The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan--An Iroquois
--Fort-à-la-Corne--News from the outside World--All haste for Home--The
solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
AT the "forks" of the Saskatchcwan the traveller to the east enters the
Great Sub-Arctic Forest. Let us look for a moment at this region where
the earth dwells in the perpetual gloom of the pine-trees. Travelling
north from the Saskatchewan River at any portion of its course From
Carlton to Edmonton, one enters on the second day's journey this region
of the Great Pine Forest. We have before compared it to the shore of an
ocean, and like a shore it has its capes and promontories which stretch
far into the sea-like prairie, the indentations caused by the fires
sometimes forming large bays and open spaces won from the domain of the
forest by the fierce flames which beat against it in the dry days of
autumn. Some 500 or 600 miles to the north this forest ends, giving place
to that most desolate region of the earth, the barren grounds of the
extreme north, the lasting home of the musk-ox and the summer haunt of
the reindeer; but along the valley of the Mackenzie River the wooded
tract is continued close to the Arctic Sea, and on the shores of the
great Bear Lake a slow growth of four centuries scarce brings a
circumference of thirty inches to the trunks of the white spruce. Swamp
and lake, muskeg, and river rocks of the earliest formations, wild wooded
tracts of impenetrable wilderness combine to make this region the great
preserve of the rich fur-bearing animals whose skins are rated in the
marts of Europe at four times their weight in gold. Here the darkest
mink, the silkiest sable, the blackest otter are trapped and traded; here
are bred these rich furs whose possession women prize as second only to
precious stones. Into the extreme north of this region only the fur
trader and the missionary have as yet penetrated. The sullen Chipwayan,
the feeble Dogrib, and the fierce and warlike Kutchin dwell along the
systems which carry the waters of this vast forest into Hudson Bay and
thee Arctic Ocean.
This place, the "forks" of the Saskatchewan, is destined at some time or
other to be an important centre of commerce and civilization. When men
shall have cast down the barriers which now intervene between the shores
of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior, what a highway will not these two
great river Systems of the St. Lawrence and the Saskatchewan offer to the
trader! Less than 100 miles of canal through low alluvial soil have only
to be built to carry a boat from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the
head of Rainy Lake, within 100 miles of Lake Superior. With inexhaustible
supplies of water held at a level high above the current surface of the
height of land, it is not too much to say, that before many years have
rolled by, boats will float from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the
harbour of Quebec. But long before that time the Saskatchewan must have
risen to importance from its fertility, its beauty, and its mineral
wealth. Long before the period shall arrive when the Saskatchewan will
ship its products to the ocean, another period will have come, when the
mining populations of Montana and Idaho will seek in the fertile lands of
the middle Saskatchewan a supply of those necessaries of life which the
arid soil of the central States is powerless to yield. It is impossible
that the wave of life which rolls so unceasingly into America can leave
unoccupied this great fertile tract; as the river valleys farther east
have all been peopled long before settlers found their way into the
countries lying at the back, so must this great valley of the
Saskatchewan, when once brought within the reach of the emigrant, become
the scene of numerous settlements. As I stood in twilight looking down on
the silent rivers merging into the great single stream which here enters
the forest region, the mind had little difficulty in seeing another
picture, when the river forks would be a busy scene of commerce, and
man's labour would waken echoes now answering only to the wild things of
plain and forest. At this point, as I have said, we leave the plains and
the park-like country. The land of the prairie Indian and the
buffalo-hunter lies behind us-of the thick-wood Indian and moose-hunter
before us.
As far back as 1780 the French had pushed their Way into the Saskatchewan
and established forts along its banks. It is generally held that their
most western post was situated below the junction of the Saskatchewans,
at a place called Nippoween; but I am of opinion that this is an error,
and That their pioneer settlements had even gone west of Carlton. One of
the earliest English travellers into the country, in 1776, speaks of
Fort-des-Prairies as a post twenty-four days journey from Cumberland on
the lower river, and as the Hudson Bay Company only moved west of
Cumberland in 1774, it is only natural to suppose that this Fort-des
Prairies had originally been a French post. Nothing proves more
conclusively that the whole territory of the Saskatchewan was supposed to
have belonged by treaty to Canada, and not to England, than does the fact
that it was only at this date--1774--that the Hudson Bay Company took
possession of it.
