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ON CANADA'S FRONTIER
Sketches
OF HISTORY, SPORT, AND ADVENTURE AND OF THE INDIANS, MISSIONARIES
FUR-TRADERS, AND NEWER SETTLERS OF WESTERN CANADA
BY
JULIAN RALPH
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1892
Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.
_All rights reserved_.
TO
THE PEOPLE OF CANADA
THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR WHO, DURING MANY LONG
JOURNEYS IN THE CANADIAN WEST WAS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE TREATED WITH AN
EXTREME FRIENDLINESS TO WHICH HE HERE TESTIFIES BUT WHICH HE CANNOT
EASILY RETURN IN EQUAL MEASURE
PREFACE
If all those into whose hands this book may fall were as well informed
upon the Dominion of Canada as are the people of the United States,
there would not be needed a word of explanation of the title of this
volume. Yet to those who might otherwise infer that what is here related
applies equally to all parts of Canada, it is necessary to explain that
the work deals solely with scenes and phases of life in the newer, and
mainly the western, parts of that country. The great English colony
which stirs the pages of more than two centuries of history has for its
capitals such proud and notable cities as Montreal, Quebec, Toronto,
Halifax, and many others, to distinguish the progressive civilization of
the region east of Lake Huron--the older provinces. But the Canada of
the geographies of to-day is a land of greater area than the United
States; it is, in fact, the "British America" of old. A great
trans-Canadian railway has joined the ambitious province of the Pacific
slope to the provinces of old Canada with stitches of steel across the
Plains. There the same mixed surplusage of Europe that settled our own
West is elbowing the fur-trader and the Indian out of the way, and is
laying out farms far north, in the smiling Peace River district, where
it was only a little while ago supposed that there were but two seasons,
winter and late spring. It is with that new part of Canada, between the
ancient and well-populated provinces and the sturdy new cities of the
Pacific Coast, that this book deals. Some references to the North are
added in those chapters that treat of hunting and fishing and
fur-trading.
The chapters that compose this book originally formed a series of
papers which recorded journeys and studies made in Canada during the
past three years. The first one to be published was that which describes
a settler's colony in which a few titled foreigners took the lead; the
others were written so recently that they should possess the same
interest and value as if they here first met the public eye. What that
interest and value amount to is for the reader to judge, the author's
position being such that he may only call attention to the fact that he
had access to private papers and documents when he prepared the sketches
of the Hudson Bay Company, and that, in pursuing information about the
great province of British Columbia, he was not able to learn that a
serious and extended study of its resources had ever been made. The
principal studies and sketches were prepared for and published in
Harper's Magazine. The spirit in which they were written was solely that
of one who loves the open air and his fellow-men of every condition and
color, and who has had the good-fortune to witness in newer Canada
something of the old and almost departed life of the plainsmen and
woodsmen, and of the newer forces of nation-building on our continent.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Titled Pioneers 1
II. Chartering a Nation 11
III. A Famous Missionary 53
IV. Antoine's Moose-yard 66
V. Big Fishing 115
VI. "A Skin for a Skin" 134
VII. "Talking Musquash" 190
VIII. Canada's El Dorado 214
IX. Dan Dunn's Outfit 290
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_The Romantic Adventure of Old Sun's Wife_ Frontispiece
_Dr. Rudolph Meyer's Place on the Pipestone_ 2
_Settler's Sod Cabin_ 3
_Whitewood, a Settlement on the Prairie_ 4
_Interior of Sod Cabin on the Frontier_ 5
_Prairie Sod Stable_ 7
_Trained Ox Team_ 9
_Indian Boys Running a Foot-race_ 31
_Indian Mother and Boy_ 36
_Opening of the Soldier Clan Dance_ 39
_Sketch in the Soldier Clan Dance_ 43
_A Fantasy from the Pony War-dance_ 47
_Throwing the Snow Snake_ 51
_Father Lacombe Heading the Indians_ 61
_The Hotel--Last Sign of Civilisation_ 69
_"Give me a light"_ 73
_Antoine, from Life_ 79
_The Portage Sleigh on a Lumber Road_ 83
_The Track in the Winter Forest_ 87
_Pierre from Life_ 91
_Antoine's Cabin_ 93
_The Camp at Night_ 97
_A Moose Bull Fight_ 101
_On the Moose Trail_ 103
_In sight of the Game--"Now Shoot"_ 105
_Success_ 109
_Hunting the Caribou--"Shoot! Shoot!"_ 111
_Indians Hunting Nets on Lake Nipigon_ 119
_Trout-fishing Through the Ice_ 127
_Rival Traders Racing to the Indian Camp_ 137
_The Bear-trap_ 143
_Huskie Dogs Fighting_ 147
_Painting the Robe_ 151
_Coureur du Bois_ 159
_A Fur-trader in the Council Tepee_ 163
_Buffalo Meat for the Post_ 167
_The Indian Hunter of 1750_ 171
_Indian Hunter Hanging Deer Out of the Reach of Wolves_ 173
_Making the Snow-shoe_ 177
_A Hudson Bay Man (Quarter-breed)_ 181
_The Coureur du Bois and the Savage_ 185
_Talking Musquash_ 193
_Indian Hunters Moving Camp_ 198
