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.
About the middle of January we started for the plains to find the
Indians, and, if possible, secure provisions and fresh meat from
them. William and Neils, with horses and sleds, preceded us some
days. Williston and I in the meantime went for the last load of
fish, then we followed our men out to the great plains. In those
days travelling with horses was tedious. You had to give the animals
time to forage in the snow, or they would not stand the trip. From
forty to sixty miles per day would be ordinary progress for dogs and
drivers, but from ten to twenty would be enough for horses in the
deep snow and cold of winter; thus it came to pass that, although
William and Neils had preceded us some days, nevertheless we camped
with them our second night out, close beside an old buffalo pound
which had been built by the Indians.
It was said by the old Indians that if you took the wood of a pound
for your camp-fire, a storm would be the result; and as we did take
of the wood that night, a storm came sure enough, and William's
horses were far away next morning. As we had but little provisions,
Williston and I did not wait, but leaving the most of our little
stock of dried meat with the horse party, we went on in the storm,
and keeping at it all day, made a considerable distance in a
south-easterly direction, where we hoped to fall in with Indians or
buffaloes, or possibly a party bent on the same errand as ourselves
from the sister mission at Whitefish Lake.
That night both men and dogs ate sparingly, for the simple reason
that we did not have any more to eat. In these northern latitudes a
night in January in the snow with plenty of food is, under the best
of circumstances, a hardship; but when both tired men and faithful
dogs are on "short commons" the gloom seems darker, the cold keener,
the loneliness greater than usual. At any rate, that is how
Williston and I felt the night I refer to. The problem was clear on
the blackboard before us as we sat and vainly tried to think it out,
for there was very little talking round our camp-fire that night.
The known quantities were: an immense stretch of unfamiliar country
before us; deep, loose snow everywhere around us; our food all gone;
both of us in a large measure "tenderfeet." The unknown: Where were
the friendly Indians and the buffaloes, and where was food to be
found? But being tired and young we went to sleep, and with the
morning star were waiting for the daylight in a more hopeful
condition of mind.
Driving on in the drifting snow, about 10 a.m. we came upon a fresh
track of dog-sleds going in our direction. This, then, must be the
party from Whitefish Lake. The thought put new life both into us and
our dogs. Closely watching the trail, which was being drifted over
very fast by the loose snow, we hurried on, and soon came to where
these people had camped the night before. Pushing on, we came up to
them about the middle of the afternoon. They turned out to be Peter
Erasmus and some Indians from Whitefish Lake Mission; but, alas for
our hopes of food, like ourselves they were without provisions.
However, we drove on as fast as we could, and had the supreme
satisfaction of killing a buffalo cow just before sundown that same
evening. Very soon the animal was butchered and on our sleds, and
finding a suitable clump of timber, we camped for the night. Making
a good large camp-fire, very soon we were roasting and boiling and
eating buffalo meat, to the great content of our inner man. What a
contrast our camp this night to that of the previous one! Then,
hunger and loneliness and considerable anxiety; now, feasting and
anecdote and joke and fun. Our dogs, also, were in better spirits.
There was one drawback--we had no salt. My companion Williston had
left what little we had in one of our camps. He pretended he did not
care for salt, and he and the others laughed at me because I longed
for it so much. The fresh meat was good, but "Oh, if I only had some
salt!" was an oft-repeated expression from my lips. Later we fell in
with old Ben Sinclair, who sympathized with me very much, and
rummaging in the dirty, grimy sack in which he carried his tobacco
and moccasins and mending material, he at last brought up a tiny bit
of salt tied up in the corner of a small rag, saying: "My wife
Magened, he very good woman, he put that there; you may have it;" and
thankful I was for the few grains of salt. As Williston had lost
ours, and had laughed at me for mourning over the loss, and
especially as the few grains old Ben gave me would not admit of it, I
did not offer him a share, but made my little portion last for the
rest of that journey.
Six hungry, hard-travelled men and twenty-four hungrier and also
harder-travelled dogs left very little of that buffalo cow (though a
big and fat animal) to carry out of the camp. Supper, or several
suppers, for six men and twenty-four dogs, and then breakfast for six
men, and the cow was about gone; but now we had pretty good hope of
finding more. This we did as we journeyed on, and at the end of two
days' travel we sighted the smoke of a large camp of Indians.
[Illustration: "The dogs and sleds went sliding in around him."]
Nothing special had happened during those two days, except that once
our dogs and an old buffalo bull got badly tangled up, and we had to
kill the bull to unravel the tangle. It happened in this wise: We
started the bull, and he galloped off, almost on our course, so we
let our dogs run after him, and the huge, clumsy fellow took straight
across a frozen lake, and coming upon some glare ice just as the dogs
came up to him, he slipped and fell, and the dogs and sleds went
sliding in all around him. Thus the six trains got tangled up all
around the old fellow, who snorted and shook his head, and kicked,
but could not get up. We had to kill him to release our dogs and
sleds.
The camp we came to had about two hundred lodges, mostly Wood Crees.
They were glad to see us, and welcomed us right hospitably. We went
into Chief Child's tent, and made our home there for the short time
we were in the camp; but we may be said to have boarded all over this
temporary village, for I think I must have had a dozen suppers in as
many different tents the first evening of our arrival; and I could
not by any means accept all the invitations I had showered upon me.
