VAGUE NEWS
Ray had learned at Ganawa’s camp that the Indians had no set time for
meals, but ate when they were hungry, provided there was something to
eat in camp. There was no set time for anything. The women, indeed, did
go in the afternoon to cut and bring in the firewood, but as it was now
midsummer and no fire was needed in the tepees at night, they were not
very regular in attending to this duty; although they were busy at some
kind of work all day long.
The men had no such regular hours for anything as a white man must
observe for his work. Their duty in times of peace was to provide the
camp with meat, and to secure enough fur or dried meat so they could
buy of the white traders whatever the family needed: blankets, knives,
needles, steel axes, traps, and especially guns and ammunition. There
were in an Indian camp, just as there are in a white man’s town, men
and families who were thrifty, and those who were shiftless and always
in trouble.
All trade was carried on by barter, no money circulated in the Indian
country, but a beaver skin was the standard of value.
Ray was much pleased when one of the women handed to each of the three
visitors a birch-bark dish and a wooden spoon and told them to help
themselves to meat in a large kettle in front of her tepee.
The ideas of Indians concerning things that are clean often differed
from those of white men. The kettle contained venison and two wild
ducks all boiling together; and the Indian woman had not been very
careful about picking the birds.
“I can’t eat that mess,” Ray said to Bruce when he saw Ganawa help
himself to a liberal portion. Ganawa smiled at this remark of the white
boy. “My little son, our friends offer us good meat,” he encouraged the
white lad. “Ducks keep their feathers very clean. Fill your dish and
eat, for I know you must be very hungry.”
Ray was indeed very hungry, and as he began to eat he found that the
meat was good, although it had been boiled without salt or other
seasoning.
Ganawa learned from the men in this camp that the brave young trader of
last spring had sailed his wooden boat along the eastern shore of the
Big Lake, that he had reached Michipicoten Bay, which is sheltered from
all winds except those that come from the southwest. They had also
heard that he had paddled up the Michipicoten River as far as the
rapids below the big falls. Whether he had made a camp at that place
and remained there during the winter they did not know.
A young man, however, who was known by the name of Roving Hunter, told
that about twelve moons ago he and a companion had met a family of
Wood-Indians, called by the Chippewas Oppimittish Ininiwac. These
Wood-Indians had told him that two white men had made a camp on the
Michipicoten River, nine or ten leagues above the big falls. They had
also a camp on one of the big lakes of that country. He thought from
the account of the Ininiwacs that they meant Lake Anjigami. But he
could not understand the language of the Ininiwacs very well, and they
might have referred to some other lake, because the Michipicoten
carries the water of many lakes down to Gitche Gumee.
He and his companion had paddled up the river to visit the white
hunters, but when they came to a stretch of rapids two miles long, his
companion became discouraged and said it was too much work to visit the
camp of these white men. Perhaps they would not find the camp, even if
they carried their canoe past the long rapids and the big falls. So
they turned back and did not see the white men. The Ininiwacs also told
him that there were many beavers on the small lakes and streams in the
Michipicoten country. The three white men were trapping beaver and
marten and otter, and they had also traded some beaver skins and marten
of the Ininiwacs for knives and beads and needles, but they had no
blankets and guns to sell and no fire-water. But Roving Hunter, like
the other Chippewas, did not know if the white men were still in the
Michipicoten country.
When Ganawa told his white sons what he had learned, Ray was much
discouraged. “I told you,” he said to Bruce when the two had gone to
catch trout, “I told you, Bruce, we could never find anybody in this
country. Every time we go anywhere, the country and the lake look
bigger and wilder to me. We might find a big island, if it is not too
far from shore, but how can you find a camp when nobody knows where it
is? None of the Indians know where Jack Dutton is now. And perhaps the
stories they have told Ganawa are not true; you know not all stories
you hear among white people are true.”
To one who has never lived in a wild and thinly populated country it
would seem that Ray’s conclusion was right, but the facts are that it
is much more difficult to disappear in a wild country than it is in a
big city. There are so few people in a wild country that a stranger,
coming in or passing through, is remembered for a long time by
everybody who has seen him. In the same way, both whites and Indians
who live in these regions know of each other, although their camps or
homes may be more than a hundred miles apart and they may seldom or
never see each other.
