Читать книгу American Indian life - Various - Страница 22

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On the shores of a great lake were clustered the buildings of the old Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, where the People of the Interior came every spring with their cargoes of pelts to trade for the articles which the white man made for them. Through the long, cold winters, the factor and his crew passed the time as comfortably as they could, with little to break the monotony of the days, while powerful blasts of cold, often bringing several feet of drifted snow in their wake, beat upon the buildings. In the summer, however, the time went quickly. From the vast, forested hills northward came the returning bands of trappers, bringing the results of their winter’s hunt. From the regions nearer, the People of the Lake, by shorter stages, came in, too, with their peltry. So, with the two bands of nomads camped along the beach and on the grassy terrace between the lake and the forest of the upland, the scene was enlivened each spring by the presence of several hundred hunters, with their families, gaudily dressed and garrulous.

By day, in the heat of the sun, which makes these northern places blossom in acres of green and showy flowers, the newcomers wandered from tent to tent, exchanging gossip, talking, singing, gaming and planning for the coming of winter; and all the time gradually enlarging the store of their annual necessities by an irregular trade with the factor behind his long counter in the Post shop. By night among the tents, grouped in twos and threes, the twinkling lights illuminated scenes of quiet domestic life, where some were asleep on piles of tent litter and furs, while others were engaged in plying the busy needle or in the low conversation which made the early evenings such pleasant times for visiting between those who had not seen each other for many months.

The People of the Interior always came to the Post two or three weeks later than those whose hunting grounds were around the lake. Some of the families from the interior came six hundred miles, driving dogs which dragged their laden sleds, the canoes forming part of the loads, until, coming south to where the snow was giving way to the advance of the spring, they left the sleds and loaded the canoes, finishing their journey by drifting in them with the swollen current down to the great lake. The trading completed, the People of the Interior returned as they had come, by canoe and sled, leaving the Post two or three weeks sooner than the People of the Lake. This had been the procedure for innumerable generations.

The People of the Lake never envied their friends from the interior. Their nearness to the Post they considered a great advantage. They could even make a short journey to the Post in midwinter to enjoy the festivities of Christmas with the factor and his employees, while their friends in the interior were perhaps freezing or starving if the game had failed them.

The People of the Lake had begun to feel themselves wiser and more important than their simple forest neighbors. Often one of them would come back from the metropolis with new and smart-cut clothes, plenty of gin, and some household finery with which to decorate the shelves and tables of the board houses which they had erected on the lake shore, but above all, with glowing accounts of the great and busy city where everything could be had that a Montagnais might covet in his most prodigal dreams. To the People of the Interior, these tales sounded marvelous, yet, much as they loved to hear them told, there was a lingering suspicion in their minds that all was not as fine and grand as it was painted, judging by the strong breath, the fagged condition and the depleted pocket-books of those who had experienced these transitory contacts with the outside world.

A product of the conditions which made the People of the Lake so satisfied with themselves was young Antoine, a stalwart youth, whose knowledge of French and the astute principles of business in general, made him invaluable to the independent fur traders who regularly came to the lake to drive bargains with the returning hunters. Antoine’s clothes showed his advance in the social scale. Peg-top trousers, narrow-waisted jacket, suède-topped, patent leather shoes, blue celluloid collar, ready-made cravat, and a green woolen golf cap marked him at once as a denizen of the back streets of Montreal as much as his brown skin, oblique eyes, and sleek hair proclaimed his origin from the People of the North. In broken French, even in broken English, Antoine could swear in competition with the French-Canadian employees of the honorable Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, and those of Revillon Brothers of Montreal who sought to compete with the great company. Antoine had actually cultivated an urbane swagger, he consumed innumerable packages of paper cigarettes and perfumed his system attentively with draughts of gin and brandy. At times, even, Antoine forgot that he was a Montagnais. It was only when reminded by his own people that it was unbecoming for him to prey upon them to the advantage of the traders, that his vanity was lowered to a point which made him agreeable to the other young men. To the girls he was more attractive, and among the People of the Lake there were few girls he had not sampled. At times his vain heart yearned to extend his conquests to the simple maids who came patiently with their parents on the toilsome journey from the hills and forests of the north.

