The wild animals of the Peace River.—Indian method of hunting the moose.—Twa-poos.—The beaver.—The bear.—Bear’s butter.—A bear’s hug and how it ended.—Fort St. John.—The river awakes.—A rose without a thorn.—Nigger Dan.—A threatening letter.—I issue a Judicial Memorandum.—Its effect is all that could be desired.—Working up the Peace River.
Three animals have made their homes on the shores of the Peace River and its tributaries. They are the bear, the moose, and the beaver. All are valuable to the Indian for their flesh, fur, or skin; all come to as great perfection here as in any part of the American continent.
The first and last named go to sleep in the long winter months, but the moose still roams the woods and willow banks, feeding with his flesh the forts and the Indians along the entire river. About 100 full-grown moose had been consumed during the winter months at the four posts we have lately passed, in fresh meat alone. He is a huge animal; his carcase will weigh from three to six hundred pounds; yet an ordinary half-breed will devour him in little more than a month.
Between four and five hundred moose are annually eaten at the forts of the Peace River; four times that number are consumed by the Indians, but the range of the animal is vast, the hunters are comparatively few, and to-day there are probably as many moose in Peace River as there were fifty years ago.
Athabasca trades to-day the skins of nearly 2000 moose in a single year. Few animals are more unshapely than this giant deer. His neck slopes down from the shoulder, ending in a head as large as a horse—a head which ends in a nose curled like a camel’s—a nose delicious to the taste, but hideous to the eye. The ears are of enormous length. Yet, ugly as are the nose and ears of the moose, they are his chief means of protection against his enemy, and in that great ungainly head there lurks a brain of marvellous cunning. It is through nose and ears that this cunning brain is duly prompted to escape danger.
No man save the Indian, or the half-Indian, can hunt the moose with chance of success.
I am aware that a host of Englishmen and Canadians will exclaim against this, but nevertheless it is perfectly true. Hunting the moose in summer and winter is one thing—killing him in a snow-yard, or running him down in deep snow is another. The two methods are as widely different as killing a salmon which another man has hooked for you is different from rising, hooking, playing, and gaffing one yourself.
To hunt the moose requires years of study. Here is the little game which his instinct teaches him. When the early morning has come, he begins to think of lying down for the day. He has been feeding on the grey and golden willow-tops as he walked leisurely along. His track is marked in the snow or soft clay; he carefully retraces his footsteps, and, breaking off suddenly to the leeward side, lies down a gunshot from his feeding-track. He knows he must get the wind of any one following his trail.
In the morning “Twa-poos,” or the Three Thumbs, sets forth to look for a moose; he hits the trail and follows it; every now and again he examines the broken willow-tops or the hoof-marks, when experience tells him that the moose has been feeding here during the early night. Twa-poos quits the trail, bending away in a deep circle to leeward; stealthily he returns to the trail, and as stealthily bends away again from it. He makes as it were the semicircles of the letter B, supposing the perpendicular line to indicate the trail of the moose; at each return to it he examines attentively the willows, and judges his proximity to the game.
At last he is so near that he knows for an absolute certainty that the moose is lying in a thicket a little distance ahead. Now comes the moment of caution. He divests himself of every article of clothing which might cause the slightest noise in the forest; even his moccassins are laid aside; and then, on a pointed toe which a ballet-girl might envy, he goes forward for the last stalk. Every bush is now scrutinized, every thicket examined. See! he stops all at once! You who follow him look, and look in vain; you can see nothing. He laughs to himself, and points to yon willow covert. No, there is nothing there. He noiselessly cocks his gun. You look again and again, but can see nothing; then Twa-poos suddenly stretches out his hand and breaks a little dry twig from an overhanging branch. In an instant, right in front, thirty or forty yards away, an immense dark-haired animal rises up from the willows. He gives one look in your direction, and that look is his last. Twa-poos has fired, and the moose is either dead in his thicket or within a few hundred yards of it.