The Calumet Or Tobacco-pipe Dance
The Calumet Or Tobacco-pipe Dance
Ninahani, &c, ongo; ninahani, &c, hoho; ninahani, &c.,Kawa bannoge atchicha Koge ake awā;Banoge atchicha shagobe hé hé hé! Mintingo mitadePini pini hé! Atchicha lé machi mi nam ba miktande,Miktande pini pini hé!
Dancing was little else than posturing and jumping in masks—usually made to look like the head of a wild beast. But the men were usually very athletic. Wrestling competitions were almost universal, especially as a means of winning a wife. The conqueror in a wrestling match took the wife or wives of the defeated man. Their running powers for endurance and speed became justly celebrated.
"Their principal and most inveterate game is that of the hoop," writes Alexander Henry, sen., "which proves as ruinous to them as the platter does to the Saulteurs (Ojibwé)." This game was played in the following manner. A hoop was made about two feet in diameter, nearly covered with dressed leather, and trimmed with quillwork, feathers, bits of metal, and other trinkets, on which were certain particular marks. Two persons played at the same time, by rolling the hoop and accompanying it, one on each side; when it was about to fall, each gently threw one arrow in such a manner that the hoop might fall upon it, and according to that mark on the hoop which rested on the arrows they reckoned the game. They also played another game by holding some article in one hand, or putting it into one of two shoes, the other hand or shoe being empty. They had another game which required forty to fifty small sticks, as thick as a goose quill and about a foot long; these were all shuffled together and then divided into two bunches, and according to the even or odd numbers of sticks in the bunch chosen, the players lost or won.
A favourite game amongst the Ojibwé is described as "the hurdle", which is another name for the Canadian national game of La Crosse. When about to play, the men, of all ages, would strip themselves almost naked, but dress their hair in great style, put ornaments on their arms, and belts round their waists, and paint their faces and bodies in the most elaborate style. Each man was provided with "a hurdle", an instrument made of a small stick of wood about three feet long, bent at the end to a small circle, in which a loose piece of network is fixed, forming a cavity big enough to receive a leather ball about the size of a man's fist. Everything being prepared, a level plain about half a mile long was chosen, with proper barriers or goals at each end. Having previously formed into two equal parts, they assembled in the very middle of the field, and the game began by throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when instantly both parties (writes an eyewitness) "formed a singular group of naked men, painted in different colours and in the most comical attitudes imaginable, holding their rackets elevated in the air to catch the ball". Whoever was so fortunate as to catch it in his net ran with it to the barrier with all his might, supported by his party; whilst the opponents were pursuing and endeavouring to knock the ball out of the net. He who succeeded in doing so ran in the same manner towards the opposite barrier, and was, of course, pursued in his turn. If in danger of being overtaken, he might throw it with his hurdle towards any of his associates who happened to be nearer the barrier than himself. They had a particular knack of throwing it a great distance in this manner, so that the best runners had not always the advantage; and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running, the ball never dropped out of their "hurdle".
"The best of three heats wins the game, and, besides the honour acquired on such occasions, a considerable prize is adjudged to the victors. The vanquished, however, generally challenge their adversaries to renew the game the next day, which is seldom refused. The game then becomes more important, as the honour of the whole village is at stake, and it is carried on with redoubled impetuosity, every object which might impede them in their career is knocked down and trodden under foot without mercy, and before the game is decided, it is a common thing to see numbers sprawling on the ground with wounded legs and broken heads, yet this never creates any disputes or ill-will after the play is decided" (Alexander Henry, sen.).
It has been computed that in the middle of the eighteenth century the Amerindian population of the vast territories now known as the Dominion of Canada numbered about 300,000. It now stands at an approximate 110,000. The chief diminution has taken place in Newfoundland, Lower and Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Assiniboia, and British Columbia. There may even have been an increase in the north and north-west. The first great blow to the Amerindians of these regions was the smallpox epidemic of 1780. The next was the effect of the strong drink[14]introduced by the agents of the Hudson's Bay and, still more, the two North-west Companies. Phthisis or pulmonary consumption also seems to have been introduced from Europe (though Hearne thought that the Northern Indians had it before the white man came). In fact, before the European invaded America neither Eskimo nor Amerindian seem to have had many diseases. They suffered from ulcers, scurvy, digestive troubles, rheumatism, headache, bronchitis, and heart complaints, but from few, if any, "germ" diseases.
