The Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our Way--A long
Ride-Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.
Two things strike the new-comer at Carlton. First, he sees evidences on
every side of a rich and fertile country; and, secondly, he sees by many
signs that war is the normal condition of the wild men who have pitched
their tents in the land of the Saskatchewan that land from which we have
taken the Indian prefix Kis, without much improvement of length or
euphony. It is a name but little known to the ear of the outside world,
but destined one day or other to fill its place in the long list of lands
whose surface yields back to man, in manifold, the toil of his brain and
hand. Its boundaries are of the simplest description, and it is as well
to begin with them. It has on the north a huge forest, on the west a huge
mountain, on the south an immense desert, on the east an immense marsh.
From the forest to the desert there lies a distance varying from 40 to
150 miles, and from the marsh to the mountain, 800 miles of land lie
spread in every varying phase of undulating fertility. This is the
Fertile Belt, the land of the Saskatchewan, the winter home of the
buffalo, the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, the future home of
millions yet unborn. Few men have looked on this land-but the thoughts of
many in the New World tend towards it, and crave for description and fact
which in many instances can only be given to them at second-hand.
Like all things in this world, the Saskatchcwan has its poles of opinion;
there are those who paint it a paradise, and those who picture it a hell.
It is unfit for habitation, it is to be the garden-spot of America--it is
too cold, it is too dry--it is too beautiful; and, in reality, what is
it? I answer in a few words. It is rich; it is fertile; it is fair to the
eye. Man lives long in it, and the children of his body are cast in manly
mould. The cold of winter is intense, the strongest heat of summer is not
excessive. The autumn days are bright and-beautiful; the snow is seldom
deep, the frosts are early to come and late to go. All crops flourish,
though primitive and rude are the means by which they are tilled; timber
is in places plentiful, in other places scarce; grass grows high, thick,
and rich. Horses winter out, and are round-carcased, and fat in spring.
The lake-shores are deep in hay; lakelets every where. Rivers close in
mid-November and open in mid-April. The lakes teem with fish; and such
fish! fit for the table of a prince, but disdained at the feast of the
Indian. The river-heads lie all in a forest region; and it is midsummer
when their water has reached its highest level. Through the land the red
man stalks; war, his unceasing toil--horse-raiding, the pastime of his
life. How long has the Indian thus warred?-since he has been known to the
white man, and long before.
In 1776 the earliest English voyager in these regions speaks of war
between the Assineboines and their trouble some western neighbours, the
Snake and Blackfeet Indians. But war was older than the era of the
earliest white man, older probably than the Indian himself; for, from
what ever branch of the human race this stock is sprung, the lesson of
warfare was in all cases the same to him. To say he fights is, after all,
but to say he is a man; for whether it be in Polynesia or in Paris, in
the Saskatchewan or in Sweden, in Bundelond or in Bulgaria, fighting is
just the one universal "touch of nature which makes the whole world
kin."
"My good brothers," said a missionary friend of mine, some little while
ago, to an assemblage of Crees, "My good brothers--why do you carry on
this unceasing war with the Blackfeet and Peaginoos, with Sircies and
Bloods? It is not good, it is not right; the great Manitou does not like
his children to kill each other, but he wishes them to live in peace and
brotherhood."
To which the Cree chief made answer--"My friend, what you say is good;
but look, you are white man and Christian, we are red men and worship
the Manitou; but what is the news we hear from the traders and the
black-robes? Is it not always the news of war? The Kitchi Mokamans (i.e.
the Americans) are on the war-path against their brethren of the South,
the English are fighting some tribes far away over the big lake; the
French, and all the other tribes are fighting too! My brother, it is
news of war, always news of war! and we--we go on the war-path in small
numbers. We stop when we kill a few of our enemies and take a few scalps;
but your nations go to war in countless thousands, and we hear of more of
your braves killed in one battle than all our tribe numbers together. So,
my brother, do not say to us that it is wrong to go on the war-path, for
what is right for the white man cannot be wrong in his red brother. I
have done!"
During the seven days which I remained at Carlton the winter was not
idle. It snowed and froze, and looked dreary enough within the darkening
walls of the fort. A French missionary had come down from the northern
lake of Isle-à-la-Crosse, but, unlike his brethren, he appeared shy and
uncommunicative. Two of the stories which he related, however, deserve
record. One was a singular magnetic storm which took place at
Isle-à-la-Crosse during the preceding winter. A party of Indians and
half-breeds were crossing the lake on the ice when suddenly their hair
stood up on end; the hair of the dogs also turned the wrong way, and the
blankets belonging to the part even evinced signs of acting, in an
upright manner. I will not pretend to account for this phenomenon, but
merely tell it as the worthy père told it to me, and I shall rest
perfectly satisfied if my readers hair does not follow the example of
the Indians dogs and blankets and proceed generally after the manner of
the "frightful porcupine." The other tale told by the père was of a more
tragical nature. During a storm in the prairies near the South Branch of
the Saskatchewan a rain of fire suddenly descended upon a camp of Cree
Indians and burned everything around. Thirty-two Crees perished in the
flames; the ground was burned deeply for a considerable distance, and
only one or two of the party who happened to stand close to a lake were
saved by throwing themselves into the water. "It was," said my informant,
"not a flash of lightning, but a rain of fire which descended for some
moments."
