Читать книгу Adventures Among the Red Indians - Sidney Harry Wright - Страница 11

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The Iroquoian branch of the red race is considered by the best authorities to be far superior, mentally and physically, to any other. Before British rule was definitely established in Canada, they were a power (known as “The Six Nations”) duly recognised by English and French alike; and to-day, though less numerous than the Algonquins, they show fewer signs of dying out than the other families. Ontario is, and has ever been, a favourite district of theirs, and it was while living in this province that Dr. John Bigsby, who died in 1881, jotted down the notes concerning them which one often sees quoted in works dealing with the study of races.

Surgeon-Major Bigsby had the good fortune, as a young man, to be appointed geologist and medical officer to the Canadian Boundary Commission, a post decidedly congenial to a zealous student of ethnology, since it brought him in constant touch with the Cherokees, who, with the Hurons, Mohawks, etc., constitute the Iroquoian family. The inspection of military and native hospitals, together with his 56 geological researches, necessitated frequent journeys north, south, and west from Montreal; and it was on one such journey, in the year 1822, that he met with a string of adventures both comical and exciting.

From Montreal he set out in a light waggon for Kingston, where he fell in with an acquaintance, Jules Rocheblanc, a fur-trader who, like himself, had various calls to make on the shores of Lake Ontario. Rocheblanc had already arranged to travel with Father Tabeau, the diocesan inspector of missions, and the doctor very willingly joined their party. The mission boat, unlike the birch canoes, was a well-built, roomy craft paddled by eight or ten Indians—Cherokees and Hurons—all of whom spoke Canadian-French fluently. The weather, though cool, was far from severe, and as all three travellers had frequent engagements ashore, these made welcome breaks in the journey.

After Toronto was passed, the white stations became scarcer, and villages inhabited by Indians more frequent; and, at the first of these, the young army surgeon began to fear that the treachery so often justly imputed to the redskins was going to betray itself.

Three of the Indians had asked leave to go ashore for a day’s hunting, and, as the meat supply had run short, Père Tabeau was glad to let them go, on the understanding that they were to await him that evening at a spot below the next Indian village, at which he was to halt for a few hours. Owing to some minor accident, it was well on in the afternoon before the boat came in sight of the village, which stood at the foot of a hill, immediately on the lake shore.

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Two or three dozen Indians could be seen on a grassy space, engaged in their national ball-play—a mixture of tennis, lacrosse, and Rugby football, which will be more closely described in the next chapter. By the goal nearest the water, the absent canoemen were standing, a goodly heap of game piled at their feet. The moment they caught sight of their boat they drew the attention of the players to it; these immediately abandoned the game and, running to the farther goal, picked up muskets and hastened with them towards the quay.

“This is something new,” said Bigsby, “and I don’t like the look of it. For whom do they take us?” He took a pistol from his bag, and Rocheblanc did the same; then, looking towards the bank again, they saw that every redskin had pointed his gun-muzzle on the boat.

“I think it is only a salute,” said the priest, “though I must confess I have never been so honoured before. They are harmless, hard-working men, and all know me perfectly well.”

He had scarcely finished speaking when the guns began to go off in twos and threes and sixes, anyhow, in fact. Then the surgeon put away his pistol and laughed, for there was not a splash on the water anywhere.

“The Father was right; it’s only a salute. Do they often do this?” he asked of the nearest of the canoemen. “I’ve not seen it before.”

The Indian looked very knowing and mysterious, and, after a pause, answered:

“It is a royal salute. They only fire like this for a 58 great Iroquois chief, or for a messenger from the white king.”

Very soon another succession of reports came, the guns all the while trained so accurately on the boat that even Bigsby, fresh from three years’ constant active service at the Cape, began earnestly to hope that no one had, in the excitement of the moment, dropped a bullet into a gun-muzzle by mistake. Before the muskets could be loaded a third time the travellers were safely at the landing-stage.

At other Indian villages the doctor had noticed that the priest was always subjected to lengthy greetings, speechifyings, and very elaborate homage. The homage and the greetings were not absent to-day, but they were of the hurried and perfunctory sort, for everyone, after a word and an obeisance to his reverend fellow-traveller, turned to Bigsby himself; and the old chief, coming forward with tremulous respect, began to address a long oration to him, calling him the lord of lakes and forests, the father of the red man, the slayer of beasts, and a score of other titles; in short, “describing him ever so much better than he knew himself,” as John Ridd says. While he was stammering out a suitable acknowledgment in French, the parish priest came hurrying to greet his superior, and then the mystery was explained, for Père Tabeau introduced the lord of lakes, etc., to him as plain “Surgeon Bigsby.”

The old curé laughed heartily.

“I understand. Your uniform is responsible for all this, monsieur. Your boatmen had told us that an ambassador from the king was coming with the Père 59 Supérieur.” He pointed at the doctor’s regimental coat.

