Part 4

One year I told an Eskimo, who hunted two hundred miles north of one of our stations, to report to me, the next summer, how many sea trout he had caught that spring at the mouth of a certain river where we thought of establishing an outpost.

The native borrowed a pencil and a sheet of paper from the trader and departed. The next year he brought in the paper, very much soiled, but showing exactly how many fish he had killed—1132. For each trout the Eskimo had drawn a line, varying in length according to the size of the fish, and for each ten trout he had scrawled a double line. Nobody had ever taught him that.

Another instance of mathematics was reported to me in the Northwest two years ago. At a certain post, we were using an Eskimo to trade with a far away tribe which we could not get in touch with otherwise. In the fall our trader would put on the man’s sleigh so many articles, telling him how many articles he ought to give out for each skin. The next spring the man would return and faithfully turn over the furs with the balance of the untraded goods. There never was a mistake. But a year later, our trader noticed that the Eskimo brought back a bundle of furs of his own which he would trade with us afterwards, and for which it was difficult to account as the balance of the merchandise returned was correct and the native himself was not supposed to trap.

The trader finally asked him how it happened, and the Husky’s answer plainly proved that he had found out by himself the secret of division. For instance, each article, that ought to have been given out for fur, the Eskimo cut in two; keeping one half for himself so as to trade it later on against fur on his own account.

Thus our native friend would trade one-half a pound of sugar instead of a whole one; half a stick of tobacco, and so on. He went so far as filing an ordinary file in two, trading one-half for us and the other for himself.

When our trader told him that he was not very fair to his northern brothers, he laughed and answered, “They have not learned how to count. I have.”

Tale XXX: “Caribou”

In the northwest of Canada, far away from civilization, there still exist huge herds of caribou that roam by tens of thousands. In summer, they are to be found on the barren lands; in winter, through the wooded wilderness around Reindeer Lake.

The main body of the herd seems to follow a steady routine of migration.

Each year the natives know exactly where to find it. The Eskimos follow the caribou during the summer. The Chippewayans lie in wait for them on their way south in the early fall. From then on until spring those Indians live on the herd, using the meat for food and the leather for clothing.

At all times during the year, the grey timber wolves hover around, cutting out and pulling down the young, the maimed and the weak. Still, the caribou ranks never seem to dwindle. In countless numbers each year they move north or south, according to the season, obeying the law of their kind.

In winter, when one travels through that enormous country which lies between Cree Lake and Pakatawagan, through Bear Lake, Wollaston Lake, further north to Nueltin Lake, further southeast to Reindeer Lake, one is liable to meet, any day, hundreds and hundreds of these deer. In the depth of the bush one seldom sees them. But they seem to have a fondness for lakes, over the ice of which they roam aimlessly, in the open, milling like sheep at the slightest sign of danger.

All men who travel in those regions depend on these deer for food, not only for themselves but for their dogs. Each team of “huskies” is wise to what a herd of caribou means as soon as it is sighted. When the traveller reaches a lake and sees the deer far away on the ice, the dogs realize what is going to happen, and strain silently and excitedly in their traces. The deer, foolishly, look around, run about, stop and stare. Little by little, the sleigh drawn by the straining dogs gets nearer and nearer.

Finally the man with one short word stops the team, then steps out of the sleigh, aims and fires. Instantly the dogs are off, baying like maniacs. The man makes a flying leap, grabs the sleigh and scrambles on board. The seven dogs are racing madly towards the deer who are running around in circles.

If the man’s aim has been true, in a few minutes the team of “huskies” has reached its prey and, in a mad leap, is worrying its throat.

If he has missed, the man calls out a second time. The dogs stop dead and the rifle barks again.

Tale XXXI: In Siberia

In pre-war days in Siberia, traveling on the railway was easy; but as soon as one left it, one was liable to meet with a certain amount of adventures.

One night in the middle of winter, I landed at the station of Omsk. No one was there to meet me and I did not know a word of Russian. I was told that the town was at least six miles away and that to reach it one had to travel through a wild, empty country of rolling plain and small bush. Furthermore, quite a few Russians in Moscow and on the train had entertained me in French with terrible stories of escaped convicts, brigands, hold-ups and murders. In fact, only that week before my arrival, a traveler was supposed to have been shot and robbed on the same road that I had to take to go to town.

After a lot of trouble, I found a “troika” drawn by the usual three horses and was able to make the driver understand where I wanted to go.

I snuggled down under the fur robes and pulled out a revolver which I kept in my hand ready for any emergency. We started slowly through very bad roads. The cold was intense. In a little while, just as I was thinking that I had never seen such a beautifully lonely country to commit wholesale murder in, we heard a shout ahead of us. At that time we were half way up a small hill and, on the top of it hardly one hundred yards from us, plainly visible on the sky line, was a man on horseback. I could distinguish his big shaggy fur cap and a rifle which he held in his right hand with the stock resting on his thigh, the barrel sticking up.

