woolsey's farewell visit to Edmonton--Preparing for a trip to
Fort Garry--Indians gathering into our valley--Fight between Crees
and Blackfeet--The "strain of possible tragedy"--I start for Fort
Garry--Joined by Ka-kake--Sabbath observance--A camp of Saulteaux--An
excited Indian--I dilate on the numbers and resources of the white
man--We pass Duck Lake--A bear hunt--"Loaded for b'ar"--A contest in
athletics--Whip-poor-wills--Pancakes and maple syrup--Pass the site
of Birtle--My first and only difference with Ka-kake
CHAPTER XIII.
Fall in with a party of "plain hunters"--Marvellous resources of this
great country--A "hunting breed"--Astounding ignorance--Visit a
Church of England mission--Have my first square meal of bread and
butter in two years--Archdeacon Cochrane--Unexpected sympathy with
rebellion and slavery--Through the White Horse Plains--Baptiste's
recklessness and its punishment--Reach our destination--Present my
letter of introduction to Governor McTavish--Purchasing
supplies--"Hudson's Bay blankets"--Old Fort Garry, St. Boniface,
Winnipeg, St. John's, Kildonan--A "degenerate" Scot--An eloquent
Indian preacher--Baptiste succumbs to his old enemy--Prepare for our
return journey
CHAPTER XIV.
We start for home--A stubborn cow--Difficulties of
transport--Indignant travellers--Novel method of breaking a
horse--Secure provisions at Fort Ellice--Lose one of our cows--I turn
detective--Dried meat and fresh cream as a delicacy
CHAPTER XV.
Personnel of our party--My little rat terrier has a novel
experience--An Indian horse-thief's visit by night--I shoot and wound
him--An exciting chase--Saved by the vigilance of my rat terrier--We
reach the South Branch of the Saskatchewan--A rushing torrent--A
small skin canoe our only means of transport--Mr. Connor's fears of
drowning--Get our goods over
CHAPTER XVI.
A raft of carts--The raft swept away--Succeed in recovering
it--Getting our stock over--The emotionless Scot unbends--Our horses
wander away--Track them up--Arrive at Carlton--Crossing the North
Saskatchewan--Homes for the millions--Fall in with father and
Peter--Am sent home for fresh horses--An exhilarating gallop--Home
again
CHAPTER XVII.
Improvements about home--Mr. Woolsey's departure--A zealous and
self-sacrificing missionary--A travelling college--I feel a twinge of
melancholy--A lesson in the luxury of happiness--Forest and prairie
fire--Father's visit to the Mountain Stoneys--Indians gathering about
our mission--Complications feared
CHAPTER XVIII.
Maskepetoon--Council gatherings--Maskepetoon'a childhood--"Royal born
by right Divine"--A father's advice--An Indian
philosopher--Maskepetoon as "Peace Chief"--Forgives his father's
murderer--Arrival of Rev. R. T. Rundle--Stephen and
Joseph--Stephen's eloquent harangue--Joseph's hunting exploits--Types
of the shouting Methodist and the High Church ritualist
CHAPTER XIX.
Muh-ka-chees, or "the Fox"--An Indian "dude"--A strange story--How
the Fox was transformed--Mr. The-Camp-is-Moving as a magician
CHAPTER XX.
Victoria becomes a Hudson's Bay trading post--An adventure on a
raft--The annual fresh meat hunt organized--Among the buffalo--Oliver
misses his shot and is puzzled--My experience with a runaway horse--A
successful hunt--My "bump of locality" surprises Peter--Home again
CHAPTER XXI.
Father and I visit Fort Edmonton--Peter takes to himself a wife--Mr.
Connor becomes school teacher--First school in that part of the
country--Culinary operations--Father decides to open a mission at
Pigeon Lake--I go prospecting--Engage a Roman Catholic guide--Our
guide's sudden "illness"--Through new scenes--Reach Pigeon
Lake--Getting out timber for building--Incidents of return trip
CHAPTER XXII.
Another buffalo hunt--Visit Maskepetoon's camp--The old chief's
plucky deed--Arrival of a peace party from the Blackfeet--A "peace
dance"--Buffalo in plenty--Our mysterious visitor--A party of
Blackfeet come upon us--Watching and praying--Arrive home with
well-loaded sleds--Christmas festivities
CHAPTER XXIII.
We set out with Maskepetoon for the Blackfoot camp--A wife for a
target--Indian scouts--Nearing the Blackfeet--Our Indians don paint
and feathers--A picture of the time and place--We enter the Blackfoot
camp--Three Bulls--Buffalo Indians--Father describes eastern
civilization--The Canadian Government's treatment of the Indians a
revelation--I am taken by a war chief as a hostage--Mine host and his
seven wives--Bloods and Piegans--I witness a great dance--We leave
for home--A sprained ankle--Arrival at the mission
CHAPTER XXIV.
