Pioneers in Canada

by Harry Johnston

The gooseberries, wortleberries, and raspberries which Mackenzie ate at this hospitable village were the finest he ever saw or tasted of their respective kinds. They were generally eaten together with the dry roes of salmon. Salmon was the staple food of the country, and very abundant in the river which Mackenzie was following down to the Pacific shore. The fish were usually caught in weirs, and also by dipping nets. The natives were so superstitious about the salmon, that they believed they would give offence to the spirits if they ate any other animal food, especially meat. They would scarcely allow Mackenzie to carry venison in his canoe, in case the salmon should smell it and abandon the river.

After this welcome rest they embarked in two canoes on the stream which Mackenzie calls the Salmon River. The stream was rapid, and they proceeded at a great rate, stopping every now and then to get out and walk round salmon weirs. Nevertheless, although other Indians ran before them announcing their approach towards a village, the noise of which was apparent in the distance, they were received at this place in a very hostile way, the men rapidly arming themselves with bows and arrows, spears, and axes. But Mackenzie walked on alone to greet them, and shook hands with the nearest man. Thereupon an elderly man broke from the crowd and took Mackenzie in his arms. Another then came and paid him the same compliment. One man to whom he presented his hand broke the string of a handsome robe of sea-otter skin and threw it over Mackenzie.

The chief made signs to the white men to follow him to his house, which Mackenzie found to be of larger dimensions and better materials than any he had yet seen. "Very clean mats" were spread in this house for the chief, his counsellors, and the two white men. A small roasted salmon was then placed before each person.

"When we had satisfied ourselves with the fish, one of the people who came with us from the last village approached, with a kind of ladle in one hand, containing oil, and in the other something that resembled the inner rind of the cocoanut, but of a lighter colour. This he dipped in the oil, and, having eaten it, indicated by his gestures how palatable he thought it. He then presented me with a small piece of it, which I chose to taste in its dry state, though the oil was free from any unpleasant smell. A square cake of this was next produced, when a man took it to the water near the house, and having thoroughly soaked it, he returned, and, after he had pulled it to pieces like oakum, put it into a well-made trough, about three feet long, nine inches wide, and five deep. He then plentifully sprinkled it with salmon oil, and manifested by his own example that we were to eat of it. I just tasted it, and found the oil perfectly sweet, without which the other ingredient would have been very insipid. The chief partook of it with great avidity after it had received an additional quantity of oil. This dish is considered by these people as a great delicacy; and on examination, I discovered it to consist of the inner rind of the hemlock pine tree, taken off early in summer, and put into a frame, which shapes it into cakes of fifteen inches long, ten broad, and half an inch thick; and in this form I should suppose it may be preserved for a great length of time. This discovery satisfied me respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of their bark."

Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.

After describing some remarkable oblong "tables" (as they might be called) of cedar wood—twenty feet long by eight feet broad—made of thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the helplessness of "native" medicine in many diseases.

He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way. The poor fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to death.

"I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art on the patient. They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach; they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted water from their own with great violence into his face. To support these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx. I had observed that his belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or demonstrate their courage. He was now placed on a broad plank, and carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany them. I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony, particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third dry wood. I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection. When they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution. The scene afflicted me, and I left it."

The chief of this village had probably met Captain Cook about ten years before. He had been down in a large canoe[12] with forty of his people to the seacoast, where he saw two large vessels.

Farther down the river the natives, instead of regaling them with fish, placed before them a long, clean, and well-made trough full of berries, most of them resembling blackberries, though white in colour, and others similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark, to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the salmon coming up the river.