John D. Smith, at Smith’s Creek, now Port Hope, erected a grist-mill some time after 1800 came in, and his was the first grist-mill between Toronto and Kingston. The boon which this conferred upon the sparse settlers can hardly be realized at this day. Many of these settlers became Indian traders, for the Indians at this time far outnumbered the whites; and semi-annually all the Indian tribes came to Lake Ontario to fish. Their trading was done by barter. A party of traders would set out into the woods with their packs of goods and fire off three guns in succession, which was the signal to the Indians that traders were there. Next morning the Indians would invariably come to the rendezvous to trade their furs for ammunition, blankets and trinkets. The furs were sent by bateaux to Montreal, and were for many years the only commodity which would command the cash in the market.
The next commodity which brought cash was black salts and potash. This was before the square timber began to be exported from this locality.
Just about the time that the settlers began to subdue the forests, the War of 1812 broke out and sadly disarranged all the plans of the settlers. Some of the sparse settlers, known for probity and reliability, got contracts under the Government as despatch bearers between certain stations, and for this received weekly, during the unfortunate time, Spanish milled dollars, in which they were then paid. The military impressment law was, of course, in full force during the war. The cannon and military stores were hauled along the shores from Montreal to Toronto, as the war progressed, as it was not safe to trust them on vessels on the water for fear of capture by the Americans. The mouths of streams had to be forded. The writer can call to mind many anecdotes of his forefathers of that interesting time in our history. The straggling settler would be ploughing among the stumps with his yoke of oxen, when a squad of British soldiers would come along and make him unhitch from the plough, and hitch on to the cannon without any waiting or time even to go in for his coat. Usually two yokes of oxen were attached to each of the small cannon. On arrival at the garrison at Toronto the owners of the oxen were invariably well paid in cash for their services. Two persons with oxen from this locality were once pressed into the service. One yoke happened to be tolerably fat, and the owner sold them to the military authorities in Toronto for a good price in money, for beef for the troops. The money obtained for that yoke of oxen enabled the owner to buy and pay for 200 acres of as fine land as to-day can be found under the sun.
Nor was it infrequent for the passing soldiers to be billeted upon the inhabitants for a night.
Indians used to spear fish when the first settlers came here, along the lake shore and off the headlands. No matter if the water was rough, the Indian would stand in the prow of the dug-out log canoe, holding some sturgeon oil in his mouth. Now and again he would spit this oil out upon the water, which would so calm it for a moment or two that he could see the fish and spear them. By such sleights the Indian invariably succeeded in procuring food from the forest and flood, while the white man could hardly do so until he learned from the Indian how to take game and fish. It was always the policy of the first settlers to treat the Indians kindly. They did this because the Indians gave them like treatment in return, and also because they far outnumbered the whites and could easily have destroyed them. An Indian was never to be refused something to eat if he came along hungry. My forefathers have told me that an Indian came along one day nearly famished and asked for food. Through some mishap he had been a week without food. A lot of cold meat was set before him and a quantity of corn bread. The old settler sat beside his fireplace and saw with surprise the eagerness and dexterity with which he managed to appropriate this cold meat. And still the Indian ate on, without apparent flagging, until at last the four pounds or so of cold meat was gone. Then he gave a grunt of satisfaction and sat before the fire. Soon he appeared in great distress and began rolling on the floor. To cure the surfeit the settler knew no better way than to grease his abdomen and pull him about. Just what virtue the grease had the settler did not know, but thinking that his body must necessarily stretch to master all that meat, he knew no better way to produce the stretching than by greasing him. And grease him he did, with the Indian all the time roaring with agony. However, after sundry greasings, rollings and groanings, he got relief, and sat once more beside the fire. On going away he told the old man what a good meal he had had, and that he ever would remember him. It is a fact that the Indian in his forest home used many times to be for days without food, when game was not secured. When he did get game he gorged himself, but of the manner of relieving a surfeit in the woods the white man does not seem to know whether it was by grease or otherwise.
