Travels Around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes, 1862-1882 : Great Slave Lake, Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Dene 0968931731, 9780968931738

Citation preview

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/travelsaroundgre0067peti

EMILE PETITOT

(1874)

From the original frontispiece Around the Great Slave Lake

Paris Albert Savine, Editor 1891

$63 &

THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETY LXVII

GENERAL EDITOR ROGER HALL

To Donat Savoie

THE

PUBLICATIONS OF THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETY TRAVELS AROUND GREAT SLAVE AND GREAT BEAR LAKES 1862-1882 BY EMILE PETITOT

TORONTO THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETY

Eight hundred and thirty copies of this volume have been printed. Seven hundred and fifty have been reserved for members of the Society and subscribing libraries. The balance are reserved for editorial purposes and for sale to the public. This copy is No.

TRAVELS AROUND GREAT SLAVE AND GREAT BEAR LAKES 1862-1882

BY EMILE PETITOT

TRANSLATORS AND EDITORS PAUL LAVERDURE JACQUELINE MOIR JOHN S. MOIR

TORONTO THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETY 2005

© The Champlain Society 2005 isbn

0-9689317-3-1

No. 67 in the General Series Legal deposit third quarter 2005 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper or, in case of photo¬ copying or other reprographic copying, a license from

access

(Canadian Copyright

Licensing Agency) 1 Yonge St., Ste. 1900, Toronto, on M5E 1E5, fax 416-868-1621.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Petitot, Emile, 1838-1917. Travels Around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes, 1862-1882 by Emile Petitot / by Emile Petitot translators and editors: Paul Laverdure, Jacqueline Moir, John S. Moir. The publications of the Champlain Society; 67 Translations of 2 of the 5 books published in Paris between 1887 and 1893. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn

0-9689317-3-1

Northwest Territories—Description and travel. 2. Northwest, Canadian—Description and travel. 3. Native peoples—Northwest Territories—History. 4. Petitot, Emile, 1838-1917. 5. Native peoples—Missions—Northwest Territories. 6. Oblates of Mary Immaculate—Missions—Northwest Territories. 7. Missions, French—Northwest Territoires. 8. Oblates of Mary Immaculate—Biography. 9. Missionaries—Northwest, Canada—Biography. 10. Northwest, Canadian—Biography. 1. Laverdure, Paul 11. Moir, Jacqueline, 1928- 111. Moir, John S„ 1926iv. Champlain Society, v. Title, vi. Series: Publications of the Champlain Society ; 67. FC4167.1.P4813 2005

971-9301

C2004-906929-2

CONTENTS PAGE Illustrations and Maps.viii Preface. Introduction: The Making of a Missionary

ix

.

xv

.

1

Table of Contents.

3

Introduction.

7

Text.

9

Note on Tribal Names.

211

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region.

217

Table of Contents.

219

Introduction

.

223

Text.

227

Around Great Slave Lake

Index

43i

ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

PAGE Emile Petitot, 1874.Facing i

Title Page of

Autour dv Grand Lac des Esclaves.xxxiv

Forest Bivouac.

15

Missionaries travelling on Great Slave Fake.

24

St. Joseph’s Mission and Fort Resolution.

34

Danite—Yellowknife Indians.

61

St. Michael’s Mission and Fort Rae.

94

Dogrib Wilderness.

110

Kounhe-Manlay on Pyrites Fake.

160

Dogrib Danites (Pyrites Fake).

170

Title Page for

Exploration de la region du Grand Lac des Ours . .

.

216

Hareskin River and Eagle Rock.

218

Smith Arm.244 Keith Arm (west side) with Fort Norman and Petitot’s Mission. . .

264

Great steppe Die-tcho-ellon-tpiele with parhelion.

282

Keith Arm (east side) aurora borealis.

325

Ice Breakup on the Telini-Die, 3 June 1868.

335

Valley of the Telini-Die near its mouth.

341

Ra-tpou-youe Mountain.

352

Giant Wolverine Fake, or Fake Faraud.

359

Giant Beaver Fake, or Lake Pius ix.

364

Caribou Hunt on the Steppes of the White Caribou.

393

Map of Petitot’s Explorations around Great Slave Lake Following 30 Map of Petitot’s Explorations around Great Bear Lake Following 252

T

PREFACE his volume comprises a translation from French of two of the five books writ¬ ten by Father Emile Petitot,

published in Paris between 1887 and 1893

and recording his experiences as a missionary and explorer in the Canadian Arctic from 1862 to 1882. In his introduction to En route pour la trier glaciale Petitot explains that his purpose is simply to tell French people of France’s historic role and mission in the development of Canada and of the exploits of their North American offspring, the Metis nation.1 Although Petitot journeyed up the Peel River and over the Rocky Mountains to the upper Yukon River and overland from Fort Providence on the Mackenzie River to Fort Liard on the Liard River, his major sphere of activ¬ ity was the hinterlands north and east of the Mackenzie, from Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake as far east as the Anderson River, which he followed to the Arctic Ocean. The two volumes translated, edited, and published here are descriptions of those travels around Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake. Lather Emile Petitot does not rank among such famous Arctic explorers as Alexander Mackenzie, John Rae, and John Lranklin, but he made significant contributions to geographic knowledge about the country’s northwestern territories and to ethno¬ graphic studies of the native population of that region. His travels were undertaken virtually single-handedly, without the extensive supplies of food, equipment, and manpower that the British Admiralty provided for so many expeditions. Except for the company of a few native paddlers and guides who often knew no more about the unexplored areas than Petitot did, he travelled alone on his missionary-exploratory ventures, visiting and staying with various native groups in different localities, shar¬ ing their living conditions and recording in detail their life, legends, customs, be¬ liefs, and languages. He operated with the simplest of instruments—a watch and a compass—to map his discoveries. He also collected artifacts, clothing, and weapons which he later deposited in Lrench museums.2 The records of Petitot’s travels are important for Canadian history, and his maps provided basic information about this vast region. The introduction of aerial pho¬ tography has verified and complemented his reports. Numerous lakes and rivers were recorded and named by him, and many of these names are still in official use to this day.3 Pour rivers in the Northwest Territories carry his personal names, and he

1 En route pour la mer glaciale (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1888). Most catalogues state that the date of pub¬ lication is 1887, but it only appeared in 1888. 2 According to Petitot, he presented native clothing and utensils to the Trocadero Museum in 1875. When the Trocadero was levelled in 1937, it was replaced by “le palais de Chaillot, which housed a number of museums. Petitot’s donations may now be in the Musee de 1 Homme in the Chaillot Palace. 3 Donat Savoie, ed., Land Occupancy by the Amerindians of the Canadian Northwest in the ifh Century, as

Preface

X

designated Lac Ste Therese in honour of his mother. Although slight of build, tem¬ peramentally erratic, frequently ill, and handicapped for years by an abdominal her.nia and tuberculosis, Petitot endured extreme hardships of travel worse than those of a military boot camp. Nevertheless, he was so strong and so determined, he boasted that he could travel sixteen hours a day for ten to thirteen days at a stretch. Petitot drew passable sketches of Arctic landscapes, native encampments, living arrangements, and utensils, and these were later reproduced as etchings. The etch¬ ings in this volume have been reproduced and printed in the same order and places as in their original publication. During his journeys, he also used his linguistic gift to compile dictionaries and grammars of the native languages. He kept diaries which later provided the basic raw material for several monographs and lengthy essays. These studies have been of value to Canadian northern research, while his notes and sketches have made his volumes unique handbooks for modern ethnologists. Petitot’s success as a missionary is debatable, but his massive dictionary and nu¬ merous articles on the local native languages stand, along with his geographic and geological records, as bedrock contributions to our knowledge of Canada’s western Arctic. It is our hope that this translation may further assist historical research by current scholars in such varied and specialized fields as gender, race, class, madness, culture clash and socio-economic interaction, missiology, and biography. John Moir and Paul Laverdure conceived the idea for this book when Moir was preparing a biography of Petitot for the now-defunct Western Canadian Publishers and while Laverdure was working in the Oblates’ Deschatelets Archives as an histo¬ rian for the residential schools’work group of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. John Moir and his wife, Jacqueline Moir, who together had travelled through some of the area documented by Petitot, undertook the initial translation of the texts and pro¬ vided the geographic translations as well as many of the English terms for the flora and fauna. Paul Laverdure did the biographical research on many of the individu¬ als mentioned and researched translations and etymologies of obscure nineteenthcentury words Petitot chose to use, mainly in Latin, Greek, German, Italian, Provencal, and Spanish, although Petitot sometimes delighted in using the occa¬ sional word from language groups further afield, such as Finnish. Laverdure then undertook to revise the entire translation from the French and assisted with the editing of the preliminary matter. Petitot’s writing style can best be described as convoluted, punctuated with short passages designed to produce a dramatic effect on his readers. For readability, the editors have taken the occasional liberty of combining short paragraphs and of alter¬ ing his complex sentence structure. Accent marks have been retained for all Dene

reported by £mile Petitot (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs, 2001) provides extensive maps, illustra¬ tions, and a toponymic inventory.

Preface

xi

(Dene) words and also for French personal names. Unfortunately, Petitot was incon¬ sistent in his transcriptions, sometimes using Greek letters, sometimes using Latin letters, sometimes using different font sizes, and at other times using superscripts and subscripts. He distinguished, however, between two kinds of “R” sounds. In this volume, the Latin “R” or “r” is used to indicate the then-common southern French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin tongue-trilled “R.” The lowercase Greek “rho” (“p”) is used to indicate the guttural “R” found in German and in modern international French. Some of these words are now officially transliterated with “g,” although it is clear Petitot considered the sound to be a form of “R.” Petitot also used the Greek “chi” (“%”) in transcribing a more guttural and aspirated Dene sound (similar to the German “ach”), but it has usually been replaced by the Latin “x” since this letter does not appear in any of the Dene words Petitot used in the two books translated here. A superscript “c,” reproduced as “c,” usually placed before an “L” indicates a harder, “L” sound. Further editorial additions have been placed between square brackets. These additions include brief notes within the text where feasible, but lengthy ones have been added as footnotes between square brackets to distinguish them from Petitot’s own footnotes. When Petitot provides dialect in broken English or in native languag¬ es, these have been kept exactly as Petitot transcribed them, including superscripts. Translations in English from French sources have been provided by the editors where not otherwise indicated. Petitot’s corrections (errata notes) have also been incorpo¬ rated into the text. Petitot’s use of such expressions as “redskins,” “Eskimo,” and “savages” was ac¬ ceptable in Victorian times. “Redskins” and “savages” have sometimes been replaced by “natives,” although “savages” has been retained when Petitot obviously referred to native ferocity, wildness, or uncivilized behaviour. Since Petitot made a distinc¬ tion between Eskimo and Inuit, these words have been kept as he used them. When his writings are sprinkled with Provencal and references to French customs, persons, and places which have little relevance for modern readers, they have been explained in editorial footnotes. Similarly, his references to fauna often and understandably use European terms for the benefit of his public and have been explained or replaced with Canadian terms. For example, his frequent use of the French terms for “deer” must be understood as referring to “caribou,” a term he knew but Europeans may not have known; and in most cases, the word

caribou has been used instead of

“deer.” Petitot sprinkled Dene words throughout his writings and this, too, led to some difficulties since many of them, as Petitot states himself, have double meanings. The reader should be aware that even Petitot changed his mind about the correct transcription of a Dene word and its translation into French from one volume to the next and even within a volume. When he first used a Dene word, he usually divided it into monosyllables by means of hyphens and then abandoned the hyphens when¬ ever he used the word again, although he was by no means consistent. The different Dene transcriptions and translations from the varying French equivalents have been