We visit the Cree camp--I lose Maple and the pups--Find our Indian
friends "pound-keeping"--The Indian buffalo pound--Consecrating the
pound--Mr. Who-Brings-Them-In--Running the buffalo in--The herd
safely coralled--Wholesale slaughter--Apportioning the hunt--Finis
ILLUSTRATIONS.
"I made a fire, and by melting snow boiled my kettle" ... Frontispiece
"The dogs and sleds went sliding in around him"
"There he sat, his eyes bulging out with fear"
"The discharge of shot, bounding from this, struck both father and
his horse"
"To save my life I had to climb to the top of the staging"
"I got Tom up, and held him close over the fire"
"I bounded from before him for my life"
"I headed her out again into the lake"
"I took deliberate aim, and fired at him"
"We went at a furious rate on that swirling, seething, boiling
torrent"
Rev. Thomas Woolsey
"Tying our clothes in bundles above our heads, we started into the
ice-cold current"
"Slapping his head, I turned his course to smooth ground"
"Maskepetoon calmly ...took out his Cree Testament ... and began to
read"
"This strange Indian, without looking at us, sang on"
"Slapped-in-the-Face, take that one"
SADDLE, SLED AND SNOWSHOE
CHAPTER I.
Old Fort Edmonton--Early missionaries--Down the Saskatchewan by
dog-train--Camp-fire experiences--Arrival at home--Daily occupations.
In my previous volume, "FOREST, LAKE AND PRAIRIE," which closed with
the last days of 1862, I left my readers at Fort Edmonton. At that
time this Hudson's Bay post was the chief place of interest in the
great country known as the Saskatchewan Valley. To this point was
tributary a vast region fully six hundred miles square, distinguished
by grand ranges of mountains, tremendous foot hills, immense
stretches of plain, and great forests. Intersecting it were many
mighty rivers, and a great number of smaller streams. Lakes, both
fresh and alkaline, dotted its broad surface.
Over the entire length and breadth of this big domain coal seemed
inexhaustible. Rich soil and magnificent pasturage were almost
universal. But as yet there was no settlement. The peoples who
inhabited the country were nomadic. Hunting, trapping, and fishing
were their means of livelihood, and in all this they were encouraged
by the great Company to whom belonged the various trading-posts
scattered over the wide area, and of which Fort Edmonton was chief.
For the collecting and shipping of furs Edmonton existed. For this
one definite purpose that post lived and stood and had its being. A
large annual output of the skins and furs of many animals was its
highest ambition. Towards this goal men and dogs and horses and oxen
pulled and strained and starved. For this purpose isolation and
hardship almost inconceivable were undergone. For the securing and
bringing in to Edmonton of the pelts of buffalo and bear, beaver and
badger, martin and musk-rat, fisher and fox, otter and lynx, the
interest of everyone living in the country was enlisted. Thirteen
different peoples, speaking eight distinct languages, made this post
their periodic centre; and while at Edmonton was shown the wonderful
tact and skill of the Hudson's Bay Company in managing contending
tribes, yet nevertheless many a frightful massacre took place under
the shadow of its walls.
This was the half-way house in crossing the continent. Hundreds of
miles of wildness and isolation were on either hand. About midway
between and two thousand feet above two great oceans--unique,
significant, and alone, without telegraphic or postal
communication--thus we found Fort Edmonton in the last days of the
last month of the year 1862.
Edmonton had been the home of the Rev. R. T. Rundle, the first
missionary to that section, who from this point made journeys in
every direction to the Hudson's Bay Company's posts and Indian camps.
Following him, later on, the Roman Catholic Church sent in her
missionaries. These, at the time of which I write, had a church in
the Fort, and the beginning of a mission out north, about nine miles
from the Fort; also one at Lake St. Ann's, some forty miles distant.
When the Rev. Thomas Woolsey came into the North-West, he too made
Edmonton his headquarters for some years, and, like his predecessor,
travelled from camp to camp and from post to post.
Even in those early days, one could not help predicting a bright
future for this important point, for in every direction from
Edmonton, as a centre, Nature has been lavish with her gifts. The
physical foundations of empire are here to be found in rich
profusion, and in 1862, having gone into and come out of Edmonton by
several different directions, I felt that I would run but little risk
in venturing to prophesy that it would by-and-by become a great
metropolis.
The second day of January, 1863, saw a considerable party of
travellers wind out of the gate of the Fort and, descending the hill,
take the ice and begin the race down the Big Saskatchewan; Mr.
Chatelaine, of Fort Pitt, and Mr. Pambrun, of Lac-la-biche, with
their men, making, with our party, a total of eight trains. There
being no snow, we had to follow the windings of the river. For the
first eighty or ninety miles our course was to be the same, and it
was pleasant, in this land of isolation, to fall in with so many
travelling companions.
It was late in the day when we got away, but both men and dogs were
fresh, so we made good time and camped for the night some twenty-five
miles from the Fort. Climbing the first bank, we pulled into a clump
of spruce, and soon the waning light of day gave place to the bright
glare of our large camp-fire. Frozen ground and a few spruce boughs
were beneath us and the twinkling stars overhead.
