All over the Hudson's Bay territory, in making trips, be it in winter or summer, there is a scale of provisions upon which a safe result can be assured. For each person of the party, per diem, the following is allowed, and that is multiplied by the supposed number of days that the trip is likely to last. Moreover, for each seven days calculated on, an extra full day's ration is thrown in, this is for safety in case of some unlooked for accident.
Provisions per man, per day: 2 pounds of flour (or 1 1/2 pounds of sea biscuits), 1 pound of fat mess pork, 2 ounces of sugar, 1/2 ounce of tea, 2 ounces of peas (or same of barley), 1/2 ounce of carbonate of soda, and 1/2 ounce of salt.
The peas or barley are intended to be cooked during the night's encampment with any game the route may have produced through the day. With such rations I have traveled with large and small parties, sometimes with Indians only, and at others with Indian and Canadian voyagers mixed; have penetrated the wildest parts of two provinces, in canoes and on snowshoes, and was never short a meal. I admit that with the wasteful and improvident character of the Indians, the leader of the party must use due care and watchfulness over his outfit and see it is not wrongly used.
Take, for instance, the provisions for a party of seven men for fifteen days, the weight aggregates 347 pounds, and is of formidable bulk; and when the necessary camping paraphernalia, tents, blankets, kettles and frying pans, are piled on the beach alongside the eatables, the sight is something appalling, and the crew is apt to think what an unnecessary quantity of provisions; but before the journey is over we hear nothing about there being too much grub. Long hours, hard work and the keen, bracing atmosphere gives the men appetites that fairly astonish even themselves.
If a party is to return on the outgoing trail, and after being off a few days finds it is using within the scale of provisions, it is very easy tocachea portion for the home journey with a certainty of finding it "after many days," that is, if properly secured. If in the depth of winter, and there is a likelihood of wolves or wolverines coming that way, a good and safe way is to cut a hole in the ice some distance from the shore on some big lake, cutting almost through to the water. In this trench put what is required to be left behind, filling up with the chopped ice, tramp this well down, then pour several kettles of water on top. This freezes at once, making it as difficult to gnaw or scratch into as would be the side of an ironclad. I have come on such acacheafter an absence of three weeks to find the droppings of wolves and foxes about, but the contents untouched. One could not help smiling on seeing these signs, imagining the profound thinking the animals must have exerted in trying to figure out a plan to reach the toothsome stuff under that hard, glazed surface.
At other seasons of the year a goodcacheis made by cutting and peeling a long live tamarac pole. Place this balanced over a strong crutch, tie what is to be left secure to the small end, over which place a birch bark covering to keep off the rain (or failing the proper place or season for getting bark, a very good protection is made with a thatch of balsam boughs placed symmetrically as shingles) and tying all in place, tip up the small end, weighting down the butt with heavy logs or stones; and possess your mind in peace.
Two of the best auxiliaries to a short supply of provisions that a party can take on any trip in the wilds of Ontario or Quebec, are gill-net and snaring wire. As food producers, I place these before a gun. Most of the interior lakes contain fish of some sort, and a successful haul one night can be smoke dried to last several days without spoiling, even in hot weather. So long as they are done up in a secure manner in birch bark to keep out blue flies, the greatest danger of their going bad is prevented.
Another very good way to preserve and utilize fish, is to scorch a small portion of flour (about one-third the quantity) and mix with pounded up, smoke dried fish, previously cleaned of bones. This makes a light and sustaining pemmican, easily warmed up in a frying-pan, and if a little fat can be added in the warming process, one can work on it as well as on a meat diet.
Admitting that there are years of plenty and years of scarcity with rabbits, there must be a dearth indeed when one or two cannot be snared in some creek bottom near the night's camp. A gun on the other hand may be only an incumbrance on a long journey. A chance shot may well repay the person carrying it, but very frequently a gun is quite useless.
We crossed the country some years ago between St. Maurice and Lake St. John. It was at the very best time of the year to see game, being in the month of May, when every living thing is full of life and moving about. The trip took us seven days going; coming back by another route we gained one day. On the whole of that journey through bush, lakes and rivers we only fired two cartridges, whereas our small gill-net gave us splendid fish each camping place.
Another trip I remember, this time in the winter, accompanying the men who carried the winter despatches between Pic River and Michipecoten, a distance of 120 miles each way. I was prevailed upon to take a rifle, as the route went over a very high mountain where deer (caribou) were seen every year by the men. Well, I suppose they told the truth; but I carried that gun 240 miles without firing a shot. No, as a possible help to stave off starvation, commend me to a net and snare in preference to a gun.