xii

Preface

generally kept as Petitot gave them unless it was clear that a typographical error had occurred in the original editions. Petitot’s transcriptions are not necessarily accurate nor are his translations exact, but they are the best we have for this period. On oc¬ casion, to clarify Petitot’s meaning, Dene speakers and elders have been consulted through the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre and the First Nations University of Canada. Our deep gratitude is owed to Mr. Donat Savoie, the acknowledged expert on Emile Petitot, who began studying Petitot’s career more than three decades ago. He has published a short biography of Emile Petitot, a bibliography of Petitot’s writings, and a two-volume compilation of Petitot’s ethnographic writings. These works are cited in the notes. He also prepared an archival finding aid to the scattered cor¬ respondence by and about Petitot. All of these materials he most generously made available to us. It should also be recorded here that Donat Savoie donated his ex¬ tensive collection of copies that he had made of the Petitot materials in the Oblates Deschatelets Archives in Ottawa and from elsewhere to the Archives of the Northwest Territory. No Canadian scholar is more deserving of the dedication of this book than this groundbreaking researcher, Donat Savoie. Our long-time friends, M. Rene Bodin and Mme Franchise Bodin of Poitiers, France, cheerfully and successfully researched many of Petitot’s obscure references to French regional customs and beliefs, and also Petitot’s more exotic examples of an¬ tique or regional French vocabulary, and we thank them for their help. Mr. Randolph Freeman, former toponymist with the Prince of Wales Museum in Yellowknife, gen¬ erously loaned his copies of the late Rachelle Castonguay’s exhaustive compilation of Petitot’s recording of native place names in the Northwest Territories. Also among these expert advisors is William Green, M.D., who explained the finer points of Petitot’s comments on illnesses and his Arctic medical practices. Thanks are due to Ms. Joan Links and the staff of the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto for preparing copies of Petitot’s volumes from the CIHM microfiches, and to the staff of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library for providing clear copies of original pages where the microfiche copy was illegible. Dr. T. Wade Richardson of McGill University helped to identify and translate some of the more obscure classical Latin quotations. Peter Brass of the First Nations University of Canada Library, Regina, helped in bibliographic research. Walter Eisenbeis provided photographic and com¬ puter reproduction services in Toronto. Our thanks are also owing to the editors of the Champlain Society publications for their assistance in preparing the copy for the present volume and for supervising the reproduction of the illustrations and map of Great Slave Lake (courtesy of Robarts Library, University of Toronto) and those of Great Bear Lake (courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto). Their commitment to a transla¬ tion and edition of Petitot’s works dates back to 1913 when Guy Lancelot Stebbing, a surveyor's assistant, first proposed his own translation of Petitot’s Great Bear Lake

Preface

xiii

narrative. The editors felt that Petitot’s work was classic, but Petitot was still alive and owned the copyright. The First World War soon claimed Mr. Stebbing’s attention. The project languished, almost forgotten in the archives of the Champlain Society.4 Despite all of this help, we must acknowledge our responsibility for any errors that may have crept into the text and beg our readers’ indulgence. PAUL LAVERDURE, JACQUELINE R. MOIR, JOHN S. MOIR

4 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, Manuscript Collection 50 (Champlain Society), Item 66, “Champlain Society Minute Book 1905-1925,” Minutes of the meeting of the Editorial Board on May 15th 1914. Also Box 29, folio 3, Sir Edmund Walker to C.D. Melville, c/o Mr. Guy Stebbing, Edmonton, 13 February 1914; and H.H. Langton (University of Toronto Librarian and Secretary of the Champlain Society) to Sir Edmund Walker (President of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and President of the Champlain Society) 30 April 1914. The translation is available in Box 45, folder 8 and following. A battered copy of Exploration de la region du Grand Lac des Ours available in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto was obviously Stebbing’s copy, since it contains his handwritten translation notes. Stebbing’s personal details on the enlistment attestation paper for the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force can be found in the National Archives of Canada. Melville, of Shrewsbury, England, provided photographs taken probably in 1912 of the area explored by Petitot to accompany Stebbing’s manuscript. Unfortunately, they were undated and most were unidentified. Since they were of a period roughly fifty years after Petitot’s explorations, they were not used in this work.

INTRODUCTION

W

The Making of a Missionary hen Jean-Baptiste Petitot (pronounced “Petitott”), a watchmaker, and Therese Julie Fortunee Gagneur were married in Marseilles at the begin¬ ning of 1828, Jean-Baptiste was forty-five years old and Therese just sixteen.

In the next nine years, while they lived in Marseilles, the Petitots had two daughters, Fortunee Josephine in 1829 and Claudine Eugenie Victorine in 1836, and two sons, Pierre Joseph Esprit in 1830 and Louis Hipolyte5 in 1831. Pierre Joseph died at the age of five and Claudine at nine months, and another child was stillborn in 1834. In the late summer or the early autumn of 1837, the remaining Petitot family moved from Marseilles to Jean-Baptiste’s natal village, Grancey-le-Chateau, situated midway be¬ tween two of France’s famous wine regions, the Cotes de Nuits to the southeast and Chablis to the northwest. The birth of Emile on 3 December 1838 was undoubtedly a joyful occasion follow¬ ing the three child-deaths in Marseilles, but less than two years later Louis Hipolyte died, reducing the number of children once more to two. At Emile’s confirmation, the name “Stanislaus” was added, and in later years “Joseph” was tacked on for rea¬ sons unrecorded. It is not known why Jean-Baptiste had moved from Marseilles to Grancey-le-Chateau nor why by the summer of 1840, after Louis Hipolyte’s death, the family returned to Marseilles’ Rue de la Palud. About a year later, the family moved again, to the quartier Magdeleine, making this the sixth residence of the Petitots since their marriage and the third in as many years. In the summer of 1840 a new arrival, Victor-Frederic, joined the Petitot family, and yet another son, Auguste Marius in the spring of 1845. By the mid-i840S the two older brothers—Emile and Victor—were attending local schools. Twice more in that decade the family moved, to houses in the Boulevard de la Liberation in Marseilles. The 1850s, however, brought a major change in the Petitot home—Jean-Baptiste died on 15 February 1854 at the age of seventy-one, leaving his forty-three-year-old widow with four children: the oldest, Fortunee, aged twenty-three; Emile, the eldest son, seventeen; Victor, fourteen; and Auguste, the youngest, only nine. Jean-Baptiste must have provided well for his family, because the children were able to continue their education. In all of his voluminous writings, Emile seldom comments on these events or his impressions of the early decades of his or his family’s life. A young man of slim build, mentally alert and physically active, Emile grew up sur¬ rounded by the excitement of the bustling activity of the great seaport of Marseilles.

5 While an uncommon spelling, “Hipolyte” is recorded on the baptismal certificate.

XV

xvi

Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes, 1862-1882

The rugged Alpille mountains of Provence are a backdrop to the Mediterranean coast¬ al plain on which Marseilles is located, forty-seven kilometres east of the mouth of the Rhone River. West of the city silt deposits from the rivers have built up low-lying areas, now pockmarked with small lakes or ponds forming the Camargue, Europe’s major wetland, a famous haven of wild birds and herds of wild horses. East of the city, however, the coastline is marked by picturesque seaside villages and scarred by calanques, deep cliff-rimmed inlets characteristic of that immediate area. References and comparisons to the geography of the area are scattered throughout his writings. Little detail is known of Emile’s childhood in Marseilles beyond the fact that he completed his classical studies at the city’s Petit Seminaire et College du Sacre-Coeur. The curriculum of the day would have included classical languages and literature, his¬ tory, mathematics, physics, biology, and at least rudimentary geology, to judge from Petitot’s mature writings. The discovery, after Emile’s death, of his 112-page manuscript entitled “Souvenirs de Jeunesse: Excursion faite dans le Midi de la France, par Emile Petitot, etudiant de 17 ans,” dedicated by the seventeen-year-old author to his ‘future nephews,’ provides a revealing picture of his extracurricular interests and activities during his student years.6 With various young friends, and usually under the watch¬ ful eye of someone in holy orders, Emile shared in at least fifteen excursions along the shores bordering Marseilles and into the villages and hills behind the city. The first two of these outings, taken in the autumn of 1856 and the summer of 1857, found four young friends visiting such nearby villages as Gemenos and Sainte Baume with its towering Romanesque church. Later in 1857, Emile and a different set of companions spent four days at Cassis and La Ciotat, two neighbouring coastal towns that he apparently liked, because he returned there in 1858 and i860. These outings included rock climbing and cave exploration, and on one occasion Emile fell some distance and although he suffered no injury, his widowed mother was con¬ siderably upset by the incident. Emile’s detailed account of these trips shows him as a young man with an omnivorous and inquisitive interest in the natural sciences and history. Geology, geography, botany, ornithology, and particularly the local flora and fauna attracted his attention. Of almost equal interest were all the local histori¬ cal sites, including churches, castles, and the famous Roman battlefield of Mont SteVictoire, immortalized in paint by Cezanne. Emile recalled that on every outing he carried the sword-cane his father had given him. In the year of his father’s death, Emile at about the age of seventeen apparently resolved to enter the priesthood as a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and received the tonsure. The Oblates had been founded in 1815 by Eugene de Mazenod, later the popular bishop of Marseilles. Known first as the Societe des Missionaires de Provence, its purpose was to conduct religious revivals among the unchurched poor

6 Archives de la paroisse St-Etienne, Mareuil-les-Meaux.

Introduction

xvn

of the region. A decade later, the Society’s successful work had spread through the Marseilles region, and the Society received papal approval and a new name, Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Despite strong objections from his recently widowed moth¬ er, Emile could not be dissuaded from joining the dynamic group of missionaries. Having completed his studies in Marseilles, on 27 September i860, he was authorized by Bishop de Mazenod to enter the novitiate and, on the same day, was registered in the Oblate seminary, Notre Dame de l’Osier, by the Isere River near the ancient city of Romans, some two hundred kilometres north of Marseilles. The seminary of Notre Dame de l’Osier was one of three new and specifically Oblate training institutions opened in the 1850s. The curriculum of these seminaries all followed the same course, founded on de Mazenod’s Instructions, a codicil to the Society’s rules dealing with mission philosophy and practice. Rather than the usual four years required for ordination, Oblate candidates spent only one or two years in theological studies because intensive theological training seemed less relevant for missionaries working with primitive and illiterate people. The core curriculum, usu¬ ally taught by recent graduates with little pedagogical preparation, was dogmatic the¬ ology. Moral theology was the “equiprobabilism” of Alphonsus de Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists, a pedagogy that stressed human frailty and divine pardon.7 By the middle of the nineteenth century, dogmatics were increasingly drawn from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and were polemical in nature, of importance in relationship with Protestants. Greek and Latin, begun early in every educational programme, later proved valuable tools for Petitot’s interest in the native languages of the Northwest. He also had some knowledge of biblical Hebrew, was reasonably literate in English, and knew some German. After one year at Notre Dame de l’Osier, Emile made his perpetual Oblation (vows) on 10 October 1861, marking his admission as a member of the Congregation. Four months later, Emile’s theological studies being complete, the Oblates’ General Council approved him for ordination and on 15 March 1862, he and another candi¬ date were ordained in the Oblate church of le Calvaire, less than a kilometre north of the Old Port of Marseilles. This rite was performed by the city’s new bishop, Patrice Francis Cruice. Just four days later, Emile left home, family, and friends for his mission appointment in the vicariate of Red River in Rupert’s Land. From Dieppe he sailed via London to New York and then travelled overland to Montreal. There, in the space of two weeks he received brief mission training, including some instruc¬ tion in native languages. Although Montreal’s bishop, Ignace Bourget, felt Emile was

7 The filial relationship between the nineteenth-century congregation of Oblates and the Redemptorists, founded in the eighteenth century, has been studied in numerous articles in Etudes Oblates (although less so in its successor Vie Oblate Life). For a brief, modern study of the impact of Alphonsus’ moral theology, see Theodule Rey-Mermet, Moral Choices: The Moral Theology of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, trans. and ed. Paul Laverdure (Liguori, Missouri: Liguori Publications, 1998).

xviii

Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes,

1862-1882

immature for mission work—at twenty-four he was just one year below the canoni¬ cal age—the young priest was sent west with the Hudson’s Bay Company fur brigade and by fune 1862 had reached his posting at the newest Oblate mission, Providence, at the head of the Mackenzie River.8

Evangelism and Exploration In an analytical summary of the Oblates’ successful mission in western and northern Canada, Raymond Huel emphasizes their primary focus on preaching the Gospel. “Judged by institutional standards the Oblate apostolate in western and northern Canada was a highly successful enterprise, especially when one considers the limited resources and personnel available to the Oblates.”9 The desire to evangelize com¬ pensated for many of the shortcomings of missionary life, balanced their monastic discipline, provided an outlet for autonomy and individual talents, justified their pragmatic philosophy of mission, and enhanced their ability to innovate to meet new challenges. Finally he points to the successful adaptation of the southern French technique of parish mission to the unique physical and cultural environment of Canada’s hinterland. In 1820 Norbert Provencher had been consecrated as a bishop in partibus, a mis¬ sionary bishop, the first and only Vicar General of the vast Canadian Northwest. With the support of his fellow bishops of Quebec and Montreal, he travelled to Rome in 1832 with a plan to evangelize Oregon, British Columbia, the prairie West, and the Northwest. Provencher’s need and search for missionaries brought him to the Oblates, who had been working on the frontiers of the diocese of Montreal since 1841. Three years later, Provencher obtained two Oblate missionaries for his territory. Canadian-born and educated Alexandre-Antoine Tache10 was assigned to the Red River as Provencher’s auxiliary bishop and superior of the Oblates in the West and, on the death of Provencher in 1853, became bishop of St. Boniface. The subsequent arrival of more Oblates to evangelize the whole West and Northwest required the building of an ecclesiastical infrastructure. In 1847 Tache established the mission of La Nativite at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca and two years later appointed Father Henri Faraud,11 a young man with prodigious physical energy but

8 No full biography of Petitot exists. See Dictionary of Canadian Biography (henceforth DCB), XIV: 838-40, particularly the article’s bibliography. A listing of his printed works can also be found in Donat Savoie, “Bibliographie d’Emile Petitot, missionnaire dans le Nord-Ouest canadien," Anthropologica 13, no. 1-2 (1971): 159-168. 9 Raymond Huel, “The Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the Canadian North West: Reflections on 150 Years of Service, 1845-1995,” Western Oblate Studies IV (1995): 43. 10 DCB, XIL1002-12. 11 DCB, XL310-11.

