THE CHIPEWYANS, THEIR SPEECH AND WRITING
Sweeping generalisations are always misleading, therefore I offer
some now, and later will correct them by specific instances.
These Chipewyans are dirty, shiftless, improvident, and absolutely
honest. Of the last we saw daily instances in crossing the country.
Valuables hung in trees, protected only from weather, birds, and
beasts, but never a suggestion that they needed protection from
mankind. They are kind and hospitable among themselves, but grasping
in their dealings with white men, as already set forth. While they
are shiftless and lazy, they also undertake the frightful toil of
hunting and portaging. Although improvident, they have learned to
dry a stock of meat and put up a scaffold of white fish for winter
use. As a tribe they are mild and inoffensive, although they are
the original stock from which the Apaches broke away some hundreds
of years ago before settling in the south.
They have suffered greatly from diseases imported by white men,
but not from whiskey. The Hudson's Bay Company has always refused
to supply liquor to the natives. What little of the evil traffic
there has been was the work of free-traders. But the Royal Mounted
Police have most rigorously and effectually suppressed this.
Nevertheless, Chief Trader Anderson tells me that the Mackenzie
Valley tribes have fallen to less than half their numbers during
the last century.
It is about ten, years since they made the treaty that surrendered
their lands to the government. They have no reserves, but are free
to hunt as their fathers did.
I found several of the older men lamenting the degeneracy of
their people. "Our fathers were hunters and our mothers made good
moccasins, but the young men are lazy loafers around the trading
posts, and the women get money in bad ways to buy what they should
make with their hands."
The Chipewyan dialects are peculiarly rasping, clicking, and
guttural, especially when compared with Cree.
Every man and woman and most of the children among them smoke.
They habitually appear with a pipe in their mouth and speak without
removing it, so that the words gurgle out on each side of the pipe
while a thin stream goes sizzling through the stem. This additional
variant makes it hopeless to suggest on paper any approach to their
peculiar speech.
The Jesuits tell me that it was more clicked and guttural fifty
years ago, but that they are successfully weeding out many of the
more unpleasant catarrhal sounds.
In noting down the names of animals, I was struck by the fact that
the more familiar the animal the shorter its name. Thus the Beaver,
Muskrat, Rabbit, and Marten, on which they live, are respectively
Tsa, Dthen, Ka, and Tha. The less familiar (in a daily sense) Red
Fox and Weasel are Nak-ee-they, Noon-dee-a, Tel-ky-lay; and the
comparatively scarce Musk-ox and little Weasel, At-huh-le-jer-ray
and Tel-ky-lay-azzy. All of which is clear and logical, for the
name originally is a description, but the softer parts and sharp
angles are worn down by the attrition of use--the more use they
have for a word the shorter it is bound to get. In this connection
it is significant that "to-day" is To-ho-chin-nay, and "to-morrow"
Kom-pay.
The Chipewyan teepee is very distinctive; fifty years ago all were
of caribou leather, now most are of cotton; not for lack of caribou,
but because the cotton does not need continual watching to save it
from the dogs. Of the fifty teepees at Fort Chipewyan, one or two
only were of caribou but many had caribou-skin tops, as these are
less likely to bum than those of cotton.
The way they manage the smoke is very clever; instead of the two
fixed flaps, as among the Plains River Indians, these have a separate
hood which is easily set on any side (see III). Chief Squirrel lives
in a lodge that is an admirable combination of the white men's tent
with its weather-proof roof and the Indian teepee with its cosy
fire. (See cut, p. 149.)
Not one of these lodges that I saw, here or elsewhere, had the
slightest suggestion of decoration.
For people who spend their whole life on or near the water these are
the worst boatmen I ever saw. The narrow, thick paddle they make,
compared with the broad, thin Iroquois paddle, exactly expressed
the difference between the two as canoemen. The Chipewyan's mode of
using it is to sit near the middle and make 2 or perhaps 3 strokes
on one side, then change to the other side for the same, and so
on. The line made by the canoes is an endless zigzag. The idea of
paddling on one side so dexterously that the canoe goes straight
is yet on an evolutionary pinnacle beyond their present horizon.
In rowing, their way is to stand up, reach forward with the 30-pound
16 1/2-foot oar, throw all the weight on it, falling backward into
the seat. After half an hour of this exhausting work they must rest
15 to 20 minutes. The long, steady, strong pull is unknown to them
in every sense.
Their ideas of sailing a boat are childish. Tacking is like washing,
merely a dim possibility of their very distant future. It's a
sailing wind if behind; otherwise it's a case of furl and row.
By an ancient, unwritten law the whole country is roughly divided
among the hunters. Each has his own recognised hunting ground,
usually a given river valley, that is his exclusive and hereditary
property; another hunter may follow a wounded animal into it, but
not begin a hunt there or set a trap upon it.
Most of their time is spent at the village, but the hunting ground
is visited at proper seasons.
Fifty years ago they commonly went half naked. How they stood the
insects I do not know, and when asked they merely grinned significantly;
probably they doped themselves with grease.
This religious training has had one bad effect. Inspired with horror
of being "naked" savages, they do not run any sinful risks, even
to take a bath. In all the six months I was among them I never saw
an Indian's bare arms, much less his legs. One day after the fly
season was over I took advantage of the lovely weather and water
to strip off and jump into a lake by our camp; my Indians modestly
turned their backs until I had finished.
If this mock modesty worked for morality one might well accept it,
but the old folks say that it operates quite the other way. It has
at all events put an end to any possibility of them taking a bath.
