_SNARES._
1812.
Machecawa, who was still a widower, made no secret of his admiration
of Abbie. With a dogged determination, characteristic of his race,
he resolved to win her, and having evidently made a deep study of the
case, had put it down as a first axiom that, if he began by wooing
the father and brothers, all things being favorable, he would soon
have the daughter and sister. He had not been slow to observe a
change in the atmosphere of the Chief's home since Abbie's return
from the convent. He felt instinctively a lack of warmth in the
welcome received. He had little encouragement to spend the day in
the kitchen as he had done formerly.
This coolness on the part of the weaker members of the family he
attributed to two things. First, that they had moved into a new
house overlooking the Falls, on the western hill of the village,
which they regarded as altogether too grand for him; and, second,
that Harold Wrenford had succeeded in rousing within them a want of
trust and a suspicion that he had sinister designs upon certain
members of the family.
Numerous and costly gifts and game of all kinds found their way to
the White House, as the new home was called. A short deerskin coat,
or shirt, beautifully embroidered with colored silks and beads, was
sent to the Chief. Moccasins similarly decorated were given to his
sons. Baskets and bark boxes ornamented with colored porcupine
quills were presented to Mrs. Wright, who was suspicious of the
motives which prompted these offerings.
The two younger boys, who were still in their teens, were delighted
with the attentions of the Red Chief, for he taught them many lessons
in hunting and trapping, and confided to them many secrets unknown to
white men. Casting his Indian superstitions to the winds, he told
them of the existence of iron mines in the neighboring hills. He led
them into the depths of the forests that they might witness one of
the strangest of ceremonies, which the Indians were shy of performing
in the presence of whites--the ceremony of the marriage of the
nets--and which Rug afterwards described as follows:
"Supper was hardly finished when a huge fire was kindled on an open
space on the bank of the river, and their Chief called out in a loud
bass voice, 'Ho!'
"'Ho! Ho!! Ho!!!' came thick and fast from every part of the camp.
"They then surrounded two beautiful young Indian girls, and laying at
their feet several rude nets, which had been made from the inner bark
of trees, commenced to dance round them, yelling, stamping with their
feet and brandishing their arms, while the two Indian maidens, who
stood apart from each other, raised the nets between them and held
them suspended in the air.
"Again the Chief called 'Ho!' and they all fell on their backs silent
and motionless, with their feet towards the fire, while the Chief,
with a loud voice, called upon the spirit of the nets to do its best
to furnish them with food for themselves, their wives and their
children. Then he addressed the fish, urging them to take courage
and be caught, assuring them that the greatest respect would be paid
to their bones."*
* Parkman mentions this as a common ceremony among the Algonquin
tribes of the Ottawa.
Machecawa frequently took the boys with him when he visited traps on
the "Carman Grant."* On one occasion they crossed the ice on
snow-shoes, climbed the cliffs, and made their way through the woods
to the head of a small stream in the midst of a great cedar swamp.
They followed the stream through marsh and thicket, crawling on their
hands and knees at times, and climbing over fallen trees, until they
came to a large pond with a dam about thirty rods long. On one side
the land was low, but on the opposite side a steep bluff of about
thirty feet rose directly from the water. The bluff was covered with
poplar and birch. Here beaver had made roads, or slides, from top to
bottom, wonderfully smooth and neat, on which they slid the wood they
had cut, some of which was eight inches thick, into the pond below.
Machecawa, who had previously cut a gap in the dam and made a hole in
the ice, where he had set two traps in about four inches of water,
drew up the first of them. He discovered that a young beaver had
been caught, and cut off his leg, leaving that in the trap to tell
the tale. In the second was a huge male with flat, broad, scaly
tail, which could not have been mistaken for any other creature than
a beaver. He re-baited the traps with an aromatic substance called
castor, which he had taken from the pouches of one caught a few days
previously, and which entices the beaver from a great distance.
* The present site of the city of Ottawa.
"Machecawa," continued Rug, "then began to mutter a monotonous song
which he afterwards explained was a song of praise to the great king
of the beavers, who, he declared, was the forefather of the human
race. In it he described their good qualities, and promised to
respect the bones of the one which had been killed, and to keep them
from the dogs.
"'Surely, Machecawa,' I said, 'you do not believe that your
grandfather was a beaver, do you?'
"To this he replied: 'De fadder ob de fadder ob de fadder ob my
fadder, she am de king of de beaver an' de fadder ob all men.'
"I asked him," said Rug, "if in that case it were not wrong to kill a
beaver, for I hardly knew how to reconcile the Indian's superstitious
belief with his conduct.
"'When de big Injun she am kill de beaver,' he replied, 'she praise
de good beaver, and de king she am pleese an' she no get cross.'
Proceeding eastward they soon reached the Rideau, and following the
ice on snow-shoes they were surprised to hear the sound of a
woodman's axe in the distance. They followed the direction from
whence the sound came and found a white man, Braddish Billings by
name, hewing out for himself a home in the forest. He was as much
surprised at seeing them as they were at seeing him, as he did not
expect to find any white man, except Mr. Honeywell, in the vicinity
of his grant.
They had not gone far when the Indian drew their attention to the
tracks of a jumper in the snow. Following the track for a mile they
came upon a small clearing, in the midst of which stood a log shanty,
and found that it had been built by Mr. Honeywell, who, like Mr.
Billings, had made his way through the wilds from Prescott with a
jumper drawn by a young ox, upon which he had strapped all his
household effects, provisions and tools.
They then followed a trail which led down to the little Chaudiere,
where Machecawa had a moose snare. He had driven two oak pegs into
two large pine trees, about six feet from the ground, on opposite
sides of the trail. On these he hung a cord about the size of a
cod-line, formed of thirty strands of the green skin of a moose and
arranged as a noose, one end of which was securely attached to a
fallen log, so that when the moose would come down hill for a drink
he would run his head into it and the strip would slip off the pegs
and tighten round his neck; then, in attempting to get free he would
become strangled, for the log to which he was attached could not be
dragged through the woods.
At the mouth of a creek which ran through a deep ravine* the Indian
had set traps for mink and otter. Cautiously they approached the
spot, keeping to the lee side till they reached the bank, where they
remained quietly for several minutes. They soon observed two young
otters crawling to the top of the opposite bank, a height of about
thirty or forty feet. No sooner had they reached it than they slid
head-first down into the water. This was repeated over and over
again until someone stepped on a dry branch, which snapped, and they
disappeared and were not seen again.
* The present Water-works viaduct.