It was late in the fall of 1916, in the Somme, during the War. The
Canadian Army in junction with one of the French Army Corps at its right
had gone over the top and brilliantly carried an enemy’s strong
position, two miles deep. The inevitable counter attack had been
repulsed and, although the shelling was still vicious, one felt that the
show was over for that day. The wounded were streaming out of the
communication trenches towards the rear. A few dead bodies were lying
about in small groups.
I was passing along quickly, following a sunken road, when I noticed a
swarthy Canadian soldier on the ground, apparently dying of his wounds.
I happened to be glancing towards him when he looked up, saw me, and,
making a sign of the hand, called out clearly, “Nipi.” I recognized the
word at once and stopped in amazement. The man was a full-blooded Cree
Indian. He must have volunteered somewhere in Northern Canada, gone
overseas, fought, and was now dying all alone in the mud of the Somme.
He did not seem to be able to speak a word of English.
I knelt beside him and put my water bottle to his lips. Meanwhile I
racked my brain for the few words of Cree I still knew. When he had
finished drinking I began slowly to tell him, one by one, all the words
I remembered. I said in Cree, “lake, fire, bear, moose, tent, axe,
canoe.” What else, I do not recall. Dozens of Cree words—one after the
other. Then I named in Indian, all the northern places I knew from
Labrador to Yukon.
As soon as the Cree warrior heard my first words, he caught hold of my
hands with both of his own and held on to them like a drowning man. He
looked at me with a startled face, then his expression changed little by
little. He was far gone then but he could still hear and understand the
words of his native tongue. A far away look came into his dying eyes,
his features relaxed and a smile hovered on his lips. He had forgotten
the battlefield. His thoughts were away, far away, in some part of the
Canadian wilderness which he and I knew.
It was all over in a few seconds. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to
say something and then his soul went West; suddenly, without a flutter,
straight to the Happy Hunting Grounds of his ancestors.
[Illustration: An Indian warrior]