The Great Lone Land / A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America

by Sir William Francis Butler

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The Saskatchewan--Start from Carlton--Wild Mares--Lose our Way--A long Ride-Battle River--Mistawassis the Cree--A Dance.

Two things strike the new-comer at Carlton. First, he sees evidences on every side of a rich and fertile country; and, secondly, he sees by many signs that war is the normal condition of the wild men who have pitched their tents in the land of the Saskatchewan that land from which we have taken the Indian prefix Kis, without much improvement of length or euphony. It is a name but little known to the ear of the outside world, but destined one day or other to fill its place in the long list of lands whose surface yields back to man, in manifold, the toil of his brain and hand. Its boundaries are of the simplest description, and it is as well to begin with them. It has on the north a huge forest, on the west a huge mountain, on the south an immense desert, on the east an immense marsh. From the forest to the desert there lies a distance varying from 40 to 150 miles, and from the marsh to the mountain, 800 miles of land lie spread in every varying phase of undulating fertility. This is the Fertile Belt, the land of the Saskatchewan, the winter home of the buffalo, the war country of the Crees and Blackfeet, the future home of millions yet unborn. Few men have looked on this land-but the thoughts of many in the New World tend towards it, and crave for description and fact which in many instances can only be given to them at second-hand.

Like all things in this world, the Saskatchcwan has its poles of opinion; there are those who paint it a paradise, and those who picture it a hell. It is unfit for habitation, it is to be the garden-spot of America--it is too cold, it is too dry--it is too beautiful; and, in reality, what is it? I answer in a few words. It is rich; it is fertile; it is fair to the eye. Man lives long in it, and the children of his body are cast in manly mould. The cold of winter is intense, the strongest heat of summer is not excessive. The autumn days are bright and-beautiful; the snow is seldom deep, the frosts are early to come and late to go. All crops flourish, though primitive and rude are the means by which they are tilled; timber is in places plentiful, in other places scarce; grass grows high, thick, and rich. Horses winter out, and are round-carcased, and fat in spring. The lake-shores are deep in hay; lakelets every where. Rivers close in mid-November and open in mid-April. The lakes teem with fish; and such fish! fit for the table of a prince, but disdained at the feast of the Indian. The river-heads lie all in a forest region; and it is midsummer when their water has reached its highest level. Through the land the red man stalks; war, his unceasing toil--horse-raiding, the pastime of his life. How long has the Indian thus warred?-since he has been known to the white man, and long before.

In 1776 the earliest English voyager in these regions speaks of war between the Assineboines and their trouble some western neighbours, the Snake and Blackfeet Indians. But war was older than the era of the earliest white man, older probably than the Indian himself; for, from what ever branch of the human race this stock is sprung, the lesson of warfare was in all cases the same to him. To say he fights is, after all, but to say he is a man; for whether it be in Polynesia or in Paris, in the Saskatchewan or in Sweden, in Bundelond or in Bulgaria, fighting is just the one universal "touch of nature which makes the whole world kin."

"My good brothers," said a missionary friend of mine, some little while ago, to an assemblage of Crees, "My good brothers--why do you carry on this unceasing war with the Blackfeet and Peaginoos, with Sircies and Bloods? It is not good, it is not right; the great Manitou does not like his children to kill each other, but he wishes them to live in peace and brotherhood."

To which the Cree chief made answer--"My friend, what you say is good; but look, you are white man and Christian, we are red men and worship the Manitou; but what is the news we hear from the traders and the black-robes? Is it not always the news of war? The Kitchi Mokamans (i.e. the Americans) are on the war-path against their brethren of the South, the English are fighting some tribes far away over the big lake; the French, and all the other tribes are fighting too! My brother, it is news of war, always news of war! and we--we go on the war-path in small numbers. We stop when we kill a few of our enemies and take a few scalps; but your nations go to war in countless thousands, and we hear of more of your braves killed in one battle than all our tribe numbers together. So, my brother, do not say to us that it is wrong to go on the war-path, for what is right for the white man cannot be wrong in his red brother. I have done!"

