SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE
"Wild for the hunter's roving, and the use
Of trappers in its dark and trackless vales,
Wild with the trampling of the giant moose,
And the weird magic of old Indian tales."
--_Archibald Lampman_.
A double cabin is assigned us on _The Mackenzie River_ and the nightmare
that haunted us on the scows of wet negatives and spoiled films
vanishes. On Tuesday, July 7th, the new steamer takes the water.
Although, as we have said, we are in the latitude of St. Petersburg,
still twelve hundred miles in an almost due northwest direction
stretches between us and that far point where the Mackenzie disembogues
into the Polar Ocean. The Union Jack dips and all Fort Smith is on the
bank to see us off. On the Fourth of July we had improvised a program of
sports for the Dog-Rib and Slavi boys, introducing them to the
fascinations of sack-races, hop-step-and-jump, and the three-legged
race. The thing had taken so that the fathers came out and participated,
and, surreptitiously behind the tepees, the mothers began to hop. Having
no popcorn, fizz, or Coney-Island red-hots to distribute, we did the
next best thing,--became barkers and gave the calls that go with
festivities. So now, as the boat swings out from the soft bank, it is a
gay company of urchins who wave their caps and yell, "R-r-r-red
lemol-lade, everybody drinks it!"
There is only one Fort Smith! Established for three decades, it has as
yet seen no wells dug. The people still climb that steep bank, carrying
in pendant buckets from wooden shoulder-yokes water for the daily
drinking and ablutions. At four o'clock in the afternoon, should you
visit Fort Smith forty years from now, you will see the same daily
procession of women and kiddies bearing buckets,--the Aquarius sign of
the Fort Smith zodiac. A scoffer at my elbow grins, "Why should they
bother to dig wells? It's cheaper to bring out Orkney-men in sail-boats
from Scotland to tote their water up the banks."
[Illustration: The "Red Lemol-lade" Boys]
At noon we reach the Salt River, twenty-two miles up, which is one of
the most marvellous salt deposits in the world. The Salt River winds in
crescent curves through a valley wooded with aspen and spruce, and the
Salt Plains six miles in extent stretch at the base of hills six or
seven hundred feet high. The salt lies all over the ground in beautiful
cubes,--pure crystal salt. It is anybody's salt plain; you can come here
when you will and scoop up all you want. These plains have supplied the
North country with salt since first white men penetrated the country. At
the mouth of the Salt River are the shacks of the present
representatives of the Beaulieus,--a family which has acted as guides
for all the great men who ever trended northward. They have been
interesting characters always, and as we look in upon them to-day
neither Beaulieu nor salt has lost his savour.
[Illustration: Salt Beds]
The Slave River from where it leaves Fort Smith to its embouchure in
Great Slave Lake is about two hundred miles long, with an average width
of half a mile, except where it expands in its course to enclose
islands. The big boat behaves beautifully in the water, and on we slip
with no excitement until about five o'clock, when a moose and her calf
are espied, well out of range. Each in his narrow cell, we sleep the
sleep of the just and wake to find ourselves tied to the bank. The
captain fears a storm is brooding on Great Slave Lake; so, tethered at
the marge of the reedy lagoon, we wait all the forenoon. A corner of
Great Slave Lake has to be traversed in order to reach Fort Resolution.
To Samuel Hearne, the Mungo Park of Canada, belongs the double honour of
tracing the Coppermine River and discovering Great Slave Lake. Just one
hundred and thirty-seven years ago on Christmas Eve, Hearne got his
first glimpse of this magnificent inland sea which is cut through the
centre by the parallel of 62°, and which lies east and west between the
meridians of 109° and 117°. No survey of Great Slave Lake has been made,
but it is estimated to have a superficial area of 10,500 square
miles--just one-third the size of troubled Ireland, and as great as
Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined.
Great Slave Lake, lying wholly within the forested region, is three
hundred miles long, and its width at one point exceeds sixty miles. At
every place on its banks where the fur-traders have their stations
ordinary farm-crops are grown. Barley sown at Fort Resolution in mid-May
reaches maturity in a hundred days; potatoes planted at the same time
are dug in mid-September. The gardens of Fort Rae on the North Arm of
the Lake produce beets, peas, cabbages, onions, carrots, and turnips. As
Fort Rae is built on a rocky island with a bleak exposure, this would
seem to promise in some future day generous harvests for the more
favoured lands on the south and west.
