I read in one of the May issues ofForest and Streamof a dog that joined a band of wolves and became as savage and fleet of foot as the best of them, and brought to my mind a circumstance that came under my own observation, of a pair of steers that threw off all trammels of restraint and took to the bush.
I think it is worth recording, for it shows that even horned cattle brought up with care, and fed at regular intervals can support themselves, even through the rigor of a northern winter in the wild bush country.
In my early days on the Labrador we were in the habit of getting our winter beef on the hoof from the villages on the south shore. The cattle were sent over by schooner, late in the fall, and stall-fed until the cold weather set in, when they were killed and the carcasses hung up to freeze. As we had no wharf accommodation, the cattle were unloaded in a primitive and unceremonious way. The schooner anchored two or three hundred yards from the shore. The cattle sided up alongside the rail next the beach, and a couple of sailors introduced hand spikes under the animal's body, the end engaging the top of the rail. At the word "Go" the beasts were hurled sideways into the water. Rising to the surface, after the plunge, they naturally struck out for the shore, where we had men with short ropes ready to secure them and lead them away to the stable.
On the occasion upon which I write we had a consignment of five three-year-old steers, the meat of which, augmented by the usual game of the country, was considered sufficient for the post's use during the following winter.
Two of the bunch reached footing in such a lively state that they baffled the combined efforts of our men to capture them, and with a few defiant snorts and bounds, they reached the primitive forest and were lost to view.
As soon as I realized that there was a possibility of the animals being lost to us, I turned out all the "hangers on" about the post, with our own men in hot pursuit. Night coming on shortly after, the hunt was given up, only to be resumed with greater energy the following day; but the nature of the ground being hard, hoof marks were indistinguishable, and to use dogs would only make the cattle wilder. Once more the men had to reluctantly abandon the search and return to the post, and although we kept up the hunt for several days more, we failed to locate the missing "meat."
In due course of time, snow covered the ground, and men circled the bush in the vicinity of the post without any results, and we had unwillingly to place the two steers on our profit and loss account.
Time went on, the winter passed, and the summer also, and none of the visiting Indians reported any signs of the cattle.
The following winter, in February, a party of hunters came in from the headwaters of the Moisie River, 150 miles north of us, and they reported having killed our cattle among a small herd of wood caribou. To prove their story they produced the horns which they had brought down all those miles on their toboggans as visible proof.
The report they gave me was as follows: They had come across the tracks of this small bunch of caribou (five) with which the oxen were living in consort, sometime in early December. The animals winded them and the hunters failed to sight the herd.
As the snow was yet shallow, they left them unmolested until after the New Year, when the men from the nearby camps organized a hunt expressly to run them down.
From hearsay they thought the strange tracks were those of moose, and were very much, surprised when the herd was sighted to find they were horned cattle, and at once concluded (and very correctly) that they were the long lost cattle.
The chief informed me they were so fleet of foot that the five deer were come up with and killed before they overtook the steers, which were rolling fat, sleek of coat and had an under growth of wool such as the deer had, showing that under different circumstances nature had given them this protection against the severity of the climate.
I hardly think I would have credited their story with the proof, and further, the next summer, when they came in to trade on the coast, they brought me a piece of the thigh skin of each animal. Verily these oxen had a call from the wild and took it and became as one with the denizens of the bush.
Reading of the dog that fraternized and went off with the wolves brought this to my mind after a lapse of forty-one years.
The two years I passed in charge of the Hudson's Bay Post of Long Lake, situated on the water-shed between Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay, was the happiest of any period of my long service.
The conclusion I have arrived at, after considerable experience, is that Christianizing, in no matter what form, has only made the Indian worse.
It is the verdict of all who have had to do with the red man, that he copies all of the white man's vices and very few, if any, of his virtues.
Indians I found at Long Lake, in the middle seventies, were Pagans, but they were honest, truthful and virtuous.
We locked our tradeshop, not to prevent robbery, simply to guard against the door being blown open. Not one of these Indians would have taken a pin without showing it to me first and saying: "I am going to keep this," holding up the pin.
My predecessor had been stationed at that post in an unbroken charge of over twenty years. He was a man of system and everything went by rote. There were certain fixed dates for out-fitting the hunters; certain dates for those short of ammunition to come and get it in the winter; and, best of all, certain dates for them to arrive in the spring and close their hunts. This assured us of getting only prime, seasoned skins, and such skins it was a pleasure to handle, since the paper upon which this is printed is not whiter than every skin that passed thru my hands in those two years.
