Trails of the Pathfinders

by George Bird Grinnell

The journey westward was slow and difficult. They met many people, all of whom were friendly, and when their guide left them, as he did in a day or two, they succeeded in procuring other guides for short distances from the various villages that they passed, and went forward with comparatively little difficulty, although the almost continuous rain was unpleasant enough. The people whom they met as they proceeded showed more and more evidences of intercourse with the whites, having a number of articles obtained by trade. Most of these people seemed to belong to different small tribes of Athabaskan stock. They seemed less and less surprised at the appearance of the white men and, while still more or less astonished at their fire-arms, did not appear to be frightened by the explosions. Game was so scarce that practically none was killed, their provisions being largely fish, obtained from the natives or caught by themselves. The killing one day of two eagles and three gray partridges is important enough to be mentioned.

Mackenzie describes in considerable detail some of the houses of the Indians which he passed. He notes also, on July 14, that he had reached a place where it is the practice of the Indians to burn the bodies of their dead. On the 15th they fell in with a village of particularly clean and attractive people, who were on their way to the sea with articles for trade with the white people. They said that in view of the fact that the women and children with them could not travel fast it would be three days before they could reach the end of their journey. This was welcome news to the explorer.

Before they had gone very far, however, these people changed their minds, and determined to go to the sea by a different and somewhat longer route, and so the white men separated from them, having procured guides from four new Indians, who had just joined the party and belonged to a tribe Mackenzie had not yet seen.

The way was difficult, full of swamps and fallen timber. Ground-hogs were seen, and a number of them captured, and before long a deer was killed. They were now high up in the mountains, and were marching through the snow. The country became very rough and they travelled along precipices, while snow-covered peaks frowned on them from above. On these mountains, according to their guides, were many animals, which, “from their description, must be wild goats.” The timber grew very large.

On this day their guide hurried ahead, leaving the laden white people to follow, and when it grew dark the men were anxious to stop for the night, but Mackenzie pushed on, and at last reached a village where he saw fires with people cooking over them. He entered a house and shook hands, and the people directed him to go to a large house, where he was cordially received and fed with roasted salmon. A little later they were regaled on salmon roes, pounded fine, beaten up and flavored with something bitter, which we may conjecture to have been soap ollalie. The natives here were capturing salmon with their dip nets and by weirs. They were kindly and hospitable, and had very strong beliefs and feelings with regard to their fish. Mackenzie declared that they never taste flesh, and that one of their dogs having swallowed part of a bone left at the camp-fire was beaten by his master till he disgorged it. A bone having been thrown into the river by one of Mackenzie’s people, a young man dived, brought it up and put it in the fire, and then proceeded to wash his polluted hands. The chief of the tribe declined to let the white men have a canoe because they had with them some deer meat, which, if put in the canoe on their river, would cause the fish to leave the river, so that the people must starve. Mackenzie asked what he should do with the meat, and the Indian told him to give it to a native present who belonged to a tribe of flesh eaters. The canoe was then loaned them.

These people seemed to belong to a different family from the Chipewyans; at least Mackenzie says their language appeared to have no resemblance to that of the Atnahs. Seven natives with two canoes took the explorers and their baggage down the river. They travelled fast, and the skill of the Indians greatly impressed Mackenzie, who says: “I had imagined that the Canadians who accompanied me were the most expert canoemen in the world, but they are very inferior to these people, as they themselves acknowledge, in conducting those vessels.”

Just above a village the whole party landed, the Indians preceding the white men to announce their approach. When they reached the village they found it in a turmoil, the natives armed and rushing about apparently in a great state of alarm. There was nothing to do except to face the music, and Mackenzie walked boldly forward into the midst of the village, when most of the people laid aside their arms and came forward to meet them. He shook hands with those nearest to him, when suddenly an elderly man broke through the crowd and embraced him, as did also a younger man, the chief’s son. Another son of the old chief approached, and as Mackenzie stepped forward to shake hands with him the younger fellow broke the string of a handsome robe of sea-otter skin which he had on and put it over Mackenzie’s shoulders. The chief took Mackenzie to his house, and treated him in a most hospitable manner. He was offered a dish made of the dried inner bark of the hemlock tree, soaked in fresh salmon oil. Food was plenty here, for the salmon run was at its height. Fish were drying on lines strung all about the village. These people were also very careful that nothing should be done to alarm their fish. They objected to water being taken from the river in an iron kettle, on the ground that the salmon disliked the smell of iron. Wooden boxes for holding water were given the explorers, however. Here were seen panels made of thick cedar boards, neatly joined and painted with hieroglyphics and figures of different animals, such as are commonly seen on the coast.

Here Mackenzie was obliged to do some doctoring, and he describes the methods of the native physicians in treating their patients.

Mackenzie had several times asked the chief for canoes to take the party to the sea, but his requests had received little attention. When, however, he tried to take an observation the chief objected, not, apparently, because the natives were afraid of the instruments, but because their use might frighten the salmon from that part of the river. Just as they were about to embark in the large canoe, forty-five feet long, four feet wide, and three and a half feet in depth, it was discovered that an axe was missing, and there was a short halt. Mackenzie’s resolution procured the return of the axe, and they went on. Villages were seen along the river, and once or twice they stopped. The people they passed seemed to have more and more articles of European manufacture, and they treated Mackenzie very well. On the evening of this day, at a village where they stopped, Mackenzie says, “I could perceive, personally, the termination of the river and its discharge into an arm of the sea.”

The Indians now seemed unwilling to go farther, but two of them were persuaded to keep on, and, taking another canoe, about eight o’clock on Saturday, July 20, they left the river and reached an arm of the sea. The tide was out, and the large mud flats, seaweed covered, were bare. Gulls, eagles, and ducks were seen. The weather was boisterous, and before long they put ashore in a cove for the night. One of the young natives here deserted, but, being pursued, was brought back. Since they had left the river porpoises and sea-otter—or seals—had been continually in sight. Fresh water was had from streams running down the mountains, and just after dark the young chief from up the river came into camp with a large porcupine, which was eagerly devoured by the half-starved men. The next day they came across three canoes with fifteen people, one of whom seemed to have had some trouble with white men not long before. The people they now met were somewhat annoying, for they begged, pilfered, and seemed to wish to see everything that the white men possessed. They constantly spoke of a white man named Macubah, very likely meaning Vancouver, and for the negative distinctly answered “No, no.”