The names given by the old fur-traders to their posts make the
traveller think that in these North lands he, a second Christian, is
essaying a new Pilgrim's Progress. At the south entry to the Lake we are
at Resolution; when we cross it we arrive at Providence; away off at the
eastern extremity is Reliance; Confidence takes us to Great Bear Lake;
and Good Hope stretches far ahead down the lower reaches of the
Mackenzie. Fort Resolution on the south side of Great Slave Lake, a
little west of the mouth of the Slave, lies back of an island-sheltered
entrance.
[Illustration: Unloading at Fort Resolution]
The striking feature as we enter is an immense Roman Catholic Mission
school in process of construction, to supplement the existing church and
school of that faith. There is neither station of the Mounted Police nor
Church of England here; their places are taken by two independent
fur-trading concerns operating in opposition to the Ancient Company.
We had been told that the children down North had the kiddies at Fort
Smith and Chipewyan "all skinned" for politeness, and we find it even
so. The good nuns are trying to make reputable citizens of the young
scions of the Dog-Rib and Yellow-Knife nations and are succeeding
admirably as far as surface indications go. We approach a group of
smiling boys arrayed in their Sunday clothes, awaiting a visit of the
Bishop. With one accord come off their Glengarry bonnets, smoking caps,
and Christie stiffs, and a row of brown hands is extended to greet us.
Very trim the laddies look in their convent-made cadet-uniforms, as,
standing at "'Shun!" they answered our every question with, "Yes,
missus," "No, missus." When we ask their names, without tittering or
looking silly they render up the whole list of saintly cognomens. Here
they have once more their white brothers "skinned"; no civilised man,
woman, or child ever stood up in public and announced his full baptismal
name in an audible tone without feeling a fool. I have seen grizzled
judges from the bench, when called upon to give evidence as witnesses,
squirm like schoolboys in acknowledging that their godfathers had dubbed
them "Archer Martin" or "Peter Secord" or whatever it might be.
It is certainly Old Worldish. We speak with Father Laity who, all
unconscious of the commotion around him, marches up and down the trail
and reads his breviary. He tells us he is a Breton and that in an age
that is past he served as a drummer-boy in the Prussian war. The Father
came to this shut-in land forty-one years ago.
Great Slave Lake, which presents a formidable barrier to the passage of
the smaller land birds, is a breeding station of the sea-swallow. The
Arctic tern hatches on its shores, laying its eggs in the beach gravel.
The bird, with its slender body, deeply-forked tail, and
shrilly-querulous voice, is everywhere in evidence. Does the whole
family of lake birds show any more exquisite colour-scheme than the
pearly plumage, small coral feet, carmine bill, and black cap of this
tern? In a dell carpeted with silverweed and wild mustard, we come
across a nest of our persisting friend, the chipping sparrow. Afterward
we wander down to the shore and make the acquaintance of Pilot Julien
Passepartout, whose calling as Mackenzie River navigator allows him to
live out the largeness of his title, though I like best to think of him
by the cradle-name his mother gave him, Tenny Gouley, which means "_A
man born_."
Down at the Treaty tent, Dog-Rib and Yellow-Knife are being handed the
five one dollar bills which remind each that he is a loyal subject of
His Imperial Majesty Edward the Seventh. The Yellow-Knives were so named
by Mackenzie far back in 1789 when he first saw them and their weapons
of native copper. Each head of a family is issued an
identification-ticket which he presents and has punched from year to
year. A father "draws treaty" for his olive-skinned branches until each
marries and erects a tepee for himself. Government Agent Conroy, big
bodied and big hearted, sits on a nail-keg, represents the King, and
gives out largesse; and Mr. Laird presides over the Doomsday book.
Inside the tent we take up a sheltered position and watch the fun. There
are marked zones of names as well as of vegetation. The _Fiddler Anns,
Waggon-box Julias_, and _Mrs. Turkeylegs_ of the Plains country are
absent here, in the Land of the Yellow-Knife, where neither
waggon-boxes nor turkeys flourish.
