A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean Part 21

[74] Wishac.u.mpuckey is one of the species of _Ledum_; jackasheypuck = _Arctostaphylos uvaursi_ Spreng.; cranberry = _Vaccinium vitisidaea_ Linn.; heathberry probably = _Empetrum nigrum_ Linn.--E. A. P.

[AP] See Hist. of Greenland, vol. i. pp. 132-156.

[75] Gull = _Larus_; blackhead = _Sterna paradisaea_ Brunn; loon = _Gavia_; old-wife = _Harelda hyemalis_ Linn.; ha-ha-wie = _Harelda hyemalis_ Linn.; hawks-eye = _Charadrius dominicus_ Mull.; yellow-legs = _Tota.n.u.s flavipes_ Gmel.--E. A. P.

[76] For descriptions of these mammals see Chapter X.

[77] _Lepus arcticus ca.n.u.s_ Preble.

[78] _Lagopus lagopus_ (Linn.)

[79] The Alarm bird is probably the Short-eared Owl, _Asio flammeus_ (Pontoppidan), a common summer inhabitant of the Barren Grounds. The Cobadekoock is the Hawk Owl, which seldom goes north of the woods.--E.

A. P.

[80] The exact locality here described does not appear to have been visited by any white man since 1771, but Sir John Richardson visited the Copper Mountains in 1821, and the following description by him will give some idea of their character:

"The Copper Mountains appear to form a range running S.E. and N.W. The great ma.s.s of rock in the mountains seems to consist of felspar in various conditions; sometimes in the form of felspar rock or claystone, sometimes coloured by hornblende, and approaching to greenstone, but most generally in the form of dark reddish-brown amygdaloid. The amygdaloidal ma.s.ses, contained in the amygdaloid, are either entirely pistacite, or pistacite enclosing calc-spar. Scales of native copper are very generally disseminated through this rock, through a species of trap tuff which nearly resembled it, and also through a reddish sandstone on which it appears to rest. When the felspar a.s.sumed the appearance of a slaty claystone, which it did towards the base of the mountains on the banks of the river, we observed no copper in it. The rough and in general rounded and more elevated parts of the mountain, are composed of the amygdaloid; but between the eminences there occur many narrow and deep valleys, which are bounded by perpendicular mural precipices of greenstone. It is in these valleys, amongst the loose soil, that the Indians search for copper. Amongst the specimens we picked up in these valleys, were plates of native copper; ma.s.ses of pistacite containing native copper; of trap rock with a.s.sociated native copper, green malachite, copper glance or variegated copper ore and iron-shot copper green; and of greenish-grey prehnite in trap (the trap is felspar, deeply coloured with hornblende), with disseminated native copper; the copper, in some specimens, was crystallized in rhomboidal dodecahedrons.

We also found some large tabular fragments, evidently portions of a vein consisting of prehnite, a.s.sociated with calcareous spar, and native copper. The Indians dig wherever they observe the prehnite lying on the soil, experience having taught them that the largest pieces of copper are found a.s.sociated with it. We did not observe the vein in its original repository, nor does it appear that the Indians have found it, but judging from the specimens just mentioned, it most probably traverses felspathose trap. We also picked up some fragments of a greenish-grey coloured rock, apparently sandstone, with disseminated variegated copper ore and copper glance; likewise rhomboidal fragments of white calcareous spar, and some rock crystals. The Indians report that they have found copper in every part of this range, which they have examined for thirty or forty miles to the N.W., and that the Esquimaux come hither to search for that metal. We afterwards found some ice-chisels in possession of the latter people twelve or fourteen inches long, and half-an-inch in diameter, formed of pure copper.

"To the northward of the Copper Mountains, at the distance of ten miles, in a direct line, a similar range of trap hills occurs, having, however, less alt.i.tude. The intermediate country is uneven, but not hilly, and consists of a deep sandy soil, which, when cut through by the rivulets, discloses extensive beds of light-brownish red sandstone, which appears to belong to the new red sandstone formation. The same rock having a thin slaty structure, and dipping to the northward, forms perpendicular walls to the river, whose bed lies a hundred and fifty feet below the level of the plain. The eminences in the plain are well clothed with gra.s.s, and free from the large loose stones so common on the Barren Grounds, but the ridges of trap are nearly dest.i.tute of vegetation.