Introduction

xix

minimal theological training, to that post. There Faraud was joined in 1852 by Henri Grollier,1- a young but quarrelsome and vocal zealot who openly criticized his mission¬ ary colleagues, the Hudson’s Bay Company employees, Protestantism, Protestant mis¬ sionaries, and all natives. From his post at Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake, Grollier was ordered to open a new mission, Notre Dame, at Fort Good Hope on the Mackenzie River just north of the Arctic Circle. From there he reached the Mackenzie Delta where he baptized sixty-five Loucheux (modern-day Gwich’in or Kuttchin) and four Inuit. In all, Grollier established five missions: Fond du Lac, Fort Simpson, Fort Rae, Fort Norman, and Fort Good Hope, where he died in 1864 at the age of thirty-eight. In 1857 Tache received an auxiliary bishop for St. Boniface, Vital Grandin,13 who as a titular bishop outranked Faraud, a bishop in partibus. Grandin was given re¬ sponsibility for the northwestern portion of the diocese, including the missions in the Athabasca-Mackenzie area. He, however, did not assume these responsibili¬ ties until i860, after being consecrated in France at the end of 1859. The following year, he toured the northern missions and chose Providence near the head of the Mackenzie River to be his headquarters. A reluctant bishop, and a timid man with a speech impediment, Grandin felt relieved when Faraud was appointed vicar ap¬ ostolic for the northwestern region in 1862. At Tache’s suggestion, Grandin was put in charge of the more southerly missions in the Saskatchewan vicariate in 1868 and then, three years later, was named bishop of St. Albert when St. Boniface became a metropolitan see or archdiocese. Meanwhile, Faraud found the huge frontier vicariate of Athabasca-Mackenzie so burdensome he consecrated Isidore Clut14 as his auxiliary in 1865. On Petitot’s arrival in the Northwest in 1862 he was first assigned to Fort Good Hope to assist the ailing Grollier but was redirected to Providence to help Grandin build his new northern mission headquarters. There, while moving heavy timber, Petitot suffered an abdominal hernia which continued to plague him for the re¬ mainder of his life. During the winter of 1862-63, Grandin put Petitot through a rigorous and dangerous series of survival training exercises that took the nov¬ ice missionary across Great Slave Lake to Resolution at terrible physical expense. Petitot, the greenhorn, learned painful lessons in Arctic living that made his missionary-explorer career possible. He never, however, acknowledged his indebt¬ edness to this bishop whose character he regularly denigrated in his books three decades later. Although suffering from tuberculosis and handicapped by his hernia, Petitot de¬ clared he could walk sixteen hours a day for ten to thirteen days at a stretch. It was

12 DCB, IX:342. 13 DCB, XIII:400-3.

u DCB, XIII:205-6.

XX

Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes, 1862—1882

during these journeys that he compiled dictionaries and grammars of the native languages. His beard and his wire-rimmed spectacles were a constant source of won¬ der and amusement to the natives that he met. To his readers, then and now, his accounts of native and of mission cuisine are frequently revolting, but they are ac¬ curate accounts of the hardships and necessities of northern life. In the same way, his detailed description of barbaric native customs and practices are as disturbing today as they were in his time. As for the Hudson’s Bay Company, Petitot deplored the Company’s racist policies and sharp business practices, but held many individual Company employees in high regard and friendship. Petitot’s relations with the natives were in fact a mixture of admiration and con¬ demnation. He was shocked by the sexual licentiousness of some natives (although at two separate periods he had a homosexual relationship with one of his young guides.)15 He was dismayed by the cruelty shown to animals, children, and the elderly, critical of forest fires that he believed were caused by native carelessness, and convinced from his early observations of natives in the United States that liquor and guns threatened their very survival.16 Petitot never smoked and seldom used alcohol. In writing about the Northwest, however, he seldom refers to the liquor problem except as it involved Hudson’s Bay Company employees. Petitot dispensed to the na¬ tives simple but debatable medications although most of their ailments proved fatal. These diseases included the recurrent epidemics of smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough contracted from Europeans in the fur brigade boats. With in¬ struments supplied by a medical friend in Marseilles, Petitot and his colleague Father Jean Seguin vaccinated more than seventeen hundred people in 1871. Tuberculosis was also rampant, and Petitot himself suffered bouts of bloody coughing which he seems to have cured by daily exercise in the cold winter air.17 Petitot was captivated by the loyalty of his converts, believed knowledge of their languages was the key to their conversion, and was both amused by and critical of their superstitious fears and dreams. He admired the natives’ skills and ingenuity in facing the bleak conditions of Arctic life, but criticized their unhygienic practices, their tendency to procrastinate, and their surprising lack of geographic knowledge about regions beyond their hunting areas. By comparing the vocabularies of the

15 For a critique of Petitot’s personal behaviour see Robert Choquette, The Oblate Assault on Canada’s Northwest (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. 1995), 59-66. His relationship with Hyacinthe Dzan-Yu led to his temporary but not curative excommunication in 1866 by Bishop Faraud. By 1868 he was suffering short bouts of insanity each winter, hallucinating and running naked in minus 40°C weather, and at least twice tried to kill his colleague Father Jean Seguin. 16 En route pour la mer glaciale, 157. 17 For a detailed analysis of the impact of European diseases on the natives of the Northwest see Martha McCarthy, From the Great River to the Ends of the Earth: Oblate Missions to the Dene, 1847-1921 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1995), 120-30.

Introduction

xxi

northwestern natives to ancient Hebrew, Petitot, like the later Oblate missionary au¬ thor, Adrien-Gabriel Morice, convinced himself that these people were surely among the lost tribes of Israel. He made particular note whether tribal groups practised male circumcision, a factor that might support the “lost tribes” theory and which influenced him to have the same surgical rite performed on himself during his last stay in Canada in an attempt to have them accept him as one of their own.18 During his voyages Petitot recorded not only native languages and traditions but also maps of his routes, and sketches of aboriginal life and of the landscape. Like other Oblate missionaries in the mission field, he was chagrined by competition from Anglican missionaries. He characterized these rivals as theologically ignorant, and he was especially bothered by the wide-ranging activities of William Carpenter Bompas. Ironically Petitot turned to Bompas for help in 1884, hoping that Bompas could make his return to evangelize the Arctic possible, this time on behalf of the Church of England.19 After sharing life with Petitot in a one-room, hastily built log house at Providence during the winter of 1862-63, Bishop Grandin commented at some length to Bishop Tache on Petitot’s character and ambitions. “He dreams only of long voyages. He often asks me to send him to the Eskimos.” Grandin found Petitot overly fastidi¬ ous about native cooking and stupidly careless about dangers. “He had to freeze his fingers before agreeing to wear mittens.” It would take considerable time to make Petitot into “a good missionary,” because “he is a very immature young man; he rea¬ sons like a schoolboy, or at best a seminarian.”20 Nevertheless, early in 1863 Grandin sent Petitot to Fort Resolution on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, although the mission post was actually four kilometres distant on Moose Island. Interesting as this new experience was, Petitot felt isolated on the island and longed for the excitement of exploration. That dream became a possibility the following year because Grollier died at Fort Good Hope and Petitot was once more assigned to that most northerly mission. The trip to Fort Good Hope would take him west¬ ward on Great Slave Lake and then northward some five hundred kilometres down the Mackenzie on Hudson’s Bay Company boats. But before making that transfer, he was ordered to cross Great Slave Lake, follow its North Arm past the future site of Yellowknife and proceed by river beyond Fort Rae to make contact with the na¬ tives around Lac la Martre. Petitot, however, conceived a plan to travel and explore the unknown territory from Lac la Martre northwest to reach Fort Good Hope, all this without the permission or knowledge of his superiors. This audacious scheme,

18 Choquette, 64. 19 Copies of this correspondence can be found in the Oblates’ Deschatelets Archives, Ottawa, call number HEC 6491, E53L. 20 V. Grandin to A. Tache, 3 April 1863; copy from Archives of the Archdiocese of St. Boniface, 84.400, 911.

xxii

Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes,

1862 1882

however, came to naught when the natives refused him passage for lack of space in their canoes and he was forced to retrace his steps to Fort Resolution and follow the normal route, down the Mackenzie. On Petitot’s arrival at Fort Good Hope, he found to his dismay that Father Jean Seguin was already established there as the senior missionary. This situation pro¬ duced long-lasting friction between the two men and created a desire on Petitot’s part to escape the routine of mission work at the post. This became his excuse for undertaking exploratory trips into uncharted regions to evangelize pagan tribes and also for designing and constructing the Church of Our Lady of Good Hope and per¬ sonally decorating its interior, especially the altar, with paintings and woodwork. This building, which was declared a national historic site in 1977, was begun in 1865 and completed by 1876. In 1889 Bishop Emile Grouard, Petitot’s long-time friend, called the church a “little jewel.”21 After his first winter at Fort Good Hope, Petitot set out to meet the Chiglit Eskimos at Fort Anderson (Eskimo Fort) on the Anderson River, the most northerly of the Hudson’s Bay Company posts. Anxious to copy Grollier’s example and to become famous as the “Apostle to the Eskimos,” he had already begged his superiors for permission to explore and evangelize northward from Fort Good Hope.22 After a warm welcome from these Inuit, who dubbed him “Son ofthe Sun,” he travelled with them to their home camp only a few kilometres from the shore of the Arctic Ocean. Petitot soon learned, however, that Inuit hospitality only existed in the presence of Company employees. A few days later he left rapidly after he had been robbed and his life had been threatened. In the autumn of that same year, 1865, he set out again to visit the Chiglits, but this trip was aborted and he spent his time and evangelical efforts among the Gwich’in of the upper Anderson River. Later, in 1867, Petitot met the Inuit again at Fort McPherson and began a trip with them through the Mackenzie delta from which he barely escaped with his life.23 He never did reach the Arctic Ocean, but for years he cherished his dream of becoming history’s “Apostle to the Eskimos.” Blocked from northward explorations, however, and delayed by other priorities, Petitot’s exploratory interests had turned eastward. In 1866 he ascended the Hare River to Great Bear Lake. Again in 1867,1868,1871, and 1872 he returned to the region of Great Bear Lake, recording the languages and lifestyles of the Hareskins and Batard-Loucheux (literally, “squinty-eyed bastards,” as their

21 For a detailed description and illustrations, see Janet Wright, Church of Our Lady of Good Hope (Ottawa: Parks Canada, Heritage Commemoration Series, 1986).

22 Missions (1866): 255. 23 Petitot’s account of these two episodes is the subject of his volume: Les grands Esquimaux (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit, 1887), translated into English by O.E. Hohn, Among the Chiglit Eskimos, 2nd ed. (Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1999).