Some of the agents of the North-west Company apologize in their writings for the amount of rum that was circulated among the Amerindians at the orders of that company to stimulate trade, by saying that it was seven parts water. Nevertheless it excited them to madness, as the following extracts show. These are mostly taken from the journals of Alexander Henry the Younger, but they are typical of what was recorded by many other writers who describe the far interior of British North America between 1775 and 1835.
"To see a house full of drunken Indians, consisting of men, women, and children, is a most unpleasant sight; for, in that condition, they often wrangle, pull each other by the hair, and fight. At times, ten or twelve of both sexes may be seen fighting each other promiscuously, until at last they all fall on the floor, one upon another, some spilling rum out of a small kettle or dish which they hold in their hands, while others are throwing up what they have just drunk. To add to this uproar, a number of children, some on their mothers' shoulders, and others running about and taking hold of their clothes, are constantly bawling, the elder ones, through fear that their parents may be stabbed, or that some other misfortune may befal them in the fray. These shrieks of the children form a very unpleasant chorus to the brutal noise kept up by their drunken parents."
"In a drinking match at the Hills yesterday, Gros Bras (Thick Arms) in a fit of jealousy stabbed Aupusoi to death with a hand-dague (dagger); the first stroke opened his left side, the second his belly, and the third his breast; he never stirred, although he had a knife in his belt, and died instantly. Soon after this Aupusoi's brother, a boy about ten years of age, took the deceased's gun, loaded it with two balls, and approached Gros Bras's tent. Putting the muzzle of the gun through the door the boy fired the two balls into his breast and killed him dead, just as he was reproaching his wife for her affection for Aupusoi, and boasting of the revenge he had taken. The little fellow ran into the woods and hid. Little Shell (Petite Coquille) found the old woman, Aupusoi's mother, in her tent; he instantly stabbed her. Ondainoiache then came in, took the knife, and gave her a second stab. Little Shell, in his turn taking the knife, gave a third blow. In this manner did these two rascals continue to murder the old woman, as long as there was any life in her. The boy escaped into Langlois' house, and was kept hid until they were all sober. Next morning a hole was dug in the ground, and all three were buried together. This affair kept the Indians from hunting, as Gros Bras was nearly related to the principal hunters."
"Grand' Gueule stabbed Perdrix Blanche with a knife in six places. Perdrix Blanche fighting with his wife, fell in the fire and almost roasted, but had strength enough left notwithstanding his wounds to bite her nose off."
"In the first drinking match a murder was committed in an Assiniboine tent, but fortunately it was done by an Ojibwé. L'Hiver stabbed Mishewashence to the heart three times, and killed him instantly. The wife and children cried out, and some of my people ran to the tent just as L'Hiver came out with the bloody knife in his hand, expecting we would lay hold of him. The first person he met was William Henry, whom he attempted to stab in the breast; but Henry avoided the stroke, and returned the compliment with a blow of his cudgel on the fellow's head. This staggered him; but instantly recovering he made another attempt to stab Henry. Foiled in this design, and observing several coming out of the fort, he took to his heels and ran into the woods like a deer. I chased him with some of my people, but he was too fleet for us. We buried the murdered man, who left a widow and five helpless orphans, having no relations on this river. The behaviour of two of the youngest was really piteous while we were burying the body; they called upon their deceased father not to leave them, but to return to the tent, and tried to prevent the men from covering the corpse with earth, screaming in a terrible manner; the mother was obliged to take them away."
"Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights, during which it has been drink, fight—drink, fight—drink, and fight again—guns, axes, and knives being their weapons—very disagreeable."
