CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
The Great Sub-Arctic Forest--The "Forks" of the Saskatchewan--An Iroquois --Fort-à-la-Corne--News from the outside World--All haste for Home--The solitary Wigwam--Joe Miller's Death.
At the "forks" of the Saskatchcwan the traveller to the east enters the Great Sub-Arctic Forest. Let us look for a moment at this region where the earth dwells in the perpetual gloom of the pine-trees. Travelling north from the Saskatchewan River at any portion of its course From Carlton to Edmonton, one enters on the second day's journey this region of the Great Pine Forest. We have before compared it to the shore of an ocean, and like a shore it has its capes and promontories which stretch far into the sea-like prairie, the indentations caused by the fires sometimes forming large bays and open spaces won from the domain of the forest by the fierce flames which beat against it in the dry days of autumn. Some 500 or 600 miles to the north this forest ends, giving place to that most desolate region of the earth, the barren grounds of the extreme north, the lasting home of the musk-ox and the summer haunt of the reindeer; but along the valley of the Mackenzie River the wooded tract is continued close to the Arctic Sea, and on the shores of the great Bear Lake a slow growth of four centuries scarce brings a circumference of thirty inches to the trunks of the white spruce. Swamp and lake, muskeg, and river rocks of the earliest formations, wild wooded tracts of impenetrable wilderness combine to make this region the great preserve of the rich fur-bearing animals whose skins are rated in the marts of Europe at four times their weight in gold. Here the darkest mink, the silkiest sable, the blackest otter are trapped and traded; here are bred these rich furs whose possession women prize as second only to precious stones. Into the extreme north of this region only the fur trader and the missionary have as yet penetrated. The sullen Chipwayan, the feeble Dogrib, and the fierce and warlike Kutchin dwell along the systems which carry the waters of this vast forest into Hudson Bay and thee Arctic Ocean.
This place, the "forks" of the Saskatchewan, is destined at some time or other to be an important centre of commerce and civilization. When men shall have cast down the barriers which now intervene between the shores of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Superior, what a highway will not these two great river Systems of the St. Lawrence and the Saskatchewan offer to the trader! Less than 100 miles of canal through low alluvial soil have only to be built to carry a boat from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the head of Rainy Lake, within 100 miles of Lake Superior. With inexhaustible supplies of water held at a level high above the current surface of the height of land, it is not too much to say, that before many years have rolled by, boats will float from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the harbour of Quebec. But long before that time the Saskatchewan must have risen to importance from its fertility, its beauty, and its mineral wealth. Long before the period shall arrive when the Saskatchewan will ship its products to the ocean, another period will have come, when the mining populations of Montana and Idaho will seek in the fertile lands of the middle Saskatchewan a supply of those necessaries of life which the arid soil of the central States is powerless to yield. It is impossible that the wave of life which rolls so unceasingly into America can leave unoccupied this great fertile tract; as the river valleys farther east have all been peopled long before settlers found their way into the countries lying at the back, so must this great valley of the Saskatchewan, when once brought within the reach of the emigrant, become the scene of numerous settlements. As I stood in twilight looking down on the silent rivers merging into the great single stream which here enters the forest region, the mind had little difficulty in seeing another picture, when the river forks would be a busy scene of commerce, and man's labour would waken echoes now answering only to the wild things of plain and forest. At this point, as I have said, we leave the plains and the park-like country. The land of the prairie Indian and the buffalo-hunter lies behind us-of the thick-wood Indian and moose-hunter before us.
As far back as 1780 the French had pushed their Way into the Saskatchewan and established forts along its banks. It is generally held that their most western post was situated below the junction of the Saskatchewans, at a place called Nippoween; but I am of opinion that this is an error, and That their pioneer settlements had even gone west of Carlton. One of the earliest English travellers into the country, in 1776, speaks of Fort-des-Prairies as a post twenty-four days journey from Cumberland on the lower river, and as the Hudson Bay Company only moved west of Cumberland in 1774, it is only natural to suppose that this Fort-des Prairies had originally been a French post. Nothing proves more conclusively that the whole territory of the Saskatchewan was supposed to have belonged by treaty to Canada, and not to England, than does the fact that it was only at this date--1774--that the Hudson Bay Company took possession of it.
During the bitter rivalry between the North-west and the Hudson Bay Companies a small colony of Iroquois indians was brought from Canada to the Saskatchewan and planted near the forks of the river. The descendants of these men are still to be found scattered over different portions of the country; nor have they lost that boldness and skill in all the wild works of Indian life which made their tribe such formidable warriors in the early contests of the French colonists; neither, have they lost that gift of eloquence which was so much prized in the days of Champlain and Frontinac. Here are the concluding words of a speech addressed by an Iroquois against the establishment of a missionary station near the junction of the Saskatchewan:
"You have spoken of your Great Spirit," said the Indian; "you have told us He died for all men--for the red tribes of the West as for the white tribes of the East; but did He not die with His arms stretched forth in different directions, one hang towards the rising sun and the other towards the setting sun?"
"Well, it is true."
"And now say, did He not mean by those outstretched arms that for evermore the white tribes should dwell in the East and the red tribes in the West? when the Great Spirit could not speak, did He not still point out where His children should live?" What a curious compound must be the man who is capable of such a strange, beautiful metaphor and yet remain a savage!