Introduction

xxiii

enemies called them, or Metis or half-breed Gwich in 'as they call themselves).2^ Petitot distinguishes between “Dene” (which now applies to all the northern natives of the Athapaskan language family) and the “Dindjie” or “Loucheux” (present-day Gwich in), the most northerly of these tribes. During these trips he built the small post of Ste Therese (named for his mother’s patron saint) close to Fort Franklin and modern-day Deline. By 1871 Petitot was hoping to return to France to raise money for the missions by publishing a volume of his drawings. In September 1872 he received permission from his superiors to visit France for this purpose, but only for one year. Petitot informed Bishop Faraud that at Bishop Clut’s directions he had written and distributed prayers and catechisms in three Dene dialects. He had also visited seven Inuit camps by Great Bear Lake to hold services and give religious instruction. He was now, however, reluctant to go to France unless assured that he could return to “mes chers sauvages.” Exhausted by his laborious pace of evangelization and exploration, he spent a brief period in 1873-74 resting at Lac la Biche. Now he was advised that he could go on furlough to arrange for the printing of his Dene-Dindjie and Inuit dictionaries and grammars instead of a volume of pictures.25 After a two-month delay he left for France, loaded with many manuscripts and with native costumes and artifacts from the North. From Montreal, he made a side trip to Ottawa where he lobbied the government for financial support to publish his dic¬ tionary. He reported that he received a thousand dollars from the government as Father Albert Lacombe had for his Cree dictionary, but that when he pointed out his own book was three times the size of Lacombe’s, the Minister of Agriculture prom¬ ised to triple the subsidy.26 In August Petitot sailed from New York. As in Montreal and Ottawa, so in France he was greeted by an admiring company of academics and scientists as an Arctic expert, a heady experience after more than a decade of isola¬ tion in the Canadian North. Petitot was soon in contact with several learned societies, hoping to receive ad¬ ditional financial backing from them for his publication, and in short order he was made a member of the anthropological and philological societies in Paris. Next, he was guest speaker at Paris’ Societe geographique, to which he presented his map of the Mackenzie Basin as well as native utensils and weapons. His geological report on the Mackenzie Basin was printed in the Societe’s annual report, and the Societe pre¬ sented him with a silver medal and arranged to have his map engraved and published.

24 “Land Use and Occupancy in the Athabasca-Mackenzie by Various Native Groups,” Chapter 2 in Donat Savoie, ed., Land Occupancy by the Amerindians of the Canadian Northwest in the 19th Century, as reported by Emile Petitot (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs, 2001), 13-32, provides descriptions and maps of the various tribal and linguistic groups and subgroups in the Northwest. 25 Jean Seguin to A.A. Tache, 28 May 1872, Seguin Papers, Deschatelets Archives. 26 Missions (1874): 398-99.

xxiv

Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes,

1862 1882

A further honour came from France’s Minister of Public Instruction, who added the distinction of “laurels” to the title of Officer of the French Academy. In the opinion of the editor of the Oblate journal, Missions, all these honours paid to “the humble priest” pointed, like his dictionaries, grammars, catechisms, and books of prayers, to his overriding purpose: to spread the Gospel. In report¬ ing Petitot’s triumphal progression, the editor reprinted an article from the official journal of the Republic of France praising Oblate missionaries in general and Petitot in particular for their efforts to evangelize the Canadian North. The same editor fol¬ lowed this with an address to Petitot by the secretary of the learned societies lauding his explorations, his personal sacrifices and dangers, and his services to the natural and humane sciences as scientific progress “in the interests of France.” After these paeans of praise, Missions in 1875 reprinted two of Petitot’s papers, filling two hun¬ dred pages, on the geography and geology of the Athabasca-Mackenzie Basin and the valley of the Anderson River. Petitot spent most of the winter of 1874-75 in Paris preparing for the printing of his dictionary. In July 1875, however, more public attention came his way when he and Father Emile Grouard, “my best colleague,”27 were invited to a four-day interna¬ tional Congress of Americanists, both lay and ecclesiastical, at Nancy. At the opening session, a member of the Parisian Society of Anthropology recognized Petitot and invited him and Grouard to sit on the podium. Petitot said he was reluctant to ac¬ cept the honour because he had not prepared any paper on the topic to be discussed and because he was unknown to the audience, but what followed proved that neither factor mattered. The first topic was historical considerations of the Asian-migratory vs. indigenous North American origins of the continent’s native peoples. One speaker, de Rosny,28 with the self- assurance of a “Parisian professor,” proposed what Grouard consid¬ ered impious, unchristian, and “liberal thinking,” namely that natives of America were a separate creation. The cause of religion seemed about to be wounded un¬ til Petitot was permitted to defend outraged truth. Because he was unprepared for this topic, he asked the assembly not to reach any premature conclusion. De Rosny, tiny, pale, and bearded, blanched at these words and shouted, “The reverend father wants war; well then, war is declared.” Petitot’s rebuttal to de Rosny was ready the next day, but de Rosny was absent during Petitot’s speech to a body already aware of his Arctic experiences and his forthcoming dictionary-grammar. Petitot proclaimed

27 Hohn, 148. Petitot renamed the Loon River “Grouard River.” 28 Leon de Rosny (1837-1914), famed ethnographer and orientalist, professor of Japanese at the Ecole des langues orientales vivantes and Assistant Director of the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes.

Introduction

xxv

that traditions, customs, beliefs, and language proved a common origin for Asians and “Americans.”29 This did not end “the war” for de Rosny and his defenders, but Petitot wrote throughout the morning of 21 August, with the aid of five novice secretaries, to “as¬ sure the complete triumph of truth.” At the third session, de Rosny explained the secrets of Mayan hieroglyphs at great length. When Petitot rose he had everyone’s attention but, after only twenty-five minutes, his speech was cut short because, re¬ sponding to Rosny’s supporters, the chairman rang his handbell. Those who had suffered throughout de Rosny’s Yucatan speech now loudly demanded equal time for Petitot, and justice was served as the Oblate returned to the rostrum. Despite the ill-will of these “liberal professors,” Petitot was invited to speak again at the closing session of the Congress. His topic was native weapons, which he compared to those displayed at France’s National Museum at St Germain-en-Laye, and his conclusion was that the “savages” of North America were not a separate creation but part of a single human family to which all peoples of the world belong. Petitot’s performance ended amid loud applause, and the chair’s congratulations for his scientific talents evoked yet another round of applause. Finally, the secretary rose to thank Petitot, the Superior of the Oblate House in Nancy, and all Oblates. As Grouard reported, “This was the bouquet of the session!” and “the glorification of a poor Missionary and of the little congregation of Oblates!”30 The editor of Missions printed Petitot’s peroration in extenso as an appendix to Grouard’s blow-by-blow account of the victorious battle with the forces of modernism. Petitot’s triumphal procession was, however, nearing its end. Ahead of him lay long hours of drudgery, proofreading, and overseeing the publication of his massive dictionary, a formidable task considering the variety of hand-set fonts required for this folio volume of par¬ allel columns. The finished dictionary has 367 pages, including Petitot’s forty-page introductory essay on Dene grammar. On 26 September 1874, Petitot celebrated Mass in Marseilles’ massive church of Notre Dame de la Garde after giving an address about his mission at Sainte Trinite church. Local newspapers reported that this speech produced “an excellent effect.” “A better account of the missions to the savage country is not possible.” The stories by “the intrepid apostle to the Eskimos” impressed his large audience greatly, but the report added that Petitot neglected to mention his own “truly marvellous linguistic erudition” and his zealous contributions to “one of the most flourishing missions in North America.” From Marseilles Petitot wrote on 30 September to Bishop Faraud

29 Missions (1875): 401. 30 Ibid., 409.

xxvi

Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes,

1862 1882

(who was now in France), reporting the warm welcome and encouragement to publish that he had received from both the Oblates and the government in Paris. Faraud, however, complained that Petitot’s activities were unknown and that Clut was criti¬ cal of some of Petitot’s linguistics and opposed the publication of the dictionary.31 Petitot replied that his dictionary must be published because any accidental fire at a mission could destroy his manuscripts, and although the volume was not yet in print, subscription lists had been opened and its forthcoming publication had been adver¬ tised. At last, on 4 November, Petitot received Faraud’s letter from Lourdes, which he hastened to answer the next day. Clut had been worried about the cost of a polyglot dictionary and he had limited it to three Dene dialects, Montagnais or Chipewyan, Hareskin, and Loucheux.32 Bishops Clut, Grandin, and I ache had each written commendations for the preface of the massive volume. Two weeks later Petitot was back in Paris overseeing the publication of his truncated dictionary. Anxious to mend his breach with Faraud, he announced that he would like to meet his superior, and he enclosed pictures of himself taken in Paris wearing Inuit, Hare, and Dogrib costumes. In early May, he warned Faraud that the printer was only producing twenty pages of the dictionary per week and the project might last to the end of September 1875. In June 1875 both Petitot and Emile Grouard, his missionary friend since 1862, were guests at the blessing of the cornerstone of the third Oblate sanctuary, SacreCoeur in Montmartre. After the dinner, the two brought greetings in the Dogrib and Chipewyan languages and described their Arctic missionary work before presenting the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris with examples of their own compositions in these languages.33 Soon afterwards, Petitot’s “condisciples” from the Grand Seminaire gave him two statues for his chapel at Good Hope and a plaque bearing all their names. Three months later, he told Faraud that the printing should be completed by the end of October. In fact the dictionary was not finished until November, and the print¬ ing of the grammar and notes had just begun. Of the 200 copies printed, 150 were reserved for use by the missions in the Mackenzie Basin. The remainder, printed on special paper, would be sold to raise money for mission work. Petitot left France in late spring or early summer of 1876, and reached Fort Good Hope at the beginning of December. His recovery time in France had been well spent—Seguin said Petitot was so fat that he was unrecognizable on his arrival back at the mission.34 Petitot’s return to the Arctic meant that his glorious days of limelight, popularity,

31 Deliberations du Conseil general, 20 July 1874,103; Archives generates, O.M.I., Rome. 32 Emile Petitot, Dictionnaire de la langue dtni-dindjie: dialectes montagnais ou chippewayan, peaux de lievre et loucheux, renfermant en outre un grand nombre de termes propres a sept autres dialectes de la meme langue: precede d’une monographic des Dent-Dindjie, d’une grammaire et de tableaux synoptiques des conjugaisons: (Paris: E. Leroux; San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft Co., 1876).

33 Missions (1876): 101. 34 Jean Seguin to Isidore Clut, 3 March 1877, Deschatelets Archives, Ottawa, G LPP 2687.

.•

Introduction

XXVII

and praise were past and the loneliness of the boreal missions was revisited. He seemed emotionally unprepared for the change and, just a month after his arrival at Fort Good Hope, he sent a sixteen-page letter to Faraud complaining that Seguin was spreading rumours about him. Seguin, Petitot charged, was telling the natives that he had only returned for their death and, by dredging up Petitot’s past troubles, had blackened his reputation at every turn. He also accused Seguin of telling one French Canadian that Petitot would end up insane. Father Georges Ducot, a new arrival at Good Hope, informed Petitot that Seguin and Clut had conspired to keep Petitot out of France. For these reasons, real or imaginary, Petitot asked his bishop to move him to another mission. Three weeks after returning to Fort Good Hope, however, Petitot was already back at his old post, Ste Therese, on Great Bear Lake. He now informed Faraud that Ducot was too inexperienced for that mission but that he, Petitot, was loved by the natives there, and a permanent mission should be established for the Dene and Inuit with himself as missionary. Petitot did not get either his wish or recognition as “Apostle to the Eskimos, and in 1877 Clut told Faraud that the Good Hope mission would do better without Petitot, who had been a hindrance to Seguin for several years. Petitot, he reported, was emotionally and mentally unstable, perhaps paranoid, and his Inuit apostolate was part of his imaginings. Worse, he had been accompanied on a recent trip by the young Dene, Hyacinthe, with whom he had earlier had a homosexual relationship. Clut would keep Petitot under surveillance in the Good Hope mission unless Faraud sent him elsewhere.35 Petitot now resumed his explorations, probably to the great relief of his fel¬ low missionaries at Fort Good Hope. In early June of 1877 he travelled to Fort McPherson on the Peel River in hopes of evangelizing the Chiglits. In the autumn of 1878, he revisited the area north of Great Slave Lake and east of the Mackenzie, where he had gone twice in 1872. On this trip Petitot named Faraud Lake, perhaps as an olive branch to the man who would ultimately determine his fate. The fol¬ lowing year, Petitot travelled once more into the region north of Great Bear Lake. This time he discovered the real sources of the Anderson River, some twenty-five kilometres north of Great Bear Lake. Because these sources are on the north side of the watershed formed by the lake’s northern shore, the Anderson flows to the Arctic Ocean directly rather than circuitously by way of the Mackenzie. This was Petitot’s last trip to Great Bear Lake, the largest lake entirely in Canada and the eighth largest in the world. Petitot was now becoming even more erratic in his behaviour and paranoid in his re¬ lationships, quarrelsome with colleagues (especially Seguin), alternately boastful and wheedling to his bishop, and a failure and an embarrassment at successive missions.

