THE INDIANS OF THE LABRADOR.
The Indians of the interior are probably a diminishing people whose
numbers it is difficult to compute, for they live for the most part
withdrawn behind their fastnesses of wilderness and stony desert.
According to the most reliable estimates they may be counted as some
four thousand in all. The large majority of these hunt and trap in the
southern part of the peninsula, coming out with their furs to the waters
of the St. Lawrence.
In the central country are the lodges of two tribes—the Montagnais to the
south and the Nascaupees further north. They have parcelled out certain
districts of the interior into hunting grounds, each of which is regarded
as a hereditary belonging, passing from father to son. They call no man
master, and they live a life of hardship and freedom such as was more
common in the world of a hundred years ago.
On their journeys their camps are set beside the waters of countless
unrecorded lakes; for men, women and children follow the nomadic life.
The Labrador is, as my readers will before this have recognised, a bitter
mother; but all that she is unwilling to give the Indian wrings from her.
In August he shoots the young Canada geese, spruce-grouse and ptarmigan.
The month, in his picturesque language (on which, as on the whole subject
of the Indians, Mr. William Cabot, of Boston, is incomparably the best
authority) is called _O-pó-o Píishum_, that is, the Moon of Flight.
By hunting and fishing the Indian obtains his food from the country over
which he travels, and about August he pitches his shifting _tepees_ deep
in the interior, where the chief event of the year, the autumn killing of
the migrating caribou, takes place.
Both to the Montagnais of the more wooded south and the Nascaupees of
the Barren Ground, the caribou forms the main support of life. From time
immemorial the Indians have gathered to slay them at this season, while
they cross the lakes on their mysterious journeyings, the beginning and
the end of which no man really knows. Even the path of the migration
changes from year to year, and in some seasons the tribes fail to meet
with the deer at all. At these times starvation visits the tents and
sits, a grim shape, beside the fires. Such a year was 1893, when many of
the people died, only half their number surviving to the spring.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Nascaupees depend for their very
existence upon the caribou. They rely on the meat for their winter
provision; with the sinews they sew; the clothes which protect them
against the Arctic cold are fashioned from the pelts, the hair worn
inside against the wearer’s flesh; their lodges are covered with hides
of stags, and the very sparse store of civilised luxury which finds its
way to the tents on the lake promontories is largely gained by barter of
smoked skins and mocassins made from the same material.
About the season when the caribou may be expected in their long-drawn
battalions many thousands strong, all becomes activity in the Indian
camps. Up and down the George River the scouts are watching, and when
the leading deer make their appearance, he who sees them signals to his
fellows, for the first deer must not be turned.
All is quiet until the advance-guard has entered the water and a fair
proportion of caribou have crossed; then the Indians flash out in their
canoes and harry the herds, often slaying as many as a thousand. There is
no sport in the killing—merely a massacre of helpless swimming creatures.
But for days after the battle the hunters sit by their fires and enjoy
the greatest of all the luxuries the wilderness provides—the marrow of
the deer. Countless multitudes of caribou have been slain upon Indian
House Lake; so many, indeed, that the place has become historic.
This raiding of the herds, with trapping, partridge and ptarmigan
shooting and freshwater fishing, make up the Indian’s hunting for a
successful year. But there are few years when one month or another of the
twelve does not see these nomadic people face to face with famine. This
is more especially the case with the Nascaupees, who pass their lives in
the most remote part of the interior, some of them probably never coming
into touch with white men.
The Montagnais are a far more civilised race, partly on account of local
conditions; for Southern Labrador, having a less rigorous climate,
possesses more settlers with whom the Indians come in contact. Further,
they long ago passed under the teaching of the Oblate Fathers, and now
profess the Roman Catholic faith. The Fathers keep up annual visits
with their converts, who seldom move far to the north; and in fact
(particularly of late years) they spend a part of each year encamped not
very far from the coast settlements. During the winter of 1909-10 a lady
of the Moravian Mission, while travelling by _komatik_ southwards from
Nain, visited the tent of a Montagnais some distance behind Hopedale.