During the bitter rivalry between the North-west and the Hudson Bay
Companies a small colony of Iroquois indians was brought from Canada to
the Saskatchewan and planted near the forks of the river. The
descendants of these men are still to be found scattered over different
portions of the country; nor have they lost that boldness and skill in
all the wild works of Indian life which made their tribe such formidable
warriors in the early contests of the French colonists; neither, have
they lost that gift of eloquence which was so much prized in the days of
Champlain and Frontinac. Here are the concluding words of a speech
addressed by an Iroquois against the establishment of a missionary
station near the junction of the Saskatchewan:
"You have spoken of your Great Spirit," said the Indian; "you have told
us He died for all men--for the red tribes of the West as for the white
tribes of the East; but did He not die with His arms stretched forth in
different directions, one hang towards the rising sun and the other
towards the setting sun?"
"Well, it is true."
"And now say, did He not mean by those outstretched arms that for
evermore the white tribes should dwell in the East and the red tribes in
the West? when the Great Spirit could not speak, did He not still point
out where His children should live?" What a curious compound must be the
man who is capable of such a strange, beautiful metaphor and yet remain a
savage!
Fort-à-la-Corne lies some twenty miles below the point of junction of the
rivers. Towards Fort-à-la-Corne I bent my steps with a strange anxiety,
for at that point I was to intercept the "Winter Express" carrying from
Red River its burden of news to the far-distant forts of the Mackenzie
River. This winter packet had left Fort Garry in mid-December, and
travelling by way of Lake Winnipeg, Norway House and Cumberland, was due
at Fort-à-la-Corne about the 21st January. Anxiously then did I press on
to the little fort, where I expected to get tidings of that strife whose
echoes during the past month had been powerless to pierce the solitudes
of this lone land. With tired dogs whose pace no whip or call could
accelerate, we reached the fort at midday on the 21st. On the river,
'close by, an old Indian met us. Has the packet arrived? "Ask him if the
packet has come," I said. He only stared blankly at me and shook his
head. I had forgotten, what was the packet to him? the capture of a
musk-rat was of more consequence than the capture of Metz. The packet had
not come, I found when we reached the fort, but it was hourly expected,
and I determined to await its arrival.
Two days passed away in wild storms of snow. The wind howled dismally
through the pine woods, but within the logs crackled and flew, and the
board of my host was always set with moose steaks and good things,
although outside, and far down the river, starvation had laid his hand
heavily upon the red man. It had fallen dark some hours on the evening
of the 22nd January when there came a knock at the door of our house; the
raised latch gave admittance to an old travel-worn Indian who held in his
hand a small bundle of papers. He had cached the packet, he said, many
miles down the river, for his dogs were utterly tired out and unable to
move; he had come on himself with a few papers for the fort: the snow
was very deep to Cumberland. He had been eight days in travelling 200
miles; he was tired and starving, and white with drift and storm. Such
was his tale. I tore open the packet--it was a paper of mid-November.
Metz had surrendered; Orleans been retaken; Paris, starving, still held
out; for the rest, the Russians had torn to pieces the Treaty of Paris,
and our millions and our priceless blood had been spilt and spent in vain
on the Peninsula of the Black Sea--perhaps, after all, we would fight? So
the night drew itself out, and the pine-tops began to jag the horizon
before I ceased to read.
Early on the following morning, the express was hauled from its cache and
brought to the fort; but it failed to throw much later light upon the
meagre news of the previous evening. Old Adam was tried for verbal
intelligence, but he too proved a failure. He had carried the packet from
Norway House on Lake Winnipeg to Carlton for more than a score of
winters, and, from the fact of his being the bearer of so much news in
his lifetime, was looked upon by his compeers as a kind of condensed
electric telegraph; but when the question of war was fairly put to him,
he gravely replied that at the forts he had heard there was war, and
"England," he added, "was gaining the day." This latter fact was too much
for me, for I was but too well aware that had war been declared in
November, an army organization based upon the Parliamentary system was
not likely to have "gained the day" in the short space of three weeks.
