January 14.
It should seem that this wintry season, which appears to me so dismal, is for the Canadians the season of festivity. Now is the time for visiting, for sleighing excursions, for all intercourse of business and friendship, for balls in town, and dances in farm-houses, and courtships and marriages, and prayer-meetings and assignations of all sorts. In summer, the heat and the mosquitos render travelling disagreeable at best; in spring the roads are absolutely impassable; in autumn there is too much agricultural occupation: but in winter the forests are pervious; the roads present a smooth surface of dazzling snow; the settlers in the woods drive into the towns, supply themselves with stores and clothing, and fresh meat,—the latter a luxury which they can seldom obtain in the summer. I stood at my window to-day watching the sleighs as they glided past. They are of all shapes and sizes. A few of the carriage-sleighs are well appointed and handsome. The market-sleighs are often two or three boards nailed together in form of a wooden box upon runners; some straw and a buffalo skin or blanket serve for the seat; barrels of flour and baskets of eggs fill up the empty space. Others are like cars, and others, called cutters, are mounted on high runners, like sleigh phaetons; these are sported by the young men and officers of the garrison, and require no inconsiderable skill in driving: however, as I am assured, they are overturned in the snow not above once in a quarter of an hour, and no harm and much mirth ensues: but the wood sleighs are my delight; a large platform of boards is raised upon runners, with a few upright poles held together at top by a rope, the logs of oak, pine, and maple, are then heaped up to the height of six or seven feet. On the summit lie a couple of deer frozen stiff their huge antlers projecting in a most picturesque fashion, and on these, again, a man is seated with a blanket round him, his furred cap drawn down upon his ears, and his scarlet woollen comforter forming a fine bit of colour. He guides with a pole his two patient oxen, the clouds of vapour curling from their nostrils into the keen frosty air—the whole machine, in short, as wildly picturesque as the grape waggons in Italy, though to be sure, the associations are somewhat different.
January 16.
This morning, before I was quite dressed, a singular visit was announced. I had expressed to my friend Mr. H * * * a wish to see some of the aborigines of the country: he had the kindness to remember my request; and Colonel Givins, the principal Indian agent, had accordingly brought some Indians to visit us.
The party consisted of three—a chief named the White Deer, and two of his friends. The chief wore a blanket coat and leggings, and a blanket hood with a peak, from which depended a long black eagle plume; stout mocazins (shoes of undressed deer-skin) completed his attire: he had about fifty strings of blue wampum round his neck. The other two were similarly dressed, with the exception of the wampum and the feathers. Before I went down I had thrown a chain of wampum round my neck, which seemed to please them. Chairs being presented, they sat down at once (though, as Colonel Givins said, they would certainly have preferred the floor), and answered with a grave and quiet dignity the compliments and questions addressed to them. Their deportment was taciturn and self-possessed, and their countenances melancholy; that of the chief was by far the most intelligent. They informed me that they were Chippewas from the neighbourhood of Lake Huron, that the hunting season had been unsuccessful, that their tribe was suffering the extremity of hunger and cold, and that they had come to beg from their Great Father the Governor rations of food, and a supply of blankets for their women and children. They had walked over the snow, in their snow-shoes, from the Lake, one hundred and eighty miles; and for the last forty-eight hours none of them had tasted food. A breakfast of cold meat, bread, and beer, was immediately ordered for them; and though they had certainly never beheld in their lives the arrangement of an European table, and were besides half famished, they sat down with unembarrassed tranquillity, and helped themselves to what they wished with the utmost propriety—only, after one or two trials, using their own knives and fingers in preference to the table knife and fork. After they had eaten and drunk sufficiently, they were conducted to the government-house to receive from the governor presents of blankets, rifles, and provisions; and each, on parting, held out his hand to me, and the chief, with a grave earnestness, prayed for the blessing of the Great Spirit on me and my house. On the whole, the impression they left, though amusing and exciting from its mere novelty, was melancholy. The sort of desperate resignation in their swarthy countenances, their squalid, dingy habiliments, and their forlorn story, filled me with pity, and, I may add, disappointment; and all my previous impressions of the independent children of the forest are for the present disturbed.
These are the first specimens I have seen of that fated race, with which I hope to become better acquainted before I leave the country. Notwithstanding all I have heard and read, I have yet but a vague idea of the Indian character; and the very different aspect under which it has been represented by various travellers as well as writers of fiction, adds to the difficulty of forming a correct estimate of the people, and more particularly of the true position of their women. Colonel Givins, who has passed thirty year of his life among the north west tribes, till he has become in habits and language almost identified with them, is hardly an impartial judge. He was their interpreter on this occasion; and he says that there is as much difference between the customs and language of different nations—the Chippewas and Mohawks, for instance—as there is between any two nations of Europe.
The cold is at this time so intense that the ink freezes while I write, and my fingers stiffen round the pen. A glass of water by the bed-side, within a few feet of the hearth (heaped with logs of oak and maple kept burning all night long), is a solid mass of ice in the morning. God help the poor emigrants who are yet unprepared against the rigour of the season!—yet this is nothing to the climate of the Lower Province, where, as we hear, the thermometer has been thirty degrees below zero. I lose all heart to write home, or to register a reflection or a feeling—thought stagnates in my head as the ink in my pen—and this will never do!—I must arouse myself to occupation; and if I cannot find it without, I must create it from within. There are yet four months of winter and leisure to be disposed of. How?—I know not; but they must be employed, not wholly lost.