"Mithanasconce was so troublesome (in drink) that we were obliged to tie him with ropes to prevent his doing mischief. He was stabbed in the back in three different places about a month ago. His wounds were still open, and had an ugly appearance; in his struggling to get loose they burst out afresh and bled a great deal. We had much trouble to stop the blood, as the fellow was insensible to pain or danger; his only aim was to bite us. We had some narrow escapes, until we secured his mouth, and then he fell asleep."
"Some Red Lake Indians having traded here for liquor which they took to their camp, quarrelled amongst themselves. One jumped on another and bit his nose off. It was some time before the piece could be found; but, at last, by tumbling and tossing the straw about, it was recovered, stuck on, and bandaged, as best the drunken people could, in hopes it would grow again" (Alexander Henry, jun.).
As regards drunkenness, several authors among the early explorers declared that the French Canadian voyageurs were more disagreeable when drunk even than the Amerindians, for their quarrels were noisier and more deadly. "Indeed I had rather have fifty drunken Indians in the fort than sixty-five drunken Canadians", writes Alexander Henry in 1810. And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when intoxicated.
Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:—
"What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop of liquor in the country! If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs (Ojibwés), it is always in a drinking match. We may truly say that liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west. Great bawling and lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor to wash away grief."
As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them. But in Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated. Between the middle of the seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland haddestroyedthe native population of Beothik Indians.
Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks lived an ideal life for savages. They were well clothed with beasts' skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes. Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring. Vast flocks of willow grouse (like ptarmigan) were everywhere to be met with; the many lakes were covered with geese, swans, and ducks. The woods were full of pigeons; the salmon swarmed up the rivers tobreed; the sea round the coasts was—except in the wintertime—the richest fishery in the world. They caught lobsters in the rock pools, and speared or clubbed seals and great walruses for their flesh and oil. An occasional whale provided them with oil, blubber, and meat. The Great Auk—which could not fly—swarmed in millions on the cliffs and islets. So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp. In the summertime their fish and flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing wild—strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and whortleberries. Thecapillaireplant yielded a lusciously sweet, sugary substance.[15]
Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots
Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots
The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes and a light-coloured skin. The early French and Biscayan seamen, who resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries, reported these "Red Indians" to be "an ingenious and tractable people, if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a little bread or some such small hire".
Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks—then about four thousand in number—were ill-treated by the European fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts. They soon greatly decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men. The French, when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or "Red" Indians. The Eskimo attacked them from Labrador. Finally, when Newfoundland became British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy) which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and Hispaniola. By about 1830 they were all extinct. As late as 1823 the following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are hidden behind the initials C and A. "When near Badger Bay they fell in with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting food. The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at, when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired. This was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed." Even English women in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill "in shooting Red Indians and seals".
"For a period of nearly two hundred years this barbarity had continued, and it was considered meritorious to shoot a Red Indian. 'To go to look for Indians' came to be as much a phrase as to look for partridges (ptarmigan). They were harassed from post to post, from island to island; their hunting and fishing stations were unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as curiosities to the rabble at the fairs of the western towns of Christian England at twopence a piece."[16]
Too late—when the worry and anxiety of the Napoleonic wars were over—the British Government sent a commission of naval officers to enquire into the treatment of the Beothiks by the settlers. One woman alone remained, as a frightened semi-captive, to be consoled and soothed. There are Indians in the south of Newfoundland at the present day, but they are Mikmaks who come over from the adjoining regions of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. So tender, indeed, is the modern government of the island towards these (out of compunction for the past) that they are allowed to kill the reindeer and other wild animals without the licence which is exacted from white people, and so are actually injuring Newfoundland's resources!
Since the great Dominion of Canada was brought into existence in 1871 as a unified, responsible government, the treatment of the remaining Amerindian natives of British North America has been admirable; and splendid work has been done in reclaiming them to a wholesome civilization by the Moravian, Roman Catholic, and Church of England missionaries.