In my younger days in the Hudson's Bay Company's service I put in many years in what we call the Moose Belt in Quebec — that is, from the St. Maurice River on the east to Lake Nipissing on the west from the Kepewa on the south to near the height of land on the north. All inside these boundaries was teeming with moose. They were killed in the most wanton manner by Algonquin Indians and the lumbermen, in many instances only the hide being taken, and the meat left. Our own Indians, who lived year in and year out in the country, never wasted a particle of meat. If they killed more than the family could consume during the winter months, before the warm days of April set in, it was carefully collected, cut in strips and smoke dried for summer use. While attending to the curing of the meat, the thrifty squaw dressed the hides. These were cut up and made into moccasins and traded at our store during their stay about the post in summer. An ordinary sized hide would cut up into about twenty-two pairs of shoes (without tops) and commanded $1.50 per pair, we selling them for the same price in cash to lumber concerns, making our profit on the goods bartered.
The young Indian the year prior to getting married always exerted himself to show how many moose he could kill. This was their boast and pride to show they were good providers of food. The Indian nature to kill would manifest itself at this time, and the numbers killed by some of the young slips is hardly to be credited. Older men with families never killed for the sake of killing.
I knew a young Indian personally whose mother had been left a widow with a large family. He was the eldest of the children, and that summer began to strut about the post in fine clothes and mix with the men of the tribe. This is one of the traits that shows itself before matrimony is contemplated. The killing of many moose was sure to follow these signs. That young boy actually killed to his own gun ninety moose. Averaging the butchered meat of each moose at the low estimate of 600 pounds, we have a gross weight of 54,000 pounds of good, wholesome food.
This section of country was in those days, I venture to say, the richest in game on the continent of America. Every little creek or lake had its beaver lodge, and even on the main routes of travel one would see beaver swimming two or three times in the course of a day's paddle.
At the posts we lived on fish, game and potatoes. Our allowance of flour was only 100 pounds for each man for the twelve months, and we used to spin this out by eating only a pancake or so on Sundays and a pudding on Christmas.
The choice bits of the moose — the tongue and muzzle — the Indians brought us in quantities, the trade price of each being half a "made beaver," equal to a supposed sum of fifty cents. This was paid in goods, and would be further reduced by 100 per cent, our advance for transport and profit.
One cannot but look back with regret to those days and think such slaughter was murder.
The Hudson's Bay Company's establishments comprised two Factories, several Forts and numerous posts, out-posts and smaller ones called "flying posts." I am writing of the days gone by for now, since the country is opened up, forts, as they were then known, no longer exist. The so-called factories were not places in which fabrics or other goods were manufactured, but more rightly speaking great depots where an entire year's supplies were stored in advance in case of a mishap to either of the ships.
The country was subdivided into the Northern Department and Southern Department. York Factory supplying the requirements of the former and Moose Factory the latter. At these places the summer months was their busy season, for not only did they receive the next year's outfit from the ships, but numerous brigades of boats and canoes were continually loading and departing for the far away inland posts and forts.
With the exception of one or two which were built of stone, the forts and posts were constructed of heavy hewn logs which, being placed flat to flat, were bolted with strong treenails every second or third tier until the desired height of wall was attained. The windows were mere narrow slits in the walls and as few as possible on the ground floor.
All the buildings were made in the same strong way and consisted, in an ordinary fort, of the master's house (or chief officer's dwelling); this was the most pretentious building in the lot, for not only did the factor and his family occupy it but it also lodged the clerks and other petty officials, besides furnishing a spacious mess or dining room and a guard room in which the officers lounged and smoked and the small arms were stacked ready for use.
Within the enclosure were the following other buildings, similar in construction to the great house. A store house in which was kept the bulk of the outfit and the furs gathered. A trade shop in which the Indians bartered their peltries. A men's house or servants' quarters. A work shop in which all necessary repairs were made on guns, harness, etc., and a stable to house the stock at night. They pastured, under guard, outside the walls during the day.
These buildings were generally in the form of a hollow square and the whole surrounded by a picket stockade ten or twelve feet high. This protection was made from trees of about seven inches in diameter, brought to a sharp point at the upper end and planted deep in the ground, touching one another. Here and there, inside, the stockade was reinforced by strong braces, which added to its solidity, should a combined force of men be brought against it.
At each of the four corners of the square a strong block tower was erected with embrasures cut therein for shooting from. In some of the larger forts small cannon were placed that commanded each side of the square and all around the inside of the pickets ran a raised platform on which men standing would be breast high to the top of the protection. This gave them a great advantage in shooting on coming enemies or repelling scalers.
Such places were only in the prairie country where the warlike and turbulent Black Feet, Bloods, Pegans and Sioux roamed. Amongst the bush or fish-eating tribes less severe precaution was required, altho the most of them were enclosed by the picket stockade and supplied liberally with muskets, cutlasses and side arms.
While the Indians were paying their semiannual trading visits the dwellers of the forts were confined pretty well indoors and the stock hobbled close to the stockades, for it was not always safe for a small party to be caught far afield. Great massive, barred gates opened into the fort, in the leaves of one side a wicket placed for the entrance and departure of men afoot, and it was thru this wicket an Indian and his wife were admitted with their furs to trade. When they were finished bartering and departed, two others were allowed in and so it went on.