The old Indian received her with much hospitality and apologised for not
offering her tea, as his supply was exhausted.
[Illustration: The Home of the Nascaupees.]
[Illustration: The Children of the Barrens.]
There is a pronounced physical difference between the Montagnais and the
Nascaupees, the former being much shorter, with somewhat broad faces and
blunt features, while the Nascaupees retain the tall slender forms and
high features of the typical Red Indian. The tribes intermarry, for I
know of at least one intermarriage, though this may be a rare instance.
The head-quarters of the Nascaupees may be said to be on Indian House
Lake, the shores of which are, in truth, a battleground over which an
unrecorded but terrible struggle is fought out. This battle has endured
for generations; the antagonists are Nature on the one side and the
little tribe of Nascaupees on the other. The Indians can hope for no aid
in their conflict. Shut in upon all sides by the mighty Barrens, help
cannot reach them, nor have they sought it. Few people of white race have
yet set eyes on Indian House Lake, and the half-dozen expeditions which
have passed up and down the River have spent but half-an-hour at the
Nascaupee camp before they boarded their canoes and voyaged on.
It is believed that the Nascaupees came from the far south, being driven
north before the onslaughts of the Iroquois about the date when Canada
was first occupied by the French. They fled through the wooded south of
Labrador, still pursued by their remorseless enemies, who were not shaken
off till they had pushed the flying tribe up to those naked tablelands
that occupy so much of the central regions of the country. These are
dented with innumerable lakes and marshes, and covered with gigantic
boulders; enormous tracts being entirely timberless and exposed to the
cruel forces of the Arctic.
After many wanderings the poor hunted creatures must have found in the
valley of the Barren Ground River a true Land of Promise. Here all was
changed indeed. Spruce, elder, juniper and birch grew in the sheltered
hollows, and woods and marshes alike were crossed and seamed with the
high-roads of travelling bear and caribou; the tangled bush hid coveys
of willow grouse, while the very rocks yielded the crouching ptarmigan.
All these they found, not to speak of other game—foxes, lynx, wolves,
hares, Canada geese, black ducks, and many more. It can well be imagined
that when the Nascaupees first entered this region they believed that the
faces of their gods were indeed turned towards them. Game on the hills,
fish in the river, wood for their fires, _teepee_ poles to be had for the
cutting—what more could they desire?
In those days the country was virgin and the deer plentiful. The latter
are so still, and it is certain that during many years the Indians must
have fared well, for Indian House Lake appears to be the favourite
crossing-place in all Labrador for the migrating caribou. Thus they
learned to live by the deer; and so, while the herds held to the old
migratory route, all went well on the George. After 1828, when McLean
visited them, a veil dropped over their life by the Lake for more than
seventy years. No one, save a single Roman Catholic priest, saw them
in their home camps; the tribe lived secure behind their impenetrable
ramparts. It can hardly be doubted that they gorged and starved
alternately. At any rate, they survived in numbers not too much lessened;
and so they continued to exist until the dreadful winter of 1893, when,
as I have said, deer and game failed.
The Nascaupee families were for many years in the habit of coming out to
the Atlantic at Davis Bay Inlet to barter at the post of the Hudson’s
Bay Company which is situated there. But in 1910, for some reason, they
made a change; and a trading party of fifteen, of whom some four or five
were Montagnais, came out at Voysey’s Bay as usual; but there, abandoning
their canoes, they hired the resident settlers to take them by trap-boat
to Nain to transact their business at the Moravian Mission store. Some
travellers have dwelt upon the Indian terror of salt water; but if this
fear existed at one time, it would now appear to have passed away: the
Indians who came to Nain showed no symptoms of any feeling of the kind,
as in coming and going from Voysey’s Bay they must have covered some
sixty miles of sea-water.
The old racial antagonism between the Indians and the Eskimo has also
apparently quite died out—at any rate on the eastern coast. For something
like two hundred years the feuds and battles between the two peoples were
“continual and bloodthirsty to a terrible degree” (Gosling’s Labrador, p.
