Part 3

Moose and Caribou will not hesitate to cross lakes several miles wide, and for no apparent reason but to change from one feeding ground to another. I have often seen them swim over four miles in the bitterest cold weather in the early spring or late in the fall when the snow was on the ground and the temperature at freezing point.

Black Bears will swim for miles; young cubs barely four months old keeping up with their mothers.

Lynx, although hating water like all the cat tribe, will cross the widest river when migrating.

Small animals, such as porcupines and squirrels, are often found swimming a mile or so from shore.

Two years ago when paddling down the Churchill River, we found a fat old porcupine leisurely crossing the river where it was over a mile wide. He was then about eight hundred yards from where he wanted to land and his speed must have averaged one mile per hour. He took absolutely no notice of us. At each stroke of his short foreleg he grunted loudly. Now and then he would lift his quills and shake them so as to get some of the weight of the water off his back.

Squirrels, I have noticed, always swim with the wind in their backs and invariably carry their tails straight up in the air out of the water. The Indians maintain that they only take to water when the wind is favorable as they know that their tail, acting like a sail, will help them along.

White Bears, of course, are the best swimmers of all the non-amphibious mammals. They can swim for a whole day, resting now and then on their backs like sleeping seals.

In 1908, we saw a White Bear yearling cub swimming towards shore at least fifteen miles out from Cape Churchill in Hudson Bay. The nearest ice was then forty-five miles from the spot where we found him. There was absolutely no doubt that our bear had undertaken a sixty-mile swim to reach land.

Tale XX: “Sunday”

The eastern hair seals roam between the coasts of Newfoundland and Greenland. Unlike the fur seals of the Pacific, they are valuable only for their fat and the leather of their pelts. The best oil is obtained from the young pups which are born on the ice in February.

Young seals do not know how to swim at birth and the hardy fishermen of Newfoundland hunt them before they have taken to the water.

Every day of the week the crew of each vessel leaves its ship and on foot, through fog and blizzards, scours the bleak wilderness of the ice floes. But the hunt stops on Sunday—even if the vessels happen to be in the midst of thousands of seals. From Saturday midnight to Monday one o’clock, all the men remain idle.

One Sunday morning in March, 1908, I was on board a sealer. I happened to look over the side and saw a young seal sound asleep on the ice a few hundred yards from the ship. With the idea of taking it on board so as to photograph it on deck, I slipped over the side. Walking up to the pup I caught it by the hind flippers, swung it over my shoulder and started carrying it to the vessel. Although I followed my footsteps on the ice, I suddenly broke through and found myself plunged into the bitterly cold water. The little seal followed me in my downfall.

We both came up to the surface at the same time, with only one idea in our heads—to get out as quickly as possible. I tried hard to climb out on the ice. So did the pup. The hole in which we were floundering was very small. The young seal floated like an empty bottle, his body half out of the water. In his efforts to get a hold on the edge of the pan, he flapped his front flippers like a pair of fans. Each flipper was armed with five claws as hard as steel.

My face got in the way of one flipper and instantly I came to the conclusion that I had better wait until my companion got out first.

Patiently and courteously I waited until the little pup, with a lot of snorting and splashing, slowly but stubbornly wriggled himself out of the water. When my turn came I was half dead with cold, and barely managed to pull myself on the ice in safety. Leaving the seal where he was, I tottered back to the ship.

I found the skipper very unsympathetic. The only thing he had to say was: “Serves you right. This is Sunday.”

Tale XXI: Filming a White Bear on Land

During the filming of “Nanook of the North”, in the winter of 1921, we decided to take a scene of a white bear hunt at close quarters on land.

In a genuine film like ours, where one must take “close ups” of wild animals, the difficulty lies not only in approaching them sufficiently near so as not to have to use telescopic lens, but also in keeping the animals more or less on the same spot in front of the camera. Consequently, after studying the matter carefully, we concluded that the only way we could film the white bear hunt was to find in the early spring a “she” bear with cubs in her den.