The trade shop was so constructed that the Indian and his wife did their barter at the end of a long narrow passage, at the end of which a square hole was cut in the logs, behind which the trader stood with an assistant to fetch the goods required by the purchaser. The display of goods on the shelves was invisible to the Indian, but it was not necessary he should see them inasmuch as there being no great variety, everything being staple and the same from year to year, manufactured of the best material expressly for the Company.
The trade shop was always built near the gate and the guard at the wicket, after admitting the would-be purchaser of supplies, locked and barred the gate and conducted them to the entrance of the passageway along which all they had to do was to travel until they reached the trader at the end.
So that the Indian might know the amount of his means of trade the furs were taken in first and valued at a certain well-known currency of that particular part of the country in which he resided, i. e., "Made Beaver" or so many "Martens." In some places he was given the gross amount in certain quills and about the Bay in brass tokens. Of this latter coinage the Company had quarters, halves and whole M. B. (Made Beaver). Once this was mutually adjusted, trade commenced. The Indian would call for a gun and pay so many Made Beaver, a scalp knife, powder, shot and so on, paying for each article as he received it in either quills or tokens.
The outposts or "flying posts" were more in the bush country, where the Indians, as a rule, lived peaceably with one another and the whites. The smaller of these trading places were only kept open during the winter months and were generally built for the accommodation of the Indians and supplied with absolute necessities only. This enabled the hunter to keep closer to his work and not travel long distances, when furs were prime, for some positive requirement, such as the replacing of a broken gun. The keepers of these small posts were in most cases guides or deserving and trustworthy servants of long standing in the employ. With their families and a man or two they departed from the forts in September, taking the supply of trading stuff with them.
These small parties were self-sustaining, being given one day's provisions to take them away from the fort. After that until the next May they lived on fish and the small game of the country, with probably an odd wood caribou. The men of the party trapped furs while hunting game for their sustenance. The proceeds for the personal winter trapping of each servant was allowed him as a bonus over and above his wages. Cash was not given, but they had permission to barter the skins for what they chose out of the trade shop and they went principally in tobacco for the men and finery for the women.
Where fish and rabbits in their season was the mainstay with these people, prodigious numbers were required and consumed to sustain life. Thirty or forty white fish or the same of rabbits was an ordinary daily consumption of the dwellers at one of these "flying posts," but the reader must remember they had no auxiliaries to help out this plain straight food.
No butter, lard, pork, sugar or vegetables, just rabbit or white fish twice a day and nothing else. This was washed down with bouillon in which the food was cooked. Spring and fall they had a variety in ducks, geese, beaver and an occasional bear and then they lived in the tallest kind of clover while it lasted.
As no insurance company could be found who would take fire risks that could only be represented to them on paper by the interested parties, the Hudson's Bay Company began years ago to take certain sums of money out of each year's profits and created a marine and fire account, out of which fund any loss by sea or fire is met and the district or department where the accident occurred is recouped for its loss. Fires at the forts and posts have been of very rare occurrence, as the utmost care and precaution has ever been exercised in preventing such by the officer in charge.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature and the dwellers of these far away Hudson's Bay posts knew of no greater calamity than that of being burnt out and they looked to it that as far as precaution went this should not occur.
The way in which the Hudson's Bay Company managed the Indians of Canada has ever been admired by the people of the outside world. Their fundamental rule and strict order to their servants was never to break faith with an Indian. As time went on the Indians began to realize fully that the company was in the country for their mutual benefit, not as aggressors, land grabbers or people to take away their vested rights.
It soon became known that any promise made to them by a Hudson's Bay officer was as good as fulfilled. On the other hand, when "No" was said it meant No every time and there was never any vacillating policy. "Just and Firm" was the motto in all the Company's dealings with the natives and while they were at all times prepared, as far as they could be, to meet any trouble, yet they never provoked enmity. To do so would have been antagonistic to their interests even if justice and humanity were put aside.
Each officer of the posts had the welfare of the Indians as much at heart as a father has for his own children. In sickness they attended them, in trading they advised them what goods would be most beneficial and lasting to their requirements and as far as they could in a pacific way they advised them when trouble arose between any members of the tribe.
In those days when the Company had the country under their exclusive sway, no cheap, shoddy goods were imported in the trading forts. Durability was looked for, not flashy finery. These came with the opening of the country and the advent of peddlers and unprincipled traders. We see the results of this today at any of the stations where our transcontinental train stops. Bands of the once well-conditioned, well-clothed, sober Indians are now replaced by ragged, emaciated, vice marked descendants of these, hanging around in idleness, an object lesson of what so-called civilization has brought them to. Except in some far back isolated posts, the Indian's word goes for nothing. They have lost the once binding obligation that their promise carried and the trader can no longer depend on them.
