On the shores of a great lake were clustered the buildings of the old
Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, where the People of the Interior came
every spring with their cargoes of pelts to trade for the articles
which the white man made for them. Through the long, cold winters,
the factor and his crew passed the time as comfortably as they could,
with little to break the monotony of the days, while powerful blasts
of cold, often bringing several feet of drifted snow in their wake,
beat upon the buildings. In the summer, however, the time went quickly.
From the vast, forested hills northward came the returning bands of
trappers, bringing the results of their winter’s hunt. From the regions
nearer, the People of the Lake, by shorter stages, came in, too, with
their peltry. So, with the two bands of nomads camped along the beach
and on the grassy terrace between the lake and the forest of the
upland, the scene was enlivened each spring by the presence of several
hundred hunters, with their families, gaudily dressed and garrulous.
By day, in the heat of the sun, which makes these northern places
blossom in acres of green and showy flowers, the newcomers wandered
from tent to tent, exchanging gossip, talking, singing, gaming and
planning for the coming of winter; and all the time gradually enlarging
the store of their annual necessities by an irregular trade with the
factor behind his long counter in the Post shop. By night among the
tents, grouped in twos and threes, the twinkling lights illuminated
scenes of quiet domestic life, where some were asleep on piles of tent
litter and furs, while others were engaged in plying the busy needle
or in the low conversation which made the early evenings such pleasant
times for visiting between those who had not seen each other for many
months.
The People of the Interior always came to the Post two or three weeks
later than those whose hunting grounds were around the lake. Some of
the families from the interior came six hundred miles, driving dogs
which dragged their laden sleds, the canoes forming part of the loads,
until, coming south to where the snow was giving way to the advance of
the spring, they left the sleds and loaded the canoes, finishing their
journey by drifting in them with the swollen current down to the great
lake. The trading completed, the People of the Interior returned as
they had come, by canoe and sled, leaving the Post two or three weeks
sooner than the People of the Lake. This had been the procedure for
innumerable generations.
The People of the Lake never envied their friends from the interior.
Their nearness to the Post they considered a great advantage. They
could even make a short journey to the Post in midwinter to enjoy the
festivities of Christmas with the factor and his employees, while their
friends in the interior were perhaps freezing or starving if the game
had failed them.
The People of the Lake had begun to feel themselves wiser and more
important than their simple forest neighbors. Often one of them would
come back from the metropolis with new and smart-cut clothes, plenty of
gin, and some household finery with which to decorate the shelves and
tables of the board houses which they had erected on the lake shore,
but above all, with glowing accounts of the great and busy city where
everything could be had that a Montagnais might covet in his most
prodigal dreams. To the People of the Interior, these tales sounded
marvelous, yet, much as they loved to hear them told, there was a
lingering suspicion in their minds that all was not as fine and grand
as it was painted, judging by the strong breath, the fagged condition
and the depleted pocket-books of those who had experienced these
transitory contacts with the outside world.
A product of the conditions which made the People of the Lake so
satisfied with themselves was young Antoine, a stalwart youth, whose
knowledge of French and the astute principles of business in general,
made him invaluable to the independent fur traders who regularly came
to the lake to drive bargains with the returning hunters. Antoine’s
clothes showed his advance in the social scale. Peg-top trousers,
narrow-waisted jacket, suède-topped, patent leather shoes, blue
celluloid collar, ready-made cravat, and a green woolen golf cap marked
him at once as a denizen of the back streets of Montreal as much as his
brown skin, oblique eyes, and sleek hair proclaimed his origin from the
People of the North. In broken French, even in broken English, Antoine
could swear in competition with the French-Canadian employees of the
honorable Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, and those of Revillon Brothers
of Montreal who sought to compete with the great company. Antoine
had actually cultivated an urbane swagger, he consumed innumerable
packages of paper cigarettes and perfumed his system attentively with
draughts of gin and brandy. At times, even, Antoine forgot that he was
a Montagnais. It was only when reminded by his own people that it was
unbecoming for him to prey upon them to the advantage of the traders,
that his vanity was lowered to a point which made him agreeable to the
other young men. To the girls he was more attractive, and among the
People of the Lake there were few girls he had not sampled. At times
his vain heart yearned to extend his conquests to the simple maids who
came patiently with their parents on the toilsome journey from the
hills and forests of the north.