165). Tradition tells of a massacre, about the year 1640, in which the
Indians slew a thousand Eskimo. Even so recently as 1890 Warburton Pike,
in his travel book, “The Barren Grounds of Northern Canada,” says that
while on the Great Fish River he could not obtain an Indian guide to the
head of the river, “they have such a dread of the Esquimaux ... for many
years they have not met, and although the Esquimaux seen by Anderson on
the Great Fish River appear peaceful enough, the Yellow Knives hunting at
the head of the river are in constant fear of meeting them.”
But no trace of this enmity was observable at Nain, where many of the
Eskimo saw Indians for the first time in their lives in August, 1910.
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon when the Eskimo raised loud cries and
ran down to the little wooden jetty, as they always do on sight of an
approaching boat. The excitement was greater than usual, for the two trap
boats crossing the bay contained passengers the like of whom they had
never before seen. In a short time the Indians landed and walked along
the wharf in single file, with bundles upon their shoulders, to a house
on the beach placed at their disposal by Mr. Schmitt of the Mission. They
sat on the ground round the walls side by side, dumb and dirty, tired and
wretched-looking, after their long weary journey from the interior.
A small crowd of Eskimo stood inside the doors staring curiously at
them, but one or two others, bustling about with eager kindness, had lit
the stove and put on water to boil, and presently Mr. and Mrs. Schmitt
took them tea, sugar and biscuit, for they were undoubtedly very hungry.
As far as one could learn the Indians had never brought their women to
Davis Inlet, but three accompanied them to Nain. One of them was tightly
wrapped in folds of creased white calico; another was muffled in a
blanket; the third was a young girl. The men sat silent and sullen with
handkerchiefs and cloths bound round their heads, and one had a piece of
fur hanging from his shoulders.
[Illustration: A Mixed Marriage—Nascaupee and Montagnais.]
By next morning they looked rested and more cheery, and climbed up the
stairs into the store with a good deal of eagerness. They had brought
dressed deerskins, the pelt of a bear and of a wolverine, with a few wolf
skins and some half-made mocassins embroidered on the uppers for barter.
A Montagnais acted as interpreter and pointed out the various articles
on the shelves that his companions desired to examine, each of which was
carefully weighed in the hand before purchase, as the long portages on
their homeward journey made every extra ounce of importance.
They bought a good deal of tea, one man taking no less than 16 lbs.
Brightly coloured prints attracted them in the way of materials, red,
striped blue and magenta, pink, clear dark blue, and so on, and later
they invested in some store clothes. Besides these things they purchased
tobacco, cartridges, boxes of caps, matches, fish-hooks of the largest
size, a few reels of cotton, and spent some time in choosing skeins of
brilliant Berlin wools for embroidery purposes, some packets of rather
fine needles, and no less than twelve dozen pearl buttons, shirt size.
These latter are used by the Montagnais to ornament their flat round
caps. They bartered each pelt or bundle of deerskins for so much money,
the price was handed to them and they then bought with the amount as far
as it went. Mouth organs were very popular, and it was easy to see how
they hankered after a concertina; but evidently the means of the party
did not run to the necessary price.
At first they were all very silent and shy; but that mood soon wore off,
and they laughed and talked gaily. The men, when they raise their voices,
speak in a curious flat-toned falsetto. They spat freely all the time,
though they were not allowed to smoke in the store. One boy who had
acquired a clay pipe solemnly licked it all day long and went away in the
trap boat two days later still licking.
One of the young women, a Nascaupee, was distinctly handsome and
obviously much admired. She was given any number of pieces of
bright-coloured stuffs: a red petticoat, kettles, cups and saucers; and
finally a cake of scented soap and a bottle of Florida water! One young
man—evidently very flush of cash—bought for her anything she fancied, and
at each purchase the men laughed loudly. The second woman, a Montagnais,
was very composed and quiet, but for every special article of personal
luxury, such as soap and scent, lavished upon the Nascaupee belle, she
extracted a counterpart from her tall fine-looking Nascaupee husband.