[Illustration: Coming to "Take Treaty" on Great Slave Lake]
_Mary Catholic_ comes along hand-in-hand with _Samuel the Worm_. Full of
animal spirits is a group of four--_Antoine Gullsmouth,
Tongue-of-the-Jackfish, Baptiste Wolftail,_ and _The Cat's Son_. A
little chap who announces himself as _T'tum_ turns out to be _Petite
Homme_, the squat mate of _The Beloved_. It would be interesting to know
just how each of the next couple acquired his name, for neither
_Trois-Pouces_ and _Owl-Plucked-Out-His-Eye_ bears evidence of abnormal
conditions. On a whole the names are more striking than our John Smiths;
Richard Roes, and Tom Browns, as for instance the next three--_Le Père
des Carriboux, Geroux the Eldest, Alixi To-rong-jo.
The-man-who-stands-still_ is evidently a stand-patter, while one wonders
if it would be right to call _The-Man-Who-Walks-With-The-Red-Hair,_ a
Crimson Rambler.
_Carry-the-Kettle_ appears with _Star Blanket_ and _The Mosquito,_ and
the next man in line, who has the tongs from a bon-bon box stuck in the
band of his hat, rejoices in the name of _Strike-Him-on-the-Back,_ which
somehow suggests the match-box in the hotel hall-way. As the dignified
father, _Having-Passed-Many-Birthdays,_ claims five dollars each for his
four daughters, _Smiling Martin, My-Wigwam-is-White,_ and the twins
_Make-Daylight-Appear_ and _Red-Sky-of-the-Morning,_ we acknowledge that
here again, in the art of naming, the Yellow-Knife has his white brother
"skinned."
Birth, dowry, divorce, death, each must be noted on the treaty ticket,
with a corresponding adjustment of the number of dollar-bills to be
drawn from the coffer. If a man between treaty-paying and treaty-paying
marries a widow with a family, he draws five dollars each for the new
people he has annexed. If there is an exchange of wives (a
not-infrequent thing), the babies have to be newly parcelled out.
Through all the family intricacies Mr. Conroy follows the interpreter
with infinite patience and bonhomie. To the listener it sounds startling
as the interpreter, presenting two tickets says, "He married these three
people--this fellow." "O, he give dat baby away to Charles." When we
hear in a dazed way that "_Mary Catholic's_ son married his dead woman's
sister who was the widow of _Anton Larucom_ and the mother of two boys,"
we take a long breath and murmur, "If the angle ACB is not equal to the
angle ABC, then how can the angle DEF be equal to the angle DFE?" A
young couple, looking neither of them more than sixteen or seventeen,
return with a shake of the head five of the fifteen dollars proffered
them, and the interpreter explains, "Their little boy died--there's only
two of them."
Gregory Daniels in a Scottish voice, which cannot quite hide its
triumphant ring, pushes back his five dollars and demands forty-five. "I
got a wife and siven since last year, she's a Cree wumman." Another
half-breed asks anxiously if he would be allowed to send for a "permit"
like a white man if he refused to take treaty.
One man with long black hair and a cheese-cutter cap creates
consternation at the tent-door by claiming treaty for two wives and
seventeen children. Mr. Conroy, scenting an attempt to stuff the
ballot-box, produces seventeen matches, lays them at my feet on the
tent-floor and asks _The-Lean-Man_ to name them. He starts in all right.
We hear, "_Long Lodge, Little Pine, Blue Fish, Birdtail, Little Bone,
Sweet Grass, Ermine Skin_," and then in a monotone he begins over again,
"_Long Lodge, Little Pine, Blue Fish_," and finally gives it up, eagerly
asking the interpreter to wait "a-little-sun." The drama of paying and
recording has gone on for half an hour and we have quite forgotten
_The-Lean-Man_, when back he comes with _Mrs. Lean-Man, Sr._, and _Mrs.
Lean-Man, Jr_. Each spouse leads her own progeny. Seeing is believing,
and off _Lean-Man_ goes with a fat wallet. We wander into the stores to
see what purchases the Indians will make. One young blade is looking at
a box of stogies, and the clerk says, "He can afford to blow in his wad
on perfumes and cigars, that chap, he got a silver-fox last winter."
They tell the story of how old Maurice, Chief of the Chipewyans, put
his first treaty money in a cassette and kept it there all the year
because he had heard one white man tell another that money grows, and he
wanted to see if a white man lies when he talks to another white man.