The head man of the People of the Interior, old Shekapeo, whose name meant “Going Backwards,” was a stern and practical hunter whose annual catch could generally be depended upon to contain the finest and rarest furs. While he was alive to the defects of character which made Antoine in figure and reputation so conspicuous about the Post, he often wondered if a matrimonial attachment between Antoine and his daughter would not be of considerable advantage. With his own opportunities of production and Antoine’s far-reaching business experience and associations, he had more than once pictured the advantage, while puffing his pipe before the fire. And yet he could not make up his mind to discourage the growing intimacy between his daughter and a young man of his own band, whom he had always admired for his quiet energy and productive trapping. The girl herself, if left to her own judgment, would have had little to say. Born by the side of a remote lake on a beautiful still morning, when the heat of noontime was lifting a mirage to the north across the glassy waters, her mother had called her Ilitwashteu, Mirage, from the first phenomenon seen after the birth of her child. Mirage, like her father, felt the contrast between Good-ground and Antoine. But the mystery of Antoine was making him an object of growing interest in her mind. She had dared to raise her eyes from her moccasins and look directly at him once, when he had come to the tent to talk with her father on business. Then, when her father’s back was turned, Antoine spoke to her, but she did not go so far as to answer him.

It was winter. Shekapeo had returned to his hunting grounds in the region of the Lake of Steep Shores. Near him, this year, was camped the family of young Good-ground who was at this season trapping in that section of his hereditary hunting grounds for marten. The territories of the two families adjoined each other, though for several years each had been operating on the more distant tracts, with the idea of allowing the intervening zone to become replenished with the fur-bearing animals. Old Shekapeo and young Good-ground knew perfectly well where their respective bounds lay. During the winter they occasionally visited one another and sometimes planned to exchange privileges in each other’s grounds. When, for instance, one year bear had been abundant in Shekapeo’s district, owing to a forest fire in the month of flowers which had left in its wake an exceptional abundance of berries, the same winter on young Good-ground’s territory, caribou had wandered in unusual numbers. Then they had allowed each other to cross the landmarks. Good-ground took toll on many of Shekapeo’s bears, and Shekapeo took what he needed of Good-ground’s caribou.

It happened late in the winter in the month of great cold that several members of Good-ground’s family were taken sick with coughs and aching limbs. Sickness added to Good-ground’s duties, and often he was prevented from following his line of traps properly, by the necessity of remaining at camp himself. One trip when he started to visit his ten traps, which were strung at a distance of about two miles apart along the banks of the River of Poplars, he found himself at the ninth trap by the end of the second day. So bad had been the conditions of travel, and his own feelings so oppressed, that, late this afternoon, he made himself a little fire where he had scraped away the snow with one of his snowshoes, and boiled himself a pot of tea. Near the fire lay his good dogs Ntohum and Kawabshet, “My Hunter” and “Whitey,” names descended through many generations of canines. They were worn out and tired, from pulling the toboggan through the soft, deep snowdrifts. The nine traps had yielded a few furs, yet most of them were empty. The promise of bad weather added to the trouble. To the northeast a heavy bank of lead-colored sky appeared above the pointed tops of the vast spruce forest. Fitful blasts of wind came occasionally from the same quarter, growing more frequent during the afternoon and causing Good-ground many times to turn his head about and look behind, then urge the dogs with a few sharp words to greater exertions.

Now, smoking his pipe of stone, which several times he refilled with dry tobacco obtained from the Post so far away, his eyes rested first upon his fagged dogs, then upon the slowly spreading pall of gray, northward above the hills. The question of the tenth trap was resting heavily upon Good-ground’s mind. Might there be anything held fast in its iron jaws, or would the machine be empty before his disheartened gaze, should he gather his forces together and press on against the rising wind for another three hours? The price to pay in risk to himself and his animals for whatever might be caught there, would be, indeed, the highest. With depleted provisions through another afternoon of struggle against the blizzard which was surely coming, a question arose in his experienced mind as to the actual possibility of its accomplishment. Should he turn about now and go down with the wind to the little shelter camp where he could spend the night, back on Round Lake, he would then be within a short day’s voyage of his home camp. There his sick family, brothers, sisters and mother, were comfortably and snugly housed in their warm tent, roofed tightly with birch-bark and lined with caribou skins, making it warm as the inside of his fur-lined mitten. But what if trap number ten should contain an animal, perhaps a sable or even a black fox, whose pelt would bring the profit he so badly needed?