1There may have been an earlier race inhabiting north-east America which was killed out or driven away by the last Glacial period.
2"The dogs of the Northern Indians are of various sizes and colours, but all of them have a foxy or wolf-like appearance, sharp noses, bushy tails, and sharp ears standing erect." (Samuel Hearne).Hearne also remarks that the northern Indians had a superstitious reverence and liking for the wolf. They would frequently go to the mouth of the burrows where the female wolves lived with their young, take out the puppies and play with them, and even paint the faces of the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.When first observed by Europeans the unhappy Beothiks (of Newfoundland) had apparently no domestic dogs, only "tame wolves", whom they distinguished from the wild wolves by marking their ears. They were made more angry by the European seamen attacking and killing the wolves than by anything else they did. Apparently some kind of alliance had been struck up between the Beothiks—a nation of hunters—and the wolf packs which followed in their tracks; and the Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs". Later on it was realized that the islanddidproduce a special breed—the celebrated Newfoundland dog—the original type of which was much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour, with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the "Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland type, and have thought that the latter may not be altogether of wolf extraction, but be descended from the dogs brought from Norway and Iceland by the Norse adventurers who visited Newfoundland in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
3Of which they made very serviceable chisels.
4See also pp.156,164,186, and199. In this list I have put in italics the names of the tribes more important in history, and in capitals the principal group names.
5Kinistino, Kiristineaux, Kilistino; called "Crees" or "Kris" for short.
6"Iroquois" was a name invented by Champlain (see p.69). Apparently this confederation called themselvesHodenosauni. The termination "ois" in all French-American names is pronounced "wa"—Irokwá.
7The far-famed termSiouis said to have been an abbreviation of one of the original French names for this type of Amerindian,Nadouessiou. In early books they are often called the Nadouessies.
8These northern Indians are described by Hearne as having very low foreheads, small eyes, high cheekbones, Roman noses, broad cheeks, and long, broad chins. Their skins were soft, smooth and polished, somewhat copper-coloured, and inclining towards a dingy brown. The hair of the head was black, strong, and straight. They were not in general above middle size, though well proportioned.
9"It is surprising how dexterous all these natives of the plains are in communicating their ideas by signs. They hold conferences for several hours, upon different subjects, during the whole of which time not a single word is pronounced upon either side, and still they appear to comprehend each other perfectly well. This mode of communication is natural to them; their gestures are made with the greatest ease, and they never seem to be at a loss for a sign to express their meaning" (Alex. Henry the Younger, 1800). But it should also be noted that during the last hundred years the peoples belonging to the Nūtka-Columbian group have developed a trade language which they use in common. This is a mixture of Chinūk, English, French, Chinese, and Hawaaian.
10The manner of courtship among the Ojibwés seemed to Peter Grant not only singular, but rude. "The lover begins his first addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs, small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals of marriage are made by word of mouth."
11See also p.249.
12See p.150.
13In the far north-west, on the rivers of the Pacific slope, the natives used spruce-fir bark instead of birch.
14Before the white man came toNorthAmerica the natives had no form of intoxicating drink.
15This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry (Chiogenes hispidula).
16These are the remarks of an English chaplain in the island, quoted by the Rev. George Patterson, who contributed a most interesting article on the vanished Beothiks of Newfoundland to the Royal Society of Canada in 1891.
[TABLE OF CONTENTS]
In a general way the discovery of the main features of the vast Canadian Dominion may be thus apportioned amongst the different European nations. First came the British, led by an Italian pilot. They discovered Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. Then came the Portuguese, who discovered the north-east of Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, while a French expedition under an Italian captain reached to Nova Scotia and southern Newfoundland. A Spanish expedition under a Portuguese leader shortly afterwards reached the coast of New Brunswick. After that the French from Brittany, Normandy, and the west coast of France laid bare thewestcoast of Newfoundland, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the River St. Lawrence, and the Great Lakes.