The idea was that the bear would refuse to leave her young, would make a stand right away and give battle on the spot, thereby allowing the cameraman to crank away to his heart’s content. We sent, accordingly, a few Eskimos to scour the country. After a few weeks they reported having found a bear asleep in a snow bank under a cliff on the seashore, about seventy-five miles north from where we were. We were certain that the animal was a “she” bear, as the males do not hibernate but roam all winter on the ice far out to sea.

We made the trip at once with six Eskimos, three sleighs and twenty-two dogs, and built our Igloos two miles away from where the bear had been found. Then we went out on foot to reconnoiter.

We found the bear’s den easily. A large yellow spot on the snow, from which rose a slight vapor coming from the animal’s breath, plainly showed that someone was at home. We carefully chose the best spot to place our one and only camera and rehearsed the whole scene. One Eskimo was to climb above the den and rouse the bear with a long pole. The others standing in front of the den were to let the dogs go as soon as the brute appeared. We knew that the Huskies would surround the bear; and we had no doubt that she would immediately make a stand in front of her cubs and fight.

We had to wait after that for three days until the weather was clear and fine. In the end the hour came. At first, everything went off beautifully. The bear was roused out of her lair by a few vigorous pokes of the pole but, instead of showing her head out of the snow and then emerging to give battle, she burst out of her den like a rabbit from its hold. It was a “she” bear all right, but it happened that she had no cubs.

In a flash she was through the pack of dogs and away! Before the cameraman could start cranking she was already fifty yards off, racing for the sea with all the huskies after her. We tried to lift the camera, carry it and follow, but it was useless. The bear never stopped for at least a mile. After that, when it was much too late, she turned around, fought the dogs for a few minutes—scattering them easily—then went on her way and disappeared finally over the icy horizon. We never found another bear in her den that year.

Such was the way Mr. R. J. Flaherty missed the only scene from “Nanook of the North”.

Tale XXII: Vermin and Ants

“Alex is a doggoned fool.” ... The speaker, a middle-aged Yankee trapper, spat thoughtfully on the red hot stove, then gazed inquiringly at his audience.

We were four, in a log cabin on the banks of the Churchill River. It was night—late in the fall—and already cold. Inside, the atmosphere was oppressive, reeking with tobacco smoke, sweat, fish scales, and grease. Outside, the wind blew in great, uneven gusts and the shack creaked like the timbers of a labouring ship at sea.

I finally inquired why Alex was a fool, and promptly heard the following story:

“One evening last June, Alex blew in with a couple of Chippewayan Indians. He had a load of fur in his canoe and was hurrying to the line to sell it and get drunk. Alex wanted me to lend him a shirt. He was as lousy as a pet coon, and said he didn’t have time to wash his shirt. I had only one shirt, a clean one I had only worn a few times, and I was thinking of using it myself when I moved south. So I said ‘no’, and advised him to take his shirt off and lay it on an ant heap. Alex didn’t like the idea, but I told him the ants would clean up every insect. He did what I said.

“When the time came to leave, there was a fair wind down the stretch so they put up a sail in a hurry. Alex grabbed his shirt and they left.

“I saw Alex again last week. He said when he put on his shirt the vermin were gone, but he forgot to shake it first and the ants were still there! You know the kind, boys! The little red ones! And they sure did bite like hell before he could strip again!”

Tale XXIII: A Greenhorn in a Rapid

Every spring, a lot of greenhorns go North, either in hope of making their living, or in a spirit of adventure. A few struggle through and succeed. A lot meet with accidents. All of them run appalling risks.

Some years ago—before the War—there was a mild stampede on the Chamuchuan River in the Province of Quebec. Gold was reported to have been found. As soon as the ice had gone, several hundred men started North, plunging into the wilderness in quest of fortune.