"Beyond the last-mentioned trap range, which is about twenty miles from the sea, the country becomes still more level, the same kind of sandstone continuing as a subsoil. The plains nourish only a coa.r.s.e short gra.s.s, and the trees which had latterly dwindled to small clumps, growing only on low points on the edge of the river under shelter of the high bank, entirely disappear. A few ranges of trap hills intersect this plain also, but they have much less elevation than those we pa.s.sed higher up the stream.

"The river in its section of the plain, as far as b.l.o.o.d.y Fall, presents alternately cliffs of reddish sandstone, and red-coloured slaty indurated clay or marl, and shelving white clay banks. At b.l.o.o.d.y Fall, the stream cuts through a thick bed of dark, purplish-red felspar rock, similar to that observed at the Rocky Defile (page 527), and a.s.sociated, as at that place, with a rock composed princ.i.p.ally of light red felspar and quartz, but which is probably a species of red secondary granite. At the b.l.o.o.d.y Fall, the felspar rock is covered to the depth of six or seven hundred feet with a bed of greyish white, and rather tenacious clay, which being deeply intersected with ravines, forms steep hills.

Nearer the sea, the river is bounded by very steep cliffs of yellowish-white sand; and on the sea-coast, the above-mentioned red granite reappears on the west bank of the river, forming a rugged ridge about two hundred and fifty feet high" ("First Journey," pp. 528-530).

Sir John Franklin makes the following reference to the Copper Mountains, which he visited in July 1821:

"We rejoined our hunters at the foot of the Copper Mountains, and found they had killed three musk-oxen. This circ.u.mstance determined us on encamping to dry the meat, as there was wood at the spot. We availed ourselves of this delay to visit the Copper Mountains in search of specimens of the ore, agreeably to my instructions; and a party of twenty-one persons, consisting of the officers, some of the voyagers, and all the Indians, set off on that excursion. We travelled for nine hours over a considerable s.p.a.ce of ground, but found only a few small pieces of native copper. The range we ascended was on the west side of the river, extending W.N.W. and E.S.E. The mountains varied in height from twelve to fifteen hundred feet. The uniformity of the mountains is interrupted by narrow valleys, traversed by small streams. The best specimens of metal we procured were among the stones in these valleys, and it was in such situations that our guides desired us to search most carefully. It would appear, that when the Indians see any sparry substance projecting above the surface, they dig there; but they have no other rule to direct them, and have never found the metal in its original repository. Our guides reported that they had found copper in large pieces in every part of this range, for two days' walk to the north-west, and that the Esquimaux come hither to search for it. The annual visits which the Copper Indians were accustomed to make to these mountains, when most of their weapons and utensils were made of copper, have been discontinued since they have been enabled to obtain a supply of ice-chisels and other instruments of iron by the establishment of trading posts near their hunting grounds. That none of those who accompanied us had visited them for many years was evident, from their ignorance of the spots most abundant in metal.

"The impracticability of navigating the river upwards from the sea, and the want of wood for forming an establishment, would prove insuperable objections to rendering the collection of copper at this part worthy of mercantile speculation" ("First Journey," p. 340-1).

[AQ] This piece of Copper is now in the possession of the Hudson's Bay Company.

[AR] There is a strange tradition among those people, that the first person who discovered those mines was a woman, and that she conducted them to the place for several years; but as she was the only woman in company, some of the men took such liberties with her as made her vow revenge on them; and she is said to have been a great conjurer.

