CUN-NE-WA-BUM
Portrait in the Royal Ontario Museum
Cun-ne-wa-bum—"one who looks on stars"—
(Feel the singing wind from out the western hills)
"The tip-end of a swan's wing is her fan,
With a handle of porcupine quills."
Here is the artist's name, Paul Kane;
Painting in forty-seven, at Edmonton, I see.
That was when prairies were untamed,
And untamed this young Cree.
What an incantation in her name!
Magic as her dark face underneath the stars;
There is sword-like wind about it wrapped,
And echoes of old wars.
Cun-ne-wa-bum!
When turtle shells were rattling,
And the drums beat for the dance
In the great hall of the Factor's house till dawn,
You sat without the door,
Where the firelight on the floor
Caught the red of beads upon your moccasins.
At evening through the grassy plains the wind
Came shouting down the world to meet the dawn,
And with the wind the firelight rose and fell,
Answered with flame his shrill barbaric yell,
And died like whining fiddles at his feet.
And through it all the constant sound of drums—
Did your feet move to drums?
The men from near and far,
Crees and Sarcees,
And a Blackfoot brave or two,
Made rhythm of a dance that moves like rhyme
To the rush of wind, and rattles swung in time
To the constant, constant, constant beat of drums.
No Indian woman dances in the light;
Silent they sit together out of sight.
But to-night I think this artist from the East,
Who had come to paint the natives hereabout,
Found a splendid flare of crimson on the feast
And moved near the open door,
Where the firelight on the floor
Caught the red of beads upon your moccasins.
So it is, O Cun-ne-wa-bum,
Who were wont to look on stars,
That you sit for ever here,
Like a wild lost note from far,
From the days of ancient war
And of towered stockade and guns
In the Edmonton of seventy years ago.
In your buckskin and your beads
(Feel the sudden wind from out the western hills)
The tip-end of a swan's wing for your fan
With a handle of porcupine quills.
BALLAD OF JASPER ROAD
I know a Blackfoot Chief
Whose name is Dark Plume Bill.
He lived beside the Jasper Road—
And lives there still.
He wears a queer checked coat
And a grey bowler hat,
But looks his ninety-seven years
For all of that.
His gaze is unconcerned
As he sits in the sun,
And counts the flashing motor-cars
That pass, one-by-one,
And trucks, like dreary monsters
Of a prehistoric day,
That are rushing down the road
In their crazy way.
"The first Red River cart,"
Said Dark Plume Bill to me,
"Came lurching up the prairie
Like a ship at sea."
(Oh, the long blue road,
And the stealthy pad of feet
And the first patient ox-cart
With its sail-like sheet!)
"Then the carts came faster,
And at the time of snow
We camped outside the Palisade,
Seventy years ago.
"Arrows, guns—big Buffalo hunts,
Much long fight,
And fires to warm the tepees
For the feasts at night.
"But when they laid the steel
And the long trail awoke
My Indian tribe had scattered
Like the wigwam smoke."
His gaze was unconcerned,
Yet he scanned the way he knew,
As though from out its clamour
He had found a vanished clew.
And I thought it must be strange
To sit in the sun
And look upon an ancient road
That you had seen begun
Out of silence and mystery
And crafty, ambushed death,
Come alive with men, and monsters
Of such an alien breath.
(Oh, the long blue road
And the stealthy pad of feet
And the first patient ox-cart
With its sail-like sheet!)
BUFFALO MEAT
A Daughter-in-law Writes
It takes a letter sixty days to go—
An Indian boy runs down the trail to-night.
What shall I write to you?
My mind is full of gossip of a town
That you have never dreamed of.
So—shall I tell you of our shacks,
Huddled behind the tall stockade?
Our guns, with muzzles set against the prairie?
What if I write the truth!
Your son is now a savage;
By that much more I love him!
If I should say
I can stand all this tropic, summer heat
And menial tasks and crowded alleyways,
And fat squaws lounging in the sun,
And even water out of tainted wells,
And long, rough prairie rides—
All for the sake of autumn,
And its short, magic days of pure content!
If you could know my mind!
A little British mind two years ago;
To-day a sort of crowded, pagan scroll,
Recording strange old customs
And legends, various as the Indian tribes,
And prayers and songs and dances.
Songs that are old as earth itself,
Dances as elemental:
Skin drums and tom-toms,
Rattles of turtle shell, and whirl of winds
Against the amphitheatre of hills.
You will remember they were playing Sheridan
When we left London!
I can count every lilac spray on the old drawing room chintz.
I hope—I hope you have not changed it since!
Let me begin again.
If I should say
I love this small, rough shack,
For it has made me brave—
Braver, at least, than when I saw it first,
And saw a sea of prairie
And the dim forms of buffalo herds
Darkening the far horizon!
I am braver now than when the halfbreeds came
Racing towards us on that first wild day,
Mad messengers to frighten us to death—
Servants of trappers and the Nor'-west men—
Those halfbreeds! feathers dangling, tomahawks!
That was in summer.
Still the buffalo lingered,
Cropping the blue-grey grasses,
Plunging in the muddy wallows,
Always near us.
I could almost touch a shaggy flank.
Two years ago to-day, in Piccadilly—
That tea-shop place the day before we sailed
He said, "It may be wild enough out there,
But I shall keep you safe—
Oh, I shall keep you safe!"
We loitered through that first bright autumn
And on the edge of winter had no meat.