Having filled his pipe several times, and cleaned it with the blade of bone which he carried tied to his tobacco bag, it seemed as if Good-ground could not decide. Finally, with a motion of determination, he plunged his hand into the bag, which contained the carcass of a hare reserved for his supper. With a few cuts of his knife he got out the shoulder blade of the animal, and he removed the clinging flesh by tearing it off with his teeth till the bone was clean and brown; then upon the end of a split stick he held the hare’s shoulder bone before the heat of his fire, and raised his voice in a low melody which came from between slightly opened lips. “Ka na ka na aa ka na he.” While he sang, the bone, affected by the heat, grew black toward the center; finally a segment with a little crack split from the center and ran toward the edge, breaking through the bone and causing it to burn away on one of its outer sides. The divination was complete. The spirit of the hare had told him that his voyage would be unsuccessful.

Now, with a few deft and decided motions, Good-ground cleaned out his pipe, replaced several articles which he had removed from his bag, adjusted his snowshoes by kicking his feet into the stiffened loops, and squared about toward the south, pulling the sled around on its runners till it, too, pointed backwards along the trail over which he had, thirty minutes ago, tramped down the snow to make a path for his dogs. The animals needed no human urging to tighten their traces and drag the sled forward in a trail, which even now was being blown over with drifting snow coming slant-wise through the forest on a furious wind. Kiwedin, the north wind, was now going to rule the world of the people of the north. Whatever thought Good-ground had a while ago as to what the tenth trap might have yielded him had he gone to it, faded from his mind with the satisfaction that he was obeying his dream animal, and that probably he would reach his home camp in time to escape the suffering which he knew he would have met had he gone on to learn what trap number ten contained. His forebodings were not without ground. It was with difficulty that he reached his little camp station that night, helped along by the wind at his back. His out-trail was now completely covered, but it had been possible for him to run ahead of his dogs and break the snow for them with his snowshoes. That night at his station he tried again his “mutnshawan” and the bone broke in the same way as before. This time the crack in the surface of the shoulder blade zig-zagged off in the direction of the home camp, a sure indication that this was to be the direction of travel next day.

By the time the late northern dawn had lighted up the trail sufficiently for him to follow it, Good-ground had fed his dogs and himself on the remaining carcasses of the few beasts that he had taken, in coming up to his line of traps. By dark, forcing his way through growing drifts with the wind still at his back, he silently wound into the cleared space, near the center of which stood the three bark tents with their wisps of smoke driven horizontally from the poles, that for almost nine months of the year he called home. Several little fox-bred mongrel dogs limped out on the beaten footpaths from one of the tents, and with wheezy coughs announced the return of the son and brother to the females within the enclosure. They were building up the fire and preparing a stew of hare and smoked caribou meat. Good-ground lifted the skin hanging before the door, bent under its low arch, and stepped toward the fire, laying his game bag on the boughs near the knees of his oldest sister. The glances at his face and his return glance showed that all was well, they felt, while all were still alive. And smiles lighted their faces as the girl brought the contents of one of the packs from the sled and opened it before their eyes, though it contained only medium pelts and carcasses only large enough to go into the stew-pot for to-morrow’s dinner.

The blizzard raged, the weak and sick ones got worse before they got better, and several weeks passed before Good-ground could muster the strength, and afford the time to harness his dogs again and move along the trap line. Smoked caribou flakes, hare carcasses, and a small portion of flour had carried them through the short period of famine.

Finally with the return of good weather and the subsidence of the wind, Good-ground was able to make his round of traps, baiting and resetting those which had been torn down by the force of the wind, the snow and the beating branches of the undergrowth. Arriving at the location of trap number ten, he scraped away the snow to find there the chewed and devoured remains of a splendid black fox! The loss, Good-ground realized as he stood there regarding the remaining patch of silky ink-black fur no larger than the span of his hands, would amount to $2500 at least. Had he visited trap number ten that terrible day, weeks ago, he might have secured the pelt.

