WINTER AT MOOSE FORT
The four seasons are called in the Indian tongue, Sekwun, Nepin,
Tukwaukin, and Pepooa. Spring begins about the middle or end of May,
when the ice in the river breaks up. Vegetation proceeds rapidly. In a
few days the bushes look green, and within a fortnight the grass and
trees appear in summer garb. Sometimes the ‘breaking-up’ is attended with
danger, often with inconvenience.
In the spring of 1860 the little settlement was visited with a disastrous
flood. The ground all around is low, not a hill within seventy miles.
Mr. Horden was occupied in building his new church—the frame already
rested on the foundations. One Sunday morning it floated off and took
an excursion of nearly a quarter of a mile, and with the aid of ropes,
poles, and other implements it had to be dragged back to its former
position and strongly secured. ‘The ice,’ said Mr. Horden, ‘made much
more havoc than it did in ’57. A few days after the water had subsided I
found my garden thickly planted with ice blocks of a considerable size;
but our gardening operations were not impeded, we were able to raise a
large quantity of potatoes of very good quality. The effects of a flood
are not always evident at once; it is after the lapse of months that
they become apparent, when the poor Indian on arriving at his winter
hunting-grounds finds that the water has been there, and destroyed
nearly the whole of the rabbits. He is reduced to great straits, and the
energies of the whole family are required to keep them from starvation.’
Rabbits are the staple food of the Indians in the season. The skins,
being of little value for barter, are used by them as blankets, the women
sewing them very neatly together.
In 1861 Mr. Horden writes: ‘In May we were again threatened with a flood.
On returning from church one Sunday evening the river presented an awful
appearance. The strength of the current had broken up the ice, and formed
it into a conical shape, which rose as high as the tops of the trees on
the high bank of the river. We abandoned our house, having first taken
every precaution to guard against the fury of the waters, but, although
the threat was so formidable, we experienced no flood, and after spending
a few pleasant days at the establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company
we returned, and at once began our gardening. The children look upon a
flood as a rare treat. To them it is something of a pleasant, exciting
nature, after the dull monotony of a seven or eight months’ winter. It
drives us from our house, but we take shelter in one equally good, where
we ourselves enjoy pleasant company, and where the children have a large
number of playmates. What we look upon as our greatest trial are the
privations and sufferings to which the Indians are subjected.’
Nepin is very changeable, sometimes excessively warm, with plenty of
mosquitoes and sand-flies, which are very troublesome; sometimes quite
cold, and the transition is very rapid. It may be hot in the morning, and
in the evening so cold that an overcoat may be worn with comfort.
‘This is the busy season,’ writes Mr. Horden, ‘when I take my journeys.
Brigades of canoes from the various posts arrive, bringing the furs
collected during the preceding winter; in fact, every person appears to
have plenty to do.’ Just as summer is ending, the ship arrives, and it
is very anxiously looked for, for on it almost everything depends—flour,
tea, clothing, books, everything.
‘Tukwaukin is generally very boisterous, with occasional hail and snow
storms. Then the Indians hunt geese, which are salted and put into
barrels for our use, although they are not quite so good as a corned
round of beef. Before the arrival of Pepooa, all of the Indians are gone
off to their winter grounds, from which most of them do not return until
the arrival of spring.’
Each point of Mr. Horden’s vast parish had to be reached by an arduous
journey. Arduous is indeed but a mild expression for the troubles,
trials, privations, and tremendous difficulties attendant on travel
through the immense, trackless wastes lying between many of the
posts—wastes intersected with rivers and rapids, varied only by tracts
of pathless forest, swept by severe storms. ‘Last autumn,’ he writes,
‘I took a journey to Kevoogoonisse; it is 430 miles distant, and during
the whole way I saw no tent or house, not even a human being, until I
arrived within a short distance of the post. I appeared to be passing
through a forgotten land; I saw trees by tens of thousands, living,
decaying, and dead; I saw majestic waterfalls, and passed through fearful
rapids; I walked over long and difficult places, and day after day struck
my little tent, and felt grieved at seeing no new faces, none to whom
I might impart some spiritual blessing. In the whole space of country
over which I travelled, perhaps a dozen Indian families hunt during the
winter. Sometimes even this tract is insufficient to supply their wants;
animals become scarce, the lands are burnt by the forest fires, and they
are reduced to the greatest distress. I have seen terrible cases of this
kind. I have seen a man with an emaciated countenance, who in one winter
lost six children, all he had; and, horrible to relate, nearly every one
of them was killed for the purpose of satisfying the cravings of hunger.
At the post to which he was attached, Kevoogoonisse, out of about 120
Indians, twenty died through starvation in one winter.’
The country may be said to be one vast forest, with very extensive
plains, watered by large rivers and numerous lakes, inhabited by a few
roving Indians, who are engaged in hunting wild animals to procure furs
for the use of civilized man.