Sometimes, though, the Indian scores one on the white. This was markedly
the case when the first treaty payments were made at Lesser Slave. Two
young Jews had followed the treaty party all the way in from Edmonton
with an Old Aunt Sally stand where you throw wooden balls at stuffed
figures at ten shies for a quarter. "Every time you hit 'em, you get a
see-gar!" They thought they were going to clear out the Indians, but it
took a bunch of Lesser Slave braves just an hour and a quarter to break
the bank at Monte Carlo. As an appreciative onlooker reported, "Them
chaps pinked them dolls every time."
As we leave Resolution in the evening through an open door, we get a
glimpse of a woman placing her hands in blessing on a boy's head. It is
the mother of one of our boatmen, Baptiste Bouvier, or "De-deed." The
lad in turn puts a hand on each of his mother's shoulders and kisses her
gaily on both cheeks, grabs the camera, and helps us down the bank. The
whistle toots impatiently. We both turn and wave our hands to the mother
at the open door.
Travelling all night, we do not go to bed, but merely throw ourselves
down for an hour's rest about midnight, for we must not lose the light
effects on this great silent lake. As the captain finds, amid shifting
sandbars, a fairway for his vessel, there comes offshore the subdued
night-noises of the small wild things that populate the wilderness.
Here a heavy tree, its footway eaten out by the lake-swirl round a high
point, slumps into the water, and joins the fleet of arboreal derelicts.
The raucous voice of a night-fowl cries alarm. Then there descends over
all a measureless silence. At three o'clock in the morning we haul into
the Hay River Mission, where the familiar mosquito-smudge greets us at
the landing.
[Illustration: On the Slave]
This was by far the most attractive English Church Mission in the whole
North--although comparisons are odorous and yet illuminating. All Hay
River had been up over night, anticipating their yearly mail. Red girls
and boys of every tribe in the North are housed in this Mission,
learning how to play the white man's game--jolly and clean little bodies
they are. It looks like Christmas time. Parcels are being done up, there
is much whispering and running to and fro, and the sparkling of black
eyes. Would you like to see the letters that _The Teaser, The Twin,
Johnny Little Hunter_, and _Mary Blue Quill_ are sending out to their
parents? For the most part the missives consist of cakes of pink scented
soap tightly wrapped round with cotton cloth, on which the teachers are
writing in ink the syllabic characters that stand for each father's and
mother's name. The soap has been bought with the children's pennies
earned by quill-work and wood-carving done in the long winter nights.
The parcels will be passed from one trapper's jerkin to another, and
when, months afterwards, they reach their destination in far tepee or
lodge of the deerskin, _Mrs. Woman-of-the-Bright-Foam_ and _Mr.
Kee-noo-shay-o_, or _The Fish_, will know their boys and girls "still
remember."
One of the Hay River teachers is married to a Chicagoan who started ten
years ago for the Klondike, knew when he had found pure gold, ceased his
quest here, and lived happily ever after. Their children are the most
fascinating little people we have seen for many months. Life is quaint
at the Hay River Mission. The impression we carry away is of earnest and
sweet-hearted women bringing mother-love to the waifs of the wilderness,
letting their light shine where few there are to see it. We discover
the moccasin-flower in bloom, see old Indian women bringing in
evergreen boughs for their summer bedding--a delightful Ostermoor
mattress of their own devising. Dogs cultivate potatoes at Hay River in
summer, and in the winter they haul hay. The hay causes our enquiry, and
we learn that this Mission boasts one old ox, deposited here no doubt by
some glacial drift of the long ago. And thereby hangs a tale. Charlie,
an attaché of the school-force, drove this old ox afield day by day. As
man and beast returned wearily in the evening, the teachers asked,
"Well, what happened to-day, Charlie?" "Bill balked," was the laconic
reply. Tuesday's question would bring the same response, "Bill balked."
And "Bill balked," on Wednesday. Thursday it is--"Bill didn't balk"; and
so the days divided themselves into days of blueness and red-letter
days.
[Illustration: Dogs Cultivating Potatoes]
The mean July temperature at Hay River is 60° Fahrenheit, and the
monthly mean for January, 18° below zero. Vegetables of their own
growing, with whitefish from the lake, furnish almost the entire food
supply of this thrifty Mission, one season's harvest giving them a
thousand bushels of potatoes, fifteen of turnips, and five each of
beets, carrots, and parsnips, with two hundred cabbages and over ten
thousand whitefish.