“Then that is why all the canoemen have been so distant and servile with me to-day,” said the young surgeon. “I’ve not been able to get a word out of them.”

Usually he wore a perfectly plain, blue relief-jacket, but on this particular morning he had donned a very old scarlet tunic, of the dragoon regiment to which he belonged, merely because the day happened to be too chilly for the thin serge jacket, and not cold enough for him to trouble about unpacking a winter coat; and if this had raised him in the canoemen’s estimation, he had been quite unconscious of it. As a matter of fact, when the Indians left the boat that morning, they had already made of him a British potentate who was at last throwing off his disguise, and this they honestly believed him to be; but, before the morning was out, their imagination had run away with them so far as to promote him to the rank of envoy extraordinary; in other words, they had exaggerated, as more civilised people sometimes will, for the sake of a little reflected greatness.

“Mr. Rocheblanc,” said the doctor, “if you will lend me a spare coat till I unpack to-night, I think I can sweeten that chief’s declining years.”

A coat was soon produced, and, to the wonderment of the Indians, Bigsby removed the old tunic which, with a grave bow, he begged the old chief to accept as a memento. So great, indeed, was the surprise of the redskins that the donor was in no danger of the contempt which they might otherwise have shown 60 for a broken idol—a daw despoiled of its peacock’s plumage. Such liberality was stupefying.

But the chief was not to be outdone in self-sacrifice. After a tremendous struggle with himself he stifled his vanity and desire for possession, and turning to the old parish priest, begged him to wear the garment, as being more worthy of the honour; nor was it till he was made to understand that, neither in nor out of church, would it be seemly for the staid old clergyman to go flaunting in a cavalry officer’s scarlet and gold, that the chief would consent to wear it. And then his appearance and his self-satisfaction were such that none of the white men dared look at him for long, lest they should hurt the dear old fellow’s feelings by a burst of laughter.

The gift led to an invitation to dinner from the chief, so persistent and impassioned that it was impossible for the visitors to refuse it, though the curé had a meal awaiting them at his presbytery. And now the doctor was to achieve even greater popularity, for the curé, who usually acted as village surgeon and herbalist, took the opportunity of asking his advice in the case of a baby of one of the parishioners that suffered from what seemed to be incurable fits. Bigsby at once went to examine the child and recommended the application of a little blistering lotion to the back of the neck; he sent to the boat for his medicine-case, gave the curé a small supply of the lotion, and instructed him how to make more. This was, of course, the signal for everyone in the village to require doctoring. Ailments were discovered or invented with astonishing rapidity, and the whole time, till dinner was ready, 61 was occupied in feeling pulses, drawing teeth, lancing abscesses, and salving sores. But if the surgeon had been a vain man, the reverence paid to his skill would have been ample reward.

At last the white men were conducted in state to the chief’s hut. The dinner was laid on the floor, and mats and cushions arranged round it in a circle; the two priests sat on the chief’s right, the doctor and Rocheblanc on his left, and his son opposite him, while the wife and the daughter-in-law brought in, helped, and handed round the various courses. The first of these was sowete, a really villainous concoction of bruised sunflower seeds, camash (a very insipid kind of truffle), and the gristly parts of some fish-heads, all boiled together to the consistency of porridge. Of this the guests ate sparingly, and of the next course not at all, though it looked and smelt so inviting that Bigsby and the fur-trader would have done full justice to it, had it not been for a warning look from Père Tabeau, and the ejaculation of the single word “Puppy!” which was lost upon the Indians, as they spoke only the Canadian patois and their own Iroquoian. The dish might have been a roasted hare; but Bigsby suddenly recalled, with a shudder, having seen a fresh dog-skin spread to dry on the outside wall of the hut. But the remaining courses were unexceptionable: various fish, a kind of grouse, venison, and a right good beefsteak to finish with.

The chief implored his guests to stay for at least one night, but the mission superior had an appointment early the following day; and, when he had inspected the parish books, all returned to the boat, 62 conducted by the red-habited chief. At the landing-stage the canoemen were busy stowing away presents which half the parish had brought down for the mighty medicine man: fruits of all kinds, small cheeses, carvings on horn, bone, and wood, and—to Bigsby’s great delight—several lumps of nickel and copper ore and some bits of gold quartz. These he knew were to be found in the vicinity, though he had not yet succeeded in discovering them; and here were valuable specimens which he might have spent weeks in trying to find.

As a good deal of time had been lost, no halt was made that night, each man sleeping in the boat, where and when and how he could; and, long before noon of the following day, the next stopping-place was reached. This was a small fur-trading centre where Rocheblanc also had affairs to transact; and he and Père Tabeau went about their respective business, agreeing to meet the doctor at the boat at three o’clock.

