TO MCMURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE
"Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the track--
O' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac;
Of fur an' gun, an' ranch an' run, an' moose and caribou,
An' bull-dogs eatin' us to death! Good-bye--good luck to you!"
Our arrival at Chipewyan is opportune. Honorine Daniels, unceremoniously
known as 'Norine among her friends (and they are legion), is about to
join hand and fortune with one of the Mercredi boys. 'Norine owns a
cottage in her own right, and to-night under her roof-tree there is to
be a wedding-dance. We wait round, hungering for an invitation, finally
to be told largely, "You don't need no invitation, everybody goes."
We go with the crowd. The room is full to overflowing. Babies are
deposited on the benches along the wall, dogs look in at the window. The
air is heavy with mosquitoes and tobacco-smoke. But joy reigns. Nobody
is too old or too obese to dance. Old Mr. Loutit and lame Jimmy Flett
each secures a sonsy partner. There are three fiddlers, and these
relieve each other in turn, for fiddling, beating time with your
moccasin on the earthen floor, and "calling out" is hard work for one
man. There are but two kinds of dances,--the Red River jig, and a square
dance which probably had for honourable ancestors the lancers on the
father's side and a quadrille on the mother's.
Endurance is a sign of merit in the Red River jig. A man or woman steps
into the limelight and commences to jig, a dark form in moccasins slips
up in front of the dancer, and one jigs the other down, amid plaudits
for the survivor and jeers for the quitter.
It is the square dance that interests us, our attention being divided
between watching the deft forms in the half light and listening to the
caller-off. _Louie-the-Moose_ first officiates. His eyes look dreamy but
there is a general's stern tone of command in his words:
"Ladeez, join de lily-white han's,
Gents, your black-and-tan!
Ladeez, bow! Gents, bow-wow!
Swing 'em as hard's ye can.
"Swing your corner Lady,
Then the one you love!
Then your corner Lady,
Then your Turtle Dove!"
Over and over again Louie reiterates his injunction, to the
accompaniment of pattering moccasins and a humming chorus from door and
windows. There are phrases of variation, too. We catch the words,
"_Address your pardner," "Adaman left," "Show your steps," "Gents walk
round, and all run away to the west_."
Then Michel Manvil takes hold of the situation. He stands up to it, and
we hear
"Ladies round ladies, and gents all so!
Ladies round gents, and gents don't go!"
Why should they, we wonder!
The third fiddler is a full-blooded Chipewyan. In some dancing academy
in the woods he has learnt a "call-off" all his own, and proud indeed is
he of his stunt. We manage to copy it down in its entirety, fighting
mosquitoes the while and dodging out into the open now and again for a
little air.
"'Slute your ladies! All together!
Ladies opposite, the same--
Hit the lumber with yer leathers,
Balance all, and swing yer dame!
Bunch the moose-cows in the middle!
Circle, stags, and do-si-do--
Pay attention to the fiddle!
Swing her round, an' off you go!
"First four forward! Back to places!
Second foller--shuffle back!
Now you've got it down to cases--
Swing 'em till their back-teeth crack!
Gents, all right, a heel and toeing!
Swing 'em, kiss 'em if you kin--
On to next, and keep a-goin'
Till you hit your pards ag'in!
"Gents to centre; ladies round 'em,
Form a basket; balance all!
Whirl yer gals to where you found 'em!
Promenade around the hall!
Balance to yer pards and trot 'em
Round the circle, double quick!
Grab and kiss 'em while you've got 'em--
Hold 'em to it; they won't kick!"
The perspiring musician pushes his instrument into the hands of _Running
Antelope_ and turns to us with, "There's another verse, but I don't
always give it." We ask him to repeat it for us, but he seems a little
at a loss. "It's hard to call it out without the fiddle. When yer
playin' you just spit it out--the words come to you."
It is August 6th at Chipewyan, and once again we are at the parting of
the ways. Every one we know is heading for "Outside" by way of the
steamer _Grahame_ and the Athabasca scows. Our own ambition is to make a
traverse of the great Peace River Country before the snows. We have had
no mail since last May, and the temptation to follow the multitude as
far as McMurray in the hope of finding letters there is too strong to be
resisted. We will then return and try to perfect arrangements for the
Peace.
The outgoers are a cosmopolitan and happy "bunch,"--Major Jarvis,
R.N.W.M.P., fur-traders galore, three Grey Nuns and a priest, Mr. Wyllie
and his family bound for the Orkney Islands, fifty-four souls in all,
without counting the miscellaneous and interesting fraternity down on
the lower deck among the fur-bundles.
It is essentially a _voyage de luxe_. When Mr. Keele imagines a place is
good, the steamer stops and we all gather fossils. When lame James, the
steward, our erstwhile jig-expert, is about to serve coffee, he pokes
his head over the side and orders the engines stopped that we may drink
the beverage without spillage. The beardless prospector buys tinned
peaches from the commissariat, opens them with a jack-knife and passes
them round the deck with impartiality and a
to-hell-with-the-man-that-works smile. Who would envy kings?