35 Missions (1876): 101.

xxviii Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes, 1862

1882

Declining health, both physical and mental, finally earned Petitot lighter duties in northern Alberta, but this move proved to be the end of his missionary career. He fell in love with and “married" a handsome Metis woman, Marguerite Nikamous of Frog Lake. This union was the proverbial straw that caused his forcible removal in 1882 by his superiors to St-Jean-de-Dieu asylum in Montreal. There Petitot hallucinated about seeing his beloved “wife,” but rest gradually restored his mental stability, as he explained in his letters to family and friends.36 Meanwhile in Marseilles his sister Fortunee was urging the Oblate authorities, including the Petitot family’s acquaint¬ ances, the Father General and the Father Provincial, to release Emile and return him to France at her expense.37 He left the asylum after fourteen months and arrived home in Marseilles with four chests of diaries, sketches, and other documents that he had retrieved from the mission field with the help of friends.

Petitot’s Long Twilight Years After returning to France in 1883, Petitot tried to "earn his bread with pencil, com¬ pass and pen in mercenary pursuits” as a proofreader in Marseilles and later in Paris, but with similar unsatisfactory results. Still anxious to be reunited with Marguerite Nikamous, he wrote the Anglican, Bompas, who encouraged him to apply to the Church of England’s Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, but Petitot was rejected as a possible candidate for Anglican orders in 1884. In April 1886, he was released from the Oblates, and five months later “a charitable and saintly prelate,” the Bishop of Meaux, settled him as cure of Mareuil-les-Meaux, “a poor lit¬ tle village, a veritable ruin,”38 a country parish of three hundred souls. He became interested in the prehistory of this area and wrote essays about its archeology. In 1877 he became a founding member of the Societe de Geographic of Marseilles, and at Mareuil-les-Meaux he joined the Societe litteraire et historique de la Brie and the di¬ ocesan Conference d’Archeologie. During the remaining thirty years of his life, how¬ ever, his main interest was writing about his two decades in the Canadian Arctic. In contrast to the public spotlight of his “Roman triumph,” Petitot’s declining years were spent in a twilight of isolation as deep as that of any Arctic mission. Despite the poor health of Isabelle, daughter of Emile’s younger brother Auguste, by 1898 she had become his housekeeper and companion. Petitot himself suffered from arterial degeneration in his legs which virtually immobilized him for some time before he died on 13 May 1916. His diaries and artifacts from northern and western Canada

36 File “Petitot,” twenty-one letters, 1882-83, re Petitot’s incarceration in Hopital St-Jean-de-Dieu, O.M.I. Archives, Montreal. 37 Ibid., three letters, 10 August and 24 September 1882, Fortunee Petitot, Marseilles, to the Father General; 1 September 1882, to the Father Provincial. 38 Emile Petitot, Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire: Mackenzie, Anderson, Youkon, (Paris: E. Dentu, 1889), xii.

Introduction

xxix

disappeared after his death, but the next priest of Mareuil-les-Meaux discovered in the church his early manuscript, “Souvenirs de Jeunessededicated to his “future nephews,” recounting his youthful excursions. Although few details are known about Petitot’s formal education, every reader of his books will be impressed by his knowledge of geology, botany, zoology, astronomy, ethnology, geography, history, literature, and languages. Under the heading of lan¬ guages, it is evident that Petitot was well grounded in Greek and Latin, was acquaint¬ ed with Hebrew, read English with facility and wrote it passably well. On occasion, he employs Italian and German words, but more problematically for the average reader, he includes in his erudite and extensive vocabulary French and Provencal words and phrases that are not found in most dictionaries. In recording weather, distance, and time, Petitot had his own techniques of using his compass and watch but he admits these were techniques later discredited by sci¬ entific minds in France. Nevertheless, as an explorer and cartographer he was hailed by his learned contemporaries, who awarded him various prizes for his work, and by modern cartographers who have confirmed some of his findings with the aid of aerial photography. As for his unusual ability to absorb, dissect, and record a number of native languages, we have not only his own and not overly modest word but more substantially his massive Dictionnaire de la langage dene-dindjie that is still a linguis¬ tic landmark for Canada. Soon after his final return to France, as he rusticated at Mareuil-les-Meaux, Petitot published several ethnographical articles and followed these with five large topical and essentially autobiographical volumes. The first book chronologically was Les grands Esquimaux (Paris 1887), and perhaps its publication was encouraged by a warm public reception to a series of eight articles that appeared in the Parisian peri¬ odical Journal des Voyages in 1886-87. This first and marginally smallest of the vol¬ umes, the only volume translated to date, recounts his two trips, in 1865 and 1868, to a band of the Chiglits then living on the lower Anderson River near the Arctic Ocean. In his introduction to Les grands Esquimaux, Petitot warned that his “warts and all” approach to his subject matter was only suitable for adult readers. Nevertheless, pub¬ lic response may have been his inspiration to continue using his voluminous diaries as the basis for more books. Each of the remaining volumes, however, was produced by a different publisher. One year later, in 1888, his next volume, En route pour la mer glaciale, relates his first journey from Marseilles across the Atlantic, the United States, and Canada to Great Slave Lake in considerable and frequently amusing detail. Petitot’s furor scribendi still continued unabated, and another book, Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire, appeared in 1889, describing travel and native life during three trips to different Arctic areas— down the Mackenzie River to Fort Good Hope in 1864, among the Indians of the Anderson River in 1865, and finally on the upper portions of the Yukon River in 1870. Quinze ans contains an advertisement for his proposed next two volumes: Trois ans

xxx

Travels

around

Great Slave

and

Great Bear Lakes, 1862-1882

au Grand Lac des Esclaves, “soon to appear,” and Les Juifs arctique,

in preparation,

but apparently neither of these volumes found a publisher. In 1891 Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves was published. As Petitot announces in its introduction, it recounts “outstanding events of which I was either the hero or the witness during the years between his arrival at Great Slave Lake in 1862 and his transfer to the mission at Fort Good Hope in 1864, but it also includes a trip in 1878 westward to Fort Liard. The se¬ ries of books ended in 1893 with his fifth book, Exploration de la region du Grand Lac des Ours, covering eight journeys he made in the region of Great Bear Lake between 1866 and 1879 when he was removed from the northern areas to a mission south of Great Slave Lake. All of these books seem to have been written during the winter months and finished in the spring. Except for En route pour la mer glaciale, each is essentially an adven¬ ture account of travel in regions not previously visited by Europeans, or at least not by Frenchmen (of whom Petitot saw himself as a proud and daring representative). The books are heavily larded with anecdotal accounts of his encounters with the native peoples, and it is his comments on the lifestyles, cosmology, social organi¬ zation, and customs of all kinds that make them a treasure trove for ethnologists and anthropologists. Likewise, his descriptions of that vast country’s natural history, with all its variations of flora, fauna, and geology, and his numerous sketches of both the land and its peoples make up a valuable pre-photographic record of Canada’s western Arctic. One element, however, gets minimal or even casual attention: name¬ ly, Petitot’s work as a missionary. This statement would have the full agreement of Petitot’s superiors in the Oblate mission if they could be consulted. They complained that Petitot was more interested in exploration, to his own personal greater fame and glory, than he was in the work of conversion of the heathen or care of the converted. This deficiency, and his occasional headstrong defiance of mission orders, played a part in his final removal from the missions, although other and more important fac¬ tors were also involved. Petitot assumed that his books, like his journalistic productions, would attract a literate and sophisticated audience captivated by the romance of travel and discovery in previously unknown parts of the globe. This probably accounts for his frequent use of native words for personal and place names as evidence of his self-declared flu¬ ency in languages. Similarly his allusions to comparative social customs, costumes, etc. in the Canadian Arctic, Asia, and ancient Europe were obviously intended to impress the reader with his encyclopedic knowledge of social and anthropological history. Finally, his descriptions of flora, fauna, topography, and geology using Latin, Greek, and scientific terms also served to flatter his educated audience and impress them with his own intellectual superiority. In Petitot’s introduction to his first volume, about the Chiglits, he warns that the book is not for young people because Inuit virtues are not those of “well-bred, moral and Christian adolescents.” But if anyone is scandalized by what he has reported,

Introduction

xxxi

then they are pharisees because they do not realize that those of a lower moral level are capable of improvement “by teaching and example.” He has, he says, omitted nothing of importance, to avoid the French-Canadian label of “lying like a traveller,” but he boasts of being the first white person to visit the Dogribs dwelling between Great Slave and Great Bear lakes, and that he was the first missionary to reach the Inuit of the Anderson River and Liverpool Bay. This latter trip, as he points out, was made on orders from his bishop. In Petitot’s second volume, En route pour la mer gla¬ ciate, dedicated to his beloved sister Fortunee, he explains that, having travelled one hundred thousand kilometres in North America during a score of years, his purpose here is simply to inform the French nation about the historic role of French laity and missionaries in the development of Canada, and about the exploits of their North American offspring, the Metis nation. The introduction to Petitot’s third volume, Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire, barely mentions its contents. It opens instead with a bitter and reproachful diatribe direct¬ ed against jealous false brothers among the Oblates who, “by infamy and injustice,” “ravished” his personal liberty, denigrated his missionary labours, and gave his flock over to others. His reputation of honesty, prolonged suffering in the course of his work, his dignity as a minister, and promises made but not kept, “in a word all the joys and all the licit hopes of my life as a missionary, explorer and writer, have been ground underfoot.” Back in France for a second time, he had lived in Marseilles and Paris for four years, was refused justice, and had to earn his bread by mercenary pur¬ suits. In closing this lengthy and angry epistle to his readers, Petitot rebuked critics who charged he had exalted the North American natives over Europe’s ancient peo¬ ples. To such he replied that mankind must be distinguished from institutions. “If then the life and conduct of my Danite savages make certain Christians blush, these are the same people who blame a religion that they themselves no longer practise.”39 Having thus vented his spleen against enemies real or imaginary, Petitot prefaces his fourth book, Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves, with a dedication to his brothers Victor and Auguste, dated 1888 although the book was not published until 1891. In the introduction, he points out that his several trips on the Anderson, Mackenzie, and upper Yukon rivers “enriched the map of Canada.” He feels he is entitled to praise himself for being “the first French writer to know and to appreciate that grand and gentle Dene-Dindjie family.” He admits that he has not read translations, if they exist, of the journals of the English Arctic explorers, but says those accounts would not be to the taste of French readers who dislike dry, often incomplete readings sprinkled with technical terms, lacking literary merit.40 This volume was intended to finish En route and be a preparation for Quinze ans and his Les grands Esquimaux.

