TO MCMURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE
"Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the track—
O' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac;
Of fur an' gun, an' ranch an' run, an' moose and caribou,
An' bull-dogs eatin' us to death! Good-bye—good luck to you!"
Our arrival at Chipewyan is opportune. Honorine Daniels, unceremoniously known as 'Norine among her friends (and they are legion), is about to join hand and fortune with one of the Mercredi boys. 'Norine owns a cottage in her own right, and to-night under her roof-tree there is to be a wedding-dance. We wait round, hungering for an invitation, finally to be told largely, "You don't need no invitation, everybody goes."
We go with the crowd. The room is full to overflowing. Babies are deposited on the benches along the wall, dogs look in at the window. The air is heavy with mosquitoes and tobacco-smoke. But joy reigns. Nobody is too old or too obese to dance. Old Mr. Loutit and lame Jimmy Flett each secures a sonsy partner. There are three fiddlers, and these relieve each other in turn, for fiddling, beating time with your moccasin on the earthen floor, and "calling out" is hard work for one man. There are but two kinds of dances,—the Red River jig, and a square dance which probably had for honourable ancestors the lancers on the father's side and a quadrille on the mother's.
Endurance is a sign of merit in the Red River jig. A man or woman steps into the limelight and commences to jig, a dark form in moccasins slips up in front of the dancer, and one jigs the other down, amid plaudits for the survivor and jeers for the quitter.
It is the square dance that interests us, our attention being divided between watching the deft forms in the half light and listening to the caller-off. Louie-the-Moose first officiates. His eyes look dreamy but there is a general's stern tone of command in his words:
"Ladeez, join de lily-white han's,
Gents, your black-and-tan!
Ladeez, bow! Gents, bow-wow!
Swing 'em as hard's ye can.
"Swing your corner Lady,
Then the one you love!
Then your corner Lady,
Then your Turtle Dove!"
Over and over again Louie reiterates his injunction, to the accompaniment of pattering moccasins and a humming chorus from door and windows. There are phrases of variation, too. We catch the words, "Address your pardner," "Adaman left," "Show your steps," "Gents walk round, and all run away to the west."
Then Michel Manvil takes hold of the situation. He stands up to it, and we hear
"Ladies round ladies, and gents all so!
Ladies round gents, and gents don't go!"
Why should they, we wonder!
The third fiddler is a full-blooded Chipewyan. In some dancing academy in the woods he has learnt a "call-off" all his own, and proud indeed is he of his stunt. We manage to copy it down in its entirety, fighting mosquitoes the while and dodging out into the open now and again for a little air.
"'Slute your ladies! All together!
Ladies opposite, the same—
Hit the lumber with yer leathers,
Balance all, and swing yer dame!
Bunch the moose-cows in the middle!
Circle, stags, and do-si-do—
Pay attention to the fiddle!
Swing her round, an' off you go!
"First four forward! Back to places!
Second foller—shuffle back!
Now you've got it down to cases—
Swing 'em till their back-teeth crack!
Gents, all right, a heel and toeing!
Swing 'em, kiss 'em if you kin—
On to next, and keep a-goin'
Till you hit your pards ag'in!
"Gents to centre; ladies round 'em,
Form a basket; balance all!
Whirl yer gals to where you found 'em!
Promenade around the hall!
Balance to yer pards and trot 'em
Round the circle, double quick!
Grab and kiss 'em while you've got 'em—
Hold 'em to it; they won't kick!"
The perspiring musician pushes his instrument into the hands of Running Antelope and turns to us with, "There's another verse, but I don't always give it." We ask him to repeat it for us, but he seems a little at a loss. "It's hard to call it out without the fiddle. When yer playin' you just spit it out—the words come to you."
It is August 6th at Chipewyan, and once again we are at the parting of the ways. Every one we know is heading for "Outside" by way of the steamer Grahame and the Athabasca scows. Our own ambition is to make a traverse of the great Peace River Country before the snows. We have had no mail since last May, and the temptation to follow the multitude as far as McMurray in the hope of finding letters there is too strong to be resisted. We will then return and try to perfect arrangements for the Peace.
The outgoers are a cosmopolitan and happy "bunch,"—Major Jarvis, R.N.W.M.P., fur-traders galore, three Grey Nuns and a priest, Mr. Wyllie and his family bound for the Orkney Islands, fifty-four souls in all, without counting the miscellaneous and interesting fraternity down on the lower deck among the fur-bundles.
It is essentially a voyage de luxe. When Mr. Keele imagines a place is good, the steamer stops and we all gather fossils. When lame James, the steward, our erstwhile jig-expert, is about to serve coffee, he pokes his head over the side and orders the engines stopped that we may drink the beverage without spillage. The beardless prospector buys tinned peaches from the commissariat, opens them with a jack-knife and passes them round the deck with impartiality and a to-hell-with-the-man-that-works smile. Who would envy kings?