Sometimes sad things took place during the absence of the missionary on
his journeyings to visit outlying stations. During the short summer of
1858, he set out with his wife and their little children to visit Whale
River, in the country of the Eskimo. It was not his first journey to that
post. ‘You will have need of all your courage,’ said he to his wife.
Tempestuous seas, shelterless nights, and stormy days were vivid to his
own memory, but wife and children were glad to see anything new, after
the monotonous days and nights of the long Moose winter.
The family had not long been gone, when whooping-cough broke out at
Moose. Young, old, and middle-aged were attacked alike, and numbers died.
So terrible was the sickness that at one time there was but one man able
to work, and his work was to make two coffins. The missionary returned
to a sorrowing people. Out of five European families four had lost each
a child, and ‘the sight of the grave-yard and the mothers weeping there
is one I never shall forget. In ordinary years the average mortality was
two. This year it was thirty-two.’ Amongst the children taken was dear
little Susan, the orphan child of a heathen Indian, whom they had cared
for from infancy, and whose little fingers had just before her illness
traced upon a sampler the text: ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of
thy youth, while the evil days’——Here the words had ceased—she was taken
from all evil, and the evil days would not draw nigh her, the needle
remained in the sampler at that spot. Amongst the aged taken were blind
Koote, old blind Adam, and old blind Hannah, all of whom are specially
mentioned in Mr. Horden’s account of the previous Christmas Day services.
‘Yesterday,’ he writes, speaking of Christmas 1857, ‘was a deeply
interesting one to me. As usual, I met the Indians at seven, the
English-speaking congregation at eleven, and Indians again at three.
Among the communicants present were no less than three blind persons. Old
Adam, over whose head have, I should think, passed a hundred winters.
Old Koote, always at church, led with a string by a little boy, and poor
old lame Hannah, whose seat is seldom empty, be the weather what it may.
The day previous to our communion we had a meeting of the communicants.
Old blind Koote said, “I thank God for having preserved me to this day.
God is good! I pray to Him every night and morning. That does good to my
soul. I think a great deal about heaven, I ask Jesus to wash away all my
sins, and to take me there.”’
Any of the Indians who can come in to celebrate the Christmas and New
Year’s festivals eagerly seize the opportunity. But this is not possible
for the greater number, whose hunting-grounds lie at considerable
distances from the fort. In their far-away tents they have no means
of Christian communion or instruction, except by intercourse with one
another, and by the study of the portions of Scripture, prayers, and
hymns which they gladly and thankfully carry away with them to their
lonely homes in the wilderness.
The society had sent out a printing-press to Moose Fort, to facilitate
the supply of books to the Indians. Mr. Horden had hoped to receive by
the ship copies of his translations ready printed, instead of which,
to his dismay, blank sheets arrived with the press. He was no printer,
although his father had been, and now his energy, courage, and power to
overcome difficulties pre-eminently showed themselves. He shut himself up
in his room for several days, resolved to master the putting together of
the press; a very complicated business. But he accomplished it, and great
was his joy and triumph when he found that the machinery would work. From
this press issued, in one winter, no less than sixteen hundred books in
three Indian dialects.
The winter over and gone, the snow nearly disappeared, day after day the
geese and wavies are seen flying overhead. The mighty river, which has
been for many months locked up, with a giant’s strength has burst its
bonds asunder, and rushes impetuously towards the sea; a few birds appear
in the trees, the frogs have commenced their croaking, fish find their
way to the well-laid nets; and the busy mosquito has begun its unwelcome
buzz. The Indians collect their furs, tie them in bundles, and place them
in the canoes, and with their dogs and household stuff they make their
way down stream to the trader’s residence. They run a few rapids, carry
their canoe and baggage over many portages, sail the frail bark over
one or two lakes, and are at the end of their journey. Down come the
trader’s servants to help to carry the packs to the store.
[Illustration: A TRADER’S STORE]
Let us look around. The store contains everything that an Indian needs,
whether for business or comfort. Here a rack full of guns, there a pile
of thick blankets, a bale of blanket coats, and an almost unlimited
supply of blue and red cloth; axes and knives, matches and kettles, beads
and braid, deer-skin and moose-skin, powder and shot, twine for nets and
snares, tea and sugar, flour and oatmeal, pork and pease; and some good
books too, which tell the Indian of God and heaven, and which he can read.
The trader approaches, his face beaming with delight as he eyes the
packs, for they are large and valuable. He soon begins work. The first
bale contains nothing but beaver skins. Eighty-five examined are said to
be worth a hundred and twenty beaver according to the standard value. The
next contains forty marten, ten otter, a hundred and fifty rat. These
are adjudged worth a hundred beaver; the third bale is composed of five
hundred rabbit skins, worth twenty-five beaver. Consider a beaver equal
to two shillings and sixpence, and you will see the value of the hunt in
sterling money. We have now—bale one value one hundred and twenty beaver;
bale two value one hundred beaver; and bale three value twenty-five
beaver; altogether two-hundred-and-forty-five beaver. Last summer
yonder Indian took out a debt in goods of one hundred and fifty beaver,
this he pays, and then he has ninety-five beaver with which to trade.