_Setting a Mink-trap_ 201
_Wood Indians Come to Trade_ 205
_A Voyageur, or Canoe-man, of Great Slave Lake_ 209
_In a Stiff Current_ 211
_Voyageur with Tumpline_ 217
_Voyageurs in Camp for the Night_ 221
_"Huskie" Dogs on the Frozen Highway_ 227
_The Factor's Fancy Toboggan_ 233
_Halt of a York Boat Brigade for the Night_ 239
_An Impression of Shuswap Lake, British Columbia_ 251
_The Tschummum, or Tool Used in Making Canoes_ 257
_The First of the Salmon Run, Fraser River_ 261
_Indian Salmon-fishing in the Thrasher_ 266
_Going to the Potlatch--Big Canoe, North-west Coast_ 269
_The Salmon Cache_ 275
_An Ideal of the Coast_ 279
_The Potlatch_ 283
_An Indian Canoe on the Columbia_ 293
_"You're setting your nerves to stand it"_ 297
_Jack Kirkup, the Mountain Sheriff_ 299
_Engineer on the Preliminary Survey_ 303
_Falling Monarchs_ 308
_Dan Dunn on His Works_ 311
_The Supply Train Over the Mountain_ 313
_A Sketch on the Work_ 317
_The Mess Tent at Night_ 319
_"They Gained Erectness by Slow Jolts"_ 322
ON CANADA'S FRONTIER
I
TITLED PIONEERS
There is a very remarkable bit of this continent just north of our State
of North Dakota, in what the Canadians call Assiniboia, one of the
North-west Provinces. Here the plains reach away in an almost level,
unbroken, brown ocean of grass. Here are some wonderful and some very
peculiar phases of immigration and of human endeavor. Here is Major
Bell's farm of nearly one hundred square miles, famous as the Bell Farm.
Here Lady Cathcart, of England, has mercifully established a colony of
crofters, rescued from poverty and oppression. Here Count Esterhazy has
been experimenting with a large number of Hungarians, who form a colony
which would do better if those foreigners were not all together, with
only each other to imitate--and to commiserate. But, stranger than all
these, here is a little band of distinguished Europeans, partly noble
and partly scholarly, gathered together in as lonely a spot as can be
found short of the Rockies or the far northern regions of this
continent.
[Illustration: DR. RUDOLPH MEYER'S PLACE ON THE PIPESTONE]
These gentlemen are Dr. Rudolph Meyer, of Berlin, the Comte de Cazes and
the Comte de Raffignac, of France, and M. Le Bidau de St. Mars, of that
country also. They form, in all probability, the most distinguished and
aristocratic little band of immigrants and farmers in the New World.
Seventeen hundred miles west of Montreal, in a vast prairie where
settlers every year go mad from loneliness, these polished Europeans
till the soil, strive for prizes at the provincial fairs, fish, hunt,
read the current literature of two continents, and are happy. The soil
in that region is of remarkable depth and richness, and is so black that
the roads and cattle-trails look like ink lines on brown paper. It is
part of a vast territory of uniform appearance, in one portion of which
are the richest wheat-lands of the continent. The Canadian Pacific
Railway crosses Assiniboia, with stops about five miles apart--some mere
stations and some small settlements. Here the best houses are little
frame dwellings; but very many of the settlers live in shanties made of
sods, with such thick walls and tight roofs, all of sod, that the awful
winters, when the mercury falls to forty degrees below zero, are endured
in them better than in the more costly frame dwellings.
[Illustration: SETTLER'S SOD CABIN]
I stopped off the cars at Whitewood, picking that four-year-old village
out at hap-hazard as a likely point at which to see how the immigrants
live in a brand-new country. I had no idea of the existence of any of
the persons I found there. The most perfect hospitality is offered to
strangers in such infant communities, and while enjoying the shelter of
a merchant's house I obtained news of the distinguished settlers, all
of whom live away from the railroad in solitude not to be conceived by
those who think their homes the most isolated in the older parts of the
country. I had only time to visit Dr. Rudolph Meyer, five miles from
Whitewood, in the valley of the Pipestone.
[Illustration: WHITEWOOD, A SETTLEMENT ON THE PRAIRIE]
The way was across a level prairie, with here and there a bunch of young
wolf-willows to break the monotonous scene, with tens of thousands of
gophers sitting boldly on their haunches within reach of the wagon whip,
with a sod house in sight in one direction at one time and a frame house
in view at another. The talk of the driver was spiced with news of
abundant wild-fowl, fewer deer, and marvellously numerous small
quadrupeds, from wolves and foxes down. He talked of bachelors living
here and there alone on that sea of grass, for all the world like men
in small boats on the ocean; and I saw, contrariwise, a man and wife who
blessed Heaven for an unheard-of number of children, especially prized
because each new-comer lessened the loneliness. I heard of the long and
dreadful winters when the snowfall is so light that horses and mules may
always paw down to grass, though cattle stand and starve and freeze to
death. I heard, too, of the way the snow comes in flurried squalls, in
which men are lost within pistol-shot of their homes. In time the wagon
came to a sort of coulee or hollow, in which some mechanics imported
from Paris were putting up a fine cottage for the Comte de Raffignac.