As the writer knew the pagan and uncivilized Indian some forty years ago he was truthful, sober, honest and moral. I won't say the white man has willfully made him otherwise than what he was, but as a fact he is. It has been a transformation in which the Indian has fallen to most of the white man's vices and adopted very few of his virtues. My experience has been over considerable of the country and amongst several tribes and my observation has told me that about the Mission centers (be the denomination what it may) is to be found the greatest debauchery and rascality in the Indian and that right at their very gates.
Prior to 1821 both the Hudson's Bay Company and that of the Northwest gave liquor to the Indians, but after the coalition of the two companies a wise policy was inaugurated and liquor was stopped thruout the vast country. The Company's people saw that liquor to the Indian was laying the seeds of illness and death and impoverishing his family, but the Company did not take away the grog (which had been given in most cases as a bonus on their hunt) without giving an equivalent in value and the cash value of liquor to each hunter entitled to any was given in the shape of any goods he chose from the trade shop. Even the servants who had heretofore received a Saturday night allowance of spirits, received in lieu thereof two pounds sterling per annum added to their wages.
The Indian in the olden days seldom stayed about the posts longer than to barter his furs and got back to his hunting grounds with as little delay as possible. They were fish and flesh eaters, almost every river and lake abounded with the former and the surrounding woods furnished the latter and the Indian got his living from day to day with very little exertion. The Indian has no idea of hording up the treasures of this world and in only two instances did I know one to have a bank account. They have an implicit and abiding faith in kind providence to supply their wants as they go thru life and reason that what is sufficient for them will be forthcoming for their sons and daughters.
As an agriculturist the Indian is a failure. The life is too hard and humdrum for one whose ancestors from away back have lived a nomad life. His sphere of action on a farm is too circumspect and he pines and longs for the freedom of the wilds. It is a sad and not a successful measure, this corralling of the once lords of the country on restricted reservations which in plain English is no better than a prison to them.
The Indian in his native state is hospitable to a degree. The stranger who comes to his wigwam is given the best and choicest pieces of what his larder contains. The softest and best bed is made for him furtherest from the door. When he arrives no impertinent questions are asked as to his business, destination or his success in the hunt. Any such information that he thinks fit to impart is given voluntarily over a pipe of peace before rolling up in his robe or blanket.
It is not considered good form to ask questions, even a member of the family coming home at night is not asked as to what success he has had in the chase. His bundle or game bag is thrown inside the door and remains there until his mother has placed food before him. While partaking of this his mother (or wife if it happens to be the father) opens his bag and takes out, piece by piece, the contents. If he has killed a deer the head and heart only are brought to camp. If a bear, the four paws, if a moose, the tongue and muzzle.
The Indians are very superstitious as to how they treat the flesh and bones of the large game they kill. Beaver bones are never thrown to the dogs, but are carefully collected and sunk in the lake or river, thus returning them to the element from which they came. A bear killed by an Indian is always addressed as cousin and a harangue is given him by the hunter and his pardon asked for the necessity of taking his life. The bones, especially the skull, are hung up at the exact spot where he fell, journeys from camp often being taken with the express purpose of carrying out this sacred duty.
Deer and moose antlers and shoulder blades are generally found on stakes or dry knots of trees at the discharge of some big lake on main canoe route. There are certain parts of the flesh and insides of these animals that the women are never allowed to partake of, such as the head, heart and paws of the bear.
Likewise it isinfra dig. for a man to carry water to the camp, chop wood or dry his own moccasins. After the killing of big game it rests with the women and children to cut up the meat and toboggan it to camp. The man merely walking ahead to show the way and lolling about an open fire while the work of butchering and loading sled is going on.
Physique and Health. — Before the Indian came in close contact with the whites he lived on the produce of the country and remained close to nature. He was of a wirey and healthy stature and lived to a ripe old age. Now from their acquired taste of the white man's foods, love of liquor, insufficient clothing and early marriages, the "white plague" has taken firm hold in every band and a few decades will see very few of the Government wards to be cared for.
How few of the thousands of immigrants now flowing into the country pause to consider that once these beautiful lakes, rivers, prairies and mountains were the resort and homes of a race of God's primitive children. Their wants were supplied with a lavish generosity by a Great Spirit and pagans tho they were said to be they cast their eyes heavenwards and thanked that Great Spirit for blessings received. And the translation after death that they looked forward to, to the Happy Hunting Grounds, what are these but our God and our Heaven?
Poor, fast disappearing race! I have lived with them, hunted with them and walked the long trail and from my city home I often yearn for the old life in that North Country.
Men are governed, or prejudiced very much for, or against, things by appearances or names. And this I find holds even with practical men as are hunters, traders and trappers, men who as a rule reason much, and are endowed with considerable common sense.
There are many food meats that the woods furnish that are tabooed from the hunter's bill of fare simply by the name of the animal that furnishes it. The skin is taken but the flesh is cast away, and this for no other reason but the name the beast is generally known under.