There being at this time no snow, our home for the night is soon
ready, the kettles boiled, the tea made and pemmican chopped loose,
and though we are entirely without bread or fruit or vegetables, yet
we drink our tea, gnaw our pemmican and enjoy ourselves. The
twenty-five-mile run and the intense cold have made us very hungry.
Most of our company are old pioneers, full of incident and story of
life in the far north, or out on the "Big Plains" to the south. We
feed our dogs, we tell our stories, we pile the long logs of wood on
our big fire, and alternately change our position, back then front to
the fire. We who have been running hard, and whose clothes are wet
with perspiration, now become ourselves the clothes-horses whereon to
dry these things before we attempt to sleep. Then we sing a hymn,
have a word of prayer, and turn in.
The great fire burns down, the stars glitter through the crisp,
frosty air, the aurora dances over our heads and flashes in brilliant
colors about our camp, the trees and the ice crack with the intense
cold, but we sleep on until between one and two, when we are again
astir. Our huge fire once more flings its glare away out through the
surrounding trees and into the cold night. A hot cup of tea, a small
chunk of pemmican, a short prayer, and hitching up our dogs, tying up
our sled loads and wrapping up our passengers, we are away once more
on the ice of this great inland river. The yelp of a dog as the
sharp whip touches him is answered from either forest-clad bank by
numbers of coyotes and wolves; but regardless of these, "Marse!" is
the word, and on we run, making fast time.
On our way up I had found a buck deer frozen into the ice, and had
chopped the antlers from his head and "cached" them in a tree to take
home with me; but when I told my new companions of my find, they were
eager for the meat, which they said would be good. I had not yet
eaten drowned meat, but when I came to think of it I saw there was
reason in what they said, and so promised to do my best to find the
spot where the buck was frozen in. As it was night--perhaps three
o'clock--when we came to the place, I was a little dubious as to
finding the deer. However, I was born with a large "bump of
locality" and a good average memory, and presently we were chopping
the drowned deer out of the ready-to-hand refrigerator. This done we
drove on, and stopped for our second breakfast near the Vermilion.
We were through and away from this before daylight, and hurrying on
reached our turning-off point early in the afternoon, where we bade
our friends good-bye, and, clambering up the north bank of the
Saskatchewan, disappeared into the forest.
Taking our course straight for Smoking Lake, the whole length of
which we travelled on the ice, we climbed the gently-sloping hill for
two miles and were home again, having made the 120 miles in less than
two days.
When I jumped out of bed next morning my feet felt as if I were
foundered, because of the steady run on the frozen ground and harder
ice; but this soon passed away. Mr. O. B., whom we had left at home,
was greatly rejoiced at our return. He had been very lonely. I
described to him our visit, and told him of the nice fat, tender beef
on which the Chief Factor had regaled us on Christmas and New Year's
day; and surely it was not my fault that, when the portion of the
meat of the drowned deer which had been brought home was cooked, he
thought it was Edmonton beef, and pronounced it "delicious," and
partook largely of it, and later on was terribly put out to learn it
was a bit of a drowned animal we had found in the river.
Holidays past, we faced our work, which was varied and large: fish to
be hauled home; provisions to be sought for, and, when found, traded
from the Indians; timber to be got out and hauled some distance;
lumber to be "whipped,"--that is, cut by the whip-saw; freight to be
hauled for Mr. Woolsey, who had some in store or as a loan at
Whitefish Lake--all this gave us no time for loitering. Men, horses,
dogs, all had to move. Moreover, we had to make our own dog and
horse sleds, and sew the harness for both dogs and horses. That for
the dogs we made out of tanned moose skins; that for the horses and
oxen, out of partly tanned buffalo hide, known as "power flesh," the
significance of which I could never comprehend, unless the sewing of
them, which was powerfully tedious, was what was meant. Turn which
way you would there was plenty to do, and, from the present day
standpoint, very little to do it with.
Mr. Woolsey and Mr. O. B. kept down the shack, and the rest of
us--that is, Williston, William, Neils and myself--went at the rest
of the work. First we hauled the balance of our fish home, then we
made a trip to Whitefish Lake and brought the freight which had been
left there. Mr. Steinhauer and two of his daughters accompanied us
back to Smoking Lake, the former to confer with his brother
missionary, and the girls to become the pupils of Mr. Woolsey. The
opportunity of being taught even the rudiments was exceedingly rare
in those days in the North-West, and Mr. Steinhauer was only too glad
to take the offer of his brother missionary to help in this way. The
snow was now from a foot to twenty inches deep. The cold was keen.
To make trails through dense forests and across trackless plains, to
camp where night caught us, without tent or any other dwelling, and
with only the blue sky above us and the crisp snow and frozen ground
beneath, were now our every-day experience.