Ten paces farther, and I stood on the edge of the valley of the
Pipestone, looking at a scene so poetic, pastoral, and beautiful that in
the whole transcontinental journey there were few views to compare with
it.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SOD CABIN ON THE FRONTIER]
Reaching away far below the level of the prairie was a bowl-like valley,
a mile long and half as wide, with a crystal stream lying like a ribbon
of silver midway between its sloping walls. Another valley, longer yet,
served as an extension to this. On the one side the high grassy walls
were broken with frequent gullies, while on the other side was a
park-like growth of forest trees. Meadows and fields lay between, and
nestling against the eastern or grassy wall was the quaint,
old-fashioned German house of the learned doctor. Its windows looked out
on those beautiful little valleys, the property of the doctor--a little
world far below the great prairie out of which sportive and patient Time
had hollowed it. Externally the long, low, steep-roofed house was
German, ancient, and picturesque in appearance. Its main floor was all
enclosed in the sash and glass frame of a covered porch, and outside of
the walls of glass were heavy curtains of straw, to keep out the sun in
summer and the cold in winter. In-doors the house is as comfortable as
any in the world. Its framework is filled with brick, and its trimmings
are all of pine, oiled and varnished. In the heart of the house is a
great Russian stove--a huge box of brick-work, which is filled full of
wood to make a fire that is made fresh every day, and that heats the
house for twenty-four hours. A well-filled wine-cellar, a well-equipped
library, where Harper's Weekly, and _Uber Land und Mer_, _Punch_,
_Puck_, and _Die Fliegende Blaetter_ lie side by side, a kindly wife, and
a stumbling baby, tell of a combination of domestic joys that no man is
too rich to envy. The library is the doctor's workshop. He is now
engaged in compiling a digest of the economic laws of nations. He is
already well known as the author of a _History of Socialism_ (in
Germany, the United States, Scandinavia, Russia, France, Belgium, and
elsewhere), and also for his _History of Socialism in Germany_. He
writes in French and German, and his works are published in Germany.
[Illustration: PRAIRIE SOD STABLE]
Dr. Meyer is fifty-three years old. He is a political exile, having been
forced from Prussia for connection with an unsuccessful opposition to
Bismarck. It is because he is a scholar seeking rest from the turmoil of
politics that one is able to comprehend his living in this overlooked
corner of the world. Yet when that is understood, and one knows what an
Arcadia his little valley is, and how complete are his comforts
within-doors, the placidity with which he smokes his pipe, drinks his
beer, and is waited upon by servants imported from Paris, becomes less a
matter for wonder than for congratulation. He has shared part of one
valley with the Comte de Raffignac, who thinks there is nothing to
compare with it on earth. The count has had his house built near the
abruptly-broken edge of the prairie, so that he may look down upon the
calm and beautiful valley and enjoy it, as he could not had he built in
the valley itself. He is a youth of very old French family, who loves
hunting and horses. He was contemplating the raising of horses for a
business when I was there. But the count mars the romance of his
membership in this little band by going to Paris now and then, as a
young man would be likely to.
Out-of-doors one saw what untold good it does to the present and future
settlers to have such men among them. The hot-houses, glazed vegetable
beds, the plots of cultivated ground, the nurseries of young trees--all
show at what cost of money and patience the Herr Doctor is experimenting
with every tree and flower and vegetable and cereal to discover what can
be grown with profit in that region of rich soil and short summers, and
what cannot. He is in communication with the seedsmen, to say nothing of
the savants, of Europe and this country, and whatever he plants is of
the best. Near his quaint dwelling he has a house for his gardener, a
smithy, a tool-house, a barn, and a cheese-factory, for he makes gruyere
cheese in great quantities. He also raises horses and cattle.
The Comte de Cazes has a sheltered, favored claim a few miles to the
northward, near the Qu' Appele River. He lives in great comfort, and is
so successful a farmer that he carries off nearly all the prizes for the
province, especially those given for prime vegetables. He has his wife
and daughter and one of his sons with him, and an abundance of means,
as, indeed, these distinguished settlers all appear to have.
[Illustration: TRAINED OX TEAM]
These men have that faculty, developed in all educated and thinking
souls, which enables them to banish loneliness and entertain themselves.
Still, though Dr. Meyer laughs at the idea of danger, it must have been
a little disquieting to live as he does during the Riel rebellion,
especially as an Indian reservation is close by, and wandering red men
are seen every day upon the prairie. Indeed, the Government thought fit
to send men of the North-west Mounted Police to visit the doctor twice a
week as lately as a year after the close of the half-breed uprising.
II
CHARTERING A NATION
How it came about that we chartered the Blackfoot nation for two days
had better not be told in straightforward fashion. There is more that is
interesting in going around about the subject, just as in reality we did
go around and about the neighborhood of the Indians before we determined
to visit them.