The head man of the People of the Interior, old Shekapeo, whose name
meant “Going Backwards,” was a stern and practical hunter whose annual
catch could generally be depended upon to contain the finest and rarest
furs. While he was alive to the defects of character which made Antoine
in figure and reputation so conspicuous about the Post, he often
wondered if a matrimonial attachment between Antoine and his daughter
would not be of considerable advantage. With his own opportunities
of production and Antoine’s far-reaching business experience and
associations, he had more than once pictured the advantage, while
puffing his pipe before the fire. And yet he could not make up his mind
to discourage the growing intimacy between his daughter and a young man
of his own band, whom he had always admired for his quiet energy and
productive trapping. The girl herself, if left to her own judgment,
would have had little to say. Born by the side of a remote lake on
a beautiful still morning, when the heat of noontime was lifting a
mirage to the north across the glassy waters, her mother had called
her Ilitwashteu, Mirage, from the first phenomenon seen after the
birth of her child. Mirage, like her father, felt the contrast between
Good-ground and Antoine. But the mystery of Antoine was making him an
object of growing interest in her mind. She had dared to raise her eyes
from her moccasins and look directly at him once, when he had come to
the tent to talk with her father on business. Then, when her father’s
back was turned, Antoine spoke to her, but she did not go so far as to
answer him.
It was winter. Shekapeo had returned to his hunting grounds in the
region of the Lake of Steep Shores. Near him, this year, was camped
the family of young Good-ground who was at this season trapping
in that section of his hereditary hunting grounds for marten. The
territories of the two families adjoined each other, though for
several years each had been operating on the more distant tracts,
with the idea of allowing the intervening zone to become replenished
with the fur-bearing animals. Old Shekapeo and young Good-ground knew
perfectly well where their respective bounds lay. During the winter
they occasionally visited one another and sometimes planned to exchange
privileges in each other’s grounds. When, for instance, one year bear
had been abundant in Shekapeo’s district, owing to a forest fire in the
month of flowers which had left in its wake an exceptional abundance of
berries, the same winter on young Good-ground’s territory, caribou had
wandered in unusual numbers. Then they had allowed each other to cross
the landmarks. Good-ground took toll on many of Shekapeo’s bears, and
Shekapeo took what he needed of Good-ground’s caribou.
It happened late in the winter in the month of great cold that several
members of Good-ground’s family were taken sick with coughs and aching
limbs. Sickness added to Good-ground’s duties, and often he was
prevented from following his line of traps properly, by the necessity
of remaining at camp himself. One trip when he started to visit his
ten traps, which were strung at a distance of about two miles apart
along the banks of the River of Poplars, he found himself at the ninth
trap by the end of the second day. So bad had been the conditions of
travel, and his own feelings so oppressed, that, late this afternoon,
he made himself a little fire where he had scraped away the snow with
one of his snowshoes, and boiled himself a pot of tea. Near the fire
lay his good dogs Ntohum and Kawabshet, “My Hunter” and “Whitey,” names
descended through many generations of canines. They were worn out and
tired, from pulling the toboggan through the soft, deep snowdrifts.
The nine traps had yielded a few furs, yet most of them were empty.
The promise of bad weather added to the trouble. To the northeast a
heavy bank of lead-colored sky appeared above the pointed tops of the
vast spruce forest. Fitful blasts of wind came occasionally from the
same quarter, growing more frequent during the afternoon and causing
Good-ground many times to turn his head about and look behind, then
urge the dogs with a few sharp words to greater exertions.
Now, smoking his pipe of stone, which several times he refilled with
dry tobacco obtained from the Post so far away, his eyes rested first
upon his fagged dogs, then upon the slowly spreading pall of gray,
northward above the hills. The question of the tenth trap was resting
heavily upon Good-ground’s mind. Might there be anything held fast in
its iron jaws, or would the machine be empty before his disheartened
gaze, should he gather his forces together and press on against the
rising wind for another three hours? The price to pay in risk to
himself and his animals for whatever might be caught there, would be,
indeed, the highest. With depleted provisions through another afternoon
of struggle against the blizzard which was surely coming, a question
arose in his experienced mind as to the actual possibility of its
accomplishment. Should he turn about now and go down with the wind to
the little shelter camp where he could spend the night, back on Round
Lake, he would then be within a short day’s voyage of his home camp.