I am writing of the days before the Canadian Pacific Railway passed thru that country when there were no whiskey peddlers going about demoralizing the Indians. There being no opposition we regulated the catch of furs. When we found, by general report of the hunters, that a certain kind of fur was becoming scarce, we lowered the price for that particular animal's pelt so low as to not make it worth their while to trap it. For instance, while I was there, the beaver was having our protection, and, as a consequence, in three years every little pond or creek became stocked with beaver. The Indian hunter did not suffer, because we paid the most liberal prices for the skins that were most plentiful. This policy, however, could only be carried out at places where there was no competition.
The gentleman in charge was the representative of the "Great Company" and what he said was law. Our interests and those of the Indians ran on parallel lines.
It was to our interest to see all that the Indian required should be of the very best. That he should have good, strong, warm clothing, good ammunition and double-tower proved guns was essential to his ability to hunt, his comfort and his very life.
It was drilled into the hunters at each yearly send off, that if he did not exert himself to hunt sufficient to pay the advances given him, that the "Great Father" would not, or could not, send goods for the next year.
It was explained to them that their furs were bartered in far off countries for other new guns, blankets, twine, capots, duffle, copper kettles and other wants of the Indians. As we wanted the hunters to be well clothed and supplied with necessaries we imported no such useless trash as the frontier posts were obliged to keep to cope with the free traders.
If an Indian took a four point H. B. blanket, even with the rough usage it was subjected to, it would keep him and his wife warm for a year. The next season, a new one being bought, the old one did service for another winter as lining for mittens, strips for socks, and leggings for the younger branches.
Steel traps being dear twenty-five years ago, and the long canoe transport being costly so far into the interior, we did not import them very largely.
Bears, martens, minks and even beaver and otter were killed in deadfalls; and with different sizes of twine, the Indians snared rabbits, lynx, and, in the spring, even the bear.
The Indians principal, and I may say, only tools for hunting and for his support were his axe, ice chisel, twine and his gun. I mention the gun last because the hunter only used it for caribou and moose, ducks and geese. Ammunition was too costly to use it for anything that could be trapped or snared.
A life chief was elected by the Indians themselves, and he was supported in his management of the tribe by the officer in charge of the post. The chief had precedence in being outfitted, his canoe headed the fleet of canoes on arriving at the post in the spring, and was the one to lead off in the autumn. His was the only pack of furs carried up from the beach, by our men, to the store, and he set the example to his young men by being the first to pay his last year's advances. To him we gave, as a present, a new suit of black cloth clothes, boots, hat, etc., and to his wife a bright tartan wool dress piece, and a tartan shawl of contrasting pattern.
Our currency, or medium of trade, was called "Made Beaver," equivalent in most articles to a dollar. The value of each skin was computed in "Made Beaver." For every hundred of "Made Beaver" of skins that the Indian brought in we allowed him as a gratuity "Called Rum," ten "Made Beaver," he was at liberty, after paying his debt, to trade whatever he fancied out of the shop to the extent of his "Rum." But unless he paid his debt in full the "Rum" he was entitled to went towards his account. This, however, seldom happened, because one that did not pay his debt in full was looked down upon by his friends, and his supplies for the next year were reduced in proportion to his deficiency.
What a change has taken place in the past quarter of a century. I hear from the person now in charge of that post (it is kept up principally now to protect our further interior post) that all those Indians are dead and gone. Their descendants number scarcely one-third of the original band. They are thieves, drunkards and liars as a rule; the white man's diseases and fire-water have left their trail. White trappers have penetrated their country in all directions from the line of railway and exterminated most of the fur-bearing animals. Instead of, as their forefathers, getting a good supply of all necessary articles to assure them of comfort for a year, these, their sons and grandsons, can get no one to risk advancing them. They live principally, now, on fish and when they do succeed in killing a skin, the most likely thing to happen is, they will travel many miles to barter it for whiskey.
This is one of the results of railways and civilization. I can say with the late lamented Custer "The good Indians are dead."
A phase of hunting that I do not remember ever seeing described in the H-T-T is of tracking bears to their den and killing them there. The two seasons that this mode of hunting is resorted to by the Indians is after the first fall of snow and again in February, March or April, according to the different locality of the country, when the snow is soft and the days are mild and spring-like. Some very knowing trailers will follow up signs even before there is snow on the ground. They watch out for broken branches, shredded birch bark or other stuff which the bear has torn down to make his bed.