In the first place, the most interesting Indian I ever saw--among many
kinds and many thousands--was the late Chief Crowfoot, of the Blackfoot
people. More like a king than a chief he looked, as he strode upon the
plains, in a magnificent robe of white bead-work as rich as ermine, with
a gorgeous pattern illuminating its edges, a glorious sun worked into
the front of it, and many artistic and chromatic figures sewed in gaudy
beads upon its back. He wore an old white chimney-pot hat, bound around
with eagle feathers, a splendid pair of _chaperajos_, all worked with
beads at the bottoms and fringed along the sides, and bead-worked
moccasins, for which any lover of the Indian or collector of his
paraphernalia would have exchanged a new Winchester rifle without a
second's hesitation. But though Crowfoot was so royally clothed, it was
in himself that the kingly quality was most apparent. His face was
extraordinarily like what portraits we have of Julius Caesar, with the
difference that Crowfoot had the complexion of an Egyptian mummy. The
high forehead, the great aquiline nose, the thin lips, usually closed,
the small, round, protruding chin, the strong jawbones, and the keen
gray eyes composed a face in which every feature was finely moulded, and
in which the warrior, the commander, and the counsellor were strongly
suggested. And in each of these roles he played the highest part among
the Indians of Canada from the moment that the whites and the red men
contested the dominion of the plains until he died, a short time ago.
He was born and lived a wild Indian, and though the good fathers of the
nearest Roman Catholic mission believe that he died a Christian, I am
constrained to see in the reason for their thinking so only another
proof of the consummate shrewdness of Crowfoot's life-long policy. The
old king lay on his death-bed in his great wig-a-wam, with twenty-seven
of his medicine-men around him, and never once did he pretend that he
despised or doubted their magic. When it was evident that he was about
to die, the conjurers ceased their long-continued, exhausting formula of
howling, drumming, and all the rest, and, Indian-like, left Death to
take his own. Then it was that one of the watchful, zealous priests,
whose lives have indeed been like those of fathers to the wild Indians,
slipped into the great tepee and administered the last sacrament to the
old pagan.
"Do you believe?" the priest inquired.
"Yes, I believe," old Crowfoot grunted. Then he whispered, "But don't
tell my people."
Among the last words of great men, those of Saponaxitaw (his Indian
name) may never be recorded, but to the student of the American
aborigine they betray more that is characteristic of the habitual
attitude of mind of the wild red man towards civilizing influences than
any words I ever knew one to utter.
As the old chief crushed the bunch-grass beneath his gaudy moccasins at
the time I saw him, and as his lesser chiefs and headmen strode behind
him, we who looked on knew what a great part he was bearing and had
taken in Canada. He had been chief of the most powerful and savage tribe
in the North, and of several allied tribes as well, from the time when
the region west of the Mississippi was _terra incognita_ to all except a
few fur traders and priests. His warriors ruled the Canadian wilderness,
keeping the Ojibbeways and Crees in the forests to the east and north,
routing the Crows, the Stonies, and the Big-Bellies whenever they
pleased, and yielding to no tribe they met except the Sioux to the
southward in our territory. The first white man Crowfoot ever knew
intimately was Father Lacombe, the noble old missionary, whose fame is
now world-wide among scholars. The peaceful priest and the warrior chief
became fast friends, and from the day when the white men first broke
down the border and swarmed upon the plains, until at the last they ran
what Crowfoot called their "fire-wagons" (locomotives) through his land,
he followed the priest's counselling in most important matters. He
treated with the authorities, and thereafter hindered his braves from
murder, massacre, and warfare. Better than that, during the Riel
rebellion he more than any other man, or twenty men, kept the red man of
the plains at peace when the French half-breeds, led by their mentally
irresponsible disturber, rebelled against the Dominion authorities.
When Crowfoot talked, he made laws. While he spoke, his nation listened
in silence. He had killed as many men as any Indian warrior alive; he
was a mighty buffalo-slayer; he was torn, scarred, and mangled in skin,
limb, and bone. He never would learn English or pretend to discard his
religion. He was an Indian after the pattern of his ancestors. At eighty
odd years of age there lived no red-skin who dared answer him back when
he spoke his mind. But he was a shrewd man and an archdiplomatist.
Because he had no quarrel with the whites, and because a grand old
priest was his truest friend, he gave orders that his body should be
buried in a coffin, Christian fashion, and as I rode over the plains in
the summer of 1890 I saw his burial-place on top of a high hill, and
knew that his bones were guarded night and day by watchers from among
his people. Two or three days before he died his best horse was
slaughtered for burial with him. He heard of it. "That was wrong," he
said; "there was no sense in doing that; and besides, the horse was
worth good money." But he was always at least as far as that in advance
of his people, and it was natural that not only his horse, but his gun
and blankets, his rich robes, and plenty of food to last him to the
happy hunting-grounds, should have been buried with him.
There are different ways of judging which is the best Indian, but from
the stand-point of him who would examine that distinct product of
nature, the Indian as the white man found him, the Canadian Blackfeet
are among if not quite the best. They are almost as primitive and
natural as any, nearly the most prosperous, physically very fine, the
most free from white men's vices. They are the most reasonable in their
attitude towards the whites of any who hold to the true Indian
philosophy. The sum of that philosophy is that civilization gets men a
great many comforts, but bundles them up with so many rules and
responsibilities and so much hard work that, after all, the wild Indian
has the greatest amount of pleasure and the least share of care that men
can hope for. That man is the fairest judge of the red-skins who
considers them as children, governed mainly by emotion, and acting upon
undisciplined impulse; and I know of no more hearty, natural children
than the careless, improvident, impulsive boys and girls of from five to
eighty years of age whom Crowfoot turned over to the care of Three
Bulls, his brother.
