THE DOGS OF FORT RESOLUTION
It sounds like the opening of an epic poem but it is not.
The Chipewyan calender is divided in two seasons--dog season and
canoe season. What the horse is to the Arab, what the Reindeer is
to the Lap and the Yak to the Thibetan, the dog is to the Chipewyan
for at least one-half of the year, until it is displaced by the
canoe.
During dog season the canoes are piled away somewhat carelessly or
guarded only from the sun. During canoe season the dogs are treated
atrociously. Let us remember, first, that these are dogs in every
doggy sense, the worshipping servants of man, asking nothing but
a poor living in return for abject love and tireless service, as
well as the relinquishment of all family ties and natural life. In
winter, because they cannot serve without good food, they are well
fed on fish that is hung on scaffolds in the fall in time to be
frozen before wholly spoiled. The journeys they will make and the
devoted service they render at this time is none too strongly set
forth in Butler's "Cerf Vola" and London's "Call of the Wild." It
is, indeed, the dog alone that makes life possible during the white
half-year of the boreal calender. One cannot be many days in the
north without hearing tales of dog prowess, devotion, and heroism.
A typical incident was related as follows by Thomas Anderson:
Over thirty years ago, Chief Factor George McTavish and his driver,
Jack Harvey, were travelling from East Main to Rupert's House (65
miles) in a blizzard so thick and fierce that they could scarcely
see the leading dog. He was a splendid, vigorous creature, but all
at once he lay down and refused to go. The driver struck him, but
the factor reproved the man, as this dog had never needed the whip.
The driver then went ahead and found open water only a few feet
from the dogs, though out of sight. After that they gave the leader
free rein, surrendered themselves to his guidance, and in spite of
the blinding blizzard they struck the flagpole of Rupert's between
11 and 12 that night, only a little behind time.
Many of the wild Wolf traits still remain with them. They commonly
pair; they bury surplus food; the mothers disgorge food for the
young; they rally to defend one of their own clan against a stranger;
and they punish failure with death.
A thousand incidents might be adduced to show that in the north
there is little possibility of winter travel without dogs and little
possibility of life without winter travel.
But April comes with melting snows and May with open rivers and
brown earth everywhere; then, indeed, the reign of the dog is over.
The long yellow-birch canoe is taken down from the shanty roof or
from a sheltered scaffold, stitched, gummed, and launched; and the
dogs are turned loose to fend for themselves. Gratitude for past
services or future does not enter into the owner's thoughts to
secure a fair allowance of food. All their training and instinct
prompts them to hang about camp, where, kicked, stoned, beaten,
and starved, they steal and hunt as best they may, until the sad
season of summer is worn away and merry winter with its toil and
good food is back once more.
From leaving Fort MacMurray we saw daily the starving dog, and
I fed them when I could. At Smith Landing the daily dog became a
daily fifty. One big fellow annexed us. "I found them first," he
seemed to say, and no other dog came about our camp without a fight.
Of course he fared well on our scraps, but many a time it made my
heart ache and my food-store suffer to see the gaunt skeletons in
the bushes, just beyond his sphere of influence, watching for a
chance to rush in and secure a mouthful of--anything to stay the
devastating pang. My journal of the time sets forth in full detail
the diversity of their diet, not only every possible scrap of
fish and meat or whatsoever smelled of fish or meat, but rawhide,
leather, old boots, flour-bags, potato-peelings, soap, wooden
fragments of meat-boxes, rags that have had enough animal contact
to be odorous. An ancient dishcloth, succulent with active service,
was considered a treat to be bolted whole; and when in due course
the cloth was returned to earth, it was intact, bleached, purged, and
purified as by chemic fires and ready for a new round of benevolences.