39 Quinze ans, xi-xii, xv, xvi. 40 Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves, xii-xiii.

xxxii

Travels around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes,

1862-1882

The sequence of these volumes, like their individual contents, is primarily thematic rather than chronological. Petitot’s fifth and final volume concerns the region of Great Bear Lake where, Petitot declares, he was “the first Frenchman and the first missionary to visit, traverse, explore and live.” It tells of his exploration and his recording of geographic features on the map of Great Bear Lake drawn in 1825-26 by Lieutenant Edward Nicholas Kendall. Petitot travelled across Smith and Keith arms, part of Dease Arm and the west end ofMcVicar Arm, but could not visit the eastern part of the lake. Nevertheless, with information gathered from the Dene, he filled the void for this area in Kendall’s map. Petitot’s own map of the region, published in 1875 by the Societe de Geographie de Paris, was used by several geographers, including Canadians, to enrich their atlases.41 For the benefit of the reading public, Petitot relates episodes that he feels illustrate the mores and character of the inhabitants of the Great Bear Lake area. He himself witnessed all these incidents which, he insists, are real and not imaginary like the writings of some French novelists who exploit the element of savagery in the life of the Canadian North. Critics of his writings, he complains, have forgotten that he is a missionary traveller recounting what he saw, not a weaver of fiction who imagines it all. “By taste and nature an enemy of fiction, I have always preferred history.”42 As for these spiteful insinuations of invention, he has enough documentation to answer the envious. He himself drew from nature the pictures included in this volume, or at least they were from authentic sketches that he himself had supplied. Finally, he publicly records his appreciation of the friendship of his superiors, his colleagues in the apostolate, and officers of the Company who gave him a pencil, a drawing, or a map that he always accepted with gratitude and used with pleasure.43 Even in the depths of the Canadian Arctic, Petitot remained an ardent French na¬ tionalist and lover of his beautiful Provence. Once, while travelling down the lower Mackenzie, he regaled his two paddlers with repeated vocal renditions of the national anthem of the French Second Republic, accompanying himself with “the happy and harmonious refrains of my concertina” purchased in the United States.44 In his ac¬ count of travelling to Rome in 1909 with thousands of other French pilgrims for the highly political beatification of Joan of Arc, he repeatedly praises France over Italy for the efficiency of its railways, and the Catholic Church in France over the Church in Rome for the former’s purity of liturgy compared to the musical innovations pro¬ moted by Pius X. As an antiquarian, however, Petitot revelled in the opportunity

41 Exploration de la region du Grand Lac des Ours, i, iii, iv 42 Ibid, v. 43 Ibid., vi. 44 Les grands Esquimaux, 119.

Introduction

xxxiii

to tour the ancient monuments and churches of the Eternal City and left a detailed description of this visit and his perambulations.45 In sum, Emile Petitot was at the least a minor Renaissance man whose contri¬ bution to our knowledge of Canada’s western Arctic deserves recognition despite his very human personal frailties and faults. His life as a missionary spanned only twenty years, but the last thirty-two years spent as cure of the hamlet of Mareuil-lesMeaux allowed him the leisure to add considerably to the Canadian Arctic’s literary record. Petitot’s linguistic and ethnographic studies have been of value to Canadian northern research; also important for Canadian history were the records of his trav¬ els, including his maps, which provided basic geographic information until the in¬ troduction of aerial photography. Four streams in the Northwest Territories carry his personal names, and more than a score of other lakes and rivers are still known by the titles he gave them. On behalf of the Canadian government, on 22 September 1975 the Honourable Judd Buchanan unveiled a plaque to Petitot in Mareuil-les-Meaux and commented that: Father Petitot’s work is unique because he wrote a part of the history of the North. His voice is that of long ago, the voice of the grandparents and great-grandparents of those who had actually lived in the Canadian North. When we read Petitot’s work, we also hear the voice of a man who loved the North and its people, and who was loved, in return, by them.46

« “Souvenir de Rome et de S.S. Pie X, par l’abbe Emile Petitot, 1909,” 174 PP-> Savoie Collection, N87-015 Northwest Territory Archives. 46 News release, quoted in Savoie, ed., vi.

AUTOUR Bl) GRAND LAC

DES ESCLAVES PAR

EMILE PETITOT ANCIEN

M1SSIONN AIRE ET EXPLORATEUR ARCTIQUE

OUVRAGE ACCOMPAGN£ DE GRAVURES ET D’UNE CARTE PAR L’AUTEUR

«

In fines orbis terrx verba eorum. (Psalm. XVIII.)

PARIS NOUVELLE LIBRAIR1E PAR1S1ENNE

ALBERT SAVINE,

EDITEUR

12, rue des Pyramides, 12

1891 Tous droits r6serv6s.

Title page of Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves

»

Around Great Slave Lake

by Emile Petitot Former Missionary and Arctic Explorer

A Work Accompanied by Engravings and a Map by the Author

In fines orbis terrae verba eorum. (Psalm xviii)

Paris New Parisian Library Albert Savine, Publisher 12, RUE DES PyRAMIDES, 12

1891 All rights reserved

To My Beloved Brothers Victor and Auguste

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

7

i. The Chipewyans chapter

i: A Tenderfoot Trip

Project for a Winter Trip—Arctic Decoration—The Tenderfoot Hard-pressed from the Beginning—First Sufferings—Cordial Reception at Fort Big Island— The Guide La Porte—Bivouac in the Forest—Painful March on Great Slave Lake—Where the Tenderfoot Admits His Incapacity—Snowshoe Sickness—Extravagant Mirages—A Trail—Agreeable Surprise—Black Back—The Khamasan—Thunder from under the Lake—A Meteor—Strange Imaginary Noises—Arrival at Moose Island 9

chapter

n: Hebraic Customs

Return to the Rapid—Departure of Our Servants—Meat Shortage—A Meal of Dog—Meals without Government Approval—The Moose Hunt—Hebrew Regulations Concerning Meat and Hunting—Womens Observances—The Spirit— I Take Charge of Saint Joseph 25

chapter hi:

On a Desert Island

Where One Sees How Pilate Lost His Way in Front of Jesus—And How Jesus Could Not Find Malchus Ear—Spirit Sickness at Fort Yukon—A Ghost Appears to Antoine Houle—Knocking Spirits—Providential Punishment and Consoling Apparition—Flood of Rats—The White Bird—Tabachach, Bird Killer—Marvellous Hunt—Rates at Great Slave Lake—My Kind of Life—The Crowned Sparrow—Dry Provisions—Fisheries—The Birch 35

chapter

iv: The English and the French at Great Slave Lake

Topography of Great Slave Lake—Hearne, Pond, and Mackenzie—Metis and French Coureurs de Bois—Franklin’s Disastrous Expedition—Sir George Back at Whale River—Anderson and Stewart—First French Missionaries—Reputation of the French among the Danites—Tactic of the Fludson’s Bay Company for the Elimination of the French Element—Arrival of the Little Englishman—French Canadians and Canucks—French and English Metis 49

chapter

v: Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

On the Dane or Dene—Kindness of the Dene—Yaltpii-yousse Seized by False Hunger—Naturalism of the Chipewyans—Formation of Proper Names—Dreams and Night Visions—Probable Origin of the Response Amen—Vanity and Pretenses of the Danite Hunters—Treachery Thwarted—Where a Worthy Irishman Upheld a Point of Honour-—A Protestant Minister’s Detestable Tactic 63

chapter

vi: Sketches of Life in the North

Soon to the Arctic Circle-—Monotony of Life in the North—Indian Exaggerations—A Chipewyan Family at Home—Porridge of Boiled Leather—Rock Tripe—Travellers Lost on Great Slave Lake—Distress and Vain Searches—Nabobs of the North—A Christmas Repast—How Tsepan-khe Confused a Circumference with a Straight Line—New Wanderings 83

chapter vii:

National Legend of the Yellowknives

Legend of the Metal Woman—The Woman Who Holds up the World—Same Tradition among the Eskimos, the Greenlanders, the Kollouches, and the Dindjie— Travelling Woman of the Japanese, the Irish, and the Tripolitanians—Where Is the Real Copper River?—Symbolic Personification of the Nation That Introduced Metal—Volcanic Cataclysms—Pele in the Four Quarters of the World—Where Are the Signs Erected by the Metal People?—What Was This Mysterious Nation? 95

ii. The Dogribs chapter viii: The Dogrib Wilderness

Snow Ophthalmia—North Arm and Fort Rae—A Dogrib Tribe—Sought by the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine—Leaving for the Northern Steppes—The Wolverine—Lake and River La Martre—Grouse—Discovery of Four Lakes—Ptarmigan Stupidity— Stutterers’ Argument—Concerning the Arctic Copper River—Lakes Faber and Rae—A Grave—Arrival among the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine 111

chapter ix: In the Tents of the Dog People

Friendly Reception—Timontsate,

the Fanatic—A Forced Fast—A Horde of

Crusaders—In Camp—The Great Shadow—Ellonhism—Shamans and Seers— Egyptian Names—Sorcerors in Revolt—Suspicion of Shining Sun—Women’s Curious and Loose Morals—Weakness of the Indian Character—a Nighttime Alert Followed by an Easy Miracle—Friendliness of the Dogribs 125

chapter x: The House of the French

Caribou Hunt—Travel on Thin Ice—Pyrites Lake and the House of the French— Where Was the Site of Franklin’s Fort Enterprise?—Ignorance of the Indians in This Matter—Erection of a Cross M3

chapter xi: Return to Great Slave Lake

Sufferings of a Nomadic Life—Departure—Hare Snare Lake Tribes—The Shouting Rock—Inextricable Grassland—Dangers of Interlake Travel—More Graves—Lac la Martre Tribe—A Sacrifice to the Moon—Arrow Fishing—Arrival at Great Slave Lake 153

chapter xii: Perilous Crossings

Almost Shipwrecked in a Bark Canoe—How It Is Proven That Ducks Produce Wind—Second Miracle of the Season—Travel by Boat on Great Slave Lake—The Osprey—Ice Crossing—Guano and Caribou Islands—Quartz Islands—Perils on the Great Slave Lake Estuary—Chipewyan Welcome—Kpilli-aze—The Influence of the Shamans—Departure for Fort Good Hope 161

chapter xiii: A Tribe of Stutterers Stuttering among the Cree—Among the Dene and the Dindjie—Statistics of Stuttering—Probable Causes of Stuttering—Nature and Nurture—Mechanical Production of Stuttering—Stuttering among the Eskimos 171

chapter xiv: Legend of the Dogrib Nation The Dog Man—Death of the Dog-headed Sorceror—The Dene Woman and Her Little Dogs—Dogs Changed into People—Children of a Dog—Other Dene of the Same Origin—Charlevoix and the Dogribs—Portrait of This Tribe—Mr. De Charencey and the Dog People—Dog People and Dog Gods from Around the World—The Dog People’s Origin in Ham, Son of Noah 177

hi. The Slaveys chapter

New

Remedy for

xv: Among the Etcha-Ottine of Willow Lake

Haemoptysis—Kkpayipa

River—Indian

Cruelty

towards

the Wolverine—Excellent Reception at Mink Lake—Requests for Dreams and Charms—Fishing Dogs—A Great Chief in Trouble—Visit from Three Wolves—I Nearly Drown under the Ice—Dog for Dinner—a Windikouk or Cannibal 187

chapter xvi:

A Voyage of Discoveries

Project for an Expedition to the Etcha-Ottine of the West—Unusual Placement of a Low Mountain—Lake De Charencey—Beaver River and Its Rapids—White Wolves—Great Lake Vatimesmil and Mount Ndakka—John Hope—Great Lake Petitot—Pleasing Appearance of the Etcha-Ottine—Harangues—Simplicity and Immorality—Preposterous Questions—A Trader’s Greed and the Dane’s Heroic Honesty—Their Opinion of Me—A Twenty-five-hour Day 199

Note on Tribal Names 211

I

INTRODUCTION n this volume I have grouped in sixteen chapters all the outstanding events of which I have been the hero or the witness, during the three-year period that I spent around Great Slave Lake.

This is the immediate sequel to my travels entitled En route pour la mer glaciate,1 * and a preparation for my Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire,1 as well as to my voyages Chez les grands Esquimaux,3 I completed fourteen crossings of Great Slave Lake, this small interior sea of the great north of the Dominion of Canada; twelve times in the direction of its length, twice across its width. So, then, I could not describe all of them without falling into wordiness and useless repetitions. Nevertheless, my story follows from 8 December 1862, the day when I went for the first time on snowshoes to Moose Island, until 16 August 1864, the date when I left Moose Island permanently for Fort Good Hope on the lower Mackenzie. At this latter date, a gap of several years necessarily shortens my journal, beginning again in October 1878, which found me once more exploring the forests and visiting the Indians who belong to Great Slave Lake. But these stories, necessary because of their importance, fill only the last two chapters of this volume. The present description of travels around Great Slave Lake has a geographic value which my dear readers will appreciate. It contains several explorations of discovery by which the map of North America is enriched. Canadians, the English, and the Germans immediately did me the honour of borrowing these new findings. The results of my last two journeys among the Slaveys, from Willow Lake and from Black River, are even yet unknown to cartographers because these voyages date only from 1878. I must equally emphasize the importance of my ethnographic contribution. I can credit myself with having been the first French writer to bring to the public the knowledge and an appreciation of the large and related Dane-Dindjie tribe, which I will call freely and more succinctly the Danite family. Indeed, in the last century the English simply named them the Danes. However, I cannot agree with this latter terminology, because it seems inaccurate to me. There does not exist any French work about travel in the regions around and be¬ yond Great Slave Lake with the exception of a novel, absurd enough because of the false notions it contains: I refer to La Maison deglace, by Fr. Bresciani.