On his return home Good-ground was to have another surprise. He found his neighbor old Shekapeo visiting his family, having ventured a day’s struggle through the soft and deep snowdrifts, from a sympathetic desire to see whether all had gone well with the family whose lives depended upon the support of one young man.

Shekapeo heard the story of Good-ground’s lost prize with impassive expression. But on his way home the next day, tramping ahead of his dogs he had time to think over the bad luck attaching to Good-ground. Shekapeo’s thoughts then turned to the coming trading season at the Post, and in particular to the financial ascendancy of Antoine.

During that spring season at the Post, among the tales which circulated was that about Good-ground and trap number ten. The story of the adventure did not turn out to his credit, especially after Antoine took occasion to say to Shekapeo, in the presence of the family, including Mirage, that Good-ground was a fool to have turned back at a time when a catch worth several thousand dollars was waiting his enterprise.

To account for Good-ground’s lack of success, Antoine even remarked that Good-ground’s dream spirit would not have lied to him that day when he turned back, unless he had been a liar himself.

With the advent of the moon when the birds begin to fly, which the white people at the Post called August, the People of the Interior having finished their trading, repaired their canoes, and satisfied their craving for society, bade adieu to their friends of the lake and started on their return to the northern wilderness. In the coming voyage of ascent, Good-ground’s three canoe loads of provisions and supplies, in large part advanced to him in credit by the factor, which were to last him through the winter on his hunting grounds, would have to be carried over thirty-two portages. If the weather continued good he expected to make the return trip in forty days. The largest lake that he had to cross would be nine miles wide, but if the wind blew hard he would have to make double that distance by working around the shore line. His load consisted of about two thousand pounds in all, fifteen bags of flour, two hundred pounds of pork, ten of tobacco, one hundred of flour, one hundred of grease, twenty-five of tea, forty of salt, twenty boxes of baking powder, twenty-five bars of soap, two boxes of candles, twelve boxes of shells, four boxes of rifle cartridges, three hundred traps, from beaver size down, and ten bear traps—all this in three canoes. With the help of mother, sisters, and younger brothers, these canoes had to be paddled in smooth water, while on the portages and in water that was too shallow for paddling, they had to be relayed in loads on the back.

Finally, their toilsome journey ended, Good-ground and the others reached their distant hunt-grounds and reopened their home camps, where, all summer during their absence, the porcupines and other rodents had made havoc among the greasy furnishings; where even an occasional passing bear had left his marks. More than once the caribou and moose had poked their noses well within the clearing and among the deserted tents, as though they knew that the men, who in the winter time were so eager for their lives, were now far away killing fish to live on, and eating the white men’s food put up in tin cans.

So another winter was passed by the People of the Interior, busy in killing the wild animals of the forest and busy, too, in reviving the spirits of the slain animals, as they believed, by constant resource to drumming, singing, praying, and other shamanistic performances.

This winter at the Post, for Antoine, at least, was also a season of great activity. Antoine’s astute employer, an independent French trader, had conceived a scheme to secure the trade of the People of the Interior when they should come out from the forests in the spring. The scheme was nothing less than to have a score of cases of the strongest fire water sent to the lake, at great expense, hidden from the eyes of the revenue officers en route. The whole was to cost about all that the independent French company could afford to put into the venture, and incidentally, as his employer finally made clear to him, to absorb the whole of Antoine’s available estate in the shape of over a thousand dollars ready cash. Antoine and his employer gloated together over the scoop that would be made when the People of the Interior were told that the old company factor had died and the Post was closed, and learned that the new company had gone to the trouble of providing for them their beloved liquor so that there should be at least something for which to trade their furs. It was planned that Antoine should ascend the river Where-Moose-Abound, down which the People of the Interior generally came, a several days’ journey, and there intercept them and put through the hoax.