Accordingly when the men had loaded themselves with copper, and were going to return, she refused to accompany them, and said she would sit on the mine till she sunk into the ground, and that the copper should sink with her. The next year, when the men went for more copper, they found her sunk up to the waist, though still alive, and the quant.i.ty of copper much decreased; and on their repeating their visit the year following, she had quite disappeared, and all the princ.i.p.al part of the mine with her; so that after that period nothing remained on the surface but a few small pieces, and those were scattered at a considerable distance from each other. Before that period they say the copper lay on the surface in such large heaps, that the Indians had nothing to do but turn it over, and pick such pieces as would best suit the different uses for which they intended it.[81]

[81] A slightly different version of this tradition is given by Sir John Franklin, who heard it at Fort Chipewyan in 1820 from an old Chipewyan Indian named "Rabbit's Head," a stepson of Matonabbee. See Franklin's "First Journey," pp. 145-7.

[AS] What is meant by Beaver in other kind of furrs, must be understood as follows: For the easier trading with the Indians, as well as for the more correctly keeping their accounts, the Hudson's Bay Company have made a full-grown beaver-skin the standard by which they rate all other furrs, according to their respective values. Thus in several species of furrs, one skin is valued at the rate of four beaver-skins; some at three, and others at two; whereas those of an inferior quality are rated at one; and those of still less value considered so inferior to that of a beaver, that from six to twenty of their skins are only valued as equal to one beaver skin in the way of trade, and do not fetch one-fourth of the price at the London market. In this manner the term "Made Beaver" is to be understood.

[AT] Since this Journal was written, the Northern Indians, by annually visiting their Southern friends, the Athapuscow Indians, have contracted the small-pox, which has carried off nine-tenths of them, and particularly those people who composed the trade at Churchill Factory.

The few survivors follow the example of their Southern neighbours, and all trade with the Canadians, who are settled in the heart of the Athapuscow country: so that a very few years has proved my short-sightedness, and that it would have been much more to the advantage of the Company, as well as have prevented the depopulation of the Northern Indian country, if they had still remained at war with the Southern tribes, and never attempted to better their situation. At the same time, it is impossible to say what increase of trade might not, in time, have arisen from a constant and regular traffic with the different tribes of Copper and Dog-ribbed Indians. But having been totally neglected for several years, they have now sunk into their original barbarism and extreme indigence; and a war has ensued between the two tribes, for the sake of a few remnants of iron-work which was left among them; and the Dog-ribbed Indians were so numerous, and so successful, as to destroy almost the whole race of the Copper Indians.

While I was writing this Note, I was informed by some Northern Indians, that the few which remain of the Copper tribe have found their way to one of the Canadian houses in the Athapuscow Indians' country, where they get supplied with every thing at less, or about half the price they were formerly obliged to give; so that the few surviving Northern Indians, as well as the Hudson's Bay Company, have now lost every shadow of any future trade from that quarter, unless the Company will establish a settlement with the Athapuscow country, and undersell the Canadians.[82]

[82] In 1778 Peter Pond, a fur trader from Montreal, had built a trading post on the east bank of Athabasca River, about thirty miles up-stream from Athabasca Lake, and in 1786, after the formation of the North-West Company, Laurent Leroux and Cuthbert Grant, two of the employees of this Company, had descended Slave River to Great Slave Lake and had established a trading post on its southern sh.o.r.e. The Copper Indians traded at the latter post, while the Northern or Chipewyan Indians resorted to the more southern and older post on the Athabasca River.

Among the members of this latter tribe, who had been accustomed to make long pilgrimages to Churchill in order to procure implements and utensils of various kinds in exchange for furs, but who afterwards found that they could buy such goods as they needed more advantageously from the traders on the Athabasca River, very much nearer home, was a man known to those traders as "English Chief." This Indian accompanied Sir Alexander Mackenzie, one of the partners of the North-West Company, and one of those who would have been spoken of by Hearne as _Canadians_, on his journey from Lake Athabasca to the Arctic Ocean in 1789.

This note also throws an interesting light on the date on which the journal was written, for the first outbreak of small-pox, which swept off the Indians of Western Canada, occurred in 1781, and therefore the journal itself was written before that date, while Hearne was living as Governor at Fort Prince of Wales. The note would appear to have been written about 1787, after the destruction of Fort Prince of Wales, and while Hearne was living at Fort Churchill, five miles south of the old fort, and before he finally returned to England.

