Near the forks of the Muhigan large game was very plentiful, and Mr. Tyrrell saw eleven moose in one day.
As to his survey of the Ekwan district in 1901, Mr. D. B. Dowling reports:—“The principal fur-bearing animals of this region are foxes, otters and beavers. Of the larger mammals few appear to be taken by the Indians. In the interior the game birds are all very scarce, the fall hunt for ducks and geese being confined to the shores of the bay. The rivers afford a small supply of whitefish. The streams running to the north into Hudson bay in this region are, at certain seasons, well stocked with speckled trout. Sutton Mill lake is well supplied with a slender variety of lake trout, and at the narrows, speckled trout were also caught.”
Mr. Dowling mentions that at the foot of the first fall met with ascending Trout lake river from Little Shallow lake, the Indians form large camps in the autumn to catch whitefish as they are ascending the river to the spawning grounds.
The Best Food Fishes.
Mr. McInnes, in the report of his explorations about Winisk and Attawapiskat rivers (See p. [23]), says:—“Whitefish and sturgeon are the best food fishes, and occur in most of the lakes. Both are taken in nets, and the latter also by spearing from scaffolds built out over rapids in the river. Doré and pike are also generally distributed over the whole area, and form an important source of food supply, though the sucker among the fishes, like the rabbit among the mammals, holds the most important place, as it can be caught everywhere, not only in the larger lakes but also in the smaller ponds and streams. Brook trout were actually caught only in Winisk river near its mouth, and in the streams running into Albany river, but were seen in the rapids below Weibikwei; the Indians assert that they occur also in the lake itself. Lake trout were caught in large numbers in Trout lake at the head of Severn river, but are not found in either the Winisk or Attawapiskat waters.
“The moose (Alces americanus) has been found as far north as the southern shore of Weibikwei lake, in north latitude 52° 50′, though tracks were actually seen during our exploration only as far north as Attawapiskat river. Even here it is not nearly so plentiful as farther south in the belt of country lying near the Canadian Pacific Railway and extending for about one hundred and fifty miles north of it. Caribou (Rangifer caribou) range all over the district. No red deer are found anywhere throughout the region. The fur-bearing animals, though not so plentiful as they once were, are still fairly abundant throughout the district; the otter and the beaver from long-continued trapping are less numerous, perhaps, than any other species.”
Bears, Mr. McInnes says, are taken in good numbers, and foxes, including the red, silver, black and cross varieties are numerous. Otters and pine martens are taken in good numbers and beavers occur more sparingly. Minks and muskrats are plentiful. That the raccoon occasionally strays as far north as north latitude 52° is shown by the fact of one being taken by an Indian woman on upper Attawapiskat river in 1903.
Mr. McInnes describes Atikameg (locally known as Clearwater), Cormorant and Reed lakes as “very beautiful sheets of clear water, well stocked with fish, including lake trout and whitefish.”
Mr. McInnes, in his evidence before the Senate committee of 1907, expressed the opinion that if the region lying west of Hudson bay were opened up by railways there would be a considerable business in exploiting the fisheries, because the sturgeon is valuable. They would get the sturgeon on the lower Nelson and part of the Churchill. Big lease-holding companies put steamers on the various lake expansions on the Nelson, so that they reached down to within a few miles of Split lake, and marketed sturgeon in that way. They put tramways on all the portages. They ran that way for a couple of summers, but the distance was too great and it did not pay. The larger lakes have good whitefish and sturgeon. The head of the Adawadskit was particularly full of sturgeon. Going out Mr. McInnes’s party was short of pork and stopped one day to get supplies. In one night’s fishing the Indians caught so many sturgeon that they had enough to carry them for one hundred and fifty miles to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post. One of the sturgeon
Was Three Feet Long.