Sir Francis Drake led the way in the exploration of the north-west coast of North America. He reached, in 1579, as far north on that side as the country of Oregon, which he christened New Albion. This action stirred up the Spaniards, who explored the coast of California, and in 1591-2 sent an Ionian Island pilot, Apostolos Valeriano (commonly called Juan de Fuca), in charge of an expedition to discover the imagined Straits of Anian. He gave strength to this idea of a continuous water route across temperate North America by entering (in 1592) the straits, since called Juan de Fuca, between Vancouver Island and the modern State of Washington, and passing thence into the Straits of Georgia, which bear a striking resemblance in their features to the Straits of Magellan.
French explorers and adventurers, as we have seen, penetrated from the basin of the St. Lawrence to the north and west until they touched the southern extension of Hudson Bay (James's Bay), discovered Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan Rivers, the upper Missouri and the whole course of the Mississippi, and finally recorded the existence of the Rocky Mountains.
Parallel with these movements the British discovered the broad belt of sea between Greenland and North America and the whole area of Hudson Bay. After the French had ceased to reign in North America, the British were to reveal the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, the Yukon River, and the coasts and islands of British Columbia and Alaska.
The first Europeans, however, to reach Alaska were Russians led by Vitus Bering, a great Danish sea captain in the Russian service. Bering was born in 1680 at Horsens, in the province of Aarhuus, E. Denmark, and entered the service of Peter the Great, who was desirous of knowing where Asia terminated and America began. Bering discovered the straits which bear his name in 1728, and in 1741 was wrecked and died on Bering's Island. Captain James Cook, the British discoverer of Australia and of so many Pacific islands, completed the work of Bering in 1788 in charting the north-west American coast right into the Arctic Ocean.
It has already been related in Chapter III how the Hudson's Bay Chartered Company came to be founded. Soon after their first pioneers were established, in 1670, at Fort Nelson, on the west coast of Hudson Bay, near where York Factory now stands, there was born—or brought out from England as an infant—a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at Fort Nelson. As he played with them, and they returned his affection, he learnt their language, and—for some inconceivable reason—this gave great offence to the stupid governor of the fort (indeed, when Kellsey as a grown man, some years afterwards, compiled a vocabulary of the Kri language for the use of traders, the Hudson's Bay Company ordered it to be suppressed). Stupid Governor Geyer not only objected to Kellsey picking up the Kri language, but punished him most severely for that and for his boyish tricks and jokes; so much so, that Kellsey, when he was about ten years old, ran away with the returning Indians, some of whom had grown very fond of him whilst they stayed at Fort Nelson.
Six years afterwards an Indian brought to the governor of the fort a letter written by Kellsey in charcoal on a piece of white birch bark. In this he asked the governor's pardon for running away, and his permission to return to the fort. As a kind reply was sent, Kellsey appeared not long afterwards grown into a young man, accompanied by an Indian wife and attended by a party of Indians. He was dressed exactly like them, but differed from them in the respect which he showed to his native wife. She attempted to accompany her husband into the factory or place of business, and the governor stopped her; but Kellsey at once told him in English that he would not enter himself if his wife was not suffered to go with him, and so the governor relented. After this Kellsey (who must then have been about seventeen) seems to have regularly enrolled himself in 1688 in the service of the Company, and he was employed as a kind of commercial traveller who made long journeys to the north-west to beat up a fur trade for the Company and induce tribes of Indians to make long journeys every summer to the Company's factory with the skins they had secured between the autumn and the spring. In this way Kellsey penetrated into the country of the Assiniboines, and he finally reached a more distant tribe or nation called by the long name of Néwátamipoet.[1]Kellsey first of all made for Split Lake, up the Nelson River, and thence paddled westwards in his canoe for a distance of 71 miles. Here he abandoned the canoe, and, for what he estimated as 316 miles, he tramped through a wooded country, first covered with fir and pine trees, and farther on with poplar and birch. Apparently he then reached a river flowing into Reindeer Lake. In a general way his steps must have taken him in the direction of Lake Athapaska.