At times, however, the bear will change his mind, even after considerable work has been done, and move off to some other ridge of hills and there begin over again in what he has decided a more favorable situation. It is a much more dangerous job to tackle a newly denned bear than in the spring when they are stupid from their long spell of hibernation. Rarely does a lone hunter undertake to kill a bear in his den. It requires two persons for safety and convenience of work.
In hunting out a bear's den a knowledge of what is a likely locality shortens the work very much. There are dens found in freak and unlooked for places, but as a general rule there are certain conditions that go towards their selection and one who knows these, narrows down his area of hunting very considerably.
The dens are, as a rule, on a high elevation with a southern aspect. This selection is made, no doubt, with the knowledge given by instinct that it keeps clear longer in the autumn and opens earlier with the melting snows of spring. In my long experience I have found bears three times in very unlikely places. One time, when on a long trail with dispatches, two Indians and myself jumped, one after the other, from the trunk of a large fallen pine, with our snow shoes, fair and square onto a very large bear who had in the fall made his bed at the lea side of this shelter and allowed the winter snows to fall and bury him.
It was only three weeks later when we were returning by the same trail that the leading man of the party, when getting to this spot and looking for an easy place to clamber up onto the giant trunk noticed a suspiciously frosted little breathing hole in the snow. Word was passed back that perhaps there was a bear there. As we had no firearms in the party not even a pistol, the first thing to do was to cut good stout hardwood poles about five feet long.
A large place was well tramped down with our snow shoes to insure good solid footing and when all was ready, with our packs and extra things out of the way, one of the party was detailed to get up on the tree trunk and with a strong birch lever insert it near where we located the bear to be and pry him out, the other two to belabor him with their poles. The man on the log had such a strong leverage that his first effort broke the bear clear out of the snow and before he had time to rouse from his stupor he was dead.
The Indians, who were middle-aged men, thought it a great joke that we should all have tramped on this bear and three weeks later found and killed him. The skin, of course, was at its primest state, so we packed it turn and turn about, to the fort, where each received his share of its value.
Another time I camped almost on the very shore of a small lake with a youth for my companion. We were to start a yard of moose in the early morning on a mountain on the opposite shore. In the morning while I was cooking breakfast, the youth went a few yards away to cut a pole to hang our extra provisions on that we were leaving at the camp.
He had hardly left the fireplace when I heard him call me. There I found him gazing intently at a telltale frosted hole in the snow. We both came to the same conclusion that it was the breathing hole of some animal and that animal most likely a bear. We decided not to disturb him until our moose hunt was over, so quietly withdrew from the vicinity. I may say to close this incident that two days later, after killing three moose, we dug out the bear sufficiently to locate his shoulder and shot him in his den.
Another unlocked for place was when landing at a portage very late in the fall, was to find a half-sized bear had made his bed simply at the foot of a stump. There was no snow yet on the ground and he woke sufficiently to gaze on us with a stupid stare. The next minute he had his quietus.
I always seem to wander away from my subject. Whether it adds or detracts from the interest of the article I know not, but I assure the reader it is unintentional, but these long past incidents and adventures will crop up in my memory and before I think to pull myself up they are committed to paper. Well, once again!
The most likely places to find a bear denned up are under a ledge of rocks, under the roots of a partly fallen tree, under an over-hanging sand bank, or in a rocky crevice in the mountain side. The hunters, when they have tracked him to or found his den begin by reading all the visible signs and lay their plans accordingly. If the bed is some little distance back from the door or opening, they begin by staking up the doorway so nearly closed that the bear will have considerable delay in getting out.
If to stake it is impracticable on account of the formation, they gather rocks or sections of logs and stuff up most of the opening. Some venturesome hunters will stand a leg at each side of the opening with their axe poised ready to brain him while he is endeavoring to make his exit, the man's companion prodding him out from the rear. Other hunters (the writer amongst them) prefer to remain with his rifle ready for business at a few yards from the doorway. This is safer and more reasonable.
Most bears come out into daylight in a more or less dazed state, but I have known some with the very first introduction of the pole into the rear premises to come out with a rush, carrying obstructions and everything before them. At such times unless a man is pretty nervy he is apt to get "Bear Fever" and he should not be blamed, for the situation is trying.