Hay River has never been explored. It is supposed to head near the
source of the Nelson and to flow northeast for three hundred miles
before emptying, as we see it, into Great Slave Lake. This river marks
the limit of those grassy plains which extend at intervals all the way
from Mexico northward. Bishop Bompas, years ago, descended a long
stretch of the river, discovering not far back from where we stand a
majestic cataract, which he named the "Alexandra Falls" after the then
Princess of Wales. He describes it as a perpendicular fall one hundred
feet high, five hundred feet wide, and of surpassing beauty. "The amber
colour of the falling water gives the appearance of golden tresses
twined with pearls."
Crossing Great Slave Lake, we think of Chant-la, Chief of the Slavis at
Hay River. Bishop Reeves was anxious to convert him to the Christian
faith, but had great difficulty in giving Chant-la a proper conception
of the Trinity. The old man would not say he believed or understood what
was inexplicable to him. Setting out once on a long journey, the cleric
adjured the Chief to struggle with the problem during his absence. The
Bishop returning, Chant-la came out in his canoe to meet him, eagerly
reporting that all now was clear. "It is like Great Slave Lake," said
the old man. "It is all water now, just like the Father. When winter
comes it will be frozen over, but Great Slave Lake just the same; that
is like the Son. In the spring when the ice breaks and the rain makes
the snow into slush, it is still Great Slave Lake; and that is like the
Holy Ghost."
Beyond Great Slave Lake, forty-five miles down the Mackenzie, we reach
Fort Providence, as strongly French in its atmosphere as Hay River is
British. Our coming is a gala day. The hamlet flies three flags, the
free trader sports his own initials "H.N.," the Hudson's Bay Company
loyally runs the Union Jack to the masthead, over the convent floats the
tri-colour of France. Fort Providence is hot. We walk to the convent and
are hospitably received by the nuns. They call their Red flock together
for us to inspect and show us marvellous handwork of silk embroidery on
white deerskin. The daintiest of dainty slippers calls forth the
question, "Where are you going to find the Cinderella for these?" A
blank look is my answer, for no one in Providence Convent has ever heard
of Cinderella! But then, convents are not supposed to be the
repositories of man-knowledge (although a half-breed, on our passage
across the lake, did whisper a romantic story of a Klondiker who
assailed this very fortress and tried to carry off the prettiest nun of
the north). The garden of the Sisters is a bower of all the
old-fashioned flowers--hollyhocks, wall-flower, Canterbury bells, and
sweet-William--and down in the corner a young girl of the Dog-Ribs
discovers to us a nest of fledgling chipping sparrows.
As we landed from the boat, Tenny Gouley dressed in his Sunday best had
beamed, "Nice day--go veesit." And "veesit" we did. Mrs. Herron, of the
H.B. Company, has spent many years at Old Fort Rae, and her thoughts
hark back to one severe winter spent there. She turns to the wife of our
good Captain with, "Hard living, Mrs. Mills, dry suckers." It is a short
speech, but fraught with meaning. I honestly think a dry sucker (well
sanded) the least succulent of all the impossible fish-dishes of the
North. There are many young Herrons all as neat as new pins, the
last--no, the latest, enshrined in a moss-bag. Tradition tells that
once, when they were fewer in number, the father took the flock out to
Winnipeg to school. The children cried so at the parting that Mr. Herron
turned and brought them all back with him to the Mackenzie!
[Illustration: David Villeneuve]
The most interesting man in all Fort Providence is David Villeneuve, one
of the Company's Old Guard. He was anxious to be "tooken" with his wife
and grandchild, and over the camera we chatted. David goes through life
on one leg--fishes through the ice in winter, traps, mends nets, drives
dogs, and does it all with the dexterity and cheerfulness of a young
strong man. He tells of his accident. "I was young fellow, me, when a
fish-stage fell on me. I didn't pay no notice to my leg until it began
to go bad, den I take it to the English Church to Bishop Bompas. He tole
me de leg must come off, an' ax me to get a letter from de priest (I'm
Cat-o-lic, me) telling it was all right to cut him. I get de letter and
bring my leg to Bompas. He cut 'im off wid meat-saw. No, I tak' not'in',
me. I chew tobacco and tak' one big drink of Pain-killer. Yas, it hurt
wen he strike de marrow."
"Heavens! Didn't you faint with the awful pain?"
"What? Faint, me? No. I say, 'Get me my fire-bag, I want to have a
smok'.'"