Take, for instance, the water rat, musquash, or the more generally used name of musk rat. Here we have certainly nothing against it but the name. Because did we of the fraternity of hunters pause to consider, and reason, we must see that a musquash ought not, and cannot be different from a beaver. They are identically the same in every detail except the formation of the tail. They live on the same food, roots, grasses, and twigs, as the beaver does and to the eye they are (barring the tail) a small beaver in miniature.
Musquash, like all animals in cold countries, are at their best condition in the autumn. Let my hunter friend take one of the above despised animals, select a nice mixed flesh and fat one, clean it as you would a beaver, split it up the front, impale it on a sharp pointed stick, introduce the point near the root of the tail, and bring it up to the inside of the head. Plant your screwer in front of your camp fire, giving it an occasional twist, while getting your tea and other things ready. When done stand it back from the excessive heat for a short while to cool and harden. Fill your pannican of tea, spread out your biscuits, cut off a quarter section of your roast suckling, and fall to, and a hundred to one you never ate anything more delicious. I know prejudice has to be gotten over, "I have been there myself."
I starved once for a day and a night, did hard paddling and portaging all day and went supperless at night, simply because I could not get over the idea of "rat." We had about a dozen with us, and my Indian companion roasted a couple each meal and demolished both himself with satisfaction and relish; for myself the thought of the name was enough.
Take again the Canadian lynx. Were this name always adhered to, there would be less room for prejudice, but unfortunately it is more frequently called cat. I admit it has all the appearances and manners of the cat, but let someone, unknown to you, fry some fat cutlets from the ham of a lynx, and fifty to one you will relish it as very fine veal and you cannot be convinced to the contrary. There again is the porcupine, I think sometimes known as the hedgehog. When they are in good condition, nicer or more juicy meat a hunter cannot put his teeth into. When properly prepared and properly cooked, the white mans "rarebit", the suckling pig, cannot prove its points.
The arctic or snow owl is a bird that gives as fine a flavored flesh, and the same in color and appearance as a fat capon. But where one is set against it, is when served up in Indian fashion, boiled whole, it has then the appearance of a young baby, and one would almost have to be a professional cannibal to tackle the object. The thick, plump thighs, the round bald head, makes the appearance to a young infant almost startling. However, if one closes his mental eyes to this similitude, the flesh is most toothsome.
I come now to another that occurs to me as being much despised, that is the festive and highly perfumed skunk. We look on a skunk, be it man or beast, as the meanest kind of thing, but I assure you the skunk (the four footed one) is not to be despised or cast aside when one is hungry or desires a change from the everlasting bacon and biscuit. A skunk, shot and prepared with care, makes very good eating.
Two of the animals of our forest I never could stomach and very few Indians eat them, be they ever so much pushed for food, and these are: the otter and mink. Their flesh is oily, black and highly flavored, resembling the meat of seal, only more so! The Indians as a rule look down with contempt on a fellow Indian who eats otter or mink, whether from necessity or from an acquired and perverse taste.
I venture to opine my little sketch will set many of my hunter friends thinking and perhaps make a few converts. You won't repent it.
Forty years ago, before the country was opened up to civilization and the usual provisions of the white man were imported into the wilds, the great staple foods of the territories, from the Labrador Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific, consisted of buffalo, caribou, white fish and rabbits. According to the parts of the country where these animals resorted, the Indians, traders and trappers, lived almost exclusively on their flesh, either in the fresh, dried or pemican state.
All foods, not imported, went under the name of country produce, and as flour is the staff of life to the white man, so was buffalo, caribou, rabbit or white fish to the dwellers of the north country. Beaver, partridge, porcupine and other small prey, a kind of entree, or side dish, got only at odd times, and not to be depended on for regular three times a day diet.
The quantity of any one of these four foods required to sustain, even a family of six, during a long northern winter, was something to make a layman incredulous.
The Indians living about the plains of the lower Saskatchewan and foothills of the Rockies not only lived on the buffalo, but made up immense quantities of pemican, which was parched in summer skin bags, weighing about sixty pounds each, and traded for ammunition, cloth, beads, hatchets, etc., at the forts.
From these bases of supply the bags of meat were sent to posts farther north, and used for tripping and feeding the men about the post. Large quantities were floated down each spring from Fort Ellis, Qu Appelli and other plain forts, by the Assiniboine to Fort Garry and from there in larger boats to Norway House, on Lake Winnipeg, which in those days was the receiving and distributing factory for all the country north and east, and had the distinction of being the place of council each year.
The people inhabiting the country embraced by the Mackenzie River, Great Bear Lake, and the coast of Lake Winnipeg, subsisted almost entirely on white fish. These were killed in great numbers each spawning season, not only for their own food, but for their team dogs as well, the posts putting past from ten to one hundred thousand, according to the importance of the place and the mouths to feed.
The fish were hung in number on skewers as taken from the water, the sharpened stake being run through the fish near the tail.
