The ordinary Indian is usually considered stoical and unsympathetic. In the first of these qualities he certainly in some respects deserves a place not second to his Greek prototype. He will endure torture as a matter of pride that would shock the sensitive. His self-denial in some cases also is almost heroic. To rob a cache, even when he is enduring extreme hunger would be to him an unworthy act if he knew that the owner were depending on it for his own use.
I wish also to qualify this by the statement that I am speaking of the race as a whole and not of every individual constituting it. There is diversity of individual character among the uncivilised equal to that found in civilised society. It is incorrect also to deny to the native Indian the possession of any measure of human sympathy. It is quite true that he may sometimes seem to us cold and indifferent, but this is more in appearance than in reality.
When fortune favours the hunter and he brings home a moose to his wigwam, the first thing he does is to send a piece of the meat to his neighbours. These may be many miles away. I remember on one occasion in winter I engaged an Indian with two teams of dogs and toboggans to bring me from the northern boundary of Ontario out to the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It had happened that just before starting he had shot two moose. On the route were a few wigwams at long distances apart, and at every one of these a present of fresh venison was made. In some cases no one was in the wigwams at the hour of our visit, but nevertheless, a portion of the meat was always left; a pleasant surprise for the occupant on his return.
Their affection for their kindred and for their children is quite equal to that of the ordinary white man. There is something very morose in this affection. It was my fortune to spend a winter on Rainy River many years ago before the railway had entered any part of Canada beyond Lake Superior. There were several Indian settlements along the stream. Wild game, especially the caribou and moose, were plentiful in the woods and fish abundant in the river, so they were seldom in actual want of food such as they were accustomed to. Very little sickness among them was then heard of, but years after I went up the same river in a steamer and sad were the stories told of the misfortunes that had come upon these people. With the white settlers came the contagious diseases such as smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and others of even a worse nature with the result that their settlements were practically wiped out, and the graveyards, with their numerous little wooden houses built over each grave, showed where the stalwart braves with their wives and children had gone.
We noticed one old man who had lost all his family in one of those epidemics, walking aimlessly among the graves, and we were told that he spent most of his time there, no doubt in fancied communication with the spirits of the departed.
The grief of the Indian woman at the loss of her child is very touching. On one occasion I remember seeing at a distance two Indians and a squaw pulling a little sleigh up the bank of a river, and curiosity prompted me to join them when I saw them stop at a little open space where there was a new made open grave. Then I noticed on the sleigh the dead child which they proceeded to bury. The mother was perfectly quiet until the men commenced to cover up the grave when she uttered a wild shriek which revealed the depth of her maternal feelings. She seemed to protest at what the men were doing, and on inquiring from them I learned that she belonged to a tribe who buried their young children in trees. This was done by cutting out a section of the tree of sufficient size to receive the body and then closing it up again, their belief being that the child would in some way enjoy the life of the tree. Their ideas of these matters are vague and undefined, but the grief of this poor mother at the thought that her child was smothered in the earth instead of in some way living another form of life in conjunction with the tree, showed that ages of struggle for existence in the wilderness had failed to obliterate those finer feelings of the soul.
On another occasion an Indian, residing on one of the reserves on the Spanish River in Northern Ontario was engaged on a tug that towed scows on that stream during the construction of the Algoma branch of the C.P.R. His wife, living at their home on the bank of the river, seeing the boat with her barges coming down stream hurriedly, gathered up her husband’s laundry garments which she had ready, and picking up her baby rushed down to her birch bark canoe, placed the little infant in its wooden cradle in the bottom of the canoe and soon reached the barge, but as she came in contract with it her canoe was upset. The tug was stopped and a boat quickly launched and the mother rescued and taken ashore while the upset canoe went floating down stream. Immediately she recovered consciousness her first words were “Where is my baby?” This was the first the men knew that the baby had been with her and they at once paddled out to the canoe, and on turning it over found the little one was there uninjured, between two cross pieces in the canoe the baby in the wooden cradle was supported. They, of course, lost no time in bringing it to its mother who received it with all the affection possible, and during the whole of the afternoon she would laugh and then burst out crying, uttering words in her own tongue which meant “I thought I lost my baby.”
Turning from the serious and sentimental to the humorous or droll we will find that the Indian is by no means lacking in his sense of the ludicrous, neither is he slow in imitating by word and action any individual who excites his mirth. He is really a born mimic and the rehearsals around the camp fire are often as humorous as one would find in any comic play. There comes now to my mind a dirty little Indian boy who could easily make his mark in any of our theatres. He had the gift of portraying the appearance, the actions and the walk of others and of imitating the voice in a manner which I have never seen surpassed. He had attended a mission school for some time, and one evening I overheard him at their camp fire, intoning the English Church service in a manner so like the Oxford graduate that it was difficult to believe that the beautifully modulated sentences were uttered by this little ragamuffin.
Let no white man who has any peculiarities of action or speech (and who has not), visit an Indian settlement without expecting to have these dramatised by the wit of the band.
They have also the gift of inventing names for individuals which aptly hit off their character. For instance, during the long period in office of the late Sir John A. Macdonald he was frequently visited by deputations of Indians, which, like most deputations, asked for more than could be conveniently given. Sir John was too astute to make any definite promise that he knew could not be fulfilled, and too wise to refuse them point blank, so he usually told them that he would consult the great Queen Mother who was a good friend of the red man and that they could go home trusting that they would be well treated.