There his sick family, brothers, sisters and mother, were comfortably
and snugly housed in their warm tent, roofed tightly with birch-bark
and lined with caribou skins, making it warm as the inside of his
fur-lined mitten. But what if trap number ten should contain an animal,
perhaps a sable or even a black fox, whose pelt would bring the profit
he so badly needed?
Having filled his pipe several times, and cleaned it with the blade
of bone which he carried tied to his tobacco bag, it seemed as if
Good-ground could not decide. Finally, with a motion of determination,
he plunged his hand into the bag, which contained the carcass of a
hare reserved for his supper. With a few cuts of his knife he got out
the shoulder blade of the animal, and he removed the clinging flesh by
tearing it off with his teeth till the bone was clean and brown; then
upon the end of a split stick he held the hare’s shoulder bone before
the heat of his fire, and raised his voice in a low melody which came
from between slightly opened lips. “Ka na ka na aa ka na he.” While he
sang, the bone, affected by the heat, grew black toward the center;
finally a segment with a little crack split from the center and ran
toward the edge, breaking through the bone and causing it to burn away
on one of its outer sides. The divination was complete. The spirit of
the hare had told him that his voyage would be unsuccessful.
Now, with a few deft and decided motions, Good-ground cleaned out his
pipe, replaced several articles which he had removed from his bag,
adjusted his snowshoes by kicking his feet into the stiffened loops,
and squared about toward the south, pulling the sled around on its
runners till it, too, pointed backwards along the trail over which
he had, thirty minutes ago, tramped down the snow to make a path for
his dogs. The animals needed no human urging to tighten their traces
and drag the sled forward in a trail, which even now was being blown
over with drifting snow coming slant-wise through the forest on a
furious wind. Kiwedin, the north wind, was now going to rule the world
of the people of the north. Whatever thought Good-ground had a while
ago as to what the tenth trap might have yielded him had he gone to
it, faded from his mind with the satisfaction that he was obeying his
dream animal, and that probably he would reach his home camp in time
to escape the suffering which he knew he would have met had he gone
on to learn what trap number ten contained. His forebodings were not
without ground. It was with difficulty that he reached his little camp
station that night, helped along by the wind at his back. His out-trail
was now completely covered, but it had been possible for him to run
ahead of his dogs and break the snow for them with his snowshoes. That
night at his station he tried again his “mutnshawan” and the bone broke
in the same way as before. This time the crack in the surface of the
shoulder blade zig-zagged off in the direction of the home camp, a sure
indication that this was to be the direction of travel next day.
By the time the late northern dawn had lighted up the trail
sufficiently for him to follow it, Good-ground had fed his dogs and
himself on the remaining carcasses of the few beasts that he had taken,
in coming up to his line of traps. By dark, forcing his way through
growing drifts with the wind still at his back, he silently wound into
the cleared space, near the center of which stood the three bark tents
with their wisps of smoke driven horizontally from the poles, that for
almost nine months of the year he called home. Several little fox-bred
mongrel dogs limped out on the beaten footpaths from one of the tents,
and with wheezy coughs announced the return of the son and brother to
the females within the enclosure. They were building up the fire and
preparing a stew of hare and smoked caribou meat. Good-ground lifted
the skin hanging before the door, bent under its low arch, and stepped
toward the fire, laying his game bag on the boughs near the knees
of his oldest sister. The glances at his face and his return glance
showed that all was well, they felt, while all were still alive. And
smiles lighted their faces as the girl brought the contents of one of
the packs from the sled and opened it before their eyes, though it
contained only medium pelts and carcasses only large enough to go into
the stew-pot for to-morrow’s dinner.
The blizzard raged, the weak and sick ones got worse before they got
better, and several weeks passed before Good-ground could muster the
strength, and afford the time to harness his dogs again and move along
the trap line. Smoked caribou flakes, hare carcasses, and a small
portion of flour had carried them through the short period of famine.
Finally with the return of good weather and the subsidence of the wind,
Good-ground was able to make his round of traps, baiting and resetting
those which had been torn down by the force of the wind, the snow and
the beating branches of the undergrowth. Arriving at the location of
trap number ten, he scraped away the snow to find there the chewed
and devoured remains of a splendid black fox! The loss, Good-ground
realized as he stood there regarding the remaining patch of silky
ink-black fur no larger than the span of his hands, would amount to
$2500 at least. Had he visited trap number ten that terrible day, weeks
ago, he might have secured the pelt.