A few weeks later we were poling up that same river on our way to Mistassini Lake. We reached a long straight rapid and were unloading our canoe before portaging. One of the Indians noticed, two miles away at the head of the rapid, right in the middle of the foaming river, a dark speck on a flat rock. One man said it was a bear because it moved.

What a black bear could be doing in such a spot was a problem in itself, but we let it go at that and started packing our loads. I happened to be the first one over the portage. Throwing down my load, I looked instinctively at the river. There was a man squatting dismally on a small flat rock right in the middle of the current, fifty yards or so below where the portage stopped and the rapid began.

So that was the black bear seen an hour ago! When the stranger saw us, he scrambled to his feet and started gesticulating wildly. We could not understand how he got there. He had no canoe. The rock was about three foot square. On both sides of it the river rushed down in a blind torrent of foam.

We considered a way to rescue him. The idea of running down in a canoe was out of the question. Even if we succeeded in getting him on board—we would have to go on and there was a ten foot fall a few hundred yards further down which meant immediate disaster.

We hit on the following plan. We found a good sized log, tied to it all the ropes we had in one single line, paddled as far down near the head of the rapid as we dared, anchored our canoe with a huge stone taken from shore and then paid out the rope, the log floating ahead of it towards the man on the rock.

We managed to let the log pass more or less alongside the stranger! But for a long time the man appeared frightened. Each time he missed his chance of catching hold of the log. And we had to hand it up again thirty yards or so to be able to give it the proper direction so that it would pass as near as possible to the rock.

Finally, the stranger decided to take a chance. He waved at us as if he were taking a last farewell, then jumped boldly—head first and arm extended—straight for that log. There was quite a splash and for a second we could not see whether he had succeeded in getting hold of the stump. Our rope was tight. We had reached the end of it.

We hauled in. In a few minutes we knew we had our man at the end of our line. We got occasional glimpses of him, although he was all the time half way under water. He was lying on the log—clasping it with both arms—straddling it with both legs. Little by little we got him alongside. He was nearly drowned and quite speechless. With an effort we got him on board. Then letting the log go after cutting the rope—we paddled ashore.

An hour later our new acquaintance was able to talk and tell us his story. He was a student and had gone with a party to the upper end of the river in search of gold. Disgusted with the life, homesick, weak from lack of food and from mosquito bites, he had decided to run away and reach the line. Stealing a canoe, he had started alone on his journey.

He had never been in the woods before. When he reached the rapid he missed the portage. In a second he found himself helpless in the first whirlpool. By sheer luck his canoe was thrown against that lonely flat rock. When it hit, he let his paddle go and jumped, landing safely on the big stone. The canoe, of course, disappeared in the swirl.

He had been there—squatting helplessly right in the middle of that rapid—for thirty-six hours when we happened to pass that way and rescue him.

Tale XXIV: Large Fish

When and wherever a man tells a fishing story, there is a deep-rooted feeling among everyone listening that the man is far from being truthful. That is a handicap for any one trying to describe how large fish do run in Canada north of 53. Nevertheless the fact remains that in Labrador as well as in the West, Pickerel, Muskellunge and Lake Trout grow to enormous size.

Three years ago on Reindeer Lake, in a net placed under the ice, our men caught a trout which tipped the beam at fifty-three pounds. In the same lake, when trolling the following July, we caught one weighing thirty-five pounds. We showed it to an Indian camped near by.

He told us that a few days before he had netted one much larger, which he had given to his dogs to eat.

To prove the truth of his statement he hunted around the bush, found the trout’s head and brought it to us. We measured it with the head of our own fish. It was, more or less, twice as large.

Muskellunge up to forty pounds are common in the big lakes. Some are bigger. These fish, when hungry, are vicious and often go for quarry which they can hardly swallow.

A squirrel swimming across a river is snapped up like a minnow. So are young ducklings, if they venture too far out from shore. In several instances we have seen a much larger bird successfully pulled down by a big pickerel.