When the bear has taken up his quarters far back in a crevice of the rocks where a pole from the surface can find no opening to be introduced, then the plan of smoking him out has to be resorted to. It is done in this way. The stuff to be used, some birch bark to ignite it on top of which is placed rotten wood or broken up punk if procurable, is rammed back a distance into the hole. At the end of the withdrawn pole a lighted twist of bark is pushed back and the doorway quickly blocked as nearly tight as possible.
The hunter retires at once to a safe distance with his gun ready for action and awaits events. He does not, as a rule, have to wait long, for when that smoke becomes unbearable, Mr. Bear comes out in a hurry and a pretty mad bear at that. It is not advisable to introduce too much inflammable substance, for it is apt to spoil the fur when the bear comes thru the fiery ordeal. Rotten popple is next to punk to make a pungent and unbearable smoke. When such penetrates the bear's nostrils he is bound to wake up and his one desire is to get fresh air immediately.
The tracking of a bear even in pretty deep snow takes time, for unless he knows some one is after him he circles and zigzags about, which trail requires attention to under run successfully. However, once he becomes possessed with the knowledge that he is being pursued, he makes a pretty straight line away from danger. At such a time a small cur dog is invaluable, for while he will not attack the bear, by his yelping and barking he delays his progress and at each pause of the bear the hunter is gaining ground.
To kill a bear that is already denned the dog is better left at home, for he will be of no use and you run the risk (if he is plucky) of his being killed in the den. For all kinds of hunting I have found the small dog much preferable to the one of large size. A small dog can readily be put in one's game bag and carried up near the game one is to start. He is lighter and takes up less room in a canoe, the bones and scraps of the camp are sufficient for his support, he will run in and nip at the heels of a moose or deer and get out of the way and repeat his barking, while a big dog would be getting into trouble and endangering his life.
I have often carried my hunting dog in my game bag up a mountain and only slipped him when the moose had jumped his bed. The dog being fresh he very soon had the moose at a standstill. In hunting bear the small dog has the discretion to keep out of his reach and be contented with barking and running him around. Whereas the bigger dogs are fearless and run in on the quarry generally with fatal results to themselves, for there is no modern pugilist quicker with his fists than a bear with his paw, and let the bear get but one good whack at a dog and that dog is no better thereafter than a dead dog.
Among the many young apprentice officers who have been under my orders in the Hudson's Bay Company, none was so conspicuously unfortunate as Ralson. His bungling into trouble became so frequent that it got to be a byword amongst the other clerks and employes and at last they came to me and said, "Mr. Hunter, you ought really to forbid Ralson's going outside the stockades unless some one is along to take care of him."
For the short while he was in our service (three years) he had, as far as I know, the record for varied mishaps. These were of so frequent occurrence that at the end of his contract he was allowed to leave and, by my advice, he returned to his people in England. Good luck appeared to go hand in hand with his misadventures, for somehow he came out alive, still, to say the least, the uncertainty every time he left the post as to whether he would return, kept one's nerves forever on the ragged edge and notwithstanding, he quickly became an adept at most work connected with the service. I was glad to see him leave the service because, being under my orders and not yet to man's estate, I considered myself in a great measure responsible for his safety.
I call to memory his having almost cut off the index finger of his left hand, putting the axe right thru the knuckle joint. This bled profusely and he was on the sick list for a long while. I think the next accident very shortly after his hand healed, was to put the corner of his axe into the cap of his knee. This was more serious than the other and took weeks to get well. On the whole he was very fortunate not to have a stiff leg for the remainder of his life.
Another time he undertook to look for a man who was over-due at the post and was expected to come by a trail near the lake shore. This was a case of the biter being bitten, for the man turned up all right and had to join a party to hunt Ralson. As he told us afterwards he thought to improve on the trail by cutting curves. Dusk coming on he became hopelessly lost himself, neither being able to find the trail nor his way out of the forest. The search party only found him the following afternoon, tattered, hungry and generally woe-begone. A picture of him taken as he entered the square that day would have been interesting.
The chances are that he might never have been found and thus have perished, had a quieting effect on him for some days but the old restlessness got hold of him again, and he had to be away hunting up fresh trouble. This time he had a companion and they went in a canoe to hunt ducks. His companion (a half-breed) debarked on the river bank to crawl up to some birds and placed an injunction on Ralson to remain quietly seated in the canoe. When the half-breed returned to the river bank it was to find the canoe upset and Ralson sitting on the shore dripping wet. On comparing notes it was found a rifle I had lent him was at that precise moment at the bottom of the river in about ten feet of water.
