Mal de Raquette had at last proved more than a match for me, and walking had become impossible; but the trains returning to Dunvegan were lightly loaded, and as the officer at Vermilion had arranged that the various dogs should take their turn in hauling my cariole, I had a fresh train each day, and thus Cerf-vola and his company obtained a two days’ respite from their toil.
The old dog was as game as when I had first started, but the temporary change of masters necessitated by our new arrangements seemed to puzzle him not a little; and many a time his head would turn round to steal a furtive look at the new driver, who, “filled with strange oaths,” now ran behind his cariole. Our trail led towards the foot of the Buffalo Hills. I was now in the country of the Beaver Indians, a branch of the great Chipewyan race, a tribe once numerous on the river which bears its present name of Peace from the stubborn resistance offered by them to the all-conquering Crees—a resistance which induced that warlike tribe to make peace on the banks of the river, and to leave at rest the beaver-hunters of the Unchagah.
Since that time, though far removed from the white settler, lying remote from the faintest echo of civilization, this tribe of Beaver Indians has steadily decreased; and to-day, in the whole length of 900 miles from beyond the mountains to the Lake Athabasca, scarce 200 families lie scattered over the high prairies and undulating forest belts of the Peace River. Now they live in peace with all men, but once it was a different matter; the Crees were not their only enemies, their Chipewyan cousins warred upon them; and once upon a time a fierce commotion raged amongst their own tribe.
One day a young chief shot his arrow through a dog belonging to another brave. The brave revenged the death of his dog, and instantly a hundred bows were drawn. Ere night had fallen some eighty warriors lay dead around the camp, the pine woods rang with the lamentations of the women, the tribe had lost its bravest men. There was a temporary truce—the friends of the chief whose arrow had killed the dog yet numbered some sixty people—it was agreed that they should separate from the tribe and seek their fortune in the vast wilderness lying to the south.
In the night they commenced their march; sullenly their brethren saw them depart never to return. They went their way by the shores of the Lesser Slave Lake, towards the great plains which were said to lie far southward by the banks of the swift-rolling Saskatchewan.
The tribe of Beavers never saw again this exiled band, but a hundred years later a Beaver Indian, who followed the fortunes of a white fur-hunter, found himself in one of the forts of the Saskatchewan. Strange Indians were camped around the palisades, they were portions of the great Blackfeet tribe whose hunting-grounds lay south of the Saskatchewan; among them were a few braves who, when they conversed together, spoke a language different from the other Blackfeet; in this language the Beaver Indian recognized his own tongue.
The fortunes of the exiled branch were then traced, they had reached the great plains, the Blackfeet had protected them, and they had joined the tribe as allies in war against Crees or Assineboines. To-day the Surcees still speak the guttural language of the Chipewyan. Notorious among the wild horse-raiders of the prairies, they outdo even the Blackfeet in audacious plundering; and although the parent stock on the Peace River are quiet and harmless, the offshoot race has long been a terror over the prairies of the south. No men in this land of hunters hunt better than the Beavers. It is not uncommon for a single Indian to render from his winter trapping 200 marten skins, and not less than 20,000 beavers are annually killed by the tribe on the waters of the Peace River.
On the morning of the third day after leaving Vermilion we fell in with a band of Beavers. Five wigwams stood pitched upon a pretty rising knoll, backed by pine woods, which skirted the banks of the stream, upon the channel of which the lodges of the animal beaver rose cone-like above the snow.
When we reached the camp, “At-tal-loo,” the chief, came forth. A stranger was a rare sight; and “At-tal-loo” was bound to make a speech; three of his warriors, half a dozen children, and a few women filled up the background. Leaning upon a long single-barrelled gun “At-tal-loo” began.
The mayor and corporation of that thriving borough of Porkingham could not have been more solicitous to interrupt a royal progress to the north, than was this Beaver Indian anxious to address the traveller; but there was this difference between them, whereas Mayor Tomkins had chiefly in view the excellent opportunity of hearing his own voice, utterly unmindful of what a horrid bore he was making himself to his sovereign, “At-tal-loo” had in view more practical results: his frequent iteration of the word “tea,” in his guttural harangue, told at once the story of his wants:—