On the way he had much trouble with the Assiniboin Indians and Kris, with whom he had caught up, and with whom he was to travel in the direction of these mysterious Néwátamipoets. The last-named tribe, who were probably of the Athapaskan group, had killed, a few months previously, three of the Kri women, and the Kri Indians who belonged to Kellsey's party were bent, above all things, on attacking the Néwátamipoets and punishing them for this outrage. Kellsey only wished to open up peaceful relations with them and create a great trade in furs with the Hudson's Bay Company, so he kept pleading with the Indians not to go to war with the Néwátamipoets. On this journey, however, one of the Kri Indians fell ill and died. The next day the body was burnt with much ceremony—first the flesh, and then the bones—and after this funeral the companions of the dead man began to reason as to the cause of his death, and suddenly blamed Kellsey. Kellsey had obstructed them from their purpose of avenging their slain women, therefore the gods of the tribe were angry and claimed this victim in the man who had died. Kellsey was very near being sent to the other world to complete the sacrifice; but he arranged for "a feast of tobacco"—in other words, a calm deliberation and the smoking of the pipe of peace. He explained to the angry Indians that his Company had not supplied him with guns and ammunition with which to go to war, but to induce them to embark on the fur trade and to kill wild animals for their skins. If, instead of this, they went to war, or injured him, they need never again go down to Fort Nelson for any further trade or supplies. Four days afterwards, however, the attention of the whole party was concentrated on bison.
Bison could now be seen in abundance. Kellsey was already acquainted with the musk ox, which he had seen in the colder regions near to Hudson Bay; but the bison seemed to him quite different, with horns growing like those of an English ox, black and short. In the middle of September he reached the country of the Néwátamipoets, and presented to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common denizen of the western regions of North America. According to his own account, he and one of the Indians with him were attacked by two grizzly bears and obliged to climb into the branches of trees. The bears followed them; but Kellsey fired and killed one, and later on the other also. For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant". Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast of Hudson Bay.
The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony Hendry.[2]Anthony Hendry left York factory in 1754, with a company of Kri Indians, to make a great journey of exploration to the west, and with the deliberate intention of wintering with the natives and not returning for that purpose to Hudson Bay. By means of canoe travel and portages he reached Oxford Lake. From here he gained Moose Lake, and soon afterwards "the broad waters of the Saskatchewan—the first Englishman to see this great river of the western plains".[3]Twenty-two miles upstream from the point where it reached the Saskatchewan he came to a French fort which had only been standing for a year, and which represented probably the farthest advance northwards of the French Canadians.
Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland
Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland
[LARGER MAP]
The situation was a rather delicate one, for the Hudson's Bay Company was a thorn in the side of French Canada. However, in this year—1754—the two nations were not actually at war, and the two Frenchmen in charge of the fort received him "in a very genteel manner", and invited him into their home, where he readily accepted their hospitality. At first they spoke of detaining him till the commandant of the fort returned, but abandoned this idea after reflection, and Hendry continued his journey up the Saskatchewan. He then left the river and marched on foot over the plains which separate the North and the South Saskatchewan Rivers. The South Saskatchewan was found to be a high stream covered with birch, poplar, elder, and2 fir. He and his Indian guides were searching for the horse-riding Blackfeet Indians.[4]All the Amerindians known to the Hudson's Bay Company hitherto travelled on foot, using snowshoes in the winter; but vague rumours had reached the Company that in the far south-west there were great nations of Indians which did all their hunting on horseback.
Hendry had now found them, and he also met a small tribe of Assiniboins—the Mekesue or Eagle Indians—who differed from the surrounding tribes by going about, at any rate in the summertime, absolutely naked. Here, too, between the two Saskatchewans, they saw herds of bison on the plains grazing like English cattle. But they also found elk (moose), wapiti or red deer, hares, grouse, geese, and ducks. He records in his journal: "I went with the young men a-buffalo-hunting, all armed with bows and arrows; killed several; fine sport. We beat them about, lodging twenty arrows in one beast. So expert were the natives that they will take the arrows out of the buffalo when they are foaming and raging with pain and tearing up the ground with their feet and horns until they fall down." The Amerindians killed far more of these splendid beasts than they could eat, and from these carcasses they merely took the tongues and a few choice pieces, leaving the remainder to the wolves and the grizzly bears.