The string of ten fish on a skewer was called a "percer," and was hung head down from long horizontal poles, as high as a man could reach, and the length of these traverses would accommodate one hundred "percers." The great stock of fish was surrounded by a high picket stockade open to the weather, with one entrance, which was kept strictly under lock and key, and opened each evening by the post-master, i. e., steward, who gave out the requirements for the next twenty-four hours' consumption.
The expenditure was kept posted up each night, showing for what use the fish had been given out, under the following headings:
Thus, at any time, the factor could tell the exact number of fish consumed and number yet on hand.
Many of the posts would have an expenditure of a thousand fish a week for all purposes, which would be about thirty thousand for the winter.
In the country lying south of Lake Winnipeg to Lake of the Woods and east as far as the Ottawa River, the staple food was the harmless little rabbit. It is a dispensation of Providence that the rabbit is a prolific animal, for they are the life not only of the people, but of martens, lynx, foxes, ermine, owls, hawks and ravens.
An ordinary family of Indians, living on plain boiled or roasted rabbits, require about twenty a day, and even that keeps their vitality a very little above zero. There is no doubt but what the food a man eats makes or lowers his valor and endurance.
No one ever heard of the fish or rabbit-eating Indians going on the war-path, while, on the other hand, the buffalo eaters were fearless men both as horsemen and fighters.
The Labrador Peninsula, bounded by the Saguenay river on the west, Hudson's Bay and Straits on the north, the Atlantic seaboard on the east, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the south, a country as large as England, France and Austria combined, is the home of the Caribou or wood deer, who migrate north and south in countless herds spring and autumn, and are followed by bands of roaming Indians continually preying on them.
As in the case of the pemican, these Nascapies, Montagnais, and Cree Indians bring into the posts dried meats, marrow fat and tongues to barter, and on this the post dwellers live.
With the Indians of the present day armed with modern rifles, and the great depletion in the calf-crop made by the marauding of wolves, the day cannot be far off that the caribou will be of the past as the buffalo is.
In their migrations north and south, at certain places well known to the natives, the deer have to cross rivers. Taking the crossings the mob of deer would compact itself so much that the traverse would be black with their bodies.
The Indians who had been waiting for some days the passing of the herd, would attack them from up and down the river in their canoes, shooting them with arrows, spearing and axing the poor frightened brutes in the water till the lower waters were covered with floating carcasses.
Much meat and many skins were spoiled for the want of quick attention. After the battle the Indians gorged themselves to such a state of repletion, that it rendered them unfit for exertion, but a just God frequently punished them during the bitter weather of the following winter by starvation, and whole families succumbed for want of the very food they so wantonly wasted in the autumn.
The Hudson's Bay Company had a post years ago on Lake Mis-a-ka-ma right on the tableland between Ungava bay and the Canadian Labrador coast, for the trading of deer skins, both dressed and in the parchment state. One year the skins were in such numbers that the boats of the brigade could not carry the whole to the coast, and bales of them had to be wintered over to the next year.
The Labrador has been for many years the base of supplies for fish and rabbit districts, where the natives have no deer to make moccasins, mitts and shirts, and the parchment for their snowshoe knitting.
These deer skins take a round about route to reach their destination, being in the first place shipped from Ungava, or Nigolette, to London, and after passing the winter in London, are reshipped to Montreal, via the St. Lawrence, and from that depot sent with the new outfit to posts that have requisitioned them the previous year.
One would think with the introduction of flour, pork and other imported provisions that the slaughter would be a thing of the past, but the killing goes on as before, and now only the skin is taken, the meat remaining to rot.
To readers of H-T-T descriptions of modes of living in by-gone days will, no doubt, be as interesting as actual hunting or trapping. I therefore submit a reminiscence of days in the early sixties, gone never to return.
Transport then to the far inland posts was so tedious and costly that it was impossible to freight heavy stuff so far away, and the employees of the company had to live on what the company in which they were stationed produced. However, a scale of allowances of a few delicacies were allowed, and these were made up every year at the depot of each district, and were for one year. The laborers or common people about the post got nothing in the way of imported provisions, except when at the hard work of tripping. The officers' scale was as follows, be he a married man or a single man, it made no difference. Their several grades were as follows:
Chief Factor, Chief Trader, Chief Clerk, Apprentice Clerk, Post Master.
A Post Master did not mean a master of a post, but was generally a long service laborer, who could supervise the general work about the post and act as interpreter if required. He also received a minimum allowance from headquarters, but of fewer articles than that of clerks and officers. A Chief Factor, being of the highest grade in the service, received the largest allowance, which was as follows:
Three hundred pounds flour, 336 lbs. sugar, 18 lbs. black tea, 9 lbs. green tea, 42 lbs. raisins, 60 lbs. butter, 30 lbs. tallow candles, 3 lbs. mustard, 6 3/4 gal. port wine, 6 3/4 sherry wine, 3 gal. brandy.