The increasing severity of the frost hardened into a solid mass the
surface of the Saskatchewan, and on the morning of the 14th November we
set out again upon our Western journey. The North Saskatchewan which I
now crossed for the first time, is a river 400 yards in width, lying
between banks descending steeply to a low alluvial valley. These outer
banks are some 200 feet in height, and in some by-gone age were doubtless
the boundaries of the majestic stream that then rolled between them. I
had now a new-band of horses numbering altogether nine head, but three of
them were wild brood mares that had never before been in harness, and
laughable was the scene that ensued at starting. The snow was now
sufficiently deep to prevent wheels running with ease, so we substituted
two small horse-sleds for the Red River cart, and into these sleds the
wild mares were put. At first they refused to move an inch--no, not an
inch; then came loud and prolonged thwacking from a motley assemblage of
Crees and half-breeds. Ropes, shanganappi, whips, and sticks were freely
used; then, like an arrow out of a bow, away went the mare; then suddenly
a dead stop, two or three plunges high in air, and down flat upon the
ground. Againthe thwacking, and again suddenly up starts the mare and off
like a rocket. Shanganappi harness is tough stuff and a broken sled is
easily set to rights, or else we would have been in a bad way. But for
all horses in the North-west there is the very simplest manner of
persuasion: if the horse lies down, lick him until he gets up; if he
stands up on his hind-legs, lick him until he reverts to his original
position; if he bucks, jibs, or kicks, lick him, lick him, lick him;
when you are tired of licking him, get another man to continue the
process; if you can use violent language in three different tongues so
much the better, but if you cannot imprecate freely at least in French,
you will have a bad time of it. Thus we started from Carlton and,
crossing the wide Saskatchewan, held our way south-west for the Eagle
Hills. It was yet the dusk of the early morning, but as we climbed the
steep northern bank the sun was beginning to lift himself above the
horizon. Looking back, beneath lay the wide frozen river, and beyond the
solitary fort still wrapped in shade, the trees glistened pure and white
on the high-rolling bank beside me, and the untrodden snow stretched far
away in dazzling brilliancy. Our course now lay to the south of west, and
-our pace was even faster than it had been in the days of poor Blackie.
About midday we entered upon a vast tract of burnt country, the unbroken
snow filling the hollows of the ground beneath it. Fortunately, just at
camping-time we reached a hill-side whose grass and tangled vetches had
escaped the fire, and here we pitched our camp for the night. Around rose
hills whose sides were covered with the traces of fire-destroyed'
forests, and a lake lay close beside us, wrapped in ice and snow. A small
winter-station had been established by the Hudson Bay Company at a point
some ninety miles distant from Carlton, opposite the junction of the
Battle River with the North Saskatchewan. There, it was said, a large
camp of Crees had assembled, and to this post we were now directing our
steps.
On the morning of the second day out from Carlton, the guide showed
symptoms of haziness as to direction: he began to bend greatly to the
south, and at sunrise he ascended a high hill for the purpose of taking a
general survey of the surrounding country. From this hill the eye ranged
over a vast extent of landscape, and although the guide failed
altogether to correct his course, the hill-top yielded such a glorious
view of sun rising from a sea of snow into an ocean of pale green barred
with pink and crimson streaks, that I felt well repaid for the trouble of
the long ascent. When evening closed around us that day, I found myself
alone amidst a wild, weird scene. Far as the eye could reach in front and
to the right a boundless, treeless plain stretched into unseen distance;
to the left a range of steep hills rose abruptly from the plain; over all
the night was coming down. Long before sunset I had noticed a clump of
trees many miles ahead, and thought that in this solitary thicket we
would make our camp for the night. Hours passed away, and yet the
solitary clump seemed as distant as ever--nay, more, it even appeared to
grow smaller as I approached it. At last, just at dusk, I drew near the
wished for camping-place; but lo! it was nothing but a single bush. My
clump had vanished, my camping-place had gone, the mirage had been
playing tricks with the little bush and magnifying it into a grove of
aspens. When night fell there was no trace of camp or companions, but the
snow marks showed that I was still upon the right track. On again for two
hours in darkness often it was so dark that it was only by giving the
horse his head that he was able to smell out the hoofs of his comrades in
the partially covered grass of frozen swamp and moorland. No living thing
stirred, save now and then a prairie owl flitting through the gloom added
to the sombre desolation of the scene. At last the trail turned suddenly
towards a deep ravine to the left. Riding to the edge of this ravine, the
welcome glare of a fire glittering through a thick screen of bushes
struck my eye. The guide had hopelessly lost his way, and after thirteen
hours hard riding we were lucky to find this cosy nook in the
tree-sheltered valley. The Saskatchewan was close beside us, and the dark
ridges beyond were the Eagle Hills of the Battle River.