It would never do to return to the post and report this mishap and the loss of the gun, so Ralson undressed and began to dive for its recovery. Robert, the man, told me, when describing the adventure, that he never laughed so much in his life as when sitting on the bank and watching Ralson making desperate and repeated efforts to recover the weapon. He was finally successful and exacted a cast iron promise from Robert not to inform the people at the post. A promise which Robert promptly broke.
An accident, however, which almost cost him his life, altho after he was safe at the post, caused us considerable merriment, came about in this way, and I expect he will remember it as long as he lives, if yet alive. We were sending an express canoe from the post to the nearest point on the frontier to mail dispatches to headquarters. The distance is about fifty miles over lakes, rivers and portages. The usual time for such a trip was three days for the round trip. Ralson begged to accompany the men, partly for an outing and partly to see the frontier village of Luqueville.
Their route lay thru a chain of small lakes on which I had a couple of bear traps set. To save me a trip to visit these traps I told Robert, the guide, to kill any bear he found caught and reset the traps, cache the meat and skin and bring it with them on their return journey. These instructions were simple enough and I was not anxious about Ralson. Ralson, however, changed all these plans for, when they reached the first trap, in which they found a bear caught and Robert had killed it, Ralson proposed he should stay behind, skin and cut up the meat and visit the second trap which was a short distance off the canoe route, and then he was to come home on foot by skirting the lakes along a sometimes used trail, taking the skin with him.
Robert thought this plan a good one as it would expedite matters for he and his companion to make a quick trip. When, however, he got back to the place after an absence of about forty hours and found the skin and meat lying where he had left them and no sign of Ralson, he was quick to understand that something had happened. What that something was, however, he was at a loss to settle in his mind. All at once, while standing there considering, the thought struck him that possibly Ralson was caught in the other trap. Such things had happened to men accustomed to trapping and how much more likely to a careless fellow like the missing man.
Giving expression to his thought Robert and his companion both hurried off towards the other trap, which was about a mile up the creek. When they came to a soft place on the trail and saw only the footprints of a man going and none returning, Robert was convinced the poor fellow was in the trap, whether alive or dead they refrained from contemplating. What a sight met their gaze when coming in sight of the bear pen! There was poor Ralson lying prone on his back motionless and to all appearances dead, the great, heavy mass of metal fast to his leg and his pocket knife with broken blade lying near at hand, evidently thrown there as useless. They saw how he had hacked at the strong birch drag to which the chain was fastened until his knife became useless and then given up in despair.
Ralson, upon examination, was found to be yet alive, but unconscious and covered with blue flies, his hands and face were swollen from the mosquito poison and covered with dirt he had scratched while trying to dig for water. He looked a frightful and pitiful object. Luckily the men who had found him were quick to think and in a remarkably short space of time they had the leg freed from its iron clasp. One ran for a pannikin of cold water while the other twisted a piece of birch bark into the shape of a horn, with the small end open just enough to allow the water to trickle thru gently into his throat.
Next they bathed and washed his face and hands and shortly had the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes. Robert now held up his head and placed the remaining water in the pannikin to his lips. This he managed to drink and blessed, blessed water, it revived him completely. The other man was then sent back to the canoe for the tea kettle and provisions, Robert starting a fire during his absence. Tea and partridge broth made and administered in small quantities at first helped him to regain his strength. His youthful vitality soon asserted itself and after he was propped up and made comfortable he managed to feed himself with some of the shredded meat.
After partaking of this food and drink the boot was cut off, the poor swollen foot bathed and bound up and then they carried him on an improvised stretcher very carefully and tenderly out to the canoe. Excepting two short portages it was all water way to the post at which place they arrived just at dusk. Souder, our cook, when he saw them helping Ralson out of the canoe said, "Mein Gott! Vich end of Ralson is sick dis time? Can't you tole me, eh?" and it was pretty hard to tell from his limp appearance.
After he had recovered sufficiently to be questioned as to how he got into the trap he said he had reached into the back of the house to affix the bait and forgot the trap and stepped into it. The meat that he had cut up was, of course, spoiled, but the skin after being washed and scraped, proved to have sustained no damage.
Ralson had no further mishaps in this country for when his foot was healed he took his discharge and returned to a well-off mother in London who could afford to have a keeper to care for him if so inclined. This happened years ago and as I never heard from him he may have joined the English Yeomanry and gone to South Africa and been killed on the firing line. If so, his mishaps are finished and so is my story.