[AU] Mr. Moses Norton.

[83] The party had thus reached Congecathawhachaga on the morning of the seventh day after leaving b.l.o.o.d.y Falls or the mouth of the Coppermine River, the distance in a direct line being about one hundred and sixty miles. If they travelled in a direct line they averaged twenty-five miles a day, but the windings of the journey would add something to this distance.

[84] Contwoito Lake, described on page 152.

[85] The exact position of this place, to which the women and children had moved from the north sh.o.r.e of Cat or Clinton-Colden Lake, is not certain, but it was evidently on some of the lakes or streams marked on his map as lying between Cogead (Contwoito) and Point Lakes.

{189} CHAP. VII.

Remarks from the Time the Women joined us till our Arrival at the Athapuscow Lake.

_Several of the Indians sick--Method used by the conjurers to relieve one man, who recovers--Matonabbee and his crew proceed to the South West--Most of the other Indians separate, and go their respective ways--Pa.s.s by White Stone Lake--Many deer killed merely for their skins--Remarks thereon, and on the deer, respecting seasons and places--Arrive at Point Lake--One of the Indian's wives being sick, is left behind to perish above-ground--Weather very bad, but deer plenty--Stay some time at Point Lake to dry meat, &c.--Winter set in--Superst.i.tious customs observed by my companions, after they had killed the Esquimaux at Copper River--A violent gale of wind oversets my tent and breaks my quadrant--Some Copper and Dog-ribbed Indians join us--Indians propose to go to the Athapuscow Country to kill moose--Leave Point Lake, and arrive at the wood's edge--Arrive at Anawd Lake--Transactions there--Remarkable instance of a man being cured of the palsey by the conjurers--Leave Anawd Lake--Arrive at the great Athapuscow Lake._

[Sidenote: 1771. August.]

[Sidenote: 1771. August.]

Several of the Indians being very ill, the conjurers, who are always the doctors, and pretend to perform great cures, began to try their skill to effect their recovery. Here it is necessary to remark, that they use no medicine either for internal or external complaints, but perform all their cures by charms. In ordinary cases, sucking the part affected, blowing, and singing to it; {190} haughing, spitting, and at the same time uttering a heap of unintelligible jargon, compose the whole process of the cure. For some inward complaints; such as, griping in the intestines, difficulty of making water, &c., it is very common to see those jugglers blowing into the _a.n.u.s_, or into the parts adjacent, till their eyes are almost starting out of their heads: and this operation is performed indifferently on all, without regard either to age or s.e.x. The acc.u.mulation of so large a quant.i.ty of wind is at times apt to occasion some extraordinary emotions, which are not easily suppressed by a sick person; and as there is no vent for it but by the channel through which it was conveyed thither, it sometimes occasions an odd scene between the doctor and his patient; which I once wantonly called an engagement, but for which I was afterward exceedingly sorry, as it highly offended several of the Indians; particularly the juggler and the sick person, both of whom were men I much esteemed, and, except in that moment of levity, it had ever been no less my inclination than my interest to shew them every respect that my situation would admit.

I have often admired the great pains these jugglers take to deceive their credulous countrymen, while at the same time they are indefatigably industrious and persevering in their efforts to relieve them. Being naturally not very delicate, they frequently continue their windy process so long, that I have more than once seen the doctor quit his patient with his face and breast in a very disagreeable condition.

However {191} laughable this may appear to an European, custom makes it very indecent, in their opinion, to turn any thing of the kind to ridicule.

When a friend for whom they have a particular regard is, as they suppose, dangerously ill, beside the above methods, they have recourse to another very extraordinary piece of superst.i.tion; which is no less than that of pretending to swallow hatchets, ice-chissels, broad bayonets, knives, and the like; out of a superst.i.tious notion that undertaking such desperate feats will have some influence in appeasing death, and procure a respite for their patient.