To cross with celerity the 700 miles lying between me and Fort Garry
Became now the chief object of my life. I lightened my baggage as much as
possible, dispensing with many comforts of clothing and equipment, and on
the morn ing of the 23rd January started for Cumberland. I will not dwell
on the seven days that now ensued, or how from long before dawn to verge
of evening we toiled down the great silent river. It was the close of
January, the very depth of winter. With heads bent down to meet the
crushing blast, we plodded on, oft times as silent as the river and the
forest, from whose bosom no sound ever came, no ripple ever broke, no
bird, no beast, no human face, but ever the same great forest-fringed
river whose majestic turns bent always to the north-east. To tell, day
after day, the extreme of cold that now seldom varied would be to inflict
on the reader a tiresome record; and, in truth, there would be no use in
attempting it; 40 below zero means so many things impossible to picture
or to describe, that it would be a hopeless task to enter upon its
delineation. After one has gone through the list of all those things that
freeze; after one has spoken of the knife which burns the hand that would
touch its blade, the tea that freezes while it is being dlrunk, there
still remains a sense of having said nothing; a sense which may perhaps
be better understood by saying that 40 degrees below zero means just one
thing more than all these items--it means death, in a period whose duration
would expire in the hours of a winter's daylight, if there was no fire or
means of making it on the track.
Conversation round a camp-fire in the North-west is limited to one
Subject--dogs and dog-driving. To be a good driver of dogs, and to be
able to run fifty miles in a day with ease, is to be a great man. The
fame of a noted dog-driver spreads far and wide. Night after night would
I listen to the prodigies of running performed by some Ba'tiste or Angus,
doughty champions of the rival races. If Ba'tiste dwelt at Cumberland, I
Would begin to hear his name mentioned 200 miles from that place, and his
fame would still be talked of 200 miles beyond it. With delight would I
hear the name of this celebrity dying gradually away in distance, for by
the disappearance of some oft-heard name and the rising of some new
constellation of dog-driver, one could mark a stage of many hundred miles
on the long road upon which I was travelling.
On the 29th January we reached the shore of Pine Island Lake, and saw in
our track the birch lodge of an Indian. It was before sunrise, and we
stopped the dogs to warm our fingers over the fire of the wigwam. Within
sat a very old Indian and two or three women and children. The old man
was singing to himself a low monotonous chant; beside him some reeds,
marked by the impress of a human form, were spread upon the ground; the
fire burned brightly in the centre of the lodge, while the smoke escaped
and the light entered through the same round aperture in the top of the
conical roof. When we had entered and seated ourselves, the old man
still continued his song. "What is he saying?" I asked, although the
Indian etiquette forbids abrupt questioning. "He is singing for his son,"
a man answered, "who died yesterday, and whose body they have taken to
the fort last night." It was even so. A French Canadian who had dwelt in
Indian fashion for some years, marrying the daughter of the old man, had
died from the effects of over-exertion in running down a silver fox, and
the men from Cumberland had taken away the body a few hours before.
Thus the old man mourned, while his daughter the widow, and a child sat
moodily looking at the flames. "He hunted for us; he fed us," the old man
said. "I am too old to hunt; I can scarce see the light; I would like to
die too." Those old words which the presence of the great mystery forces
from our lips-those words of consolation which some one says are "chaff
well meant for grain"--were changed into their Cree equivalents and duly
rendered to him, but he he only shook his head, as though the change of
language had not altered the value of the commodity. But the name of the
dead hunter was a curious anomaly-Joe Miller. What a strange antithesis
appeared this name beside the presence of the childless father, the
fatherless child, and the mateless woman! One service the death of poor
Joe Miller conferred on me--the dog-sled that had carried his body had
made a track over the snow-covered lake, and we quickly glided along it
to the Fort of Cumberland.