During the seven days which I remained at Carlton the winter was not idle. It snowed and froze, and looked dreary enough within the darkening walls of the fort. A French missionary had come down from the northern lake of Isle-à-la-Crosse, but, unlike his brethren, he appeared shy and uncommunicative. Two of the stories which he related, however, deserve record. One was a singular magnetic storm which took place at Isle-à-la-Crosse during the preceding winter. A party of Indians and half-breeds were crossing the lake on the ice when suddenly their hair stood up on end; the hair of the dogs also turned the wrong way, and the blankets belonging to the part even evinced signs of acting, in an upright manner. I will not pretend to account for this phenomenon, but merely tell it as the worthy père told it to me, and I shall rest perfectly satisfied if my readers hair does not follow the example of the Indians dogs and blankets and proceed generally after the manner of the "frightful porcupine." The other tale told by the père was of a more tragical nature. During a storm in the prairies near the South Branch of the Saskatchewan a rain of fire suddenly descended upon a camp of Cree Indians and burned everything around. Thirty-two Crees perished in the flames; the ground was burned deeply for a considerable distance, and only one or two of the party who happened to stand close to a lake were saved by throwing themselves into the water. "It was," said my informant, "not a flash of lightning, but a rain of fire which descended for some moments."

The increasing severity of the frost hardened into a solid mass the surface of the Saskatchewan, and on the morning of the 14th November we set out again upon our Western journey. The North Saskatchewan which I now crossed for the first time, is a river 400 yards in width, lying between banks descending steeply to a low alluvial valley. These outer banks are some 200 feet in height, and in some by-gone age were doubtless the boundaries of the majestic stream that then rolled between them. I had now a new-band of horses numbering altogether nine head, but three of them were wild brood mares that had never before been in harness, and laughable was the scene that ensued at starting. The snow was now sufficiently deep to prevent wheels running with ease, so we substituted two small horse-sleds for the Red River cart, and into these sleds the wild mares were put. At first they refused to move an inch--no, not an inch; then came loud and prolonged thwacking from a motley assemblage of Crees and half-breeds. Ropes, shanganappi, whips, and sticks were freely used; then, like an arrow out of a bow, away went the mare; then suddenly a dead stop, two or three plunges high in air, and down flat upon the ground. Againthe thwacking, and again suddenly up starts the mare and off like a rocket. Shanganappi harness is tough stuff and a broken sled is easily set to rights, or else we would have been in a bad way. But for all horses in the North-west there is the very simplest manner of persuasion: if the horse lies down, lick him until he gets up; if he stands up on his hind-legs, lick him until he reverts to his original position; if he bucks, jibs, or kicks, lick him, lick him, lick him; when you are tired of licking him, get another man to continue the process; if you can use violent language in three different tongues so much the better, but if you cannot imprecate freely at least in French, you will have a bad time of it. Thus we started from Carlton and, crossing the wide Saskatchewan, held our way south-west for the Eagle Hills. It was yet the dusk of the early morning, but as we climbed the steep northern bank the sun was beginning to lift himself above the horizon. Looking back, beneath lay the wide frozen river, and beyond the solitary fort still wrapped in shade, the trees glistened pure and white on the high-rolling bank beside me, and the untrodden snow stretched far away in dazzling brilliancy. Our course now lay to the south of west, and -our pace was even faster than it had been in the days of poor Blackie. About midday we entered upon a vast tract of burnt country, the unbroken snow filling the hollows of the ground beneath it. Fortunately, just at camping-time we reached a hill-side whose grass and tangled vetches had escaped the fire, and here we pitched our camp for the night. Around rose hills whose sides were covered with the traces of fire-destroyed' forests, and a lake lay close beside us, wrapped in ice and snow. A small winter-station had been established by the Hudson Bay Company at a point some ninety miles distant from Carlton, opposite the junction of the Battle River with the North Saskatchewan. There, it was said, a large camp of Crees had assembled, and to this post we were now directing our steps.