The Blackfeet of Canada number about two thousand men, women, and
children. They dwell upon a reserve of nearly five hundred square miles
of plains land, watered by the beautiful Bow River, and almost within
sight of the Rocky Mountains. It is in the province of Alberta, north of
our Montana. There were three thousand and more of these Indians when
the Canadian Pacific Railway was built across their hunting-ground,
seven or eight years ago, but they are losing numbers at the rate of
two hundred and fifty a year, roughly speaking. Their neighbors, the
tribes called the Bloods and the Piegans, are of the same nation. The
Sarcis, once a great tribe, became weakened by disease and war, and many
years ago begged to be taken into the confederation. These tribes all
have separate reserves near to one another, but all have heretofore
acknowledged each Blackfoot chief as their supreme ruler. Their old men
can remember when they used to roam as far south as Utah, and be gone
twelve months on the war-path and on their foraging excursions for
horses. They chased the Crees as far north as the Crees would run, and
that was close to the arctic circle. They lived in their war-paint and
by the chase. Now they are caged. They live unnaturally and die as
unnaturally, precisely like other wild animals shut up in our parks.
Within their park each gets a pound of meat with half a pound of flour
every day. Not much comes to them besides, except now and then a little
game, tobacco, and new blankets. They are so poorly lodged and so
scantily fed that they are not fit to confront a Canadian winter, and
lung troubles prey among them.
It is a harsh way to put it (but it is true of our own government also)
to say that one who has looked the subject over is apt to decide that
the policy of the Canadian Government has been to make treaties with the
dangerous tribes, and to let the peaceful ones starve. The latter do not
need to starve in Canada, fortunately; they trust to the Hudson Bay
Company for food and care, and not in vain. Having treated with the
wilder Indians, the rest of the policy is to send the brightest of their
boys to trade-schools, and to try to induce the men to till the soil.
Those who do so are then treated more generously than the others. I have
my own ideas with which to meet those who find nothing admirable in any
except a dead Indian, and with which to discuss the treatment and policy
the live Indian endures, but this is not the place for the discussion.
Suffice it that it is not to be denied that between one hundred and
fifty and two hundred Blackfeet are learning to maintain several plots
of farming land planted with oats and potatoes. This they are doing with
success, and with the further result of setting a good example to the
rest. But most of the bucks are either sullenly or stupidly clinging to
the shadow and the memory of the life that is gone.
It was a recollection of that life which they portrayed for us. And they
did so with a fervor, an abundance of detail and memento, and with a
splendor few men have seen equalled in recent years--or ever may hope to
witness again.
We left the cars at Gleichen, a little border town which depends almost
wholly upon the Blackfeet and their visitors for its maintenance. It has
two stores--one where the Indians get credit and high prices (and at
which the red men deal), and one at which they may buy at low rates for
cash, wherefore they seldom go there. It has two hotels and a half-dozen
railway men's dwellings, and, finally, it boasts a tiny little station
or barracks of the North-west Mounted Police, wherein the lower of the
two rooms is fitted with a desk, and hung with pistols, guns,
handcuffs, and cartridge belts, while the upper room contains the cots
for the men at night.
We went to the store that the Indians favor--just such a store as you
see at any cross-roads you drive past in a summer's outing in the
country--and there were half a dozen Indians beautifying the door-way
and the interior, like magnified majolica-ware in a crockery-shop. They
were standing or sitting about with thoughtful expressions, as Indians
always do when they go shopping; for your true Indian generates such a
contemplative mood when he is about to spend a quarter that one would
fancy he must be the most prudent and deliberate of men, instead of what
he really is--the greatest prodigal alive except the negro. These bucks
might easily have been mistaken for waxworks. Unnaturally erect, with
arms folded beneath their blankets, they stood or sat without moving a
limb or muscle. Only when a new-comer entered did they stir. Then they
turned their heads deliberately and looked at the visitor fixedly, as
eagles look at you from out their cages. They were strapping fine
fellows, each bundled up in a colored blanket, flapping cloth leg-gear,
and yellow moccasins. Each had the front locks of his hair tied in an
upright bunch, like a natural plume, and several wore little brass
rings, like baby finger-rings, around certain side locks down beside
their ears.
There they stood, motionless and speechless, waiting until the impulse
should move them to buy what they wanted, with the same deliberation
with which they had waited for the original impulse which sent them to
the store. If Mr. Frenchman, who kept the store, had come from behind
his counter, English fashion, and had said: "Come, come; what d'you
want? Speak up now, and be quick about it. No lounging here. Buy or get
out." If he had said that, or anything like it, those Indians would have
stalked out of his place, not to enter it again for a very long time, if
ever. Bartering is a serious and complex performance to an Indian, and
you might as well try to hurry an elephant up a gang-plank as try to
quicken an Indian's procedure in trading.
We purchased of the Frenchman a chest of tea, a great bag of lump sugar,
and a small case of plug tobacco for gifts to the chief. Then we hired a
buck-board wagon, and made ready for the journey to the reserve.