Exactly one-half of the Factor's allowance was the share of the Chief Trader, and a half of the latter's portion was the scale for a Chief Clerk or Apprentice Clerk. A Post Master however, not receiving the full list, I will give in detail.
Fifty-six pounds sugar, 3 lbs. black tea, 1 1/2 lbs. green tea, 7 lbs. rice, 1/2 lb. pepper, 1/4 lb. pimento.
At every post where it was possible to grow potatoes they were given the greatest attention, as they constituted a very material place in the feeding of the post people. They were, however, kept under lock and key, and a weekly allowance given out by the Post Master. At posts where cattle were kept the allowance of butter was not supplied by headquarters, as we were supposed to make our own.
The allowances never came up with the general outfit, but were sent up in bulk to the headquarters of the district, and there parceled out for each post in that Factor's territory. The clerks or officers in charge of these out-posts went to headquarters about the 15th of August with a half-sized canoe. This being a special trip, made especially for the allowance of any small thing that might have been overlooked in the indent, was called "The Allowance Canoe."
A week was generally spent at headquarters in friendly intercourse with the staff there. The prospects for the ensuing year were talked over, and the requisition for the next year's outfit read carefully over, and any article requiring explanation or comment was then gone into by the Factor while he had the framer of the indent at hand.
This was the only time of the year that all the officers of that district met together, their respective posts being east, north and west, and hundreds of miles of forest and stream separating them. This reunion was a red letter week, and no sooner were we back to our posts but we looked forward to the next meeting. I doubt very much if today such a self-reliant, hardy and easily satisfied body of men could be found to fill similar circumstances.
It was etiquette not to arrive at headquarters before the date appointed. Occasionally a canoe from some post would have made extra good time coming out, probably gaining a day or part of a day, and would camp back of some point almost in sight of "The Fort." A noted last place of call before reaching the fort was called "Point a la Barbe."
Here a general clean-up took place, from a shave to clean linen and store clothes. As the lake upon which the fort is built was the main dropping-in thoroughfare from several parts of the interior, often two or three canoe parties would be at the "Point a la Barbe" at once.
A start would be made from there together, and when the rocky point which had hidden them from view was rounded a "flee de joie" was fired from each canoe, the paddle seized, and in unison with the quick stroke of the "paddle for the avenue," one of the usual French canoe songs was sung by the voices of the combined fleet till the rocky shores reproduced it from cliff to cliff.
Almost with the firing of the first shot the people at the post who were on the lookout ran up the glorious old Hudson's Bay flag to the flagstaff head, and an answering volley was returned. The handshaking, talk and laughter when the canoes beached was never to be forgotten.
Most of those at the fort had relatives or friends at one or other of the outposts, and if they were not present anxious inquiries were made and answered on the beach. Possibly some loved one had been called away since the last opportunity of communication with the fort; in such a case it devolved on some person of the new arrivals to break the sad news or receive bad tidings himself. In that case no words were necessary, the downcast look and the prolonged clasp of the hand told as well as words the bereavement. I have witnessed such meetings, and know it was only hours after the meeting that the details were imparted by words, and that night far into the small hours could be heard the death chant of the sorrowing relative.
Every night during our stay at headquarters our crews congregated at the men's guard room, and there hoed down the Red River Reels, and entered into other harmless pastimes till well up to midnight. During that week the former rigid discipline of the fort was considerably relaxed in honor of the strangers.
In the days of which I write liquor had been abolished for the servants and trade throughout the country, and a few years after even the officers' allowance of wine and brandy was cut off, so these dances were not attended by any discord or disturbance.
When the rum allowance was done away with to the servants, they received in lieu thereof two sterling per annum added to their wages, and to the Indian who had been in the habit of getting a gill of rum for every ten "made-beaver" traded, was given one skin for every ten traded, taking whatever he chose, to the amount of the aggregated skins, in goods.
For that one good deed alone, Sir George Simpson deserved the thanks of all throughout the territories when he abolished liquor as a stimulant to the men and a vehicle of trade with the natives.
The officers received no equivalent when their allowance was discontinued. It was brought about by the bad use one officer made of his allowance, and the others suffered thereby. A clerk's allowance of wine and brandy was done up in three oak kegs, each wine keg holding 2 1/4 gallons and the brandy one gallon. These were laced together with stout raw hide lashings, and the piece was called a "Maccrow," and a very awkward piece it was to portage.
The majority of the officers made it a point of honor to debark the Maccrow unbroached at their respective posts, and make the contents spin religiously through the next twelve months. Some could not withstand the temptation of sampling the liquor enroute, and had very little when they reached home.
It was one of these gentlemen who was the cause of the allowance being cut off. A petition was sent in to the Governor asking that we should receive the equivalent in money for the discontinuance of wine and brandy, which amounted to seventeen dollars at cost price, but no answer came, and we had to bear our loss and offer up some nightly words in favor (or otherwise) of the person who had made an abuse of his allowance.
