THE THIRD BUFFALO HUNT
The Indians are simply large children, and further, no matter how
reasonable your proposition, they take a long time to consider it
and are subject to all kinds of mental revulsion. So we were lucky
to get away from Fort Smith on July 4 with young Francois Bezkya
as guide. He was a full-blooded Chipewyan Indian, so full that he
had knowledge of no other tongue, and Billy had to be go-between.
Bezkya, the son of my old patient, came well recommended as a good
man and a moose-hunter. A "good man" means a strong, steady worker,
as canoeman or portager. He may be morally the vilest outcast unhung;
that in no wise modifies the phrase "he is a good man." But more:
the present was a moosehunter; this is a wonderfully pregnant phrase.
Moose-hunting by fair stalking is the pinnacle of woodcraft. The
Crees alone, as a tribe, are supposed to be masters of the art;
but many of the Chipewyans are highly successful. One must be a
consummate trailer, a good shot, have tireless limbs and wind and
a complete knowledge of the animal's habits and ways of moving and
thinking. One must watch the wind, without ceasing, for no hunter
has the slightest chance of success if once the Moose should scent
him. This last is fundamental, a three-times sacred principle. Not
long ago one of these Chipewyans went to confessional. Although a
year had passed since last he got cleaned up, he could think of
nothing to confess. Oh! spotless soul! However, under pressure of
the priest, he at length remembered a black transgression. The fall
before, while hunting, he went to the windward of a thicket that seemed
likely to hold his Moose, because on the lee, the proper side, the
footing happened to be very bad, and so he lost his Moose. Yes!
there was indeed a dark shadow on his recent past.
A man may be a good hunter, i.e., an all-round trapper and woodman,
but not a moose-hunter. At Fort Smith are two or three scores of
hunters, and yet I am told there are only three moose-hunters. The
phrase is not usually qualified; he is, or is not, a moose-hunter.
Just as a man is, or is not, an Oxford M.A. The force, then, of
the phrase appears, and we were content to learn that young Bezkya,
besides knowing the Buffalo country, was also a good man and a
moose-hunter.
We set out in two canoes, Bezkya and Jarvis in the small one, Billy,
Selig, Preble, and I in the large one, leaving the other police
boys to make Fort Resolution in the H. B. steamer.
Being the 4th of July, the usual torrential rains set in. During
the worst of it we put in at Salt River village. It was amusing
to see the rubbish about the doors of these temporarily deserted
cabins. The midden-heaps of the Cave-men are our principal sources
of information about those by-gone races; the future ethnologist who
discovers Salt River midden-heaps will find all the usual skulls,
bones, jaws, teeth, flints, etc., mixed with moccasin beads from
Venice, brass cartridges from New England, broken mirrors from
France, Eley cap-boxes from London, copper rings, silver pins,
lead bullets, and pewter spoons, and interpersed with them bits of
telephone wires and the fragments of gramophone discs. I wonder
what they will make of the last!
Eight miles farther we camped in the rain, reaching the Buffalo
Portage next morning at 10, and had everything over its 5 miles by
7 o'clock at night.
It is easily set down on paper, but the uninitiated can scarcely
realise the fearful toil of portaging. If you are an office man,
suppose you take an angular box weighing 20 or 30 pounds; if a
farmer, double the weight, poise it on your shoulders or otherwise,
as you please, and carry it half a mile on a level pavement in
cool, bright weather, and I am mistaken if you do not find yourself
suffering horribly before the end of a quarter-mile; the last part
of the trip will have been made in something like mortal agony.
Remember, then, that each of these portagers was carrying 150 to
250 pounds of broken stuff, not half a mile, but several miles,
not on level pavement, but over broken rocks, up banks, through
quagmires and brush--in short, across ground that would be difficult
walking without any burden, and not in cool, clear weather, but through
stifling swamps with no free hand to ease the myriad punctures of
his body, face, and limbs whenever unsufficiently protected from
the stingers that roam in clouds. It is the hardest work I ever
saw performed by human beings; the burdens are heavier than some
men will allow their horses to carry.
Yet all this frightful labour was cheerfully gone through by white
men, half-breeds, and Indians alike. They accept it as a part of
their daily routine. This fact alone is enough to guarantee the
industrial future of the red-man when the hunter life is no longer
possible.
Next day we embarked on the Little Buffalo River, beginning what
should have been and would have been a trip of memorable joys but
for the awful, awful, awful--see Chapter IX.
The Little Buffalo is the most beautiful river in the whole world
except, perhaps, its affluent, the Nyarling.
This statement sounds like the exaggeration of mere impulsive
utterance. Perhaps it is; but I am writing now after thinking the
matter over for two and a half years, during, which time I have
seen a thousand others, including the upper Thames, the Afton, the
Seine, the Arno, the Tiber, the Iser, the Spree, and the Rhine.
A hundred miles long is this uncharted stream; fifty feet its breadth
of limpid tide; eight feet deep, crystal clear, calm, slow, and
deep to the margin. A steamer could ply on its placid, unobstructed
flood, a child could navigate it anywhere. The heavenly beauty of
the shores, with virgin forest of fresh, green spruces towering a
hundred feet on every side, or varied in open places with long rows
and thick-set hedges of the gorgeous, wild, red, Athabaska rose,
made a stream that most canoemen, woodmen, and naturalists would
think without a fault or flaw, and with every river beauty in its
highest possible degree. Not trees and flood alone had strenuous
power to win our souls; at every point and bank, in every bend,
were living creatures of the north, Beaver and Bear, not often seen
but abundant; Moose tracks showed from time to time and birds were
here in thousands. Rare winter birds, as we had long been taught
to think them in our southern homes; here we found them in their
native land and heard not a few sweet melodies, of which in faraway
Ontario, New Jersey, and Maryland we had been favoured only with
promising scraps when wintry clouds were broken by the sun. Nor were
the old familiar ones away--Flicker, Sapsucker, Hairy Woodpecker,
Kingfisher, Least Flycatcher, Alder Flycatcher, Robin, Crow, and
Horned Owl were here to mingle their noises with the stranger melodies
and calls of Lincoln Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Olive-sided Flycatcher,
Snipe, Rusty Blackbird, and Bohemian Waxwing.
Never elsewhere have I seen Horned Owls so plentiful. I did not know
that there were so many Bear and Beaver left; I never was so much
impressed by the inspiring raucous clamour of the Cranes, the
continual spatter of Ducks, the cries of Gulls and Yellowlegs.
Hour after hour we paddled down that stately river adding our 3
1/2 miles to its 1 mile speed; each turn brought to view some new
and lovelier aspect of bird and forest life. I never knew a land
of balmier air; I never felt the piney breeze more sweet; nowhere
but in the higher mountains is there such a tonic sense abroad;
the bright woods and river reaches were eloquent of a clime whose
maladies are mostly foreign-born. But alas! I had to view it all
swaddled, body, hands, and head, like a bee-man handling his swarms.
Songs were muffled, scenes were dimmed by the thick, protecting,
suffocating veil without which men can scarcely live.
Ten billion dollars would be all too small reward, a trifle totally
inadequate to compensate, mere nominal recognition of the man who
shall invent and realise a scheme to save this earthly paradise
from this its damning pest and malediction.