1 (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 17, rue du Vieux-Colombier, 1888), 394 pp., 3 fr. 50. 1 (Paris: E. Dentu, 3, place de Valois, 1889), 322 pp., 3 fr.50. 3 (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 10, rue Garaniciere, 1887), 310 pp., 4 fr. [Petitot and other writers of his

generation did not feel it was necessary to be consistent in listing the title of any book, much less his own, but consistency and completeness have been imposed as much as possible by the ti anslators. ]

7

8

Around Great Slave Lake

I do not even know of the existence of any complete and literal translation of the published explorations of Hearne, Mackenzie, Back, Franklin, Richardson, and Hooper. Being real journals, these narratives would not be to the taste of the French public, who are seldom lovers of serious writing, which is bristling with technical terms, lacking literary appeal, and often incomplete. These considerations will promote, I hope, an appreciation of the efforts that I have made to reveal to my fellow countrymen the unknown lands that I have crossed and the unfamiliar people among whom I lived during so many years. Bonum est per se diffusivum [Travel is broadening]. From the presbytery of Mareuil-les-Meaux (S.[eine]-et-M.[arne])> 3 April 1888.

,

EMILE PETITOT, CURE

Former Arctic missionary and explorer

i. The Chipewyans

CHAPTER I A Tenderfoot Trip Project for a Winter Trip—Arctic Decoration—The Tenderfoot Hard-pressed from the Beginning—First Sufferings—Cordial Reception at Fort Big Island—The Guide La Porte—Bivouac in the Forest—Painful March on Great Slave Lake—Where the Tenderfoot Admits His Incapacity—Snowshoe Sickness—Extravagant Mirages—A Trail—Agreeable Surprise—Black Back—The Khamasan—Thunder from under the Lake—A Meteor—Strange Imaginary Noises—Arrival at Moose Island

For four months, I was one of the three lonely inhabitants of the French settlement of Providence, a mission that we built in 1862 at the head of the beautiful Mackenzie River where it flows from Great Slave Lake. This small freshwater sea in English North America, which is so little known in France, is like a Lake Baikal in the Canadian wilderness. In the course of this brief period of time, we succeeded in housing ourselves for the harsh winter that the sub-Arctic climate of the Canadian Northwest promised us. A bounteous fishing season had filled our fish larder with fifteen thousand whitefish (Coregonus lucidus), belonging to the salmon family and with an exquisite flavour. A forest of conifers, ravaged by a former fire—called a brule [a burn]—assured us for years of a free and superabundant source of firewood which cost us only the trouble of cutting it and collecting it with our dogsleds. Henceforth masters of our own time, reassured against the uncertainties of a risky future, free to take a well-earned rest after labours that were hard and new because of our inexperience, my companion, Mr. Boisrame,4 and I, on the expressed wish of

4 [Louis Boisrame (1836-1904) entered the Oblates in 1859 as a Brother. He was posted to Ile-a-la-Crosse in i860 and to Fort Resolution in 1861. In 1862 he was sent to help construct the mission at Providence. Between 1863 and 1865 he was employed in building the cathedral at St. Boniface, after which he served at various missions in the Northwest. He worked as an assistant to Bishop Faraud, and from 1894 until his death at St. Boniface for Archbishop Tache.]

9

10

Around Great Slave Lake

our provisional superior,5 prepared ourselves to undertake a winter trip to Moose Island. This was a march of fifty-six kilometres to the south of Providence, on Great Slave Lake. The purpose of this move, which left the prelate alone with two children for forty or fifty days, was multiple. The main purpose was to make me serve an apprenticeship in forced marches on snowshoes and in camping outdoors in the snow, in the most rigorous temperatures. This was to harden me for the ceaseless battles that every resident of the Far North must wage against the elements, against a hostile and murderous nature, and from which he must emerge not only unscathed but victorious. A secondary purpose was to visit an excellent colleague in his solitude, Mr. Emile Eynard,6 of Gap, former in¬ spector of waters and forests, living alone on Moose Island, five kilometres from Fort Resolution and the mouth of the Slave River. It was 8 December 1862. The day before, the packet for the northern forts carried by two Slaveys, Beghe and Ya-mitsou, had arrived from Fort Simpson, headquarters of the Mackenzie District. These two Indians spent the night under our roof, sleeping on the floor beside the stove, and the next day at two o’clock in the morning, they con¬ tinued their trip towards Great Slave Lake. They counted on not having to camp again before they reached Fort Big Island. It was no less than forty English miles that these two men intended to cross on foot in a single day, thanks to their iron-hard legs. We left two hours before them. Three sled dogs, Cartouche, Cabri, and Jupiter, dragged our supplies and covers on a little sled typical of the country—a thin birch plank, sixteen inches wide, raised at the front and curved back in a curl.7 On this sled, in the bag of moose skin sewn with cords, we put pemmican and black tea for our¬ selves, and the frozen fish for our dogs; then we launched ourselves into the woods. The atmosphere had that stillness and clarity peculiar to the extreme north during

5 [Vital-Justin Grandin (1829-1902) had been rejected for ordination because of a speech impedi¬ ment and general poor health, but was later accepted by the Oblates. He was ordained and arrived in St. Boniface in 1854, and was assigned to La Nativite mission at Fort Chipewyan the following year. Two years later he was moved to Ile-a-la-Crosse, but after only three months was nominated against his wishes to be coadjutor bishop of St. Boniface. Between 1861 and 1864 he toured the missions and determined that the site of Providence should be the administrative centre for a new apostolic vicariate to be established in the Athabasca-Mackenzie region. To Grandin’s relief, however, Henri Faraud became its vicar apostolic. As Petitot’s superior and companion at Providence Grandin incurred Petitot’s lasting disapproval for his policy of moving missionaries frequently to different posts. Petitot, who privately doubted Grandin’s competence, regularly refers to him disparagingly as “the prelate” or “the administrator”in his published volumes three decades later. In 1871 Grandin became bishop of the new province of St. Albert. His hopes of creating a native ministry for the Northwest met with little success and with opposition from other missionaries. He continued to perform his episcopal duties for the diocese of St. Albert until his death.] 6 [Marie-Germain-Emile Eynard (1824-73) was ordained in 1855, arrived at Saint Boniface in 1857, and the following year was posted to the mission of Saint Joseph. He remained there until 1863 when he was transferred to the mission at Fort Chipewyan, where he died in 1873.] 7 [Shaped like a toboggan.]

A Tenderfoot Trip

11

the winter. The night added a new charm by the mystery that it spread in the forest depths and on the massed ice in the rapids created by the Nakotsia-Kotcho.8 You might have believed that you were transported into one of Aladdin’s magical caves. The moon, a magic lamp with an electric glow unknown in western Europe, had transformed this sepulchral and motionless nature into a scene that one sees in enchanted theatres. We glided silently like gnomes, under the ribbed vault of the illuminated woods a giorno [as bright as day] and decorated as if for a party at the Summer Palace. Around us were gigantic alabaster candelabras, marble columns from which hung graceful festoons, lacy pendants, white trimmings, waving vari¬ egated feathers, all in snow and sparkling frost. When Diana throws her silver arrows across these crystal colonnades scattering light, all the objects glisten, twinkle and sparkle as if they were covered with dia¬ mond dust. We are in Golconda.9 Diamonds, opals, carbuncles flow in rivers around us. There are as many jewels as twigs on the trees, as sharp conifer needles, dry blades of grass, fan-shaped ferns above the snow. Everything gleams, everything reflects, even the white and pearly trail on which our sled silently glided, on which our Indian buskins10 skimmed lightly. This Siberian fantasia made us forget a cold of minus 30° Celsius which we found quite pleasant. It kept us from thinking about the length of the voyage in hand, of the weariness that awaited us after this forced non-stop march on a trackless ice plain, without signposts, shelter, or relief. At the end of the portage, laboriously practised by an episcopal hatchet through the forest to spare travellers the heaped-up obstacles of The Rapid,11 we found a smooth ice sheet on Beaver Lake, a cul-de-sac formed by Great Slave Lake behind the upper delta of Big Island. Unfortunately, this ice was covered with deep snow which required the use of snowshoes from then on. I have elsewhere described these light instruments of supple wood covered by a net of fine cords. One puts them on one’s feet in order not to sink into the snow. For two months I had worn them every day around our cabins. I thought I was already an expert in their use and I had refused the services of the Indian who, when we left, wanted to adjust them to my feet. I was so sure that I had arranged the binding well! My presumption as an inexperienced tenderfoot was about to receive a famous hu¬ miliation. The test of my know-how during the sixteen-hour walk on the first day, as well as during the days that followed, will not soon be erased from my memory. I had tied the straps holding the snowshoes on so tightly around my toes that I was soon

8 Big River, Dene name for the Mackenzie. 9 [Golconda, India, reputed source of great riches.] 10 [Shoe pack; moccasin half-boots.] 11 [The Rapid is an extensive widening of the river upstream

from Providence, marked by fast, strong,

and treacherous currents in summer and rugged ice formations in winter.]

Around Great Slave Lake

12

suffering acute pain which I compare to that of lancets under my toes. In order not to slow my companions’ pace, and from fear of giving them a laugh, I endured this atrocious suffering, not knowing that I was crippling myself for the rest of the trip. After three hours of such travel, 1 had had enough and was ready to ask for mercy. My pride being involved I let nothing show, and although 1 was bathed in sweat and near fainting, I hardened myself against the pain and continued in spite of the suf¬ fering. I soon ascertained that my snowshoes were much too large for such a trip. They were hunting snowshoes. They measured more than a metre in length where snowshoes of fifty centimetres would have been adequate. But I had wanted them thus, to the great amusement and despite the advice of the Slavey who had made them for me. Whatever he does, whatever he wants to do, the tenderfoot always betrays himself. He is the freshman and the greenhorn of the Canadian Northwest. His destiny can only be modified by the schooling and tests that his own experience gives him. He would soon cease to be a greenhorn if he would comply with the wise advice of his elders or the natives. But he wants to appear knowledgeable, capable; by pride and presumption he pretends to know everything, and he only ends up making people laugh at his expense. No one complains about him, however. “He’s a tenderfoot!” they say, “a novice,” and that says it all. At the end of nine hours’ walk or rather, on the trail, we took our meal on Silver Birch Island. This was enough to make a good winter’s day of travel, especially at the beginning of a long trip and for beginners. As greenhorns, we decided that nine hours was only half the trip and after less than an hour’s halt, we heartily started out again. Three hours later the sun set on our right, leaving us in complete darkness, quite far from Big Island Fort. Mr. Boisrame was no more expert than I in these regions. I had crossed them three times, but in summer; and our dogs, which neither the voice nor the whip spurred on any more, dragged their feet as their masters did. Usually, when one is worn out with fatigue, one is even more sensitive to cold and hunger. To these three ailments was added the fear of getting lost in the middle of the night without stars or eclairons,12 Our sole hope lay in the olfactory ability of our lead dog, old Cabri, to whom I no longer pretended to show the way. We knew that this part of Great Slave Lake offered no shelter and no place to find firewood suitable for a camp. We certainly travelled in a straight line, but to judge only by the impressions that we experienced in the midst ot total darkness, we would have believed we were going in endless circles. Such is the natural effect of walking in the middle of a void and

Flench Canadian name tor the aurora borealis because the phenomenon lights up the sky like the moon.

A Tenderfoot Trip

13

without a reference point to control the imagination. At the end, sleep overcame me.