Who wants meat, here, must follow it—and kill.
So, like a band of pilgrims, we set out—
Unguarded women are not left behind—
Walking beside our husbands all the way.
Far out of sight, the Indians
Search for the roaming herds.
They are on splendid ponies.
We settlers are the country's parasites.
When Mary Scott, the factor's wife, and I,
With two young squaws, were left a day in camp
We learned an incantation.
Another day when we were on the trail
My wedding ring was taken from my hand
Just as a warning,
A little necessary bright horse-play,
To show us who was master.
Five days of march and then the broad plateau—
White plains, brown beasts,
Red, flying figures of the Indian guides,
Bonfires at night and sleep in soft skin bags,
Warm blood of slaughter—
But—
It takes a letter sixty days to go,
Even at this season, when there is no snow.
Autumn has fallen on London.
I can see you in the sweet old room.
Please do not change a thing until I come!
Fires will be lit, your velvet curtains drawn,
And when you read my letter, dearest one,
Pray that some great day I may have a son
To mingle past with present.
For now each treacherous hour seems all of life;
I am as much a hunter as a wife,
To whom the summer is a breathing space,
Who waits for autumn
And trots beside her husband, through the grass
That shudders in the late November wind,
Or lies like frozen foam beneath our feet,
Looking for buffalo meat!
RETURN OF THE TRAPPERS
Against the rolling snowdrifts,
Misted by the frost-fog,
Dwarfish, pigmy figures,
See them come!
Open the gates of the great stockade,
Welcome them home.
There's my Red-Scarf!
I can almost hear him snarling,
"Marche! Marche!"
Down at old Fort Garry,
I have heard them say
That they take the women,
Who dog-trot behind them
All the way.
Not out here! Not out here!
With the glass at minus forty
Half the year!
There's the first big husky—
Think you hear his bell?
That is Henri leading;
Yes, among a thousand halfbreeds,
I would know his yell!
What you bet the sleds hold?
There's a slide!
Why that drift the other day
Stretched a half mile wide.
What you bet the sleds hold?
Fire the gun!
Here the women come, pell mell.
They've got ears, those Indian women,
Not much need to fire the gun!
Now we're in for days of steeping,
Matching, drying, sorting—rum.
Hear the whips crack!
Hi! Hi!
See, that's Henri!
Three, four, five—
Not one train lost.
Here they come!
AN OLD LADY
Madame de Courament excels at Bridge.
Hers is a clever hand,
Coloured with age and wrinkled;
But beautiful and tapering too,
Quite in accord with this old, stately room,
With crystal chandeliers,
And flowers and the warm tapestry of books.
Silent the cards fall.
Down the long avenue a dog howls at the moon,
A far, frost-sharpened sound.
The wind swirls up a little storm of snow
That blows against the casement.
A skilled opponent, Madame makes few mistakes
Like that a moment since,
When suddenly the dog howled—and we lost a trick.
She has a flashing wit,
Dinners at Rideau Hall are incomplete without her.
As someone said the other day,
"These elderly, elaborate folk
Are like a passing pageantry,
Gorgeous and of another day."
Silent the cards fall.
Again the far-off dog howls at the moon.
An hour later, "Chateau Laurier" she told the chauffeur.
And, alert and gay,
Wrapped in her sables,
She was motoring me the long white way to town
And gossiping of little this and that.
But just as we were nearing city lights
She said, "I saw you noticed that dog's bark.
It sounded almost like a wolf's;
It took me back to the Red River days.
Oh, it was fifty years ago, my dear;
I was as young as you ... It seems like yesterday.
Hardships! I loved it all!
Even the wolves, baying far out of sight,
Failed to disturb our rest
When we were safe at home.
The Indians were quite friendly—
And the eternal glamour of the snow!
And yet to-night, just when I heard that sound,
Sharpened by frost,
I felt an old pain strike me,
The knife-like thrust, before a child is born.
I was alone that night.
My husband had been called to Edmonton,
My Indian maid had let her family in
Looking for whiskey.
I dared not call to her.
For hours the Indians danced and sang and yelled.
I watched them from my icy-cold bedroom
Through great cracks in the floor.
Before they slept they sat crouched by the fire,
As I crouched up above in fright and pain.
And all night long I heard the wolves;
They kept a sort of savage company
With my own stifled cries.
To-night, my mind went back a moment strangely—
I always thought he had the sweetest face
Of any of my seven ... But then he was the first!"
She raised her glittering hand
And found the speaking tube, to modify her chauffeur's pace.
"And that, my dear, was fifty years ago," she said.
"The prairie was a very different place—
I never thought, then, I should come to Bridge!"
SPANISH PILOTS
To Agnes C. Laut
These were the ragged peon crews,
Half-bloods of Aztec women,
Of Spaniards and adventurers
Who were not seeking heaven!
But out on the broad seas driven,
And from the Horn to Sitka,
They searched for deep-sea findings
The whole unknown way,
With "small ringing of bells
And no trumpet blare,
Empty stomachs, and empty guns,
But plenty of prayer."
And if they failed of the findings,
Nothing behind but the branding irons,
Or slavery in the mines.
Yet they sang
As they sailed in their rickety death-traps;
They laughed as they rode,
And they sank as the rip-tide caught them fast
With a cry to the Virgin,
A prayer to the Virgin—
There was plenty of prayer at the last!