THE WHITE BOY LEARNS
Ganawa seemed now to have plenty of time. He and Bruce lifted the canoe
out of the water so that the lapping of the waves would not cause it to
chafe on the rocks, for a canoe is very easily injured, and an Indian
birch-bark is even more sensitive to rough handling than a white man’s
canoe.
Much to the surprise of Ray, Ganawa even built a fire, which he did by
striking the edge of a piece of flint with a small piece of steel and
catching the sparks on a piece of dry soft punk. This method of making
fire was an improvement on the bow and fire-stick, which the Indians
used before they came into contact with white traders. Steel, flint,
and tinder are much more portable than the bow, stick, and block of dry
wood used during the Stone Age of the human race, and now revived for
an interesting and valuable exercise in woodcraft by the Boy Scouts. It
was also easier for a hunter to keep dry a small piece of tinder than
to carry or make the older fire-making tools, especially in rainy
weather.
Ganawa had another surprise in store for Ray. He produced a small
package of tea and a little brown sugar. To have a drink of sweet tea
was more of a treat to Ray than a box of the best candy is to a modern
boy or girl, and Ray danced and shouted with joy when he saw what
Ganawa was doing. Since Bruce and Ray had been with the Indians they
had eaten nothing but meat and fish.
Indians were seldom more provident than white boys are in camp. The
Indians around Lake Superior knew of only two kinds of vegetable food
which they could gather and keep in quantities: wild rice and
blueberries. The supplies of both had been exhausted in Winnego’s camp
and the new crop was not yet ripe.
There was, however, no scarcity of food in camp. Moose meat, venison,
grouse, and ducks were all plentiful. With the Indians, there could not
be a closed season, because they lived largely on game; but as a
general rule, they did not waste any wild meat. If for instance it was
too difficult to carry the meat of a moose to camp, the camp was moved
to the moose and remained there until the moose was eaten up.
No decent white man or boy, however, should ever kill game in the
closed season. The Indian days and the frontier days have passed, and
to obey the game laws is as much a duty of a good citizen as to obey
other laws. Unless that is done there will soon be no game left to hunt
at any time.
One may, however, always hunt with a camera. Animals and birds shot
with a camera will keep and be a treasure for a lifetime, and hunting
with a camera is a finer and harder sport than hunting with a gun.
As told before, Bruce and Ray did not go hungry, for moose meat or
venison, either fresh or dried, is very good food, and there are no
better fresh-water fish in the world than the whitefish, lake trout,
and brook trout caught in Lake Superior, but Ray often wished for some
flour and hominy.
Ganawa gave his white sons about an hour to eat and rest at Coppermine
Point. Then he steered the canoe almost straight north and he told them
that for the night he intended to make camp at the mouth of the Agawa
River.
“That is a long river,” he told his sons, “and it runs through a deep
and beautiful canyon, where the trout live, those that are colored like
the rainbow. My little son should be able to catch some big ones at the
mouth of the Agawa,” he added with a friendly smile.
“How big are they?” asked Ray.
“That big,” answered Ganawa, holding his hands about two feet apart,
“and they should weigh five or six pounds, and maybe more than that.”
“What big ones!” exclaimed Ray. “I never saw such big ones. I am going
after them;” and involuntarily he made a jump and swung his arms so as
to rock the canoe.
“My little son,” Ganawa reminded him, “we are not in a white man’s
rowboat. You know the water of Gitche Gumee is very cold for swimming.”
“I forgot, Father, I forgot,” Ray apologized. “I’ll sit still. I know a
birch-bark canoe is very cranky, and I don’t wish to swim again in this
cold water,” and Ray started in to paddle as if he alone had to take
the canoe to the mouth of the Agawa; until Bruce brought him up short,
saying:
“Ray, what are you trying to do? Please keep time with us. You will be
tired enough by the time we get to camp. It is nearly thirty miles to
the mouth of the Agawa.”
There was very little conversation after this. Once or twice Ray asked
how deep the lake was along this coast, to which Ganawa could only
reply that it was very deep, because in those days no survey of the
lake had been made. Modern surveys have shown that the lake is indeed
very deep along that shore, in some places dropping to a depth of four
hundred and even six hundred feet close to shore, but there are a few
shoals, where in still weather one can see the bottom, for they are
covered with only seven to fifteen feet of water.
The three kept steadily on their course, and about noon an island
became visible just above the horizon straight ahead. On their right,
the wooded hills of the shore, rising about a thousand feet above the
lake, were constantly in sight a few miles off; but on their left
toward the west and the northwest there was nothing but the open lake
which to the eyes of the travellers looked as endless as the ocean.
The day had turned very warm and as the sun passed the noon line, the
air above the gentle glassy swells of the lake became filled with a
hazy vapor.
The island began to look larger as the travellers approached, and Bruce
judged that it might be a mile, perhaps two miles in diameter.
“My father,” he asked when he noticed that Ganawa was not steering for
the channel between the island and the lake, “are we going to camp on
the island?”
“My son,” replied Ganawa, “do you see that the air is no longer clear
on the water, but only high up in the sky? I am afraid we may run into
a fog and then we might not be able to find the mouth of the Agawa. The
fogs on this lake are very thick.”
Ganawa’s fear was realized all too soon. In about half an hour the
shore disappeared, and then even the island, which a little while ago
had seemed to be very close, straight ahead of them, disappeared
completely from sight.
For some little time all kept paddling in silence, and Ganawa steered
against the cold breeze that had come with the fog. But soon after the
breeze had failed Ganawa stopped paddling.
“Wait, my sons,” he spoke, “we must make sure that we are going right.
It is very dangerous to be lost in a fog on the Big Lake.” And then he
suddenly uttered a deep rolling yell: “Hoah—hoah!”
“Hoah—hoah,” a faint echo came from their right.
“We were headed for the open lake, my sons,” remarked Ganawa. “Now
paddle carefully straight ahead to our right. We must not miss the
island.”
Within a few minutes Ray gave a yell, but no echo returned from his
weaker and more highly-pitched voice.
Then Bruce tried it and back came the voice: “Oh—hoh!” but not very
strong.
“I hear the scream of some gulls,” remarked Ganawa. “I think they are
sitting on the rocks near shore. We must go slow.”
Then Ray tried it again and back came the echo quickly and clearly:
“Hi-yi, hi-yi!” and a few minutes later a rather low wooded island
suddenly rose out of the fog as if it had just come up from the bottom
of the lake.
“Thank God,” Bruce said in a low voice. “I knew we were close to the
island, but it seemed as if we should never reach it. Thank God we
found it. It is the best-looking island I ever saw.”
In reality the island looked quite forbidding. Bold, jagged rocks
seemed to form the whole shore, and it took some time before Ganawa
found a safe pebbly landing-place. Rather small spruces, balsam firs,
and birches formed a dense forest and were all dripping wet, and there
was not a sign of any human habitation either white or Indian. As far
as Bruce and Ray could tell, there had never been a human being on the
island.
“We camp here, my sons,” Ganawa informed the white lads, “and we must
set up our tepee, because the woods and the ground are too wet and cold
without a tepee and a fire. White men call this place Montreal Island,
and it measures about a league if you go north and south, and a league
if you go east and west.”