The road to the reserve lay several miles over the plains, and commanded
a view of rolling grass land, like a brown sea whose waves were
petrified, with here and there a group of sickly wind-blown trees to
break the resemblance. The road was a mere wagon track and horse-trail
through the grass, but it was criss-crossed with the once deep ruts that
had been worn by countless herds of buffalo seeking water.
Presently, as we journeyed, a little line of sand-hills came into view.
They formed the Blackfoot cemetery. We saw the "tepees of the dead" here
and there on the knolls, some new and perfect, some old and
weather-stained, some showing mere tatters of cotton flapping on the
poles, and still others only skeleton tents, the poles remaining and the
cotton covering gone completely. We knew what we would see if we looked
into those "dead tepees" (being careful to approach from the windward
side). We would see, lying on the ground or raised upon a framework, a
bundle that would be narrow at top and bottom, and broad in the
middle--an Indian's body rolled up in a sheet of cotton, with his best
bead-work and blanket and gun in the bundle, and near by a kettle and
some dried meat and corn-meal against his feeling hungry on his long
journey to the hereafter. As one or two of the tepees were new, we
expected to see some family in mourning; and, sure enough, when we
reached the great sheer-sided gutter which the Bow River has dug for its
course through the plains, we halted our horse and looked down upon a
lonely trio of tepees, with children playing around them and women
squatted by the entrances. Three families had lost members, and were
sequestered there in abject surrender to grief.
Those tents of the mourners were at our feet as we rode southward, down
in the river gully, where the grass was green and the trees were leafy
and thriving; but when we turned our faces to the eastward, where the
river bent around a great promontory, what a sight met our gaze! There
stood a city of tepees, hundreds of them, showing white and yellow and
brown and red against the clear blue sky. A silent and lifeless city it
seemed, for we were too far off to see the people or to hear their
noises. The great huddle of little pyramids rose abruptly from the level
bare grass against the flawless sky, not like one of those melancholy
new treeless towns that white men are building all over the prairie, but
rather like a mosquito fleet becalmed at sea. There are two camps on
the Blackfoot Reserve, the North Camp and the South Camp, and this town
of tents was between the two, and was composed of more households than
both together; for this was the assembling for the sun-dance, their
greatest religious festival, and hither had come Bloods, Piegans, and
Sarcis as well as Blackfeet. Only the mourners kept away; for here were
to be echoed the greatest ceremonials of that dead past, wherein lives
dedicated to war and to the chase inspired the deeds of valor which each
would now celebrate anew in speech or song. This was to be the
anniversary of the festival at which the young men fastened themselves
by a strip of flesh in their chests to a sort of Maypole rope, and tore
their flesh apart to demonstrate their fitness to be considered braves.
At this feast husbands had the right to confess their women, and to cut
their noses off if they had been untrue, and if they yet preferred life
to the death they richly merited. At this gala-time sacrifices of
fingers were made by brave men to the sun. Then every warrior boasted of
his prowess, and the young beaus feasted their eyes on gayly-clad
maidens the while they calculated for what number of horses they could
be purchased of their parents. And at each recurrence of this wonderful
holiday-time every night was spent in feasting, gorging, and gambling.
In short, it was the great event of the Indian year, and so it remains.
Even now you may see the young braves undergo the torture; and if you
may not see the faithless wives disciplined, you may at least perceive a
score who have been, as well as hear the mighty boasting, and witness
the dancing, gaming, and carousing.
We turned our backs towards the tented field, for we had not yet
introduced ourselves to Mr. Magnus Begg, the Indian agent in charge of
the reserve. We were soon within his official enclosure, where a pretty
frame house, an office no bigger than a freight car, and a roomy barn
and stable were all overtopped by a central flag-staff, and shaded by
flourishing trees. Mr. Begg was at home, and, with his accomplished
wife, welcomed us in such a hearty manner as one could hardly have
expected, even where white folks were so "mighty unsartin" to appear as
they are on the plains. The agent's house without is like any pretty
village home in the East; and within, the only distinctive features are
a number of ornamental mounted wild-beast's heads and a room whose walls
are lined about with rare and beautiful Blackfoot curios in skin and
stone and bead-work. But, to our joy, we found seated in that room the
famous chief Old Sun. He is the husband of the most remarkable Indian
squaw in America, and he would have been Crowfoot's successor were it
not that he was eighty-seven years of age when the Blackfoot Caesar died.
As chief of the North Blackfeet, Old Sun boasts the largest personal
following on the Canadian plains, having earned his popularity by his
fighting record, his commanding manner, his eloquence, and by that
generosity which leads him to give away his rations and his presents. No
man north of Mexico can dress more gorgeously than he upon occasion, for
he still owns a buckskin outfit beaded to the value of a Worth gown.
Moreover, he owns a red coat, such as the Government used to give only
to great chiefs. The old fellow had lost his vigor when we saw him, and
as he sat wrapped in his blanket he looked like a half-emptied meal bag
flung on a chair. He despises English, but in that marvellous Volapuek of
the plains called the sign language he told us that his teeth were gone,
his hearing was bad, his eyes were weak, and his flesh was spare. He
told his age also, and much else besides, and there is no one who reads
this but could have readily understood his every statement and
sentiment, conveyed solely by means of his hands and fingers. I noticed
that he looked like an old woman, and it is a fact that old Indian men
frequently look so. Yet no one ever saw a young brave whose face
suggested a woman's, though their beardless countenances and long hair
might easily create that appearance.