Early next forenoon we reached the camp of Crees and the winter post of
the Hudson Bay Company some distance above the confluence of the Battle
Riverwith the Saskatchewan. A wild scene of confusion followed our entry
into the camp; braves and squaws, dogs and papooses crowded round, and it
was difficult work to get to the door of the little shanty where the
Hudson Bay officer dwelt. Fortunately, there was no small-pox in this
crowded camp, although many traces of its effects were to be seen in the
seared and disfigured faces around, and in none more than my host, who
had been one of the four that had recovered at Carlton. He was a splendid
specimen of a half-breed, but his handsome face was awfully marked by the
terrible scourge. This assemblage of Crees was under the leadership of
Mistawassis, a man of small and slight stature, but whose bravery had
often been tested in fight against the Blackfeet. He was a man of quiet
and dignified manner, a good listener, a fluent speaker, as much at his
ease and as free from restraint as any lord in Christendom. He hears the
news I have to tell him through the interpreter, bending his head in
assent to every sentence; then he pauses a bit and speaks. "He wishes to
know if aught can be done against the Blackfeet; they are troublesome,
they are fond of war; he has seen war for many years, and he would wish
for peace; it is only the young men, who want scalps and the soft words
of the squaws, who desire war." I tell him that "the Great Mother wishes
her red children to live at peace; but what is the use? do they not
themselves break the peace when it is made, and is not the war as often
commenced by the Crees as by the Blackfeet?" He says that "men have told
them that the white man was coming to take their lands, that the white
braves were coming to the country, and he wished to know if it was true."
"If the white braves did come," I replied, "it would be to protect the
red man, and to keep peace amongst all. So dear was the red man to the
heart of the chief whom the Great Mother had sent, that the sale of all
spirits had been stopped in the Indian country, and henceforth, when he
saw any trader bringing whisky or fire-water into the camp, he could tell
his young men to go and take the fire-water by force from the trader."
"That is good," he repeated twice, "that is good!" but whether this
remark of approval had reference to the stoppage of the fire-water or to
the prospective seizure of liquor by his braves, I cannot say. Soon after
the departure of Mistawassis from the hut, a loud drumming outside was
suddenly struck up, and going to the door I found the young men had
assembled to dance the dance of welcome in my honour; they drummed and
danced in different stages of semi-nudity for some time, and at the
termination of the performance I gave an order for tobacco all round.
When the dancing-party had departed, a very garrulous Indian presented
himself, saying that he had been informed that the Ogima was possessed of
some "great medicines," and that he wished to see them. I have almost
forgotten to remark that my store of drugs and medicines had under gone
considerable delapidation from frost and fast travelling. An examination
held at Carlton into the contents of the two cases had revealed a sad
state of affairs. Frost had smashed many bottles; powders badly folded up
had fetched way in a deplorable manner; tinctures had proved their
capability for the work they had to perform by tincturing every thing
that came within their reach; hopeless confusion reigned in the
department of pills. A few glass-stoppered bottles had indeed resisted
the general demoralization; but, for the rest, it really seemed as though
blisters, pills, powders, scales, and disinfecting fluids had been wildly
bent upon blistering, pilling, powdering, weighing, and disinfecting one
another ever since they had left Fort Garry. I deposited at Carlton a
considerable quantity of a disinfecting fluid frozen solid, and as highly
garnished with pills as the exterior of that condiment known as a
chancellor's pudding is resplendent with raisins. Whether this
conglomerate really did disinfect the walls of Carlton I cannot state,
but from its appearance and general medicinal aspect I should say that no
disease, however virulent, had the slightest chance against it. Having
repacked the other things as safely as possible into one large box, I
still found that I was the possessor of medicine amply sufficient to
poison a very large extent of territory, and in particular I had a small
leather medicine-chest in which the glass-stoppered bottles had kept
intact. This chest I now produced for the benefit of my garrulous friend;
one very strong essence of smelling-salts particularly delighted him; the
more it burned his nostrils the more he laughed and hugged it, and after
a time declared that there could be no doubt whatever as to that article,
-for it was a very "great medicine" indeed.