With considerable care, seven sturdy canoe men were engaged, with Antoine as their foreman, to transfer the disguised cases from the lake to a convenient point up the river where the People of the Interior, with their precious cargoes of fur, would be sure to pass by in their descent. On the great day, the flotilla with its spirituous cargo made an early morning start. The men, with occasional levies upon the contents of their load to refresh themselves, finally reached the destined point and unloaded the boxes, setting up their camp to wait for the arrival of the descending hunters. Antoine’s expectations ran high. He pictured to himself the consternation with which the People of the Interior would receive the surprising news that he had to impart, and then the eagerness with which they would fall upon his stores of liquor. With their potations well begun, he expected that they would not stop until they had traded the best of their peltries for the last flask of his fire water. His visions were hourly more stimulated by draughts upon his stock.

That evening, when the voyagers had settled down about their leaping fire, nothing would have aroused the suspicion of the observer as to what was about to take place. The seven canoe men, who were from among the People of the Lake, had decided upon an action which, to their minds, seemed advantageous to themselves, as well as in accordance with the excise laws of the Dominion, but which was prompted above all by fidelity to their friends among the People of the Interior. These men of the People of the Lake had known from former years’ experience what it would mean for their friends of the forest to be turned back to their distant hunting grounds with nothing but the remains of a drunken orgy to meet their requirements for the coming winter. Therefore had they decided, with great moral satisfaction, in the interests of self, of government, and of mankind exactly what their correct course should be.

Before the evening had worn away, Antoine felt himself enjoying the best of spirits. He did not notice, when one of the men asked him to pass the matches, that two of the others behind him were fumbling among some tangled thongs and ropes. He did not notice, until too late, a quick movement by which he was thrown on his back and quickly bound hand and foot, his hands behind his back. Attempts to reach his sheath-knife, frantic yells, squirmings, and attempts to bite the binding thongs were lost in a roar of laughter which greeted him when he was tumbled to one side of the camp like a strangled bear, to curse in French, and threaten them with every dreadful thing that the northern Indian has learned to fear. They only laughed at him as his store clothes became grimy and his urbane veneer disappeared. They laughed all the more, these merry Men of the Lake, when the boxes had been broken open with their keen axes and the corks pulled from a score of flat bottles, whose limpid contents disappeared down their throats between gurgles of liquid and gurgles of laughter and jokes.

Now for two days this merry camp of Bacchus made the forests echo with songs and cries, some from the throats of the Men of the Lake, growing louder each hour, others growing feebler each hour from the throat of Antoine. Had the People of the Interior been within hearing distance, they might have thought that a band of marauding enemies had engaged one another in warfare on their peaceful river. And no doubt they would have gone into concealment until some of their scouts could have learned the cause of it. But it so happened that they were delayed many miles up the river at one of the portages; several invalids had required attention. When all were able to resume their journey they descended by easy stages to favor the condition of their patients.

It was not until the second day after the demolition of the boxes and their contents in Antoine’s bivouac, that the flotilla carrying the People of the Interior swung around a point of the river, and came down upon the camp, where by this time all the merrymakers were strewn about in a profound sleep. Cautiously and reverently stepping ashore, the foremost men in the canoes of the People of the Interior believed that they had come upon a camp of the dead, although, as they afterward remarked, the odor pervading the air was not exactly of a funereal taint. It took but a few moments for them to connect the circumstances. It took but a few more for them to connect with a dozen of the flat bottles whose contents had either been reserved for this special occasion by the thoughtful Men of the Lake, or had been overlooked in the surge of feeling which had followed their first attack upon the load. It now became the turn of the People of the Interior to show solicitude for those men of the People of the Lake, who had so sacrificed their loyalty to their employer for the sake of their kinsmen. Even Antoine was stripped of his thongs and stood upon his feet. But two days of fasting and exposure in the damp moss in his wet store clothes, with nothing to eat or drink, had about exhausted his constitution. His companions were the first to resuscitate, and it was from their lips that the story of the event was learned by the bewildered People of the Interior.

A day or so later, refreshed with sleep, fresh fish, and cold water, the whole company pushed off from the shore. The People of the Interior continued their journey to the Post, but among some of them a change had taken place which was to affect in particular the relationship of two individuals. These two were Good-ground and Mirage.

Frank G. Speck