We arrive at McMurray in time for treaty-payment. Tethered horses at the
tepee-poles, store-dolls for the babies, and unmistakable "Outside"
millinery prove the prosperity of these Crees, and proves also their
proximity to Edmonton. One little group looks tattered, out-at-heel,
and hungry,--a Cree widow presenting her four offspring that they may
receive the annual payment. The officials within the treaty tent declare
the youngest baby an illegitimate child and will pay it no treaty,--it
"has no name." I catch the anxious look in the mother's eye. Five
dollars goes a long way when baby bodies have to be fed and clothed. The
situation is crucial. Without a sponsor, the priest will not name the
baby. With no name, it cannot draw treaty. I conclude to father the
child, as its own (un)lawful father will not. My offer to give my name
to the girlie, after due deliberation of Church and State, is accepted.
Under the name of Agnes Deans Cameron the Cree kiddie is received into
the Mother Church and finds her place on the list of treaty-receiving
Indians--No. 53 in the McMurray Band. May she follow pleasant trails!
[Illustration: A Meadow at McMurray]
Back of McMurray lies a lush land. We tread a path a full mile in length
leading to meadows where, belly-high, the horses graze. Every yard of
our way is lined with raspberry bushes bent with their rich, red burden.
While the furs are being transferred from the _Grahame_ to the scows,
the working of our typewriter is a matter of much wonderment. Old Paul
Fontaine, a half-breed who thinks he is a white man, first looks through
the door, then comes into the dining hall where we are, takes his hat
off, and watches respectfully. Then, with an air of great conviction,
"This is the first time I ever see that. It is wonderful what man can
do--wonderful. There is only one thing left to be done now--and that is
to put the breath of life into a dead body." Solemnly putting on his
hat, he turns and walks out.
Mrs. Loutit, another fellow-passenger attracted by the click of the
machine, comes in and recounts her arts, wild and tame. In winter she
goes off in dog-cariole, traps cross-foxes off her own bat, shoots
moose, and smokes the hide according to the ancient accepted mode.
Coming home, she takes the smoked hide and works upon it silk embroidery
of a fineness which would be the envy of any young ladies' seminary in
Europe or America. She weaves fantastic belts of beads and sets the
fashion for the whole North in _chef d'oeuvres_ of the quills of the
porcupine. She is a most observant "old wife." Watching, fascinated, the
lightning play of the machine, "Much hard that, I think, harder than
bead-work, eh?" Conquering her timidity, she at last glides across to
find out how the dickens when you strike capital "A" at one end of the
keyboard, it finds itself in the writing next to small "o" at the other
end. There is something uncanny about it, and our stock goes up.
[Illustration: Starting up the Athabasca]
We confess to being a little homesick as we wave farewell to the half
hundred passengers in the familiar scows embarked for their two hundred
and thirty-eight mile journey up the Athabasca. It will be a tiresome
enough trip, though, for every foot of the way the big boats will have
to be tracked (towed) by teams of half-breeds scrambling along the
shore, now on land, now splashing in the water. The party will have the
mosquito as companion on the sorrowful way and it will take them four
weeks to make Athabasca Landing, the distance which in the spring we
dropped down in little over a week. We send letters home, and with
hand-shaking all round bid farewell to Mr. Wyllie, the Grey Nuns, and
the rest.
[Illustration: On the Clearwater]
Our way back on the _Grahame_ to Chipewyan is not without adventure. At
three o'clock in the afternoon we run up hard and fast on a batture!
There is no swearing, no shouting of orders. The deck-hands from long
experience know exactly what to do. The engines are reversed and, in
their efforts, seem to speak Cree, for we catch the sound of the
familiar "Wuh! Wey!" But it is no go. The sun sinks behind the bank,
over the tops of the poplars floats a faint rosy glow which fades into
purple and then into black, and we are still there hard and fast. The
drifting sand piles up against us, and, in scows, the whole cargo is
removed. The captain throws out a kedge-anchor, and in a mysterious way
we pull ourselves off by hawsers, as a man lifts himself by his own
boot-straps.
We have head-winds all the way. At four o'clock on the morning of August
14th, stress of weather causes us to run in under the lee of an island.
We tie up at the base of some splendid timber. Spruce here will give
three feet in diameter twenty feet from the ground. With an improvised
tape-line I go ashore and measure the base-girth of three nearby big
poplars (rough-backed). The first ran seven feet three inches, the
second exactly eight feet, and the third eight feet four inches. Within
view were fifty of these trees which would run the same average, and
interspersed with them were spruce with a base-girth scarcely less.
Arrived at Chipewyan, we are able to arrange to be taken up the Peace in
the same little tug _Primrose_ which had before carried us so safely to
Fond du Lac.