Maybe as a consequence, but of this I am not sure, none of these
Indians swim. A large canoe-load upset in crossing Great Slave Lake
a month after we arrived and all were drowned.
Like most men who lead physical lives, and like all meat-eating
savages, these are possessed of a natural proneness toward strong
drink.
An interesting two-edged boomerang illustration of this was given
by an unscrupulous whiskey trader. While travelling across country
he ran short of provisions but fortunately came to a Chipewyan
lodge. At first its owner had no meat to spare, but when he found
that the visitor had a flask of whiskey he offered for it a large
piece of Moose meat; when this was refused he doubled the amount,
and after another refusal added some valuable furs and more meat
till one hundred dollars worth was piled up.
Again the answer was "no."
Then did that Indian offer the lodge and everything he had in it,
including his wife. But the trader was obdurate.
"Why didn't you take it," said the friend whom he told of the
affair; "the stuff would have netted five hundred dollars, and all
for one flask of whiskey."
"Not much," said the trader, "it was my last flask I wouldn't 'a'
had a drop for myself. But it just shows, how fond these Indians
are of whiskey."
While some of the Chipewyans show fine physique, and many do great
feats of strength and endurance, they seem on the whole inferior
to whites.
Thus the strongest portager on the river is said to be Billy
Loutit's brother George. At Athabaska Landing I was shown a house
on a hill, half a mile away, to which he had carried on his back
450 pounds of flour without stopping. Some said it was only 350
pounds, but none made it less. As George is only three-quarters
white, this is perhaps not a case in point. But during our stay
at Fort Smith we had several athletic meets of Indians and whites,
the latter represented by Preble and the police boys, and no matter
whether in running, walking, high jumping, broad jumping, wrestling,
or boxing, the whites were ahead.
As rifle-shots, also, the natives seem far inferior. In the matter
of moose-hunting only, as already noted, the red-man was master.
This, of course, is a matter of life-long training. A white man
brought up to it would probably do as well as an Indian even in
this very Indian department.
These tribes are still in the hunting and fishing stage; they make
no pretence of agriculture or stockraising. Except that they wear
white man's clothes and are most of them nominally Roman Catholics,
they live as their fathers did 100 years ago. But there is one
remarkable circumstance that impressed me more and more--practically
every Chipewyan reads and writes his own language.
This miracle was inborn on me slowly. On the first Buffalo hunt we
had found a smoothened pole stuck in the ground by the trail. It
was inscribed as herewith.
"What is that Sousi?" "It's a notice from Chief William that Swiggert
wants men on the portage," and he translated it literally: "The fat
white man 5 scows, small white man 2 scows, gone down, men wanted
for Rapids, Johnnie Bolette this letter for you. (Signed) Chief
William."
Each of our guides in succession had shown a similar familiarity
with the script of his people, and many times we found spideresque
characters on tree or stone that supplied valuable information.
They could, however tell me nothing of its age or origin, simply
"We all do it; it is easy."
At Fort Resolution I met the Jesuit fathers and got the desired
chance of learning about the Chipewyan script.
First, it is not a true alphabet, but a syllabic; not letters, but
syllables, are indicated by each character; 73 characters are all
that are needed to express the whole language. It is so simple
and stenographic that the fathers often use it as a rapid way of
writing French. It has, however, the disadvantage of ambiguity at
times. Any Indian boy can learn it in a week or two; practically
all the Indians use it. What a commentary on our own cumbrous and
illogical spelling, which takes even a bright child two or three
years to learn!
Now, I already knew something of the Cree syllabic invented by
the Rev. James Evans, Methodist missionary on Lake Winnipeg in the
'40s, but Cree is a much less complex language; only 36 characters
are needed, and these are so simple that an intelligent Cree can
learn to write his own language in one day.
In support, of this astounding statement I give, first, the 36
characters which cover every fundamental sound in their language
and then a sample of application. While crude and inconcise, it
was so logical and simple that in a few years the missionary had
taught practically the whole Cree nation to read and write. And
Lord Dufferin, when the matter came before him during his north-west
tour, said enthusiastically: "There have been men buried in
Westminster Abbey with national honours whose claims to fame were
far less than those of this devoted missionary, the man who taught
a whole nation to read and write."
These things I knew, and now followed up my Jesuit source of
information.
"Who invented this?"
"I don't know for sure. It is in general use."
"Was it a native idea?"
"Oh, no; some white man made it."
"Where? Here or in the south?"
"It came originally from the Crees, as near as we can tell."
"Was it a Cree or a missionary that first thought of it?"
"I believe it was a missionary."
"Frankly, now, wasn't it invented in 1840 by Rev. James Evans,
Methodist missionary to the Crees on Lake Winnipeg?"
Oh, how he hated to admit it, but he was too honest to deny it.
"Yes, it seems to me it was some name like that. 'Je ne sais pas.'"
Reader, take a map of North America, a large one, and mark off the
vast area bounded by the Saskatchewan, the Rockies, the Hudson Bay,
and the Arctic circle, and realise that in this region, as large
as continental Europe outside of Russia and Spain, one simple,
earnest man, inspired by the love of Him who alone is perfect
love, invented and popularised a method of writing that in a few
years--in less than a generation, indeed--has turned the whole native
population from ignorant illiterates to a people who are proud to
read and write their own language. This, I take it, is one of the
greatest feats of a civiliser. The world has not yet heard, much
less comprehended, the magnitude of the achievement; when it does
there will be no name on the Canadian roll of fame that will stand
higher or be blazoned more brightly than that of James Evans the
missionary.