In a flash I thought of the Russians’ stories which I had disbelieved. I was being held up after all. I jerked out my gun from under the furs. I was desperate and had made up my mind to shoot first, trusting to luck. Just then the solitary cavalier shouted something in Russian, which, of course, I did not understand. My driver, with a yell to his horses, swung them frantically to the right and, in a second, the sleigh was in the deep snow out of the trail, half turned over on its side in a ditch. I clutched the sides so as not to be pitched out. At the same moment a tornado seemed to be upon us. I vaguely realized in the darkness that there were wild looking men on horseback. Some had drawn swords, others lances. There must have been one hundred of them. But instead of stopping—they swept downhill, past us, in a mad gallop. Before I could press the trigger everything was over. The road was empty, the night was silent and my driver was coaxing his horse back on the trail.

As soon as I reached Omsk I told our man, there, what had happened and asked for further information. “Why, that was his Imperial Majesty’s mail going to the station to catch the midnight train for the east. It is always surrounded by a squadron of cavalry with one or two scouts ahead to clear the road.”

My brigands were the regular Cossacks of the Czar.

To this day, I feel a cold shudder at the thought of what would have happened if I had fired my revolver in their midst. Talk of past murders on that lonely Siberian road! Picnics compared to what mine would have been!

Tale XXXII: In the Hudson Straits

Windswept, bleak and ragged, savagely beautiful in their utter desolation, the mighty shores of Labrador tower over the racing tides of Hudson Straits.

Far out on the horizon a bank of mist hangs low, blending itself with the steel grey of the sea. Close by at the foot of the cliffs, a line of white foam everlastingly coils and uncoils itself, surging angrily against the glittering walls of granite.

In between, scattered over the grey waters, hundreds of icebergs are floating. In all shapes and sizes, these grim fragments of the eternal Arctic glaciers seem to keep guard over the sea. Like sentinels on the edge of the Polar regions they drift slowly back and forth in the Straits, obedient to tide and wind, leaving behind them a long wake of swirling eddies and floating cakes of ice.

Above all a grey, cloudless, cold sky. Everywhere silence. A silence which grips one’s heart. A silence which no earthly sound would seem able to shatter. A silence which one hears.

On the very edge of the highest cliff, a man stands alone. Dressed in seal skin, bare-headed, his long, coarse black hair thrown back and mingling with the dog fur trimming of his hood—the Eskimo hunter is watching the sea. His weather-beaten face is inscrutable. With slanting eyelids narrowed, his black eyes stare into space without a quiver of an eyelash. His square jaw is closed tightly. One hand is holding by the barrel a rifle in its greasy case. The other clutches a rawhide cartridge pouch.

The man has been there every day for weeks. Today, after two hours’ watch, he suddenly wheels around, drops his cartridge pouch, picks a handful of cartridges and loads his rifle. His task finished, he looks again towards the sea for a full minute. Then, satisfied, he raises the rifle to his shoulder and fires six shots at regular intervals.

The crack of the Winchester shatters the silence—echoes along the cliff—sending down towards the sea wave after wave of sound which, in turn, is picked up and flung back by each gully and by each cave throughout the mass of granite.

Startled from its nest, an eagle dashes from the cliff, sweeps up to the level of the man, remains motionless for a fraction of a second poised in midair—then uttering a shrill cry, lashes with its wings and dives into space.

Far down on the beach, amid the rocks which form a natural slide to the sea, tiny specks appear moving hurriedly back and forth. These are Eskimos, comrades of the man who stands guard hundreds of feet above them.

Their skin tents, huddled together in the chaotic mass of stone, remain invisible to the eye. They have heard the signal and their excitement is great. Smaller specks run about the beach. Some dash even into the icy water which flings them back in a blind, white smother of foam. These are the dogs, the sleigh Huskies, the faithful companions of the natives. Their short, wolf-like howl rises above the general confusion.

In a few minutes a white puff of smoke is seen, followed shortly by the quick bark of the rifle. Then another explosion is heard until the spluttering of a general fusillade rends the air ... answering the six shots fired from the top of the cliff.

Far out at sea, looming ghostlike through the fog, threading her cautious way amidst the icebergs—a three-masted auxiliary schooner appears. On her foremast flies the Revillon Frères flag. It is the supply ship which, once a year, calls on those desolate regions.

Tale XXXIII: Whiskey Jack

In northern Canada, birds migrate south as soon as the winter sets in. The only ones who remain throughout the entire cold season are the Ravens, the little Arctic Owls and the Jays which are known from the Atlantic to the Pacific as Whiskey Jacks. The latter can be found everywhere in the bush. Although they shun the most northern villages and settlements, still they can not live far away from the haunts of men. Therefore one sees them hovering around every likely spot along all the trails, either on land or by the water, in the neighborhood of lumber camps, trapping shacks, hunting caches and portages. As soon as the traveler appears in one of those places, a small flock of Whiskey Jacks appear flitting from one tree top to another, calling, shrieking, whistling, ever on the lookout for any sign of food.