At a logging bee in those old times whiskey was ever present. All the settlers in the locality would invariably turn out and help at the logging. Wonderful stories they tell of logging an acre of land in an hour and a half by three men and a yoke of oxen. Old men to-day tell me that they were mere lads then, and were the “whiskey boys” at these loggings. Whiskey was partaken of by the bowlful, and no ill effect seemed to follow from it. If a man were to drink one-half the quantity of whiskey to-day he would be more than drunk, and sick on the morrow. It must be that the whiskey of those days was better than the modern stuff. It was not supposed to be at all wrong to drink whiskey in those days, and they tell of an Irish immigrant who settled in Pickering, who had no cows, and had to provide food for his family during the winter. He procured two barrels of whiskey, which he and the family used with the cornmeal porridge during that winter. There were young children in the family at the time. It was not maintained that the whiskey was as nutritious as milk would have been, but yet they all came out in the spring in good condition, none the worse of the thrice daily consumption of whiskey.
Barns were sometimes moved from the manure pile about them. Manure was not considered of any value upon the land, for the land was rich enough without it. In a series of years the manure would accumulate about the barns, impeding access thereto, and they were actually moved away to get away from the manure, and then the manure burnt. Of course, we would not think of such a proceeding now, but there are farmers in Darlington, in the county of Durham, who burn their straw even now. When threshing, the straw is spread over a field, as delivered from a machine, by a boy with a horse-rake. It is then burned, relying for manure upon the ashes which the straw makes. This is not told as an example of good farming, but it illustrates the exceeding richness of Ontario soil.
Since the early American colonists burnt witches at Salem, their descendants, who came to Upper Canada as U. E. Loyalists, brought the belief of witchcraft with them; and many of them who came here about 1800, and before, really did believe in witches. I have heard my forefathers relate a witch story in all seriousness which I think worth repeating, as showing to us that the New England people who burnt witches were really sincere in the belief. About 1800 a settler in the spring of the year did not enjoy very good health. Nothing serious seemed to be the matter with him but a general inertia, or seediness. There was no medical man to consult, so he did the next best thing by consulting his nearest neighbor. The neighbor upon being told his symptoms at once pronounced him bewitched. An old woman in the locality was at once picked out as the bewitcher. Now for the remedy to break the spell of the witchery. A ball must be made of silver, and they melted a silver coin and made a rifle ball of it. An image of dough must be made to as closely resemble the supposed witch as possible. And it was made. Just as the sun rose the bewitched must fire at it with his rifle and the silver ball, and the dough image was set up on a top rail of the fence, and as the sun rose he fired and just grazed the shoulder of the dough image. In about an hour the old witch came to the house in great haste, and wanted to borrow some article. Were they to lend her the article desired the spell would come on again, but refusing, the spell was broken; of course, like sensible men, they did not lend the article. Even they went on to say further that the witch was hit and wounded slightly on the shoulder, where the dough image was struck by the silver ball. However, be that as it may, they asserted that the sick man speedily got well and was never again bewitched by the witch in question nor any other. Of the efficacy of the unerring aim of the silver ball I do not vouch, but I do vouch for the real bona fide belief of the old narrators of the whole tale.
There were buffalo in Ontario once, without a doubt, and I think I can prove it. When my people first came here, their own and two other families for some years were the only settlers between Toronto and Port Hope. They had cows, but by some fatality their only bull died. Somehow, three cows strayed away one summer and did not return until late in the fall or approach of winter. Next spring these cows had a calf each, and these calves partook partly of the mother, with the head and foreshoulders of the buffalo. Having a shaggy mane and long hair on their foreshoulders like the buffalo, they were without a doubt part buffalo. The progeny of this half-buffalo stock increased, but they never became thoroughly domesticated, and when a bull, some years after, could be obtained, they had to be killed on account of their viciousness.