Mr. Remington was anxious to paint Old Sun and his squaw, particularly
the latter, and he easily obtained permission, although when the time
for the mysterious ordeal arrived next day the old chief was greatly
troubled in his superstitious old brain lest some mischief would befall
him through the medium of the painting. To the Indian mind the sun,
which they worship, has magical, even devilish, powers, and Old Sun
developed a fear that the orb of day might "work on his picture" and
cause him to die. Fortunately I found in Mr. L'Hereux, the interpreter,
a person who had undergone the process without dire consequences, was
willing to undergo it again, and who added that his father and mother
had submitted to the operation, and yet had lived to a yellow old age.
When Old Sun brought his wife to sit for her portrait I put all
etiquette to shame in staring at her, as you will all the more readily
believe when you know something of her history.
Old Sun's wife sits in the council of her nation--the only woman, white,
red, or black, of whom I have ever heard who enjoys such a prerogative
on this continent. She earned her peculiar privileges, if any one ever
earned anything. Forty or more years ago she was a Piegan maiden known
only in her tribe, and there for nothing more than her good origin, her
comeliness, and her consequent value in horses. She met with outrageous
fortune, but she turned it to such good account that she was speedily
ennobled. She was at home in a little camp on the plains one day, and
had wandered away from the tents, when she was kidnapped. It was in this
wise: other camps were scattered near there. On the night before the day
of her adventure a band of Crows stole a number of horses from a camp of
the Gros Ventres, and very artfully trailed their plunder towards and
close to the Piegan camp before they turned and made their way to their
own lodges. When the Gros Ventres discovered their loss, and followed
the trail that seemed to lead to the Piegan camp, the girl and her
father, an aged chief, were at a distance from their tepees, unarmed and
unsuspecting. Down swooped the Gros Ventres. They killed and scalped the
old man, and then their chief swung the young girl upon his horse behind
him, and binding her to him with thongs of buckskin, clashed off
triumphantly for his own village. That has happened to many another
Indian maiden, most of whom have behaved as would a plaster image,
saving a few days of weeping. Not such was Old Sun's wife. When she and
her captor were in sight of the Gros Ventre village, she reached forward
and stole the chief's scalping-knife out of its sheath at his side. With
it, still wet with her father's blood, she cut him in the back through
to the heart. Then she freed his body from hers, and tossed him from the
horse's back. Leaping to the ground beside his body, she not only
scalped him, but cut off his right arm and picked up his gun, and rode
madly back to her people, chased most of the way, but bringing safely
with her the three greatest trophies a warrior can wrest from a
vanquished enemy. Two of them would have distinguished any brave, but
this mere village maiden came with all three. From that day she has
boasted the right to wear three eagle feathers.
Old Sun was a young man then, and when he heard of this feat he came and
hitched the requisite number of horses to her mother's travois poles
beside her tent. I do not recall how many steeds she was valued at, but
I have heard of very high-priced Indian girls who had nothing except
their feminine qualities to recommend them. In one case I knew that a
young man, who had been casting what are called "sheep's eyes" at a
maiden, went one day and tied four horses to her father's tent. Then he
stood around and waited, but there was no sign from the tent. Next day
he took four more, and so he went on until he had tied sixteen horses to
the tepee. At the least they were worth $20, perhaps $30, apiece. At
that the maiden and her people came out, and received the young man so
graciously that he knew he was "the young woman's choice," as we say in
civilized circles, sometimes under very similar circumstances.
At all events, Old Sun was rich and powerful, and easily got the savage
heroine for his wife. She was admitted to the Blackfoot council without
a protest, and has since proven that her valor was not sporadic, for she
has taken the war-path upon occasion, and other scalps have gone to her
credit.
After a while we drove over to where the field lay littered with tepees.
There seemed to be no order in the arrangement of the tents as we looked
at the scene from a distance. Gradually the symptoms of a great stir and
activity were observable, and we saw men and horses running about at one
side of the nomad settlement, as well as hundreds of human figures
moving in the camp. Then a nearer view brought out the fact that the
tepees, which were of many sizes, were apt to be white at the base,
reddish half-way up, and dark brown at the top. The smoke of the fires
within, and the rain and sun without, paint all the cotton or canvas
tepees like that, and very pretty is the effect. When closer still, we
saw that each tepee was capped with a rude crown formed of pole
ends--the ends of the ribs of each structure; that some of the tents
were gayly ornamented with great geometric patterns in red, black, and
yellow around the bottoms; and that others bore upon their sides rude
but highly colored figures of animals--the clan sign of the family
within. Against very many of the frail dwellings leaned a travois, the
triangle of poles which forms the wagon of the Indians. There were three
or four very large tents, the headquarters of the chiefs of the soldier
bands and of the head chief of the nation; and there was one spotless
new tent, with a pretty border painted around its base, and the figure
of an animal on either side. It was the new establishment of a bride and
groom. A hubbub filled the air as we drew still nearer; not any noise
occasioned by our approach, but the ordinary uproar of the camp--the
barking of dogs, the shouts of frolicking children, the yells of young
men racing on horseback and of others driving in their ponies. When we
drove between the first two tents we saw that the camp had been
systematically arranged in the form of a rude circle, with the tents in
bunches around a great central space, as large as Madison Square if its
corners were rounded off.