There is a superstition in the North which claims that the killing of a Whiskey Jack brings bad luck. No one, even an Indian, would ever think of harming them. The result is that, being very tame, they often prove themselves regular pests in camp. Their only idea seems to be to hoard food for winter use. And from early spring until late fall one can see them picking up any available scrap which they stow away in various tree holes.

Their boldness is always a source of amusement to the traveler. I have seen Whiskey Jacks pounce on a piece of bacon in the frying pan and succeed in carrying it away; others raid an empty tent and steal any small thing they can find. They often get in trouble—the unlucky one then uttering the most extraordinary shrieks which are always taken up by all the other birds. It is a common occurrence to see one poke its head into an empty tin and have a great deal of difficulty in getting it out. Some, raiding a tent, get their claws caught in the mosquito net, while others hovering around a camp fire singe their tails and wings in a mad scramble for some half cooked tidbit.

The funniest jam I ever saw a Whiskey Jack get into was when the bird found a bowl on the ground filled with pieces of bannock soaked in rum. The bird was hungry and gobbled five or six pieces before the old prospector found out that his favorite evening dish was in danger. Whiskey Jack flew a few feet away and settled on a branch of a tree. But in a few minutes the liquor took effect. He began giving a series of dismal squawks, cocking his head on one side then on the other, swaying more and more until he actually fell down on the ground, where he lay unable to get up but screeching madly all the time.

The bird was all right again in an hour or so and went on flying around in search of more food, but he obstinately refused any more bannock from any one’s hands.

Tale XXXIV: Makejo

Makejo, a full-grown red fox, was born on the marshy shores of James Bay. Originally, he belonged to a litter of six pups which a Cree Indian had dug up in the spring and given to our trader at Moose Factory. The pups were still blind and helpless when they reached human hands. They took kindly to the bottle, but the mixture of condensed milk and plain water on which our man tried to raise them proved a failure. One little fox alone survived the ordeal. That was Makejo.

Although undersized and weak at first, he grew amazingly fast soon after he was weaned. When I saw him two years later he was larger and heavier than any fox of that region. Blood red, with a mask fringed with black and a large white tip at the end of his brush, he was as tame as a dog and as mischevious as a monkey.

He lived in the trader’s house, slept in a box, and came instantly at the call of his name. He was a great mouser. Now and again the trader would lock him up in the storeroom at night where he would kill dozens of mice, which he would invariably eat—barring the tails.

He would play with the children by the hour and had taught himself any amount of tricks while running madly up and down the house. His chief stunt was a back somersault. He had started doing it while leaping against the wall of the room but ended by doing it at any moment, even from a standing position.

In summer, he was allowed to use a hole cut out for him on one of the windows on the ground floor. He would get out through this to a small ledge, four feet above the ground, where he would pass hours sunning himself and keeping an eye on everything that was going on.

His chief delight was to torment the twenty-odd Post dogs which were always loafing in the neighborhood. They all belonged to the Malamute breed and would have killed him instantly had they been able to catch him. But they never did.

Makejo, from his ledge, would watch the dogs until they were asleep. Then, jumping down like a streak of lightning, he would flash through the pack yelping. In a second every Husky was after him. His speed was so marvelous, his eye so quick and his judgment of distance so uncanny, that he would remain several minutes tearing in and out of the dogs with perfect impunity until, with one leap, he would jump on his ledge again and disappear in the house through his little hole.

For all I know, Makejo may still be living happily where I saw him last.

Tale XXXV: Two Little Eskimo Boys

Hundreds of stories could be told regarding the hardships which form part of the daily life of the Canadian Eskimos, also their resourcefulness and their endurance.

Five years ago in August, near Cape Dufferin, two Eskimos started paddling in their kayaks along the shore. Each man in his little craft had his son—one five years old, the other seven. After a few hours, they decided to go to some islands six miles off shore to look for sea gulls’ eggs. Not caring to take the two children out so far, in case a storm came up, they left them on the beach and told them to wait.

The two little boys remained there all day. Night came. They huddled together, shivering, in the lee of a rock. When dawn appeared there were no signs of the two men. Another day and another night passed; still the children waited, feeding on seaweed and small shell fish which they found along the beach.

When the third day came they decided to walk back, following the shore, to the tribe. Going round the bays, climbing up and down huge slides of rocks, walking inland each time they found rivers they could not swim until they discovered a place to ford them, those two boys—aged five and seven, respectively—never lost heart.

