Jack the Young Canoeman: An Eastern Boy's Voyage in a Chinook Canoe

by George Bird Grinnell

"Well," said Hugh, "I've eaten owl a number of times, and it's not at all bad eating, though, of course, it depends a little bit on how hungry you are. I guess most everything that runs or flies is pretty good to eat, if one only has appetite enough. I have tried a whole lot of things, and I put owl down among the things that are real good."

"How did you come to eat owl, Hugh?" asked Jack. "And when was it?"

"It's a good many years ago," said Hugh, "that I started, late in December, south from the Platte River with Lute North, expecting to load up a wagon with buffalo meat at once. We didn't take much grub with us as we meant to be gone only for a few days; and as buffalo had been plenty in the country to which we were going, we thought we could soon load the wagon.

"We travelled three days without seeing a head of game, and then crossed the Republican River and kept on south. In the river bottom we killed a turkey, but all the four-footed game seemed to have left the country. After going south two days longer and finding no game, not even an old bull, we turned back, for provisions were getting low. We crossed the Republican again, but got stuck in the quicksands; and the wagon sunk so low that the water came into the wagon box and wet our things, without doing much harm, however, for the sugar was the only thing that was spoiled. The flour got wet, and left us only about enough for two or three more loaves of bread. But we had a little piece of bacon left, so we had enough to carry us through. It took some hours to get the wagon out; and that afternoon, after leaving the river, we saw three old bulls feeding on the side of a ridge. At first Lute and I both intended to go after them; but as there was a better chance of approaching them if only one man went, and as Lute was a fine shot, I told him to go ahead, and I waited in the wagon. He took a circuit and got around the bulls so that the wind was right, then crept up behind a ridge until he was within a hundred yards, and fired—and the bulls ran off over the hills. When Lute came back, and I asked him how he came to miss them, he could give no explanation. 'I had as good a bead on that bull as I ever had on anything, and yet I missed him clean,' he said; 'shot clear over him.'

"We camped that night in a wide and deep ravine, and in the morning when we got up we found that we were covered with snow, which was two or three feet deep, and which still kept falling. This was certainly a bad state of things. We lay in camp all day, only leaving it to tie the horses up to some brush where they could get something to eat. It stopped snowing that night, and the next morning we started out to try to kill something, but had no luck. The snow was so deep in the ravine that we could not travel there, but on the divide the wind had blown it all off. Lute saw a wolf, but could not get a shot at it. I had seen nothing. We spent the rest of the evening trying to break a road out to the divide, and at night we made our last loaf of bread and ate half of it. It took us all the next day to get out to where the horses could travel, but we made some little distance, stopping at night and melting some snow for the horses, and for a cup of coffee apiece. Next morning, as we were hitching up, I saw a white owl hunting along the edge of the ravine. The bird alighted about half a mile away, and I took my rifle and went out to try to kill it. I got to within seventy-five yards of it, and then it saw me; so I fired, and it did not fly away. When I got hold of it I found that I had shot high, and that my ball had just cut the top of its head. Half an inch higher, and I would have missed. We ate half the owl that morning, and the rest that night. The next night we crossed the Platte. When within four or five miles of town, just when we didn't need it, we killed a white-tail deer."

"Well," said Jack, "you must have been pretty hungry when you got it."

"Yes," said Hugh, "but it isn't very hard to go without eating. A man feels pretty wolfish for the first twenty-four hours, but then he doesn't get any hungrier. After that he begins to get weak; not very fast, of course, but he can't do as much as he can when he's well fed. He can't walk as far or climb as hard. To go without water, though, is a very different thing. If a man can't drink, he suffers a great deal, and keeps getting worse all the time."

"Well," said Fannin, "in this country no man need suffer for want of water. These mountains are covered with it; it is running down them everywhere. There is usually food too, though sometimes fish and game, and seaweed and fern roots fail, and then the Indians get hungry. One thing the Indians eat, which I never saw eaten anywhere before, and that is the octopus or devil fish, as they're sometimes called. It isn't bad eating, and the Indians think a great deal of it. They cut off the arms and boil them, and then when the skin is peeled off, they are perfectly white, looking almost like stalks of celery. The meat is tender and quite good, though to tell the truth, it hasn't got much flavor to it."

"You speak of fern roots, Mr. Fannin," said Jack, "I didn't know that they were ever eaten."