Bigsby, having nothing special to do, explored the tiny settlement and, strolling a mile inland, collected one or two geological specimens. This occupation attracted a knot of Indian idlers, who stood gaping at the childishness of a white man who could find nothing better to do than picking stones off the road, throwing them down again or putting them in his pocket, and varying these puerilities by producing a hammer and knocking chips off unoffending wayside boulders. Geologists and painters are too much accustomed to being stared at, as marvels or lunatics, to heed such curiosity; and it was not till he heard a strident voice 63 in French, ordering the Indians to go away, that he even troubled to turn his head.

“Sales chiens,” “salauds,” and “sacrés cochons” were the mildest terms that were being hurled at the simple redskins by an over-dressed and much-bejewelled being whose European toilette could not conceal the fact that he was a negro-Indian (or a Zambo, as he would have been termed farther south), with possibly a streak of white blood in him.

“Out of the way, reptiles, redskinned animals,” he shouted. “White gentlemen don’t want to be pestered by you,” and pushing his way roughly through the little crowd, he came and stood by the scientist, bestowing on him a most princely bow and a gracious smile.

Now as Bigsby had not sought this very loud young man’s acquaintance, and wouldn’t have had it at any price he could have offered him, he took no notice of him beyond a civil nod, and returned to his task of examining a chip of quartz with a pocket-lens. But the Zambo, having established the fact that he was “somebody” in these parts by driving away the shrinking natives, endeavoured to press on the doctor a card that bore a string of names beginning with César Auguste and ending with the historic surname of de Valois. Convinced that the man was not sober, and unwilling to be the centre of a disturbance, Bigsby turned away with a curt “good morning” and followed the retreating Indians.

At three o’clock he returned to the boat. The others were already in their places, and sitting next to Rocheblanc was a coloured person, resplendent in 64 white hat, fur-collared surtout, and an infinite number of waistcoats, pins, brooches, chains, and rings; Dr. Bigsby’s acquaintance of a few hours before.

“I took the liberty of inviting Mr. de Valois to join us as far as the next station, where he has business,” said Rocheblanc, who, like the Indians, seemed more or less in awe of the stranger. Bigsby concealed his annoyance and comforted himself with the reflection that the next station would be reached in less than three hours’ time. It turned out that the fellow was a millionaire fur-buyer, with whom Rocheblanc had often done business and wished to do more, and who, from his great size, his wealth, his powers of bullying, and his pretensions to white blood, was a terror to all the more civilised Indians. To the doctor, as a “king’s officer,” he condescended to be more friendly than was desired; but his manner towards the two Canadians was insufferably patronising, while a curse or a kick was the sole form of notice he could spare for the canoemen, and that only when they happened to splash him. Father Tabeau and the doctor pocketed their disgust as well as they could, and Rocheblanc endeavoured to hold his guest tightly down to business conversation. The worst of it was that the canoemen, though strong, able fellows, seemed fascinated by their fear of him, and had it not been still broad daylight, a serious accident might have happened to the boat. Even as it was, the men paddled nervously and irregularly, more than once getting her into a crosscurrent, and growing only more frightened and helpless as the half-breed became noisier and more abusive.

A Bully Well Served

The over-dressed Zambo, after bullying the canoemen to the verge of mutiny, was ordered by Bigsby to leave the canoe. The bully clenched his fist, but Bigsby planted a powerful blow on his throat, and sent him right over the gunwale.

“There’ll be trouble if we’re not careful, Father,” 65 said Bigsby in English, now at the end of his patience. “If you’ll allow me I’ll try and get rid of him.”

He made a sign to the Indians to pull sharply in, which Mr. de Valois did not perceive. But, when the confused redskins suddenly ran the boat among a number of projecting stakes, where an old landing-stage had been broken up, the Zambo, splashed and shaken, began to behave like a maniac. He jumped up, cane in hand, and lashed the three nearest Indians savagely over the head and face, swearing, gesticulating, and threatening till the doctor was minded to pitch him into the water straight away.

“Steady her; hold by those stakes,” he cried to the men in the bow, who, being farthest from the stick, were the coolest. Then, throwing himself between the half-breed and the canoemen, he said, “There’s one redskin too many here, my man, and I think you’d better clear out,” and at the same time he wrenched the stick from his hand and flung it on shore.

The bully clenched his fist, but again Bigsby was too quick for him, and planted a powerful blow neatly under his throat; he staggered, tried to steady himself, and, in so doing, toppled clean over the gunwale.

“All right; push off,” said Bigsby coolly. “He’s got plenty to catch hold of there.”

The water was still fairly deep, but the stakes were so numerous that even a non-swimmer could be in no danger. The boat was soon in clear water again, and Cæsar Augustus could now be seen—a truly pitiable figure—helping himself ashore from stump to stump, a sadder if not a wiser man.

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Bigsby never had the felicity of seeing him again, but he heard, some months later, that his power over the redskins was very much diminished, and that he had grown considerably less ready to domineer over the race which certainly had more claim to him than any other.

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