Trails of the Pathfinders

by George Bird Grinnell

“The men who were now with me left this place in the beginning of last May and went to the Rainy Lake in canoes, laden with packs of fur, which, from the immense length of the voyage and other occurring circumstances, is a most severe trial of patience and perseverance; there they do not remain a sufficient time for ordinary repose, when they take a load of goods in exchange, and proceed on their return, in a great measure, day and night. They had been arrived near two months, and all that time had been continually engaged in very toilsome labor, with nothing more than a common shed to protect them from the frost and snow. Such is the life which these people lead, and is continued with unremitting exertion till their strength is lost in premature old age.”

Mackenzie was now receiving plenty of beaver from the Indians. But, on the other hand, he was not without the usual annoyances to which the fur trader was exposed. The Indians showed a tendency to quarrel among themselves, especially over their gambling at the platter game, which is a sort of throwing of dice, the same, apparently, as the seed game, so common among all the Indians of the plains. On the whole, however, the winter passed quietly, and geese were seen on the 13th of March.

In closing his account of this winter, passed high up on Peace River, Mackenzie gives some account of the Beaver and Rock Mountain Indians living there, who, he says, did not exceed 150 men capable of bearing arms. As late as 1786, when the first traders from Canada arrived on the banks of the Peace River, the natives employed bows and snares, but since then they had become well armed, bows were little used, and snares were unknown. These Indians were excellent hunters and such hard workers in the field that they were extremely lean, being always in the best of training. When a relation died the men blackened the face, cut off their hair, and gashed their arms with knives and arrows. The women often cut off a finger at the death of a favorite son, husband, or father. The Indians told of a time when no timber grew on the hills and plains along Peace River, but they were covered with moss, and the reindeer was the only animal. As the timber spread on them, elk and buffalo made their appearance, and the reindeer retired to the range of highlands called Deer Mountain.

The month of April passed, and early in May Mackenzie loaded six canoes with the furs and provisions he had purchased, and despatched them to Fort Chipewyan. He, however, retained six of the men, who agreed to accompany him up Peace River on his western voyage of discovery, and left his winter interpreter and another person in charge of the fort, to supply the natives with their ammunition during the summer. On the 9th day of May he embarked in a canoe twenty-five feet long, loaded with about 3,000 pounds of provisions, goods for presents, arms, ammunition, and baggage, and ten persons, two of whom were hunters and interpreters.

The first day’s journey was through an interesting and beautiful country. “From the place which we quitted this morning the west side of the river displayed a succession of the most beautiful scenery I had ever beheld. The ground rises at intervals to a considerable height and stretches inward to a considerable distance; at every interval or pause in the rise there is a very gently ascending space or lawn, which is alternate with abrupt precipices to the summit of the whole, or, at least, as far as the eye could distinguish. This magnificent theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals of the country can afford it; groves of poplars in every shape vary the scene, and their intervals are enlivened with vast herds of elks and buffaloes, the former choosing the steeps and uplands, and the latter preferring the plains. At this time the buffaloes were attended with their young ones, who were frisking about them; and it appeared that the elks would soon exhibit the same enlivening circumstance. The whole country displayed an exuberant verdure; the trees that bear a blossom were advancing fast to that delightful appearance, and the velvet rind of their branches reflecting the oblique rays of a rising or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety to the scene, which no expressions of mine are qualified to describe. The east side of the river consists of a range of high land covered with the white spruce and the soft birch, while the banks abound with the alder and the willow. The water continued to rise, and the current being proportionately strong, we made a greater use of setting poles than paddles.”

On the following days camps of Beaver Indians were seen, and Mackenzie was somewhat anxious lest they should encourage his hunters to desert, but this did not take place. Game continued abundant, and on the 13th they saw along the river tracks of large bears, some of which were nine inches wide. “We saw one of their dens, or winter quarters, called watee, in an island, which was ten feet deep, five feet high, and six feet wide, but we had not yet seen one of those animals. The Indians entertain great apprehension of this kind of bear which is called the grisly bear, and they never venture to attack it but in a party of at least three or four.”

The land on both sides of the river was high and irregular, and the banks and the rocky cliffs exhibited strata of red, green, and yellow colors. “Some parts, indeed, offer a beautiful scenery, in some degrees similar to that which we passed on the second day of our voyage, and equally enlivened with the elk and the buffalo, who were feeding in great numbers and unmolested by the hunter.” The next day they passed a river, of the mouth of which Mackenzie says: “This spot would be an excellent situation for a fort or factory, as there is plenty of wood and every reason to believe that the country abounds in beaver. As for the other animals, they are in evident abundance, as in every direction the elk and the buffalo are seen in possession of the hills and the plains.” Two elks were killed and a buffalo wounded that day. The land above their camp spread out in an extensive plain, gradually rising to a high ridge, chiefly grassy, and dotted with poplar and white birch trees. “The country is so crowded with animals as to have the appearance, in some places, of a stall-yard, from the state of the ground and the quantity of dung which is scattered over it. The soil is black and light. We this day saw two grisly and hideous bears.”

Although the ascent of the river had not been easy and they had frequently been obliged to unload and repair their canoe, it was not until Sunday, the 19th, that they met rapids and cascades, which presented greater difficulties. The canoe was heavily laden, the current enormously swift, and broken constantly by rocks and shoals; the only means of advance was by the tow-line, and the beach was often narrow or wanting. At the beginning of this very difficult stretch of water they found several islands of solid rock with but little soil upon them, the rock worn away near the water’s surface, but unworn higher up, so that the islands presented, as it were, so many large tables, each of which was supported by a pedestal of a more circumscribed projection. On these islands geese were breeding.

Carrying over short distances, often crossing the river in a very swift water, in constant danger from the great stones which frequently fell from the banks above, and much of the time in the water, they pursued their way for a short distance over this very difficult passage. The work was terribly hard, and as far as they could see up the river there was no improvement of the channel. Therefore, Mackenzie sent out a party of six men to explore, and on their return that same night they reported that it was necessary to make a long carry—nine miles they said—before smooth water would be met with. The canoe was therefore unloaded, the baggage carried up to the top of the bank above the river, and then the canoe was fairly hauled up to the same height. There they camped. In two days’ march from this place, carrying the load and the canoe, they again met quiet water.

The journal for Thursday, the 23d, enumerates the different sorts of trees which they saw, among which is named bois-picant, a tree which Mackenzie had not seen before, but which was apparently the west-coast shrub—the devil’s club, which grows in a few places on the eastern slope of the Continental Divide. Although he did not know it, Mackenzie was now quite close to the summit of the Rocky Mountains.