Picking up on the beach what they could find to eat, they eventually got back to the tribe after two days and nights of constant traveling. They were footsore, wet to the bone, and famished.

They gave the alarm and a small party of men paddled immediately to the islands. There they found the two men marooned amidst hundreds of nests on which they had been feeding.

It appears that on their arrival, four days before, they had at first gone to sleep on the beach in the sun, leaving their kayaks partly out of the water. The tide rose and the two kayaks drifted out of sight. They had suffered no hardships—having plenty of food and being confident that eventually some one would come to look for them.

Furthermore, they did not feel anxious about the children. In their minds, a thirty mile walk alone on the rugged seashore, the fording of three swift rivers, and the lack of food and the exposure during four consecutive days and nights, could not possibly harm two little Eskimo boys of five and seven.

Tale XXXVI: An Indian Warrior

It was late in the fall of 1916, in the Somme, during the War. The Canadian Army in junction with one of the French Army Corps at its right had gone over the top and brilliantly carried an enemy’s strong position, two miles deep. The inevitable counter attack had been repulsed and, although the shelling was still vicious, one felt that the show was over for that day. The wounded were streaming out of the communication trenches towards the rear. A few dead bodies were lying about in small groups.

I was passing along quickly, following a sunken road, when I noticed a swarthy Canadian soldier on the ground, apparently dying of his wounds. I happened to be glancing towards him when he looked up, saw me, and, making a sign of the hand, called out clearly, “Nipi.” I recognized the word at once and stopped in amazement. The man was a full-blooded Cree Indian. He must have volunteered somewhere in Northern Canada, gone overseas, fought, and was now dying all alone in the mud of the Somme. He did not seem to be able to speak a word of English.

I knelt beside him and put my water bottle to his lips. Meanwhile I racked my brain for the few words of Cree I still knew. When he had finished drinking I began slowly to tell him, one by one, all the words I remembered. I said in Cree, “lake, fire, bear, moose, tent, axe, canoe.” What else, I do not recall. Dozens of Cree words—one after the other. Then I named in Indian, all the northern places I knew from Labrador to Yukon.

As soon as the Cree warrior heard my first words, he caught hold of my hands with both of his own and held on to them like a drowning man. He looked at me with a startled face, then his expression changed little by little. He was far gone then but he could still hear and understand the words of his native tongue. A far away look came into his dying eyes, his features relaxed and a smile hovered on his lips. He had forgotten the battlefield. His thoughts were away, far away, in some part of the Canadian wilderness which he and I knew.

It was all over in a few seconds. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something and then his soul went West; suddenly, without a flutter, straight to the Happy Hunting Grounds of his ancestors.

Tale XXXVII: Burro

Jack was a little grey donkey, a genuine little burro owned by the cook of a lumber camp in northern British Columbia. He was used for odd jobs around the men’s quarters and, when off duty, roamed about aimlessly at his own free will. He was old, tame as a dog and very wise.

We hired him one day to carry our grub and blankets on a fishing expedition. We had no fixed place to go. We simply cut across country through bush and hills, stopping to fish at every likely stream, camping when we felt like it. Jack behaved perfectly for three days. He carried his little load quietly and steered his way through any kind of ground according to our instructions, which we telegraphed to him from behind with a tap of the hand or an occasional shove.

On the third day at sundown, we pitched our tent on an old camping ground and found there two large cans of tomatoes which someone had left behind. The next morning, we loaded the little burro and placed the two cans on the top of his pack. Jack gave a grunt and promptly lay down. Nothing would induce him to rise until one of us thought of taking the two cans off. Then he proceeded on his way as if nothing had happened. For at least two hours we tried to fool him with those two tomato tins—but failed utterly. Each time we laid them on his pack, ever so gently from behind, he would stop dead and lie down again. Finally we had to give it up and throw the two cans away.

When the time came to return to the lumber camp, we were not certain of our way. In fact, we had only had a very hazy idea of our direction as we had been travelling in a round about sort of way in a very hilly country thickly covered with large trees. We decided to put our faith in Jack. He seemed to understand that we were going home. He took us back, foot by foot, exactly the same way we had come. His memory was uncanny. All the unnecessary little detours we had made, around a bush or a rock on our way up, he scrupulously made again on the way down. He never changed his pace once. He just jogged along with his head down and his eyes half closed. But nothing would make him step out of what he thought was the proper trail.

Two miles from camp, when we could already see the tents in the valley, we tried to make him take a short cut. He absolutely refused and showed the usual signs of lying down. He had been in charge all the way back and intended remaining so until we arrived.

Tale XXXVIII: Travelling in North Alberta

Early one spring, I stopped at an Indian’s tepee for a cup of tea, a smoke and a little chat. In front of the tent, a few yards away, stood the usual platform which all trappers build on four long, vertical piles so as to keep their stock of fish, meat, leather and pelts out of the reach of the dogs.