Prior to 1865, furs at inland posts were made up in packs of ninety pounds for transport to the frontier, but some of the young canoe men were not sufficiently strong to handle such a weight in debarking or loading them into the canoes, and a pack slipping from their grasp into the water and becoming wet inside caused delay to the whole brigade. A stop had to be made and the damaged pack unlaced, dried and repaired, before the journey could be resumed.
About the year mentioned, a top pack slipped off a man's back while being carried over a side portage, and before the man could save it had bounded down the hillside into the rapid, and was lost.
This happened to be a very valuable package, and its loss being reported called forth the next year, from headquarters, a general order to reduce the weight from ninety to eighty pounds per pack, and to make each package of pure skins — i. e., skins of only one kind.
This order to discontinue the mixing of skins was not pleasing to post managers, inasmuch as a smaller and better pack can be constructed of mixed skins than of only one kind.
For the information of trappers of to-day, I will give a summary of how many of each kind of skins made up, as nearly as possible, the prescribed weight of eighty pounds, thus:
We had orders to gather such furs as fisher, ermine, wolf, wolverine, skunk, and any broken or damaged skins, and make up into a separate pack.
The fine and delicate skins, as marten, mink, silver and cross foxes, were to be packed in boxes thirty inches long by twenty inches square, and into this small compass the martens and mink, after being tied in bundles of ten skins each, were packed to the number of four hundred skins.
This made a very valuable package, and the greatest care was taken of it the whole journey. Valuing them at only $5 each, one of these boxes represented the sum of $2,000.
We all saw that this mode of packing would not last; as, taking the best of care, accidents will happen, and they began the very year after the order came in force. Leaving a disagreeable job to the last, the men at each carrying place avoided these boxes, and there was a struggle to see who would not carry them. The sharp corners abraded the men's backs, and when carried on top of a pack they hurt the back of the head; so, as a rule, they were generally left till the last load, and then taken with bitter comments, and a fervent wish that the promulgator of the order for such packages were himself present to portage them over the carry.
Two of these marten boxes were left by one of our crews in the middle of a brule. In making the former trip some careless fellow must have thrown down a half-burnt match; in a few moments dense clouds of smoke arose in their rear. The country was as dry as tinder, and in the space of a very few minutes the flames swept to the other end of the portage, licking up in passing those valuable boxes and contents.
We, figuratively, locked the door for the balance of that trip after the horse had been stolen, for the remaining boxes were stored each night in the officers' tent, and during the day a responsible person was on guard over them.
It was a severe loss out of the returns of one post. No one, perhaps, could be blamed for it, but it had the desired effect of repealing the order, and we were told to pack as in the good "old corn-meal days," and mix our furs.
To arrive at an average of each kind of skins through each and every pack, we counted the whole returns and estimated the gross weight, and then divided so many of each kind of furs through the several packs, something like this: 10 beavers, 2 bears, 40 marten, 10 mink, 100 rats, 4 foxes, 4 otters, 4 lynx — 80 pounds, or as the average might count out.
Previous to packing, the skins were neatly folded, placed in a pile and weighted down for a week. They were then built in the desired pack shape and underwent a severe wedge press hammering to reduce the bulk, then tied with three strong cross lashings, either of raw cowhide or twenty-four-thread cod line, and when all was secure, the wedges being released, the pack tumbled out complete, less the lateral tyings, which were two in number, of eighteen-thread cod line.
The size of one of these packs, ready for transportation, was 24 inches long, 17 inches broad, and 10 inches thick. The expansion of the compressed skins would, after a few days, give it a rounded shape in the middle, but when first out of the press it was almost perfectly square, and it was the pride of each post manager to outdo the others in the beauty and solidity of his packs.
A well-made pack would withstand the ill usage and the hundreds of handlings in making a journey of four or five hundred miles from an interior post, and would reach the first steamer or train of cars without a tying giving way. In my young days I have seen a pile of 296 of these packs on the beach at one portage.
An anecdote relating to the care of such a valuable cargo may be here appended. An old factor who had not left the interior for twenty-seven years, applied for and received leave to visit civilization with the understanding that he would take care of the furs in transit. This he did during a journey of days and weeks coming down the great river, standing at each portage till every pack was over, and checking them off by numbers and the aggregate.
At last he reached steamboat navigation, shipped his packs, and had the bill of lading in his pocket. Having shipped the furs he took passage on the same boat. During the midnight hours the captain, in making his rounds, was surprised to find a man sitting among the cargo. Who was this but Mr. S., still keeping his faithful watch. The captain asked why he was not abed in his stateroom.
"Well," he replied, "I saw rough deck hands going about the packs, and thought it better to keep an eye on them."
The captain laughed. "Why, man," he said, "we have signed bills of lading for those goods, and we are responsible for their safe delivery. Go to bed, Mr. S.," he continued, "and rest in peace, for even you have no right to touch one of those packs, now they are aboard this vessel."
That was in 1873, and I believe that old gentleman is alive yet. He retired many years ago and settled in Ontario.