Railways may extend their lines far away in the north; civilization may
wipe out huge slices of wilderness; the remaining Indians, in spite of
all their faults intensified by the contact with white men, are still at
heart wild men whose sole aim in life is to hunt and to kill.
Whatever may be their calling, there is one thing which no Indian man,
woman or child can resist. It’s to try to lay low big game. In other
words, to try to secure red meat each time the occasion arises.
Last summer, near where we were camped, a very old squaw took her
granddaughter, aged ten, to look over her nets. The child was in the bow
of the canoe. Suddenly they came across a big bull moose swimming the
river. They had no rifle and there was no time to return to camp to
fetch one. The old woman did not hesitate. With one sweep of her paddle
she steered the small canoe straight for the moose, while she screamed
to the little girl to pick up the small axe which they were using to
drive in the stakes of their nets.
The child was frightened but she answered the call of the blood. She
seized the axe and, when her grandmother fearlessly paddled the canoe
alongside the huge horns of the moose, she struck with all her might.
She was too young to know how to use her small weapon. Instead of aiming
between the animal’s ears with the head of the axe, she struck blindly
with the blade. She missed several times, wounding the big moose in the
neck.
The infuriated animal roared, shook his head, lunged out with his front
paws, narrowly missing the canoe. The little girl kept on savagely.
Finally, she buried her axe in the bull’s huge back. She did not have
the strength to wrench it out. The moose reached the shore, staggered up
the bank and disappeared in the bush.... We found it an hour later,
dead, a few hundred yards away.
There was a silent but proud little Indian girl in camp that night.
The bull moose must have weighed over twelve hundred pounds, while the
axe measured exactly three feet long.
[Illustration: An Indian girl]