In some seasons the dogs catch Rabbits enough to keep them up. But
this year the Rabbits were gone. They are very clever at robbing
fish-nets at times, but these were far from the fort. Reduced
to such desperate straits for food, what wonder that cannibalism
should be common! Not only the dead, but the sick or disabled of
their own kind are torn to pieces and devoured. I was told of one
case where a brutal driver disabled one of his dogs with heavy blows;
its companions did not wait till it was dead before they feasted.
It is hard to raise pups because the mothers so often devour their
own young; and this is a charge I never heard laid to the Wolf,
the ancestor of these dogs, which shows how sadly the creature has
been deteriorated by contact with man. There seems no length to
which they will not go for food. Politeness forbids my mentioning
the final diet for which they scramble around the camp. Never in my
life before have I seen such utter degradation by the power of the
endless hunger pinch. Nevertheless--and here I expect the reader to
doubt, even as I did when first I heard it, no matter how desperate
their straits-these gormandisers of unmentionable filth, these
starvelings, in their dire extremity will turn away in disgust from
duck or any other web-footed water-fowl.
Billy Loutit had shot a Pelican; the skin was carefully preserved
and the body guarded for the dogs, thinking that this big thing,
weighing 6 or 7 pounds, would furnish a feast for one or two. The
dogs knew me, and rushed like a pack of Wolves at sight of coming
food. The bigger ones fought back the smaller. I threw the prize,
but, famished though they were, they turned away as a man might
turn from a roasted human hand. One miserable creature, a mere
skeleton, sneaked forward when the stronger ones were gone, pulled
out the entrails at last, and devoured them as though he hated
them.
I can offer no explanation. But the Hudson's Bay men tell me it is
always so, and I am afraid the remembrance of the reception accorded
my bounty that day hardened my heart somewhat in the days that
followed.
On the Nyarling we were too far from mankind to be bothered
with dogs, but at Fort Resolution we reentered their country. The
following from my journal records the impression after our enforced
three days' stay:
"Tuesday, July 16, 1907.--Fine day for the first time since July
3. At last we pulled out of Fort Resolution (9.40 A. M.). I never
was so thankful to leave a place where every one was kind. I think
the maddest cynophile would find a cure here. It is the worst
dog-cursed spot I ever saw; not a square yard but is polluted
by them; no article can be left on the ground but will be carried
off, torn up, or defiled; the four corners of our tent have become
regular stopping places for the countless canines, and are disfigured
and made abominable, so that after our escape there will be needed
many days of kindly rain for their purification. There certainly
are several hundred dogs in the village; there are about 50 teepees
and houses with 5 to 15 dogs at each, and 25 each at the mission
and H. B. Co. In a short walk, about 200 yards, I passed 86 dogs.
"There is not an hour or ten minutes of day or night that is not
made hideous with a dog-fight or chorus of yelps. There are about
six different clans of dogs, divided as their owners are, and a
Dogrib dog entering the Yellow-knife or Chipewyan part of the camp
is immediately set upon by all the residents. Now the clansmen of
the one in trouble rush to the rescue and there is a battle. Indians
of both sides join in with clubs to belabour the fighters, and the
yowling and yelping of those discomfited is painful to hear for
long after the fight is over. It was a battle like this, I have
been told, which caused the original split of the tribe, one part
of which went south to become the Apaches of Arizona. The scenes
go on all day and all night in different forms. A number of dogs
are being broken in by being tied up to stakes. These keep up
a heart-rending and peculiar crying, beginning with a short bark
which melts into a yowl and dies away in a nerve-racking wail.
This ceases not day or night, and half a dozen of these prisoners
are within a stone's throw of our camp.
"The favourite place for the clan fights seems to be among
the guy-ropes of our tent; at least half a dozen of these general
engagements take place every night while we try to sleep.
"Everything must be put on the high racks eight feet up to be safe
from them; even empty tins are carried off, boots, hats, soap, etc.,
are esteemed most toothsome morsels, and what they can neither eat,
carry off, nor destroy, they defile with elaborate persistency and
precision."