We arrive at McMurray in time for treaty-payment. Tethered horses at the tepee-poles, store-dolls for the babies, and unmistakable "Outside" millinery prove the prosperity of these Crees, and proves also their proximity to Edmonton. One little group looks tattered, out-at-heel, and hungry,—a Cree widow presenting her four offspring that they may receive the annual payment. The officials within the treaty tent declare the youngest baby an illegitimate child and will pay it no treaty,—it "has no name." I catch the anxious look in the mother's eye. Five dollars goes a long way when baby bodies have to be fed and clothed. The situation is crucial. Without a sponsor, the priest will not name the baby. With no name, it cannot draw treaty. I conclude to father the child, as its own (un)lawful father will not. My offer to give my name to the girlie, after due deliberation of Church and State, is accepted. Under the name of Agnes Deans Cameron the Cree kiddie is received into the Mother Church and finds her place on the list of treaty-receiving Indians—No. 53 in the McMurray Band. May she follow pleasant trails!
A Meadow at McMurray
Back of McMurray lies a lush land. We tread a path a full mile in length leading to meadows where, belly-high, the horses graze. Every yard of our way is lined with raspberry bushes bent with their rich, red burden.
While the furs are being transferred from the Grahame to the scows, the working of our typewriter is a matter of much wonderment. Old Paul Fontaine, a half-breed who thinks he is a white man, first looks through the door, then comes into the dining hall where we are, takes his hat off, and watches respectfully. Then, with an air of great conviction, "This is the first time I ever see that. It is wonderful what man can do—wonderful. There is only one thing left to be done now—and that is to put the breath of life into a dead body." Solemnly putting on his hat, he turns and walks out.
Mrs. Loutit, another fellow-passenger attracted by the click of the machine, comes in and recounts her arts, wild and tame. In winter she goes off in dog-cariole, traps cross-foxes off her own bat, shoots moose, and smokes the hide according to the ancient accepted mode. Coming home, she takes the smoked hide and works upon it silk embroidery of a fineness which would be the envy of any young ladies' seminary in Europe or America. She weaves fantastic belts of beads and sets the fashion for the whole North in chef d'oeuvres of the quills of the porcupine. She is a most observant "old wife." Watching, fascinated, the lightning play of the machine, "Much hard that, I think, harder than bead-work, eh?" Conquering her timidity, she at last glides across to find out how the dickens when you strike capital "A" at one end of the keyboard, it finds itself in the writing next to small "o" at the other end. There is something uncanny about it, and our stock goes up.
Starting up the Athabasca
We confess to being a little homesick as we wave farewell to the half hundred passengers in the familiar scows embarked for their two hundred and thirty-eight mile journey up the Athabasca. It will be a tiresome enough trip, though, for every foot of the way the big boats will have to be tracked (towed) by teams of half-breeds scrambling along the shore, now on land, now splashing in the water. The party will have the mosquito as companion on the sorrowful way and it will take them four weeks to make Athabasca Landing, the distance which in the spring we dropped down in little over a week. We send letters home, and with hand-shaking all round bid farewell to Mr. Wyllie, the Grey Nuns, and the rest.
On the Clearwater
Our way back on the Grahame to Chipewyan is not without adventure. At three o'clock in the afternoon we run up hard and fast on a batture! There is no swearing, no shouting of orders. The deck-hands from long experience know exactly what to do. The engines are reversed and, in their efforts, seem to speak Cree, for we catch the sound of the familiar "Wuh! Wey!" But it is no go. The sun sinks behind the bank, over the tops of the poplars floats a faint rosy glow which fades into purple and then into black, and we are still there hard and fast. The drifting sand piles up against us, and, in scows, the whole cargo is removed. The captain throws out a kedge-anchor, and in a mysterious way we pull ourselves off by hawsers, as a man lifts himself by his own boot-straps.
We have head-winds all the way. At four o'clock on the morning of August 14th, stress of weather causes us to run in under the lee of an island. We tie up at the base of some splendid timber. Spruce here will give three feet in diameter twenty feet from the ground. With an improvised tape-line I go ashore and measure the base-girth of three nearby big poplars (rough-backed). The first ran seven feet three inches, the second exactly eight feet, and the third eight feet four inches. Within view were fifty of these trees which would run the same average, and interspersed with them were spruce with a base-girth scarcely less.
Arrived at Chipewyan, we are able to arrange to be taken up the Peace in the same little tug Primrose which had before carried us so safely to Fond du Lac.