NORTHERN VISTAS
My name is Ojib-Charlie,
I like to sing and dance.--CY WARMAN.
The reader will excuse my chronicling the Jubilee before telling about
Grouard. I have no excuse other than caprice, nor any precedent other
than the fact that Chinese authors write their stories backward. To
resume then:
You will remember the medical doctor on the boat was telling me how,
one day, Grouard would be a large city. I wish to go further and
declare it one now in spite of its small population, that is if you
will accept with me the definition laid down by an ancient Jewish
writer who defined a large city as a place in which "there are ten
leisure men; if less than so, lo! it is a village."
No one seems to be working unless it be the Indians who are training
their horses for the sports that are to take place the day after
to-morrow, which sports will last for a week. This might be the
leisurely land of the hyperboreans where there is everlasting spring
and the inhabitants never toil or grow old--
"A land in the sun-light deep
Where golden gardens glow,
Where the winds of the north, becalmed in sleep,
Their conch-shells never blow."
The first men we meet are the civil-engineers. Nearly every one
surveys here, and even the wild geese run lines along the sky. These
engineers are pleasant-spoken men of proper spirit, who have been
hammered into hardihood by work and weather. Nearly all of them invite
you to eat in their camps: "Come over to my stamping-grounds," says a
youth who looks like a walking pine-tree. There is no doubt in the
world he is lonely for his women-folk whom we happen to know "down
home," for when we accept he smiles and says "Heaven bless you
endlessly!" He gave us a good supper, too, of hot and savoury food,
and the coffee, though served in cups of unbelievable thickness, was
undeniably nectar.
Afterwards, we walk into the village to get acquainted with the people
thereof, and to secure lodgings. Over the doors of some of the shops
there are signboards written in Cree, that is to say in syllabic
symbols which look like the footprints of a huge bird.
We are accosted by a gentleman of the Bible Society who wishes to sell
us copies of the New Testament, which book, he says, is lightly
esteemed in the North. He asks me if I belong to my Creator, but I
dissemble in that I have never been able to say God created me without
distinct reservations. There are certain ugly and reproachful traits
in my make up which it seems sacrilegious to attribute to the Deity.
This colporteur has a keen, clean mind--any one can see that--and I
like him for his childlike straightness of soul.
He is carrying copies of the gospels in the different Indian languages,
but, so far, has sold but few. Doubtless the Indians think with that
Mendizabel, the Prime Minister of Spain, who once said to George
Borrow, "My good sir, it is not Bibles we want but rather guns and
gunpowder."
The knowledge one picks up on a walk down the street is varied in
character and throws a light on village life several hundred miles from
a railway.
There are three churches here, also a pool-room and a moving picture
show. It costs fifty cents to see the latter.
When a trapper is not working he is whittling. This is a bad year for
the trappers: two summers came together.
Eggs are a dollar a dozen and four loaves of bread may be had for the
same price. Beef sells for twenty-five cents a pound and butter for
sixty-five.
There is an outcropping of coal on a mountainside twelve miles away. A
sample of the coal has been sent to Edmonton for analysis.
The main cafe is built of logs and a notice in English advises the
wayfarer to "Stick to our pies. Never mind the looks of the house," it
further enjoins. "It's the oysters we eat, not the shell."
The village boasts of a brass-band with twenty instruments. Although
instructed by wire to meet us at the boat to-day, they failed to
assemble, the members of the company having quarrelled over the
selections to be played.
Lots on main street sell as high as two thousand dollars each.
A gentleman in tweed suit with capacious pockets and tan leggings which
he has brought with him across the Atlantic, has decided to stand for
the legislature at the next election. "The electors will say," he
assures us, "that I have been drunk. They will say that I have been in
jail, but I shall reply with repartee. You see I've always been
deucedly clever at repartee."
The Mounted Police Barracks, the Indian Agency, the Hudson's Bay Post
and the Catholic Mission are on the hill above the village. The Church
of England Mission lies out and beyond, on a further hill. The bankers
ride out to the further hill to play tennis with the pretty English
girls who teach in the school.
When an elderly jocose Irishman so far forgets himself as to say
"darlint" to a breed-girl, he must not be surprised if she draws a wry
face and calls him _muchemina_; that is to say, "bad berries."
I might write a book on the news to be picked up on this main street,
if a tide of sleep did not threaten to submerge me. In this dry
crystalline atmosphere, one must sleep an hour or two sometimes,
however unwilling the spirit or unique and alluring the things present.
