There was one tribe that never went south at all. When they landed in Alaska these folk struck inland and wandered away to the east, past Hudson Bay, some of them spreading then through Labrador, others crossing the St. Lawrence and never stopping till the Atlantic [a]The Prairie as it was] rolled at their feet in Nova Scotia, where a remnant of them may be seen to-day. Some of them had fallen out at various points along the way, finding hunting grounds that suited them, and others turned back to the west, so that the early white fur traders found them scattered all through the forest lands from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the west of Hudson Bay. The Crees, a western branch of this Algonquin stock, were still a woodland folk, although, as they depended mostly for food and shelter on the caribou, they followed the herd in its yearly migrations out of the wood and across the treeless country towards the Bay.
Our fertile prairie was still an unpeopled wilderness, long after a multitude of tribes had spread over the rest of the continent.
What sort of country was this vast empty space, “the granary of the British Empire” to-day?
It is not hard to imagine, for white men are still alive among us who remember it pretty much as it was when the “Indians” first came, a thousand years ago. A great grassy plain dotted with pale anemones in spring, pink roses and white strawberry blossoms in summer; mighty herds of buffalo grazing over it, and wallowing in little pools; parts of it flat, but most of it rolling, up and down, like a sea of earth suddenly stilled after a storm. Poplar bluffs rise here and there, but for hundreds of miles not a tree is to be seen. Two great rivers, the North and South Saskatchewan, have carved deep valleys across from west to east; their water, and that of many smaller rivers, pours into the Manitoban lakes, and out again to lose itself in Hudson Bay. Those lakes, great as they seem, are but the remnants of one [a]Life and Death] vast lake which covered nearly all Manitoba long after the ice-cap had retreated.
Beyond the prairie northward stretches the forest, poplar and willow and birch, tamarack, pine and spruce. North-east the forest dwindles and fades away into the “barren lands,” which are not really barren, for countless caribou and musk ox pasture there. North-west, great rivers pour through the forest and away to the Arctic Sea; north-east, more rivers drain out to the Bay.
The plains rise gently for a thousand miles from east to west; so gently that we do not notice the change, till we see the foothills swelling up and the sharp-edged mountains towering high beyond in a heavenly rampart of white and grey. Beyond the prairie, mountains on mountains, range after range, with roaring torrents in deep ravines; wider valleys, and placid lakes reflecting stately trees; the country smoothing down to the north, in a thick cloak of poplar and pine, and sinking in the south-west to a level plain, dark under thronging regiments of giant firs and cedars, along the coast of the western sea.
No voice of man is heard upon the untilled plains; but the land is not silent. The coyote screams and howls. High overhead the wild-goose honks. The air is musical with songs of little birds and gay with their colors. No hand of man is raised to kill; but hunters are busy killing. In the woods, the rabbit squeals as the weasel catches him by the throat. On the prairie, the hovering hawk drops swiftly to seize a gopher. On the lake, the skimming gull darts down and snatches out a fish. In the mountains, the eagle swoops and carries [a]The Mound Builders] off a marmot; the prowling bear claws at a rotting stump and gobbles down grubs by the mouthful.
Far away in the south, the prairie is invaded by man. Not suddenly, or by a great armed host. Don’t imagine that the buffalo-hunting tribes known to our fathers came riding out on to the plains one day in a picturesque and mighty horde, as the invading Tartar host swarmed out over Europe. The first hunter of the plains had never heard of a horse.
This is more likely what happened.
The Indians who settled in the Mississippi Valley were far from “civilized,” but they were no longer mere wandering hunters. They hunted deer and beaver and other animals, but they also cultivated the soil, growing corn and beans and squash. They made real homes beside their fields. They stayed there long enough to build great mounds, which are still to be seen, grown over with grass and trees. Some of these mounds are very curiously shaped, like serpents, turtles and other animals, which the people superstitiously reverenced as their protectors. Some of the mounds, however, are like fortifications, high dykes or ridges enclosing great squares of land, large enough to protect whole villages. These needed all the protection they could get, and often more, for the wilder tribes were constantly raiding the weaker.