On his return home Good-ground was to have another surprise. He found
his neighbor old Shekapeo visiting his family, having ventured a day’s
struggle through the soft and deep snowdrifts, from a sympathetic
desire to see whether all had gone well with the family whose lives
depended upon the support of one young man.
Shekapeo heard the story of Good-ground’s lost prize with impassive
expression. But on his way home the next day, tramping ahead of his
dogs he had time to think over the bad luck attaching to Good-ground.
Shekapeo’s thoughts then turned to the coming trading season at the
Post, and in particular to the financial ascendancy of Antoine.
During that spring season at the Post, among the tales which
circulated was that about Good-ground and trap number ten. The story
of the adventure did not turn out to his credit, especially after
Antoine took occasion to say to Shekapeo, in the presence of the
family, including Mirage, that Good-ground was a fool to have turned
back at a time when a catch worth several thousand dollars was waiting
his enterprise.
To account for Good-ground’s lack of success, Antoine even remarked
that Good-ground’s dream spirit would not have lied to him that day
when he turned back, unless he had been a liar himself.
With the advent of the moon when the birds begin to fly, which the
white people at the Post called August, the People of the Interior
having finished their trading, repaired their canoes, and satisfied
their craving for society, bade adieu to their friends of the lake
and started on their return to the northern wilderness. In the coming
voyage of ascent, Good-ground’s three canoe loads of provisions and
supplies, in large part advanced to him in credit by the factor, which
were to last him through the winter on his hunting grounds, would have
to be carried over thirty-two portages. If the weather continued good
he expected to make the return trip in forty days. The largest lake
that he had to cross would be nine miles wide, but if the wind blew
hard he would have to make double that distance by working around the
shore line. His load consisted of about two thousand pounds in all,
fifteen bags of flour, two hundred pounds of pork, ten of tobacco, one
hundred of flour, one hundred of grease, twenty-five of tea, forty
of salt, twenty boxes of baking powder, twenty-five bars of soap,
two boxes of candles, twelve boxes of shells, four boxes of rifle
cartridges, three hundred traps, from beaver size down, and ten bear
traps,—all this in three canoes. With the help of mother, sisters, and
younger brothers, these canoes had to be paddled in smooth water, while
on the portages and in water that was too shallow for paddling, they
had to be relayed in loads on the back.
Finally, their toilsome journey ended, Good-ground and the others
reached their distant hunt-grounds and reopened their home camps,
where, all summer during their absence, the porcupines and other
rodents had made havoc among the greasy furnishings; where even an
occasional passing bear had left his marks. More than once the caribou
and moose had poked their noses well within the clearing and among the
deserted tents, as though they knew that the men, who in the winter
time were so eager for their lives, were now far away killing fish to
live on, and eating the white men’s food put up in tin cans.
So another winter was passed by the People of the Interior, busy in
killing the wild animals of the forest and busy, too, in reviving the
spirits of the slain animals, as they believed, by constant resource to
drumming, singing, praying, and other shamanistic performances.
This winter at the Post, for Antoine, at least, was also a season
of great activity. Antoine’s astute employer, an independent French
trader, had conceived a scheme to secure the trade of the People of the
Interior when they should come out from the forests in the spring. The
scheme was nothing less than to have a score of cases of the strongest
fire water sent to the lake, at great expense, hidden from the eyes of
the revenue officers en route. The whole was to cost about all that the
independent French company could afford to put into the venture, and
incidentally, as his employer finally made clear to him, to absorb the
whole of Antoine’s available estate in the shape of over a thousand
dollars ready cash. Antoine and his employer gloated together over the
scoop that would be made when the People of the Interior were told that
the old company factor had died and the Post was closed, and learned
that the new company had gone to the trouble of providing for them
their beloved liquor so that there should be at least something for
which to trade their furs. It was planned that Antoine should ascend
the river Where-Moose-Abound, down which the People of the Interior
generally came, a several days’ journey, and there intercept them and
put through the hoax.
