Ungava Bob: A Winter's Tale

by Dillon Wallace

He had no recollection of lying down in the snow. The last he could definitely recall was his fearful battling with the storm. There was a sort of hazy remembrance of something that he could not quite grasp—of having gone to sleep somewhere in a snug, warm bed spread with white sheets. Try as he would he could not explain his presence in this Indian wigwam, nor could he tell how long he had been here. It seemed to him years since the morning he left the tilt to go on the caribou hunt.

So he lay for a good while trying to account for his strange surroundings until at last he became drowsy and was on the point of going to sleep when suddenly the entrance flap of the wigwam opened and two Indians entered—the most savage looking men Bob had ever seen—and he felt a thrill of fear as he beheld them. They were very tall, slender, sinewy fellows, dressed in snug fitting deerskin coats reaching half way to the knees and decorated with elaborately painted designs in many colours. Their heads were covered with hairy hoods, and the ears of the animal from which they were made gave a grotesque and savage appearance to the wearers. Light fitting buckskin leggings, fringed on the outer side, encased their legs, and a pair of deerskin mittens dangled from the ends of a string which was slung around the neck. One of the men was past middle age, the other a young fellow of perhaps twenty.

The older woman said something to them and they began to jabber in so high a tone of voice that Bob would have thought they were quarrelling but for the fact that they laughed good-naturedly all the time and came right over to where he lay to shake his hand. They had a good deal to say to him, but he could not understand one word of their language. After greeting him both men removed their outer coats and hoods, and Bob could not but admire the graceful, muscular forms that the buckskin undergarments displayed. Their hair was long, black and straight and around their foreheads was tied a thong of buckskin to keep it from falling over their faces.

They laughed at Bob's inability to understand them, and were much amused when he tried to talk with them. Every effort was made to put him at ease.

When the men were finally seated, the girl dipped out a cup of broth and a dish of venison stew from the kettle which she handed to Bob; then the others helped themselves from what remained. There was no bread nor tea, and nothing to eat but the unflavoured meat.

It was quite dark now and the fire cast weird, uncanny shadows on the dimly-lighted interior walls of the wigwam. The Indians sitting around it in their peculiar dress seemed like unreal inhabitants of some spirit world. Bob's coming to himself in this place and amongst these people appealed to him as miraculous—supernatural. He could not understand it at all. He began to plan an escape. When they were all asleep he could steal quietly out and make his way back to the tilt. But, then, he reasoned, if they wished to detain him they could easily track him in the snow in the morning; and, besides, he did not know where his snow-shoes were and without them he could not go far. Neither did he know how far he was from the tilt. After the Indians had found him they may have carried him several days' journey to their camp and whether they had gone west or north he had no way of finding out.

It was, therefore, he realized, an unquestionably hopeless undertaking for him to attempt to reach his tilt alone, and he finally dismissed the idea as impracticable. Perhaps in the morning he could induce them to take him there. That, he concluded, was the only plan for him to follow. So far they had been very kind and he could see no reason why they should wish to detain him against his will.

The Indians were indeed Nascaupee Indians, but instead of being the ruthless cut-throats that the Mountaineers and the legends of the coast had painted them, they were human and hospitable, as all our eastern Indians were before white men taught them to be thieves and drove and goaded them—by the white man's own treachery—to acts of reprisal and revenge.

These Nascaupees, living as they did in a country inaccessible to the white ravishers, had none but kindly motives in their treatment of Bob and had no desire to do him harm. On the morning that Bob fell in the snow Shish-e-tá-ku-shin—Loud-voice—and his son Moó-koo-mahn—Big Knife—had left their wigwam early to hunt. Not far away they crossed Bob's trail. Their practiced eye told them that the traveller was not an Indian, for the snow-shoes he wore were not of Indian make, and also, from the uncertain, wobbly trail, they decided that he was far spent. So they followed the tracks and within a few minutes after Bob had fallen found him. They carried him to the wigwam and rubbed his frosted limbs and face until it was quite safe to wrap him in the deerskins in the warm wigwam.

They did not know who he was nor where he came from, but they did know that he needed care and several days of quiet. He was a stranger and they took him in. These poor heathens had never heard of Christ or His teachings, but their hearts were human. And so it was that Bob found himself amongst friends and was rescued from what seemed certain death.