Ninety-five quills are given to him, and his trading begins. The trader,
like an English shopman, stands behind a counter, and the Indian outside.
Native-like, he consults long before the purchase of each article. Having
decided, he calls out, ‘A gun;’ a gun is delivered, and he pays over ten
of his quills; then three yards of cloth, for which he pays two quills;
two books, and for them he pays one quill; and so on he goes, the heap
of goods increasing and the supply of quills decreasing gradually. As he
approaches the end, the consultation becomes very anxious; he is making
quite sure that he is laying out his money to the best advantage. But
the end comes at last, and, satisfied with his bargains, he gathers all
up into one of the purchased blankets, and retires to his tent, where he
examines and admires, and admires again, article after article.
Shall we take a peep into an Indian’s tent when encamped in the forest
on a trapping expedition? A fire burns in the centre, but through the
large opening overhead we see the snow lying thick on the branches
of the trees. The day has just broken, but the Christian Indian has
already engaged in worship and taken his morning meal. Then on with his
snow-shoes, for there is no moving without them. The blanket which forms
the tent door is raised, and he steps outside. How cold! and how drear
the scene! how still and death-like! no birds, no sound, save the wind
whistling through the forest. Now he is at a marten trap, a very simple
contrivance, composed of a framework of sticks, in the middle of which
a bait is placed, which being meddled with, causes the descent of a log,
which crushes the intruder. Here is a beautiful dark marten, quite a
prize. He takes it out and fastens it to a sledge, re-baits the trap, and
on he goes to another. Ah! he sees tracks, but the marten has not entered
the trap; on to another. What is this? He looks dismayed; a wolverine has
been here, and has robbed the trap. He resets it and goes on to the next;
the wolverine has been there too; to another and another, with the same
result. He is disheartened, but it cannot be helped. So he trudges on
over a round of thirty traps, taking altogether six fine martens; not a
bad day’s hunt, all things considered. Evening is drawing on. He returns
to the tent, and there awaits him a glorious repast, perhaps of beaver
meat. He feels quite refreshed, and recounts all the vicissitudes of the
day, the gains and disappointments.
On the morrow he takes the martens and skins them; and what is he to do
with the bodies? Our Indian friends are not fastidious. He eats them. The
skins he turns inside out, and stitches them up. In the spring he brings
them to the fur-trading post, and there exchanges them, as we have seen,
for all the requisites of Indian life. An Indian cannot afford to cast
away anything; all he kills is to him ‘beef,’ sometimes good, sometimes
not a little bad. ‘In my own experience,’ Mr. Horden says, ‘I have eaten
white bear, black bear, wild cat, while for a week or ten days together
I have had nothing but beaver, and glad indeed I have been to get it.’
When the Indians have come into the post the work of instruction at
once commences. Amid school-work, services, visiting and talking with
individuals, the missionary found his time fully occupied. Little leisure
remained for his dearly-loved translation work—yet this progressed. In
1859 Mr. Horden had already the prayer and hymn book and the four Gospels
printed in the syllabic character. The prayer and hymn book were printed
in England. The Gospels he had himself printed at Moose. ‘The performance
of this labour,’ he writes, ‘was almost too much for me, as, since last
winter, although not incapacitated for work, I have felt that even a very
strong constitution has limits, which it may not pass with impunity; I
have occasionally suffered from weakness of the chest. I need not say
with what delight the Indians received the books prepared for them. I did
not think it right to provide them all gratis, I therefore charged two
shillings each, a little less than one beaver skin, and with the money
thus raised I am able to purchase a year’s consumption of paper. Our
services are now conducted in a manner very similar to what they are at
home. Our meetings for prayer are extremely refreshing, and my spirit is
often revived by joining with my brethren around the throne of grace.’
It must be remembered that Mr. Horden had not only the Indians under
his ministry, but the Europeans of the Hudson’s Bay Company; thus he
had English as well as Indian services to hold, and as there were some
Norwegians amongst the company’s servants who did not readily follow
either the English or the Indian, he set himself to learn for their sake
sufficient Norwegian to read the service and to preach to them in their
own tongue.
To these languages he added Eskimo and Ojibbeway—the latter being the
speech of the people of the Kevoogoonisse district, the former that of
the natives of Whale River.
How could all this be crowded into the busy day of this father of his
flock? How but by rising in the small hours of the morning, when by the
light of a lamp in his little study he read, and wrote, and translated,
and in addition to all else taught himself Hebrew.