My room at the lodging-house is the best the place affords in that it
has a cotton curtain for a door, and as yet doors are only used in the
outside walls of the houses. The curtain is not, however, of much
account in that the green lumber of the walls has warped to such narrow
dimensions that the occupier of the adjoining room would have to shut
his or her eyes to keep from seeing you. On the contrary part, you
must of necessity go to bed in the dark unless you wish to fall a
victim to the crafts and assaults of the mosquitoes who are attracted
by the lamp. In a fortnight or so, they will have completely
disappeared, but, in the meanwhile, if you would escape their nasty
niggling ways you must neglect your hair, teeth, and sun-scalded nose.
A real-estate agent was telling me to-day how the mosquitoes often
disappeared in a night, and, to illustrate this fact, related a story
of a Tipperary Orator, who said, "My fellow-countrymen, the round
towers of Ireland have so completely disappeared that it is doubtful if
they have ever existed."
.... A wagon is leaving this morning for St. Bernard's Mission on the
hill, and by some felicity I am invited to go with it. Bill, who is
the driver, received a bullet wound in a Mexican rebellion; had his leg
broken by a fall from "a terrible mean cayuse"; lost an eye and part of
his nose in a mine explosion, and says, by these same tokens, he will
live to be a hundred unless he loses his head to the government. Bill
was married once down Oregon, way, but his wife divorced him. His wife
was very short-sighted, but, contrawise, her tongue was long. Besides,
she was appallingly like her mother.
This trail to St. Bernard's, passing as it does through a trail of
lanky poplars and birch in green lacy gowns, is a right pleasant one,
and fills you with the great joy of growing things.
And also it is very pleasant this morning to shut your eyes that you
may the better inhale the fine brew of the conifers, the reek of the
wild roses, the pungent wafture of the mint from the meadows, and above
all, the subtle incense of the warm spawning soil. This is to have a
happiness as large as your wishes. This is to think thoughts that are
very secret and only half-way wise.
At St. Bernard's the nuns take me to see their finely manicured garden
with its rows of cabbages, leeks, turnips, radishes and its many herbs
such as parsley, mint and sage. Their potatoes are coming on well and
so are the posy beds. This sweet-breathed garden is tilled by
voluntary labour and held in common, but it must be remembered the
nun's occupation does not afford her any special opportunities for
knowledge of the world at large and its shrewder ways.
I can easily discern that the pride of this garden are the cabbages,
probably because more care has gone into their culture. Indeed, this
vegetable seems to be peculiarly favoured by all gardeners of all
classes, for even the haughty Diocletian, when asked to resume his
crown, said to the ambassadors, "If you would come and see the cabbages
I have planted, you would never again mention to me the name of
empire." In this garden-plot the sisters have erected a pedestal upon
which stands a fair shining woman, even she who is the mother to their
Lord and wonderful God.
In order that her labour may become an offering to her tutelary spirit,
every woman should have a statue in her garden embodying her highest
ideal, whether it be of Isis, Mrs. Eddy, or Diana, the "Goddess
excellently bright." Such a statue would tend also to keep her
religion a divine intimacy rather than a creed or an institutional
observance.
Sister Marie-des-Anges shows me the hospital, and pleasures me with a
delicious cordial which is made out of wild berries and which tastes
better than champagne.
Those who have an eye for esoteric apartments with etchings and
faint-coloured prints on toned-down walls, would not be impressed with
the wards and offices of this hospital where all the furniture is
home-made. It is, however, cleverly contrived and has the prestige of
being literally the original "mission furniture"--no one can gainsay
it. In this connection, give me leave to transcribe here a passage
which I have met with in the book of Thoreau, the naturalist. "Why
should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's or the Indian's?"
he asks. "When I think of the benefactors of the race whom we have
apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man,
I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of
fashionable furniture."
I know not the answer of this question unless it be that we of Canada
need practice in the excellencies of those graces which have respect to
personal simplicity and disrespect to communal opinion. I have a mind
to make a trial of this.
It was in this hospital that "Twelve-Foot" Davis (now in heaven) gave
his instructions to his partner, Jim Cornwall, to take his body on a
sled to the Peace River and bury it on the height of land.
People in the cities are too busily absorbed in the transactions of
peers and politicians to know northern philanthropists like
"Twelve-Foot" Davis, the first man to introduce steel-traps into this
country and to thus dare the wrath of the omnipotent and indomitable
"Company of Gentlemen Adventurers." You may not know it, but the steel
trap has done as much for the Indian as the self-binder has for the
white man.