[Sidenote: 1771. August.]

On such extraordinary occasions a conjuring-house is erected, by driving the ends of four long small sticks, or poles, into the ground at right angles, so as to form a square of four, five, six, or seven feet, as may be required. The tops of the poles are tied together, and all is close covered with a tent-cloth or other skin, exactly in the shape of a small square tent, except that there is no vacancy left at the top to admit the light. In the middle of this house, or tent, the patient is laid, and is soon followed by the conjurer, or conjurers. Sometimes five or six of them give their joint-a.s.sistance; but before they enter, they strip themselves quite naked, and as soon as they get into the house, the door being well closed, they kneel round the sick person or persons, and begin to suck {192} and blow at the parts affected, and then in a very short s.p.a.ce of time sing and talk as if conversing with familiar spirits, which they say appear to them in the shape of different beasts and birds of prey. When they have had sufficient conference with those necessary agents, or shadows, as they term them, they ask for the hatchet, bayonet, or the like, which is always prepared by another person, with a long string fastened to it by the haft, for the convenience of hauling it up again after they have swallowed it; for they very wisely admit this to be a very necessary precaution, as hard and compact bodies, such as iron and steel, would be very difficult to digest, even by the men who are enabled to swallow them. Besides, as those tools are in themselves very useful, and not always to be procured, it would be very ungenerous in the conjurers to digest them, when it is known that barely swallowing them and hauling them up again is fully sufficient to answer every purpose that is expected from them.

[Sidenote: 1771. August. 6th.]

At the time when the forty and odd tents of Indians joined us, one man was so dangerously ill, that it was thought necessary the conjurers should use some of those wonderful experiments for his recovery; one of them therefore immediately consented to swallow a broad bayonet.

Accordingly, a conjuring-house was erected in the manner above described, into which the patient was conveyed, and he was soon followed by the conjurer, who, after a long preparatory discourse, and the necessary {193} conference with his familiar spirits, or shadows, as they call them, advanced to the door and asked for the bayonet, which was then ready prepared, by having a string fastened to it, and a short piece of wood tied to the other end of the string, to prevent him from swallowing it. I could not help observing that the length of the bit of wood was not more than the breadth of the bayonet; however, as it answered the intended purpose, it did equally well as if it had been as long as a handspike.

Though I am not so credulous as to believe that the conjurer absolutely swallowed the bayonet, yet I must acknowledge that in the twinkling of an eye he conveyed it to--G.o.d knows where; and the small piece of wood, or one exactly like it, was confined close to his teeth. He then paraded backward and forward before the conjuring-house for a short time, when he feigned to be greatly disordered in his stomach and bowels; and, after making many wry faces, and groaning most hideously, he put his body into several distorted att.i.tudes, very suitable to the occasion. He then returned to the door of the conjuring-house, and after making many strong efforts to vomit, by the help of the string he at length, and after tugging at it some time, produced the bayonet, which apparently he hauled out of his mouth, to the no small surprize of all present. He then looked round with an air of exultation, and strutted into the conjuring-house, where he renewed his incantations, and continued them without intermission twenty-four hours. {194} Though I was not close to his elbow when he performed the above feat, yet I thought myself near enough (and I can a.s.sure my readers I was all attention) to have detected him. Indeed I must confess that it appeared to me to be a very nice piece of deception, especially as it was performed by a man quite naked.

[Sidenote: 1771. August.]

Not long after this slight-of-hand work was over, some of the Indians asked me what I thought of it; to which I answered, that I was too far off to see it so plain as I could wish; which indeed was no more than the strictest truth, because I was not near enough to detect the deception. The sick man, however, soon recovered; and in a few days afterwards we left that place and proceeded to the South West.

[Sidenote: 9th.]

On the ninth of August, we once more pursued our journey, and continued our course in the South West quarter, generally walking about seven or eight miles a day. All the Indians, however, who had been in our company, except twelve tents, struck off different ways. As to myself, having had several days rest, my feet were completely healed, though the skin remained very tender for some time.