Last summer when paddling near a small island on Bear Lake, we noticed three young gulls take fright, leave their nest on the rocks, and swim directly away from us. They were full grown, although they had not yet learned how to fly.

One of those gulls was pulled down three times in front of us by a muskellunge. Each time it remained under water almost a minute. The fish finally gave it up as a bad job; but we marvelled at the endurance of that young bird. It did not seem the worse for its submarine encounter.

Tale XXV: A Little Indian Girl

Railways may extend their lines far away in the north; civilization may wipe out huge slices of wilderness; the remaining Indians, in spite of all their faults intensified by the contact with white men, are still at heart wild men whose sole aim in life is to hunt and to kill.

Whatever may be their calling, there is one thing which no Indian man, woman or child can resist. It’s to try to lay low big game. In other words, to try to secure red meat each time the occasion arises.

Last summer, near where we were camped, a very old squaw took her granddaughter, aged ten, to look over her nets. The child was in the bow of the canoe. Suddenly they came across a big bull moose swimming the river. They had no rifle and there was no time to return to camp to fetch one. The old woman did not hesitate. With one sweep of her paddle she steered the small canoe straight for the moose, while she screamed to the little girl to pick up the small axe which they were using to drive in the stakes of their nets.

The child was frightened but she answered the call of the blood. She seized the axe and, when her grandmother fearlessly paddled the canoe alongside the huge horns of the moose, she struck with all her might. She was too young to know how to use her small weapon. Instead of aiming between the animal’s ears with the head of the axe, she struck blindly with the blade. She missed several times, wounding the big moose in the neck.

The infuriated animal roared, shook his head, lunged out with his front paws, narrowly missing the canoe. The little girl kept on savagely. Finally, she buried her axe in the bull’s huge back. She did not have the strength to wrench it out. The moose reached the shore, staggered up the bank and disappeared in the bush.... We found it an hour later, dead, a few hundred yards away.

There was a silent but proud little Indian girl in camp that night.

The bull moose must have weighed over twelve hundred pounds, while the axe measured exactly three feet long.

Tale XXVI: Outlawed in the Barren Lands

The barren lands ... far away, north of the trees. Wind-swept, rock strewn, colorless. An undulating desert with huge boulders, grey moss, little patches of scrub willows nestling in the hollows of the hills. Thousands of small streams and lakes.

Far away on the edge of the Arctic. Bleaker than the northern moors of Scotland shorn of their native heather. The feeding ground of the wandering herds of caribou. The nestling place of all water fowl.

Far away, skirting the frozen seas. A land of waste lying on the top of the world. Scarred and twisted by some gigantic earthquake hundreds of centuries ago. Blasted eternally by the icy breath of the pole.

The Barren Lands. The last refuge for the criminal unmercifully tracked by the law. Northward—ever northward—the man has fled from civilization. Downstream—ever downstream—he has paddled madly through the forest, seeking safety in the unknown. Leaving the trees behind him he has at last reached his goal. The Barren Lands.

But fear urges him on. He leaves his useless canoe and blindly staggers north on foot. North, north, into the heart of the land of waste from which there is no outlet. The weaker he gets the more he longs to go further. His food is nearly gone. On the top of the hills he scans the horizon. South, the line of trees has disappeared. North, nothing but the rolling desert of moss and rock.

On and on he staggers for days. He is starving now, although he is able to quench his thirst at the small icy creeks which wind their way towards the sea.

It is night. The man suddenly hears a dull moaning sound, the everlasting breaking of the surf against the shore. He has reached the end of the Barren Lands. He finds himself staggering down a rocky beach. His eyes are staring ahead of him. Nothing but a grey, unlimited ocean, dotted with icebergs.

For the first time he realizes the hopelessness of his flight. He remains a few seconds swaying on his feet. Then his brain gives way. With a scream, he tosses his hands above his head and, lurching forward, falls dead, his face in the foam of the waves.