But down here every one knows that "Twelve-Foot" Davis was held in high
esteem, and any man will tell you, as Bill the driver told me, how it
was a full hand this fine frontiersman laid on the Lord's table and
that none of the cards were lacking.
Twelve-Foot Davis was so called because, in the days of the Caribou
rush, he staked a claim of twelve feet. Each prospector was allowed
one hundred feet and there was no claim left when Twelve-Foot appeared
on the scene. But to be assured in his mind he was not outdone, he
measured the claims and found that two of the prospectors were holding
two hundred and twelve feet. Davis wanted those extra twelve feet and
the prospectors decided to give him a place directly in the centre of
their claims on a spot where a basin of shale lay. From this narrow
claim, Twelve-Foot dug up a large quantity of gold, and this was the
only spot on the entire creek where the least trace of ore was found,
even his neighbours being unable to pan out a grain. It was from this
happening that he derived the name which, because of the question it
carries on its face, would, as a nom-de-plume, be worth a corresponding
amount of gold to an obscure author.
Bill, who is fairly amenable to bribes, takes me over to the further
hill where the Church of England Mission stands, which Mission was the
spiritual husbandry of the late Bishop Holmes.
It would be pleasant to tell of this place and of the school, but Bill
is in haste and will not tarry my leisure. It may be that his swaying
motive is another bribe.
It was only three months ago that the Bishop and his family started for
England, and soon afterwards came the news that he had died in a London
hospital. The teachers tell me the family who went out together on
this holiday are never coming back, in that they cannot afford to take
the journey now that the bread-winner is gone. The furniture is to be
sold and the house will be done-over for another bishop.
As I walk through the home which for many years has been the most
hospitable one in the north, it is with a mist in my eyes and a painful
tightness in my throat. I touch the chords of Auld Lang Syne on the
piano in honour of Madam, the mother; I kiss the house-flowers for the
love of the young girls who carried them safely over the long, long
winter; I finger the books in the library with affection in memory of
the good Bishop who once told me kindly tales of these Indians who were
his friends.
And when I, too, have gone, may it happen that some one who understands
will touch my books in like manner, and say good-bye to them for me. I
could not so endure it of myself....
... It was six days later at the sports that I received a proposal of
marriage from Prosper, an Indian who is a trainer of horses. It was
not wholly a surprise, in that he had already approached the master of
our party with an overture to buy me. The master had hesitated to tell
me of this for fear I might be offended. "You see, Lady Jane," he
explained, "it is like that case in _Patience_ where the magnet wished
to attract the silver churn."
"Yes?" asked I, "and what did you say to him?"
"Oh! I told him he was a master-fool; that you were nothing but a
great cross-examiner who had the misfortune to be born a woman."
And his reply.
"He said he did not understand me but he saw you laughed a great deal
and showed your teeth. He says he would not beat you, but would be
very mild and agreeable with you."
Now, I was not offended, for the proposal from this young Apollo of the
forest only meant I was no longer regarded as a mysterious invader from
another and strange land.
Why should he not propose? In this northern world distinctions fall
away and all are equal. As a usual thing, the Indian regards a white
woman impersonally or with a half-contemptuous indifference. To him,
we are frail, die-away creatures deplorably deficient in energy, yet,
strange to relate, wholly lacking in the spirit of obedience. Scores
of ill-instructed novelists to the contrary, no Indian has ever
assaulted a white woman. This is an amazing fact when one considers
how, for nearly two centuries, the Indian has guided our women through
the forests; piloted them down the rivers; and has cared for them in
isolated outposts. The Indian has lived rough and lived hard, but, in
this particular, he is morally the most immutable of all God's
estimable menfolk.
When Prosper pleaded his case personally, he broke ice by requesting me
to accept a pair of doe-skin gauntlets more beautiful than ordinary.
In spite of my declining the gift, he asked "Will you marry with me?"
assuring me, at the same time, that I was his _saky hagen_, or "one
beloved." I would not have to travel far. He is one day from here if
there be wind, but two days with no wind. He likes the noise I make in
my throat when I laugh. The master explained to Prosper, "This is only
a way she has of gargling her throat beautifully," a wicked cynicism
which was lost on the bronze-faced tamer of horses in that gargling is,
to him, an unknown and hence an incomprehensible practice. The master
also advised Prosper to keep the gloves for, if I listened, he would
indubitably need them later.
Prosper is a hardily-built man with admirable shoulders and a bearing
like Thunder Cloud, the American Indian who was the model for Mr. G. A.