When Bruce told Ganawa of the fears of the young white boy, the old
hunter looked at the lad with a serious but friendly smile.
“My little son,” he told him, “you must not forget that in the country
of the Big Lake there are not as many people as there are in the white
man’s country. My friends in this camp have told me much, and they have
not told me lies. To-morrow or next day, when the wind has gone down,
we shall start for the river Michipicoten. If we find some of the
Ininiwac people there, they may be able to tell us where your white
brother is camping, and it may be that we shall find him very soon.”
The wind went down next day, but Ganawa did not say anything of
starting north. A hunter had come to camp with some moose meat and the
women had caught plenty of fish in their nets; lake trout, pickerel,
and some big brook trout, bigger than Ray had ever seen. These brook
trout had come into Lake Superior out of the stream. Such brook trout
are found along the shores of Lake Superior to this day. They thrive in
the cold, clear water along the shore, and in places where there is
little or no fishing they are at times very numerous. White fishermen
at the present time call them “coasters.”
As far as Bruce and Ray could tell, Ganawa and his friends did nothing
all day but eat moose meat and visit. “Indians certainly have a good
time,” remarked Ray to Bruce.
“Yes,” admitted Bruce, “playing Indian is not so bad in summer, but it
must be a tough life in winter.”
At the close of the third day, Ganawa and his friends had eaten up most
of the moose meat and Ganawa told his white sons that in the morning
they would leave, provided the lake was quiet.
“Bruce, you had better ask our father,” Ray whispered to his friend,
“to take plenty of meat along. You know we were all starved when we
came to this camp, and I heard our father say that it is twenty-five
leagues to the place we are going. Twenty-five leagues, that is
seventy-five miles, so you see it will take us two or three days.”
The next morning Ganawa started at break of day without apparently
thinking of eating any breakfast. This was the usual way for Indians to
travel, and the voyageurs of the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest
Company adopted the same method of travel.
A very light fog lay over the water of Batchawana Bay when the
travellers started, but it had been dispelled by the time they rounded
the point which marks the end of the bay. Here the open lake lay before
them in all that splendor of a summer day, which one can experience in
such perfection nowhere else but along the wild rocky shores of Lake
Superior, when waves and wind seem to have gone to sleep for a long
time, and when no fog hides the sight of green hills far and near.
White gulls sailed in the air on almost motionless wings, and from the
spruces on shore came the clear whistle of the white-throat, one of the
hardiest little songsters of the North, whose cheering voice may often
be heard through a thick fog, in which one cannot see ten yards ahead.
Ray was glad to see the lake so quiet, but the feeling that he was
travelling along the shore of the ocean came over him again. “My
father,” he asked timidly, “are we travelling now where the lake is
very big?”
“Yes, my son,” replied Ganawa, “on our left toward the west the lake is
very big, sixty leagues or more; but it is still much bigger, twice as
big toward the northwest, toward the large island of Menong and Thunder
Bay, where the Sleeping Giant lies on the rocks.”
The boy asked no more. He dipped in his light paddle in unison with
Ganawa and Bruce, and his fear left him as he came under the spell of
the scene which was at the same time beautiful and sublime. Mile after
mile they glided along in silence. Some small islands to the northwest
had been left behind. Westward the lake stretched out endlessly to the
horizon, where the water seemed to rise to blend and unite with the
sky. However, the nearness of the shore on their right made the lad
feel that they were safe, although the steep brown rocks looked
forbidding enough and the forests on the high hills appeared almost
black, because the travellers had to look at them against the light of
the sun. After a while, the lad grew dull toward the beauty and
sublimity of the scene, and his healthy physical nature asserted
itself. He had hoped that Ganawa would stop for breakfast at the end of
the bay, but the old hunter had not even thought of stopping, to judge
from the way he steered out of the bay. The lad was therefore more than
glad when Ganawa steered toward a point and remarked, “My sons, we land
there to eat.”
It seemed to Ray as if it must be almost noon, but Ganawa told him that
it was still early in the morning, that they had made about eight
leagues and that the place, where by this time they had landed, was
called by English traders Coppermine Point. The Indians, he said, had
no name for it, because there were too many points like it all along
the shore of the Big Lake.