One evening a few years ago, I was sitting alone at a small trading
station on the edge of a lake in North Saskatchewan. A northeast wind
was blowing and the grey water was lashed into angry white caps that
raced madly one after the other.
I was watching an 18-foot canvas canoe manned by two Indians who were
paddling straight for me. They were having a hard time in making the
shore and seemed worried by the load they were freighting.
From where I sat I could not make out what sort of cargo they carried,
but I could see that it was placed amidship and stuck out on each side
well over the gunwales. I thought at first it was a log, although I was
at a loss to understand why they had not placed it lengthwise under the
thwarts. I finally realized, with a certain amount of astonishment, that
the two men were freighting in a large coffin, the weight and the
dimensions of which prevented them placing it anywhere else than above
deck, so to speak, and crosswise.
I sauntered down to the beach and gave them a hand in unloading their
burden. They told me that it was their father who had died a
considerable time ago and they were absolutely obliged to bury him as
soon as possible. Being Catholics, they had to bring the body for burial
to the priest whom the bad weather had kept on his side of the lake.
An hour or so later I heard the screech of a violin. Going out to
investigate, I found my two Indians in a shack close by, receiving
visitors from the neighborhood and whiling away the time by an impromptu
dance. Meanwhile, the coffin had been dragged outside to make more room.
It lay, grim and dark, on the right side of the door along the wall of
the cabin. All the dogs of the village, one by one, their tails curled
up and their ears pointed, were passing in front of it in a solemn
procession. I watched them from a distance. Each dog stopped—sniffed at
one corner of the coffin, went to the other—sniffed again and then,
slowly and religiously, cocked up one hind leg and remained there,
motionless for a few seconds.
Meanwhile the wind wailed across the lake as if striving to drown the
whining of the fiddle.
[Illustration: An Indian Wake]