The wrapping up of the purchases was promiscuous; for example, several
pounds of tea were tied up into the end of a length of cotton print—sugar
was wrapped in new handkerchiefs. None of them appeared to have any idea
of folding up their freshly acquired belongings, excepting the beauty,
who arranged all that appertained to herself with neatness; the young
settlers who had come with them in the trap-boats helping the remainder
of the party.
[Illustration: Montagnais Indians.]
[Illustration: The Nascaupee Belle and two Montagnais women.]
The women wore store dresses but had handkerchiefs bound in something of
a cone shape about their heads. Their hair was parted on the brow and
braided in two plaits which were rolled up to the level of the cheeks and
tied about with a band. The married women displayed beaded bands, but
the young girl’s hair was tied with a piece of plain blue cloth. The men
all had store trousers; one was accoutred in a bright red pair, ragged
and dirty; another took no little pride in his magenta stockings—just
such stockings as were worn on Big-Side at Fettes. Many sported Dutch
fisherman’s caps with falling point and tassel, which can be obtained
at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts. The more picturesque and more
conservative wore a beaded band round the brow, worked in a pattern,
white being the predominating colour.
Others again, who showed the Montagnais type of feature, wore flat round
caps of cloth decorated with birds worked in white beads at each side and
a symbol at the back [symbol] like this, of which no one seemed able to
explain the meaning. In front the caps were variously dotted with shirt
buttons, as can be seen in the photographs.
Some of the men were arrayed in baggy store jackets, but beneath hung
tunics of deerskin, one under the other, of different lengths. The
younger men wore tattered red and yellow sashes, the ends hanging down in
front. The entire party were shod in deerskin mocassins.
They were all very merry and ready to be amused in spite of the very
evident wear and tear of the exhausting travel they had undergone, the
repetition of which lay before them. They only stayed for a couple of
days, and departed as soon as their purchases were completed. Again they
passed down the wharf with their tightly-tied bundles on their backs, as
before in single file, and stood or sat in a picturesque group while the
boats were being loaded. They seemed to be on the most friendly terms
with the Eskimo, who crowded down to see them off. There was much warm
hand-shaking, some of the people even kneeling down on the jetty-head to
grasp the fingers of the Indians once more after they had entered the
boats.
The Indians say “Bo-you” as a greeting—evidently a corruption of “bon
jour;” at parting they cried out something that sounded like “Yomai!”
They crouched on their heels in the trap-boats, and as these got out into
the bay the sails were swung to the wind and they glided quickly out of
sight round the point.
It was not hard to realise the pitilessness of the life to which they
were returning. It may be that the Montagnais left them and went
southwards to their own district, but the Nascaupees were bound for
the more northerly latitudes of the interior. The former showed the
difference of living, for they looked fairly well fed and strong; but the
Nascaupees were one and all a gaunt race—unkempt sons of the wilderness,
with the wildness of long ages in their eyes.
We say in civilisation that “a woman’s work is never done,” and far
more is that true of the helpmate of the semi-savage man of the Barren
Grounds. She makes and breaks camp, cooks, she cuts up and carries her
husband’s kill; she dresses the skins of the deer; she is responsible for
the fashioning of the foot-gear and the greater portion of the clothing;
on a journey she often paddles the canoe, and on a portage she carries
the heavier load.
In fact, it is easier to write down the duties _not_ expected of a
squaw than those which immemorial custom demand of her. Indeed, the
North-land is a country calling aloud for a “woman’s movement”—a crusade
of emancipation! But such will never come, even in a thousand years; for
in the wilderness the provider of food, Man the Hunter, has reigned,
reigns now, and ever will reign. Having slain his deer or his bear, he
will take his ease in the best place in the lodge, deputing all lesser
offices to the mother of his children. It is a law, and the laws of the
North-land do not change.
Yet the years are fast thinning out the numbers of this interesting race,
but some are still left to carry on the age-long war with Nature; for the
Nascaupees are a true hunter people, dependent upon game for life, the
only inhabitants of the far interior of the Labrador. And the writer, at
any rate, glories in their freedom and their picturesqueness.