Reid's picture entitled "The Coming of the White Man." Also, Prosper
is daringly ugly. When I tell him I am already married, he says, "You
need not go back. Your man can find many women by the great
Saskatchewan River."
It may interest the curious to know that Prosper ultimately sold me the
gauntlets for my man, and put away the money with an imperturbable
serenity worthy the receiving-teller of a western bank.
... The sports were inaugurated by the slaughter of an ox for the
benefit of the treaty Indians. It is foolish to shudder when we see
the throat of a bullock cut. When a bird dips its long bill into the
chalice of a flower it is doing precisely the same act.
The heart of this bullock was fat, so that good fortune abides with the
tribe. A lean heart is always unlucky. Once Ba'tiste killed an animal
that had hairs on its heart, and Holy Mother! Holy Mother! that winter
he trapped a silver-fox.
The white men played a game of baseball which would have given cause
for thought to those impersonal pawns known as professionals; it was so
very original. But, after all, baseball is only cricket gone
hysterical, and perhaps the game may be further evolved under the
aurora. Some one must take the onus of initiative. Originally the
game was very primitive and I have heard tell, or I may have read, that
it was really a baseball club which Samson used to kill the Philistines.
The results of the horse races are not posted, a fact which tends to a
democratic spirit. If you want to see the start or the finish you must
bunch with the crowd at the post. This also enables you to learn how
wonderfully an excited Cree can vociferate: there is no other place in
the world where a more efficient instruction can be had. And when
words fail him, Sir Hotspur says: "Uh-huh!" and makes other sounds in
his teeth like a flame when it leaps through dry rushes.
The mysteries of straight, place, and show are not probed here and no
Indian throws a race. The best horse always wins. The Cree jockey
rides bareback and beats his horse from the start. This, they tell me,
is necessary because there is no best strain in Indian ponies. They
are as native and unimproved as the horses of Diomedes that roamed the
hills of Arcadia.
The tents, booths, and dining-rooms skirt the track, and so the squaws
can leave their cooking to engage in their own contests without any
unnecessary loss of time. These include a tug-o'-war, a horse race and
foot races. The men engage in canoe and tub races, boxing bouts,
swimming and smoking contests, bucking-broncho exhibits and other
physical tests for which they have a fondness and natural aptitude.
Gambling is in full swing and no one thinks it necessary to apologize.
Several men squat side by side on the ground and pass a jack-knife from
one to the other under a blanket which covers their knees. The gambler
has to guess in which hand the knife is to be found. It is the same
game as "Button! Button! Who has the button?"
The drum-song, that rude rough song of the suitor, does not start till
after nightfall. As a general thing, the man sings it in a tent lying
on his back, his face flushed and his eyes suffused. "Hai! Hai!" he
cries with a blurred staccato that is without response,
"otato-otooto-oha-o."
After awhile, he seems to become hypnotized by the recurrence of this
measured rhythm which is without melody and without gaiety. These
drum-songs are indubitably the survivals of earlier days when the
man-animal roamed through the land and made love-calls in the trees.
The drum-man has one pronounced characteristic; you can never mistake
him for a Christian. On one of the drums, there was a sun-symbol
marked in blue, but this may have been an accidental ornamentation. Or
it may be the drum-suitor is a Christian who merely claims the
masculine prerogative of changing his principles with his
opportunities. You can never tell.
But on the whole, the discordancy of the drum is no worse than that of
the fiddle which supplies the music for the dance. Why people say "fit
as a fiddle" I can never surmise, for a fiddle is always becoming unfit.
One hears much complaint in our province over oak floors well waxed,
but here is a dancing floor that is laid while you wait. Cross-beams
are placed on the ground and over them are put planks of uneven
thickness. When in use, the floor seems almost as active as the feet
of the dancers.
The crowd is made up of dusky belles from the tribes of the Athabasca,
Slave, and Mackenzie Rivers; many braves, and some few white men whom I
pretend not to recognize. I am like the man Herrick writes about, "One
of the crowd; not of the company."
The dancing is of a primitive order not unlike the natural movement
which street children make to the strains of the hurdy-gurdy.
In higher circles, it is known by the name of the turkey-trot.
Scientists classify it under the more dignified appellation of
"neuromuscular co-ordination."
As compared with a ball, say at Government House, this one has some
marked peculiarities. There are no chaperones, no refreshments, many
sitting-out places, and it is wholly in the dark save for the light of
a tolerant and somewhat remote moon.
A white woman who watches it is considered by the men of her own race
to be one of five things--stupid, innocent, mean, obstinate, or unduly
curious, whereas to be accurate she may only be a conscientious scribe.