A common trick of the Indians when canoe season arrives is, to put
all the family and one or two of the best dogs in the canoes, then
push away from the shore, leaving the rest behind. Those so abandoned
come howling after the canoes, and in unmistakable pleadings beg
the heartless owners to take them in. But the canoes push off toward
the open sea, aiming to get out of sight. The dogs howl sadly on
the shore, or swim after them till exhausted, then drift back to
the nearest land to begin the summer of hardship.
If Rabbits are plentiful they get along; failing these they catch
mice or fish; when the berry season comes they eat fruit; the weaker
ones are devoured by their brethren; and when the autumn arrives
their insensate owners generally manage to come back and pick up
the survivors, feeding them so that they are ready for travel when
dog-time begins, and the poor faithful brutes, bearing no grudge,
resume at once the service of their unfeeling masters.
All through our voyage up Great Slave Lake we daily heard the sad
howling of abandoned dogs, and nightly, we had to take steps to
prevent them stealing our food and leathers. More than once in the
dim light, I was awakened by a rustle, to see sneaking from my tent
the gray, wolfish form of some prowling dog, and the resentment I
felt at the loss inflicted, was never more than to make me shout
or throw a pebble at him.
One day, as we voyaged eastward (July 23) in the Tal-thel-lay
narrows of Great Slave Lake, we met 5 canoes and 2 York boats of
Indians going west. A few hours afterward as, we were nooning on
an island (we were driven to the islands now) there came a long
howling from the rugged main shore, a mile away to the east of
us; then it increased to a chorus of wailing, and we knew that the
Indians had that morning abandoned their dogs there. The wailing
continued, then we saw a tiny black speck coming from the far
shore. When it was half-way across the ice-cold bay we could hear
the gasps of a tired swimmer. He got along fairly, dodging the cakes
of ice, until within about 200 yards, when his course was barred
by a long, thin, drifting floe. He tried to climb on it, but was
too weak, then he raised his voice in melancholy howls of despair.
I could not get to him, but he plucked up heart at length, and
feebly paddling went around till he found an opening, swam through
and came on, the slowest dog swimmer I ever saw. At last he struck
bottom and crawled out. But he was too weak and ill to eat the meat
that I had ready prepared for him. We left him with food for many
days and sailed away.
Another of the dogs that tried to follow him across was lost in the
ice; we heard his miserable wailing moans as he was carried away,
but could not help him. My Indians thought nothing of it and were
amused at my solicitude.
A couple of hours later we landed on the rugged east coast to study
our course through the ice. At once., we were met by four dogs that
trotted along the shore to where we landed. They did not seem very
gaunt; one, an old yellow female, carried something in her mouth;
this she never laid down, and growled savagely when any of the others
came near. It proved to be the blood-stained leg of a new-killed
dog, yellow like herself.
As we pulled out a big black-and-white fellow looked at us
wistfully from a rocky ledge; memories of Bingo, whom he resembled
not a little, touched me. I threw him a large piece of dried meat.
He ate it, but not ravenously. He seemed in need, not of food, but
of company.
A few miles farther on we again landed to study the lake; as we
came near we saw the dogs, not four but six, now racing to meet
us. I said to Preble: "It seems to me it would be the part of mercy
to shoot them all." He answered: "They are worth nothing now, but
you shoot one and its value would at once jump up to one hundred
dollars. Every one knows everything that is done in this country.
You would have six hundred dollars' damages to pay when you got
back to Fort Resolution."
I got out our stock of fresh fish. The Indians, seeing my purpose,
said: "Throw it in the water and see them dive." I did so and found
that they would dive into several feet of water and bring up the
fish without fail. The yellow female was not here, so I suppose
she had stayed to finish her bone.
When we came away, heading for the open lake, the dogs followed us
as far as they could, then gathering on a flat rock, the end of a
long point, they sat down, some with their backs to us; all raised
their muzzles and howled to the sky a heart-rending dirge.
I was thankful to lose them in the distance.