If you have thus watched, then you know the sensation, as we do, of having beheld a clever trick performed without knowing how it is done. For to say the least, canoe-making at Indian Lorette is a fascinating bit of sleight of hand! Ma’am’selle says it takes two days to build a canoe. But the preparations—oh yes, that takes much longer.
We inquired as to the market, where they were sold. At this ma’am’selle contracted her shoulders in a French shrug, threw out her hands—still holding the hammer in the right—and cried, “Mais oui—all over Canada.”
Hand-and-glove with canoes and snowshoes goes the moccasin. The moccasin in Indian Lorette is an old, old story—as well as an elaborate one—real and flourishing to-day. It was a surprise to us to find that the Hurons still wear them, in lieu of shoes, about their daily business. Men and women pass silently up and down these little lanes, with no need of rubber heels, where the sole is like velvet.
The tannery lies across the bridge above the famous “Falls of Lorette”. In the tannery yards moose-hides from the Canadian northland flap in the wind, side by side with “hides” from Singapore. (For moccasin making here is a business big enough to call for imported skins.) And yet “the factory” is small, because most of the moccasin making is done in the homes. The cutting, cutters and machines are at “the shop” but the artistic embroideries in coloured beads and porcupine quills grow under the skillful touch of women and girls sitting on their vine-clad, tree-shaded balconies or making purchases from the butcher’s or baker’s cart in the shady lanes, moccasin in hand.
In this way moccasins enter into the home life of this “remnant of the Hurons” in a most intimate fashion. Even in the days of their prosperity as a tribe the number of moccasins made never equalled the trade of to-day. Nor was the market so large or so far-flung. One hears half a million pairs spoken of with equanimity. One is surprised that so many moccasins find their way to the woods and boudoirs of Canada and the United States; surprised, too, that the Indians have made good to such an extent from the commercial angle, creating, as it were, their own market.
Followed through all its quills and fancies, it is a pretty, homely story. But after all it is a story that brings one back to the people themselves. The chief is Monsieur Picard, residing in the old Hudson’s Bay Company house. He is a young man who saw service in France. The ex-grand chief—M. Maurice Bastien of maturer years—is actually the ruling power. Chief Bastien belongs to “the old school”, is very dignified, quiet, stands on ceremony, is the real head of the moccasin industry and has the gift of entertaining. He has an exceedingly pleasing personality and can carry solemn functions through to a successful issue. All the responsibility of doing the honours of the tribe to distinguished visitors falls to him. It is he who owns the precious wampum and the invaluable silver medals, gifts of distinguished sovereigns to himself and predecessors in office—one medal from King George III, one from Louis Quinze of France, one from King George IV, two from the late Queen Victoria.
Monsieur Bastien lives in a fine house tastefully furnished. On the table in the parlour stands a photograph of Philippe, Comte de Paris, in a blue vellum frame, a simple gold fleur-de-lys at the top. The Comte presented his photograph to Chief Bastien’s father who was the grandchief on the occasion of the Comte’s visit to Lorette.
There are many other valuable souvenirs but we liked best an old oil painting of the pioneer days, showing Hurons approaching, as visitors, the Ursuline Convent in Quebec. As a work of art it is probably of little value, but its theme—its theme, m’sieu, il parle.
As Monsieur Bastien talks of the past while graciously showing his visitors all these souvenirs, including his own feathered head-dress and the blue coat with its time-faded brocade which he wears on state occasions, he has the true story-teller’s art of making the times and occasions live again, so that through the ages you see the long procession of great families—Siouis, Vincents, Picards, Bastiens—from the earliest time down to the present—hunters, makers of the moccasin, the canoe, the snowshoe.
You see them off in the northern wilds of the Laurentides hunting the skins that enabled them to fill British Government contracts every fall for several years after 1759 for several thousand pairs of snowshoes, caribou moccasins and mittens for the English regiments garrisoning the citadel of Quebec.