At last they arrived at the temporary village of the Blackfeet. Two hundred tents ortipiswere pitched in two parallel rows, and down this avenue marched Anthony Hendry, gazed at silently by many Blackfeet Indians until he reached the large house or lodge of their great chief, at the end of the avenue of tents. This lodge was large enough to contain fifty persons. The chief received him seated on the sacred skin of a white buffalo. The pipe of peace was then produced and passed round in silence, each person taking a ceremonial puff. Boiled bison beef was then brought to the guests in baskets made of willow branches. Hendry told the great chief of the Blackfeet that he had been sent by the great leader of the white men at Hudson Bay to invite the Blackfeet Indians to come to these eastern waters in the summertime, and bring with them beaver and wolf skins, for which they would get, in return, guns, ammunition, cloth, beads, and other trade goods. But this chief, though he listened patiently, pointed out that this fort on Hudson Bay was situated at a very great distance, that his men only knew how to ride horses, and not how to paddle canoes. Moreover, they could not live without bison beef, and disliked fish.
After leaving the headquarters of the Blackfeet, Hendry rambled over the beautiful country of fir woods and pine woods until he must have got within sight of the Rocky Mountains, though these are not mentioned in his journal. Then, after passing the winter (which did not begin as regards cold weather till the 2nd of December, and was over at the end of March) he returned to the French fort on the Saskatchewan, where he was received by the Commandant, de La Corne, with great kindness and hospitality. These Frenchmen, he found, were able to speak in great perfection several Indian languages; they were well dressed, and courtly in manners, and led a civilized life in these distant wilds. They had excellent trade goods and were sincerely liked by the Indians, but for some reason or other they lacked Brazilian tobacco, which seems to have been a commodity much in favour amongst the Indians. With this the Hudson's Bay Company were kept well supplied, and that alone enabled them in any degree to compete with the French. But in ten years more this French fort would be abandoned owing to the cession of Canada to Britain.
The British, in fact, all through the first half of the eighteenth century, by their superiority in sea power, were steadily strangling the French empire in North America. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick had been, as we have seen, recognized as British in 1713, and Newfoundland, also, subject to certain conditions, giving France the exclusive right to fish on thewesternandnortherncoasts of Newfoundland. The result was that when "New France", or Canada and Louisiana combined, was at its greatest extent of conquered and administered territory, France held but a very limited seacoast from which to approach it—just the mouth of the Mississippi, and a little bit of Alabama on the south and Cape Breton Island on the east. Cape Breton Island was commanded by the immensely strong fortress of Louisburg, and the possession of this place gave the French some security in entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Cabot Straits. But Louisburg was captured by the British colonists of New England (United States) in 1745; and although it was given back to France again, it was reoccupied in 1758, and served as a basis for the armaments which were directed against Quebec in 1759, and which resulted at the close of that year in the surrender of that important city. In 1763 all Canada was ceded to the British, and Louisiana (which had become the western barrier of the about-to-be-born United States) was ceded to Spain; the French flag flew no more on the Continent of North America, save in the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon adjoining Newfoundland, wherein it still remains as a reminder of the splendid achievements of Frenchmen in America.
1Spelt in the documents of the Hudson's Bay Company, Naywatame-poet.
2The young or old reader of this and other books dealing with the exploration of the Canadian Dominion will be indeed puzzled between the various Hendrys and Henrys. The last-named was a prolific stock, from which several notable explorers and servants of the fur-trading companies were drawn. In this book a careful distinction must be made between theAnthonyHendrey or Hendey, who commenced his exploration of the west in 1754; the unrelatedAlexanderHenry the Elder, who journeyed between 1761 and 1776; and the nephew of the last-named, Alexander Henry the Younger, whose pioneering explorations occurred between 1799 and 1814.