We were ushered into the presence of Three Bulls, in the biggest of all
the tents. By common consent he was presiding as chief and successor to
Crowfoot, pending the formal election, which was to take place at the
feast of the sun-dance. European royalty could scarcely have managed to
invest itself with more dignity or access to its presence with more
formality than hedged about this blanketed king. He had assembled his
chiefs and headmen to greet us, for we possessed the eminence of persons
bearing gifts. He was in mourning for Crowfoot, who was his brother, and
for a daughter besides, and the form of expression he gave to his grief
caused him to wear nothing but a flannel shirt and a breech-cloth, in
which he sat with his big brown legs bare and crossed beneath him. He is
a powerful man, with an uncommonly large head, and his facial features,
all generously moulded, indicate amiability, liberality, and
considerable intelligence. Of middle age, smooth-skinned, and plump,
there was little of the savage in his looks beyond what came of his long
black hair. It was purposely wore unkempt and hanging in his eyes, and
two locks of it were bound with many brass rings. When we came upon him
our gifts had already been received and distributed, mainly to three or
four relatives. But though the others sat about portionless, all were
alike stolid and statuesque, and whatever feelings agitated their
breasts, whether of satisfaction or disappointment, were equally hidden
by all.
When we entered the big tepee we saw twenty-one men seated in a circle
against the wall and facing the open centre, where the ground was
blackened by the ashes of former fires. Three Bulls sat exactly opposite
the queer door, a horseshoe-shaped hole reaching two feet above the
ground, and extended by the partly loosened lacing that held the edges
of the tent-covering together. Mr. L'Hereux, the interpreter, made a
long speech in introducing each of us. We stood in the middle of the
ring, and the chief punctuated the interpreter's remarks with that queer
Indian grunt which it has ever been the custom to spell "ugh," but which
you may imitate exactly if you will try to say "Ha" through your nose
while your mouth is closed. As Mr. L'Hereux is a great talker, and is of
a poetic nature, there is no telling what wild fancy of his active brain
he invented concerning us, but he made a friendly talk, and that was
what we wanted. As each speech closed, Three Bulls lurched forward just
enough to make the putting out of his hand a gracious act, yet not
enough to disturb his dignity. After each salutation he pointed out a
seat for the one with whom he had shaken hands. He announced to the
council in their language that we were good men, whereat the council
uttered a single "Ha" through its twenty-one noses. If you had seen the
rigid stateliness of Three Bulls, and had felt the frigid
self-possession of the twenty-one ramrod-mannered under-chiefs, as well
as the deference which was in the tones of the other white men in our
company, you would comprehend that we were made to feel at once honored
and subordinate. Altogether we made an odd picture: a circle of men
seated tailor fashion, and my own and Mr. Remington's black shoes
marring the gaudy ring of yellow moccasins in front of the savages, as
they sat in their colored blankets and fringed and befeathered gear,
each with the calf of one leg crossed before the shin of the other.
But L'Hereux's next act after introducing us was one that seemed to
indicate perfect indifference to the feelings of this august body. No
one but he, who had spent a quarter of a century with them in closest
intimacy, could have acted as he proceeded to do. He cast his eyes on
the ground, and saw the mounds of sugar, tobacco, and tea heaped before
only a certain few Indians. "Now who has done dose t'ing?" he inquired.
"Oh, dat vill nevaire do 'tall. You haf done dose t'ing, Mistaire Begg?
No? Who den? Chief? Nevaire mind. I make him all rount again, vaire
deeferent. You shall see somet'ing." With that, and yet without ceasing
to talk for an instant, now in Indian and now in his English, he began
to dump the tea back again into the chest, the sugar into the bag, and
the plug tobacco in a heap by itself. Not an Indian moved a
muscle--unless I was right in my suspicion that the corners of Three
Bulls' mouth curved upward slightly, as if he were about to smile. "Vot
kind of wa-a-y to do-o somet'ing is dat?" the interpreter continued, in
his sing-song tone. "You moos' haf one maje-dome [major-domo] if you
shall try satisfy dose Engine." He always called the Indians "dose
Engine." "Dat chief gif all dose present to his broders und cousins,
which are in his famille. Now you shall see me, vot I shall do." Taking
his hat, he began filling it, now with sugar and now with tea, and
emptying it before some six or seven chiefs. Finally, when a double
share was left, he gave both bag and chest to Three Bulls, to whom he
also gave all the tobacco. "Such tam-fool peezness," he went on, "I do
not see in all my life. I make visitation to de t'ree soljier chief
vhich shall make one grand darnce for dose gentlemen, und here is for
dose soljier chief not anyt'ing 'tall, vhile everyt'ing was going to one
lot of beggaire relation of T'ree Bull. Dat is what I call one tam-fool
way to do some'ting."
[Illustration: INDIAN BOYS RUNNING A FOOT-RACE]