With considerable care, seven sturdy canoe men were engaged, with
Antoine as their foreman, to transfer the disguised cases from the lake
to a convenient point up the river where the People of the Interior,
with their precious cargoes of fur, would be sure to pass by in their
descent. On the great day, the flotilla with its spirituous cargo
made an early morning start. The men, with occasional levies upon the
contents of their load to refresh themselves, finally reached the
destined point and unloaded the boxes, setting up their camp to wait
for the arrival of the descending hunters. Antoine’s expectations ran
high. He pictured to himself the consternation with which the People of
the Interior would receive the surprising news that he had to impart,
and then the eagerness with which they would fall upon his stores of
liquor. With their potations well begun, he expected that they would
not stop until they had traded the best of their peltries for the last
flask of his fire water. His visions were hourly more stimulated by
draughts upon his stock.
That evening, when the voyagers had settled down about their leaping
fire, nothing would have aroused the suspicion of the observer as to
what was about to take place. The seven canoe men, who were from among
the People of the Lake, had decided upon an action which, to their
minds, seemed advantageous to themselves, as well as in accordance with
the excise laws of the Dominion, but which was prompted above all by
fidelity to their friends among the People of the Interior. These men
of the People of the Lake had known from former years’ experience what
it would mean for their friends of the forest to be turned back to
their distant hunting grounds with nothing but the remains of a drunken
orgy to meet their requirements for the coming winter. Therefore had
they decided, with great moral satisfaction, in the interests of self,
of government, and of mankind exactly what their correct course should
be.
Before the evening had worn away, Antoine felt himself enjoying the
best of spirits. He did not notice, when one of the men asked him to
pass the matches, that two of the others behind him were fumbling
among some tangled thongs and ropes. He did not notice, until too
late, a quick movement by which he was thrown on his back and quickly
bound hand and foot, his hands behind his back. Attempts to reach
his sheath-knife, frantic yells, squirmings, and attempts to bite
the binding thongs were lost in a roar of laughter which greeted him
when he was tumbled to one side of the camp like a strangled bear, to
curse in French, and threaten them with every dreadful thing that the
northern Indian has learned to fear. They only laughed at him as his
store clothes became grimy and his urbane veneer disappeared. They
laughed all the more, these merry Men of the Lake, when the boxes had
been broken open with their keen axes and the corks pulled from a score
of flat bottles, whose limpid contents disappeared down their throats
between gurgles of liquid and gurgles of laughter and jokes.
Now for two days this merry camp of Bacchus made the forests echo
with songs and cries, some from the throats of the Men of the Lake,
growing louder each hour, others growing feebler each hour from the
throat of Antoine. Had the People of the Interior been within hearing
distance, they might have thought that a band of marauding enemies had
engaged one another in warfare on their peaceful river. And no doubt
they would have gone into concealment until some of their scouts could
have learned the cause of it. But it so happened that they were delayed
many miles up the river at one of the portages; several invalids had
required attention. When all were able to resume their journey they
descended by easy stages to favor the condition of their patients.
It was not until the second day after the demolition of the boxes
and their contents in Antoine’s bivouac, that the flotilla carrying
the People of the Interior swung around a point of the river, and
came down upon the camp, where by this time all the merrymakers were
strewn about in a profound sleep. Cautiously and reverently stepping
ashore, the foremost men in the canoes of the People of the Interior
believed that they had come upon a camp of the dead, although, as
they afterward remarked, the odor pervading the air was not exactly
of a funereal taint. It took but a few moments for them to connect
the circumstances. It took but a few more for them to connect with a
dozen of the flat bottles whose contents had either been reserved for
this special occasion by the thoughtful Men of the Lake, or had been
overlooked in the surge of feeling which had followed their first
attack upon the load. It now became the turn of the People of the
Interior to show solicitude for those men of the People of the Lake,
who had so sacrificed their loyalty to their employer for the sake of
their kinsmen. Even Antoine was stripped of his thongs and stood upon
his feet. But two days of fasting and exposure in the damp moss in his
wet store clothes, with nothing to eat or drink, had about exhausted
his constitution. His companions were the first to resuscitate, and
it was from their lips that the story of the event was learned by the
bewildered People of the Interior.
A day or so later, refreshed with sleep, fresh fish, and cold water,
the whole company pushed off from the shore. The People of the Interior
continued their journey to the Post, but among some of them a change
had taken place which was to affect in particular the relationship of
two individuals. These two were Good-ground and Mirage.