Explorations by Adventurers of the H.B.C.
(Continued from December Number)
Arranged by J. PREST
Sometimes more dangerous game than buffalo was encountered. On September 17, Hendry writes, “Two men were miserably wounded by a grizzly bear that they were hunting today. One may recover but the other never can. His arm is torn from his body, one eye gouged out and his stomach ripped open.” The next day the Indian died.
The Assiniboines were marching southwest from the Pas towards the land of the Blackfeet. They were now three hundred miles southwest of the French House. To Hendry’s surprise they came to a large river with high banks that looked exactly like the Saskatchewan. It was the South Branch of the Saskatchewan, where it takes the great bend south of Prince Albert. Canoes had been left far behind. What were the four hundred Assiniboines to do? But the Indians solved the difficulty in less than half a day. Making boats of willow branches and moose parchment skin–like the bull boats of the Missouri–the Assiniboines rafted safely across. The march now turned west toward the Eagle River and Eagle Hills and North Saskatchewan. The Eagle Indians are met and persuaded to bring their furs to York Fort.
As winter approached, the women began dressing the skins for moccasins and clothes. A fire of punk in an earth hole smoked the skins. Beating and pounding and stretching pelts, the squaws then softened the skin. For winter wear, moccasins were left with the fur inside. Hendry remarks how in the fall of the year the women sat in the doors of their wigwams “knitting moose leather into snow shoes” made of seasoned wood. It was October before the Indians of the far western plains were met. These were the famous Blackfeet, for the first time now seen by an English trader. They approached the Assiniboines mounted and armed with bows and spears. Hendry gave them presents to carry to their chief. Hendry notes the signs of mines along the banks of the Saskatchewan. He thought the mineral iron. What he saw was probably an outcropping of coal. The jumping deer he describes as a new kind of goat. As soon as ice formed on the swamps, the hunters began trenching for beaver, which were plentiful beyond the fur traders’ hopes. When, on October 11th, the marchers for the third time came on the Saskatchewan, which the Indians called Waskesaw, Hendry recognized that all the branches were forks of one and the same great river, the Saskatchewan, or, as the French called it, Christinaux. The Indian names for the two branches were Keskatchew and Waskesaw.
For several days the far smoke of an encampment had been visible, southwest. On October the 14th, four riders came out to conduct Hendry to an encampment of three hundred and twenty-two tents of Blackfeet Indians, “pitched in two rows with an opening in the middle, where we were conducted to the leader’s tent.” This was the main tribe of which Hendry had already met the outrunners. “The leader’s tent was large enough to contain fifty persons. He received us seated on a buffalo skin, attended by twenty elderly men. He made signs for me to sit down on his right hand, which I did. Our leaders (the Assiniboines) set several great pipes going the rounds and we smoked according to their custom.
Not one word was spoken. Smoking over, boiled buffalo flesh was served in baskets of bent wood. I was presented with ten buffalo tongues. My guide informed the leader I was sent by the grand leader who lives on the Great Waters to invite his young men down with their furs. They would receive in return, powder, shot, guns and cloth. He made little answer; said it was far off and his people could not paddle. We were then ordered to depart to our tents which we pitched a quarter of a mile outside their lines. Again invited to the leader’s tent the next morning, Hendry heard some remarkable philosophy from the Indian. “The chief told me his tribe never wanted food as they followed the buffalo, but he was informed the natives who frequented the settlements often starved on their journey, ”which was exceedingly true,“ added Hendry. Reciprocal presents closed the interview. The present to the Assiniboine Chief was a couple of girl slaves, one of whom was murdered at York ten years afterwards by an Indian in a fit of jealousy.
Later, Hendry learned that the Assiniboines did not want these Blackfeet of the far west to come down to the Bay. Neither would the Assiniboines hunt except for food. Putting the two facts together, Hendry rightly judged that the Assiniboines acted as middlemen between the traders and the Blackfeet.
By the end of October, Hendry had left the plains and was in a rolling, wooded land northwest of the North Saskatchewan. Here, with occasional moves as the hunting shifted, the Indians wintered: his journal says, “eight hundred and ten miles west of York,” moving back and forward north and south of the river. Eight hundred and ten miles would bring Hendry in the region between the modern Edmonton and Battleford. It is to Hendry’s credit that he remained on good terms with the Assiniboines. If he had been a weakling, he would easily have become the butt of the children who infested the tents like imps, but he hunted with the hunters, trapped with the trappers, and could outmarch the best of them.
When he met Indians hunting for the French forts, with true trader instinct he bribed them with gifts to bring their furs down to Hudson Bay. Almost the entire winter camp moved from bend to bend or branch to branch of the North Saskatchewan, heading gradually eastward. Towards spring, different tribes joined the Assiniboines to go down to York. Among these were “green scalps” and many women captives from those Blackfeet Indians Hendry had met. Each night the scalps hung like flags from the tent poles. The captives were given around camp as presents. One hears much twaddle of the red man’s noble state before he was contaminated by the white man. Hendry saw these tribes of the Far West before they had met any white men but himself, and the disposal of those captives is a criterion of the red man’s noble state. Whenever one was not wanted–the present of a girl, for instance, resented by a warrior’s jealous wife, she was summarily hacked to pieces and not a passing thought given to the matter. The killing of a dog or a beaver caused more comment. On the value of life as a thing of worth in itself, the Indian had absolutely no conception, not so much conception as a domestic dog trained not to destroy life.
(To be continued)