While eating a titbit of buffalo in one tent, and giving all the
items of news from the north I knew, and asking and answering
questions, behold! another messenger would come in, and tell me he
had been sent to take me to another big man's lodge--and thus, until
midnight, I went from tent to tent, sampling the culinary art of my
Indian friends, and imparting and receiving information. I had a
long chat with the grand old chief, Maskepetoon; renewed my
acquaintance with the sharp-eyed and wiry hunter and warrior,
Ka-kake, and made friends with a bright, fine-looking young man who
had recently come from a war expedition. He had been shot right
through his body, just missing the spine, and was now convalescing.
My new friend, some four or five years after our first meeting, gave
up tribal war and paganism, and heartily embraced Christianity. He
became as the right hand of the missionary, and to-day is head man at
Saddle Lake.
Without recognizing the fact, I was now fairly in the field as a
pioneer, and taking my first lessons in the university of God as a
student in a great new land. Running after a dog-train all day,
partaking of many suppers, talking more or less all the time until
midnight, then to bed--thus the first night was spent in camp.
Next morning we traded our loads of provisions--calfskin bags of
pounded meat, cakes of hard tallow, bladders of marrow-fat, bales of
dried meat, and buffalo tongues. In a short time Williston and I had
all we could pack on our sleds, or at any rate all our dogs could
haul home. And now it required some skill and planning to load our
sleds. To pack and wrap and lash securely as a permanent load for
home, some four hundred pounds of tongues and cakes and bladders of
grease and bags of pounded meat, on a small toboggan, some eight feet
by one foot in size; then on the top of this to tie our own and our
dogs' provisions for the return journey, also axe, and kettle, and
change of duffels and moccasins; and in the meantime answer a
thousand questions that men and women and children who, as they
looked on or helped, kept plying us with, took some time and patient
work; but by evening we were ready to make an early start next day.
In the meantime the hunters had been away killing and bringing in
meat and robes. With the opening light, and all day long, the women
had been busy scraping hides and dressing robes and leather, pounding
meat, rendering tallow, chopping bones wherewith to make what was
termed "marrow-fat," bringing in wood, besides sewing garments and
making and mending moccasins. Only the men who had just come home
from a war party, or those who came in the day before with a lot of
meat and a number of hides, were now the loungers, resting from the
heavy fatigues of the chase or war. The whole scene was a study of
life under new phases, and as I worked and talked I was taking it all
in and adapting language and idiom and thought to my new surroundings.
Another long evening of many invitations and many suppers, also of
continuous catechism and questionings, then a few hours' sleep,
during which the temperature has become fearfully cold, and with
early morn we are catching our dogs, who are now rested, and with
what food we gave them and that which they have stolen have
perceptibly fattened.
Our Whitefish Lake friends are ready also, and we make a start. Our
loads are high and heavy. Many an upset takes place. To right the
load, to hold it back going down hill, to push up the steep hills, to
run and walk all the time, to take our turn in breaking the trail
(for we are going as straight as possible for home, and will not
strike our out-bound trail for many miles, then only to find it
drifted over)--all this soon takes the romance out of winter tripping
with dogs; but we plod on and camp some thirty-five or forty miles
from the Indian camp. The already tired drivers must work hard at
making camp and cutting and packing wood before this day's work is
done; then supper and rest, and prayer and bed, and long before
daylight next morning we are away, and by pushing on make from forty
to fifty miles our second day.
That night we sent a message back to the Indian camp. The message
was about buffaloes, of which we had seen quite a number of herds
that afternoon. The messenger was a dog. Peter Erasmus had bought a
very, fine-looking dog from an old woman, and I incidentally heard
her, as she was catching the dog, say to him: "This is now the sixth
time I have sold you, and you came home five times. I expect you
will do so again." And sure enough the big fine-looking fellow
turned out a fraud. Peter was tired of him, and was about to let him
go, when I suggested using him to tell the Indians about the
buffaloes we had seen; so a message in syllables was written and
fastened to the dog's neck, and he was let loose. He very soon left
our camp, and, as I found out later, was in the Indian camp when the
people began to stir next morning. We let him go about eight o'clock
at night, and before daylight next morning he had made the two days'
journey traversed by us. As an Indian would say, "The old woman's
medicine is strong!"
There were six very weary men in our camp that night, thirty-three
years ago. Floundering through the snow for two long days, pushing
and righting and holding back those heavy sleds, whipping up lazy
dogs, etc., chopping and carrying wood, shovelling snow--well, we
wanted our supper. But after supper, what a change! Joke and
repartee, incident and story followed, and while the wolves howled
and the wind whistled and the cold intensified, with our big blazing
fire we were, in measure, happy. Three of the six have been dead
many years; the other three, though aging fast, are now and then
camping as of old, still vigorous and hale.
During the next morning's tramp we separated, each party taking the
direct course for home. That afternoon we met William and Neils, who
had been all this time finding their horses, which strayed away the
night of the storm, when we camped together by the old pound. Surely
the spirit of the old structure had been avenged because of our
burning some of it, for the storm had come, the horses had been lost,
and our men had been in a condition of semi-starvation for some days.
We told them where they could find buffaloes and the Indian camp,
gave them some provisions and drove on. Having the track, we made
the old pound the same evening, and, nothing daunted, proceeded to
make firewood of its walls. To our camp there came that night the
tall young Indian Pakan, who is now the chief of the Whitefish and
Saddle Lake Reserves. He seemed to resent the desecration of the
pound, but our supper and company and the news of buffaloes made him
forget this for the time. He and two or three others were camped not
far off, on their way out to the plains.
Two long days more, with the road very heavy, and sometimes almost no
road at all, brought us late the second night to our shack, where Mr.
Woolsey and Mr. O. B. were delighted to greet us once more. They had
been lonely and were anxious about us.