High up in the sky, over Barren Lands and Arctic Ocean, the Northern lights reel, twist and swirl, in their eternal dance of madness.

Tale XXVII: One Thousand Years

Now and then in the far north, a trader adopts an Eskimo boy, always an orphan, and brings him up at the Station. When the boy reaches manhood he generally remains at the Post, acting as a general servant and interpreter. While his usefulness as a “jack of all trades” is great, his efficiency in English is invariably poor. No pure Eskimo can understand and speak fluently any other language but his own, and, although he is quite capable of remembering hundreds of foreign words, he has a very hazy notion of what these words really mean.

I remember well a certain Post servant called “Nero”. No one knew how he got that strange name. He was about sixty years old and thought himself head and shoulders above any other native in the country. Wise to the ways of white men, the equal of any other Eskimo in traveling and hunting, he was a well known character within a radius of five hundred miles.

One summer I was traveling with him along the eastern coast of Hudson Bay. The weather was clear and we were sailing in a little schooner a few hundred yards off shore.

Everywhere, Eskimos have a habit of erecting cairns of rocks on all the cliffs and high spots so as to have land marks when traveling in winter, especially during stormy weather.

I happened to notice one of those cairns which was of unusual size. The rocks, which had been piled very neatly and carefully one on top of the other, were enormous. It must have taken several men quite a few days of labor to put it up.

I called Nero’s attention to the cairn, and added that it looked very old and I wondered how long it had been there. Nero, never at a loss for an answer, nodded cheerfully and replied “Yes, much old—thousand years.” I grinned and remarked, “How do you know it has been there so long?” Nero hesitated a few seconds then retorted brightly, “Yes, thousand years. I know. It was here when I a little boy. I saw her, thousand years.”

After that answer, I gave it up and changed the subject of conversation.

Tale XXVIII: A Practical Joke

Indians have the reputation of being always of a serious turn of mind. My experience is to the contrary. They talk incessantly, laugh at any joke and love to play tricks on each other.

One night on Isle a la Crosse Lake, we had pitched camp near the tepee of a Chippewayan family. The weather was beautiful, the mosquitoes were gone—there was not a cloud in the sky.

The father, an old Indian with long, grey hair, decided to sleep in the open. He rolled himself up in his blanket in the bottom of his canoe and was soon asleep—snoring peacefully under a full moon, millions of stars and the shimmer of the northern lights low down on the horizon.

As soon as my two Indians saw that, they crept to the lake, filled a large kettle full of water, returned noiselessly and poured the contents of the kettle very gently in the canoe. Three times they did that without waking the sleeper. Then they hid in the bush and waited.

In a few minutes the old man grunted, shifted, turned round again, and then sat up hurriedly. First, he felt the bottom of the canoe with both hands and discovered several inches of water that had soaked through his blankets and clothes. After that, he looked up towards the sky. He searched silently for clouds and signs of rain. The moon was still there—as brilliant as ever. So were the stars! He got out of the canoe, felt himself all over again, bent down a second time to feel the water then, walking away a few paces, he gazed long and searchingly above him and turned around so as to inspect thoroughly the four points of the compass.

That was too much for the two Indians hiding in the bush. One started to grunt, the other to groan. In a second the old man understood the joke and burst out laughing, slapping his wet thighs with his two bony hands.

Two hours later the three men were squatting in front of a fire, drinking tea and talking. Every now and again I would hear a peal of laughter. They were still making merry over the joke.

Tale XXIX: Eskimo Arithmetic

Far away in the sub-arctic, the sturdy Eskimos live happily—hunting and fishing for food, trapping for furs to trade for clothing, ammunition and for such luxuries as tea, sugar, tobacco and jam. They speak only their own language, and their idea of quantities or numbers is always very hazy. Some tribes do not seem to be able to count more than ten. But their remarkable intelligence offsets this weakness.