1 his heavy sleep like lead was brought on by cold and weariness, and is death to a traveller who gives in to it. I fought it at first. Then, I perceived that I was dreaming while I walked. This battle lost, I allowed myself to sink down on the sled and fall into a deep sleep. An intense cold in my feet drew me out of my torpor. But as I raised myself, a shower of light shone through a stand of poplars stripped by the winter. “What luck! A camping place!” I exclaimed. No, it s the fort, Boisrame said to me. “We have arrived.” It was six o clock in the evening, and we had been walking since midnight. Sixteen hours travel for the first stage! The two Indians had arrived a long time before us. The three sheds, of tree trunks covered with bark and held together by stakes, to which one gave the pompous name Fort Big Island, were not as hostile as on the pre¬ vious trip.13 Mr. Read had learned to know and appreciate us. Our success as squat¬ ters had made us appreciated by people accustomed to judging others only by their achievements. For this post master, we had become neighbours from whom he could receive important services, but he also wrongly thought we might be able to harm his commercial interests. So he believed he had to humour us. To this end, a copious supper, made up of moose steaks, leftover stew, and coffee, greeted us at his table. Such a meal exceeds the limits of mediocrity in the Northwest. We soon discovered the purpose of this special treat. [In halting French, he said,] “If Master Bonamy [Boisrame] wanted to clear up14 for me one very small parcel of land, at the Rapid. And.... if Mr. Bonamy, if he wanted to sow it with some potatoes of the mission it would be one big service for me. Here not able to have one potato. The earth is not good.” The master of this house did not bother with the young tenderfoot priest any more than if he had been a child. All his attentions were for the humble saddle maker turned catechist who had just grown by ten times in importance in the master’s estimation because of his happy achievement of building Providence; this young Frenchman who had given his abilities, his devotion, and his good will to the service of the missionaries. What did this matter to me! I was just as proud of it as if I had been the object of his courtesy, since I profited by it. Soon, a new friendly attack fol¬ lowed the first; “If Master Bonamy wanted to take charge of the express [mail] as far as Fort Risolioucheune [Resolution], that would be one big service for me, too. Not able to

13 See my first volume, En route pour la mer glaciate (Paris, 1888), 364. [On Petitot’s first visit to this post Read had refused to allow Petitot’s baggage to be forwarded to Providence in the Company boat.] 14 Defricher [to clear the land by cutting the trees and underbrush].

Around Great Slave Lake

14

send one native. There was not anyone at all here.” “We counted on that, Mr. Read, and we wanted to ask you for it.” “We/// Then that’s good. Tomorrow you rest here; and ... after tomorrow you leave with Loucheux,15 one of my employees; and ... you go seek one guide on Big Island at the trout fishing place. Me to pay the guide, of course. And ... you will see the trout, how large they are in this lake here; and ... you eat trout, as many that you like.” Excellent Orkneyman, this Mr. Read, a former fisherman, raised to the grade of factor by his intelligence, his commercial aptitudes, and his good behaviour, and whose brother I later saw in Saskatchewan. He always showed himself as such, de¬ spite his ardent zeal for his Presbyterian religion. But he toned it down. Much later, when the Sisters of Charity were settled at the Rapid, he was one of the first to board his three children with them. As the Metis called the Mother Superior “Our Mother,” he, for his part, believed he ought to call the bishop “Our Lord.” “Baptiste,” he said one day to one of his servants, when giving him an enormous moose haunch for the mission, “Baptiste, you carry this to the mission, and ... you say to Our Lord that I have given him the biggest piece of my own rump.” We spent the day of the 9th at Big Island, and the next day we went fishing at the Desmarest Islands where, in Mr. Read’s name, we asked a Slavey called La Porte to serve as our guide as far as Moose Island. To attest to our truthfulness, Charbonneau, called the Loucheux, a young Metis cross-eyed as a mole and ugly as a chicken, gave to the Slavey, on behalf of his bourgeois [factor Read], a piece of red cloth that he could use to make leggings and an unmentionable [loincloth]. A moment later, the Slavey’s hut was upside down. Madame La Porte, seeing that her husband’s departure was going to leave all the work for her, started to balk and bawl. She refused to sew the aforementioned leggings, although the technique was the easiest. Her respectable husband had to hang them nobly from his belt by three loops—a style that I recommend to “Old England”—whereas a piece of the same red cloth, passing between the legs, had to make do for the front and the back of the said pants. That is enough to say: Ventris erat pro ventre locus.16 The woman was not convinced by the reasons her husband put forward. He lost patience and had recourse to a more eloquent argument; he hit her with a stick. The result was that a half-hour later the leggings were sewn and put on and we were trotting again on Great Slave Lake. La Porte preceded our dogs on the rough and trackless ice, dancing on his skinny legs, his calves sticking out like forceps. At night¬ fall, we landed at Rock Point to bivouac. La Porte went to fell and cut up some dead

15 [A member of the Loucheux tribe, also called Bastard-Loucheux, living northeast of Great Bear Lake. | 16 [“A void took the place of the belly,” or “Nothing stood in his way.” Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 8, line 805.]

A Tenderfoot Trip

15

Forest bivouac

spruce. Boisrame carried them on his back. And your servant, as the worthiest of the three, with the help of his snowshoes, dug a large hollow in the snow for a camp: a foretaste of the grave. But this is not all. We must think of supper and for sustenance we only have some food made rock-hard by the cold. Fatigue, rest, and sleep have to wait. We unharness our sled which has already become stiff from the cold and covered with snow. In the teeth of the wind, we draw from the unlaced bag the frozen covers with which mere contact numbs the fingers, the frozen fish which soon will be nourishment for our sled dogs, the frozen pemmican, the tea, and our kitchen utensils. The kettles, filled with granular snow, are put on the fire and from this smoked water—made from snow often burnt or scorched even before it melted—from this broth of the steppes, usually seasoned with spruce needles, hare dung, and grouse droppings, we make a horrid drink flattered with the name of tea; we drink it burning hot, disguising the taste with a little sugar, and at the same time devouring our lumps of bitter cranberry pemmican, scarcely thawed by the fire. Ugh! My excellent companion’s own recipe. I will not award him a certificate for the horrid meals that he made for me on this trip, with a meat dish that he called “a factor’s feast.” Wretched feast! The chewing finished, weariness is at its height, with¬ out the heart having been gladdened by some delicious food, without the stomach

i6

Around Great Slave Lake

having been warmed and restored by the smallest generous glassful. The appetite alone, a wolfish appetite that nothing satisfies and which inflames the stomach like a furnace, is the only spice for this meal. It is perfectly true to say that the Voraces do battle with the Coriaces, as good-natured Delille17 once said, with spirit. Fire is the only thing that gives real enjoyment to the traveller in the extreme north. One never tires of it. One would willingly spend the night warming oneself, presenting one side and then the next to the beneficent element while the cold and the wind freeze the other side. We had to go on again the next day, and the next, and the following days. Briskly then, take off our underclothes, lay them in the communal hollow, lay the covers and fur robes on top; then, arrange ourselves beside each other like herrings in a barrel, under this heap of clothing that we draw over our heads, call the dogs around us so that they will warm us by contact with their bodies and by their breath. Try then to get some sleep during that sixteen-hour long night that a minus 40° Celsius cold could so easily change into an eternity. Happy the traveller who can spend his beauty rest in this hole in the snow, to sleep there like a dormouse, to relax and dream golden dreams, without feeling the sting of the cold or the cramping pains caused by the forced march; without having to relight the fire before morning. For almost my whole stay in the North, I have en¬ joyed that happiness and caused envy in more experienced people than I; but on my first expedition this happiness utterly escaped me. The cramps that I felt in my legs kept me awake and groaning; not to mention my toes which made me suffer cruelly. I trembled as much from fever as from the cold. I could not manage to regain my natural warmth, lost through contact with the frozen ground, and I shivered under my caribou robes. Whereas near the fire my moose-hide moccasins and trousers curled with the heat, parts of me literally froze further away. Then, how I envied the lot of our guide who, wrapped up in a single woollen blanket and leaving his scarcely clothed spindly legs in the open air, snored like a German spinning top. How many degrees warmer is the blood of this remarkable specimen of humanity so that he enjoys an abundance of warmth while we f reeze to death. On the 11th, we made the great crossing from Rock Point to Hay River. We no longer had smooth ice as on the day before. We dragged ourselves to and fro be¬ tween banks of crusty snow that alternated with soft snow where I sank as far as my knees in spite of my snowshoes. Along the shore, ice dunes formed a chain of hills punctured and cracked like volcanic blistering. It was the breathing holes of the lake. Farther away we saw heaps of huge ice blocks raised up and jammed together in awful disorder. This was the result of cataclysms created in the ice by storms or by expansion of the ice caused by the cold. These ice blocks, called shore ice, are spread

17 [Jacques Delille (1738-1813), French didactic poet and translator of works by Virgil and Milton.]

A Tenderfoot Trip

17

far out onto the lake. They present sharp crests like the shards of a bottle to the trav¬ eller’s unwary foot. During the long hours of a moonless night with no northern lights, we had to travel by feeling for our guide’s trail which the darkness hid from us. At each step I stumbled. I broke the point of my snowshoes, I sank between the ice blocks or fell flat on my face in the frozen snow. This trip was real torture for me, like that of a blind man forced to run on a road scattered with obstacles. Such was the pleasure party to which I had been invited. It is fair to say that this greenhorn followed the instructions of a missionary who was always an unlucky traveller, it was impossible for me to go on thanks to an excessive load of cloth¬ ing. Whatever the intensity of the cold, it is important while travelling to be dressed lightly but warmly. Blood circulation must not be cut off. Unhappy is the one who perspires while walking. He needs stop but for an instant to freeze on the spot, and it is impossible for him to dry his underclothing at that night’s bivouac so that he can rest comfortably and without risk during the night. Light clothing, roomy and warm, that is the secret that shapes a traveller and makes him a man of the North. It is up to you to discover this. So, with my double shirts, double socks, double shoes, double overcoats, etc., I looked more like a white bear or Normandy’s legendary old Santa Claus than a trav¬ eller in the Danite [Chipewyan] country. The result of this ridiculous outfit was that, after one hour’s walk, each of my layers of clothing had a good extra coat of hoarfrost, formed by the sweat that had congealed as fast as I perspired. I almost froze to death. My only excuse was my undeniable status as a tenderfoot, too obedient to the advice of another tenderfoot very much older than I. At nine o’clock, when dawn broke on the horizon, I left what seemed the grip of a horrible nightmare. Daytime lessened my sufferings because it permitted me to choose my steps and avoid falling. In front of us and to our left extended the vast¬ ness of Great Slave Lake, without shores like an ocean, restless like it and often swept by snowstorms. Its surface changed each day. Sometimes we encountered pack ice, sometimes smooth ice polished like a mirror, through which the eye could probe with alarm into the black depths. Each tightrope step seemed as if it might cast us into the abyss over which we were walking. At ten o’clock, the sun rose to sharpen further the cold’s harsh bite. This was the signal for our second meal. It took us an hour; then we left again. Soon I was suffer¬ ing from “snowshoe sickness” in the instep, that is, at the point where the cord holds the snowshoe around the foot. This is the name for a kind of dislocation caused by forced marching with the aid of snowshoes. No one escapes it. The best and the most experienced travellers can suffer from it. All depends on the circumstances of the moment. One can feel -it in different parts of the legs or feet or even in the hips. Whichever the injured nerve, it becomes so painful throughout the whole journey

Around Great Slave Lake

i8

that you have such shooting pains you imagine you have a broken bone or some dis¬ located joint. Often it can even make a grinding sound. For my part I suffered so cruelly from this first attack of snowshoe sickness that, despairing of being able to reach the end of our trip, I lay down on the ice, urging my companions to continue without worrying about me. I sprayed the trail with blood from my toes, and my legs seemed dislocated by the weight and awkwardness of my snowshoes. I will never forget what I suffered on that unrivalled trip. The tem¬ perature was nevertheless delightful and prepared fairylands for us against which the marvels of our mechanized theatres would battle in vain. But when a man suffers, the extravagances of a humorous Nature resemble insults that she throws at him to scoff at his grief. One would say then that the elements jeer at you, that they are mak¬ ing common cause with the physical sickness by using fantasy to infuriate it. In other circumstances, I would have admired the shining mirage that the warming of the layers of air produced on the horizon. The distant shores of the lake, which were below our line of vision, rose suddenly and appeared suspended in the air as if they were only a few leagues from us. Behold their spruce forests, their bare headlands, the creeks, and the points of land of all this shoreline. Suddenly the same images are re¬ produced wrong-way round, inverted in the atmosphere above the first. The tips of the trees touch together in the air, top to bottom. The big red noses of the ochre headlands collide in Indian salutes while their base lies in a mist as transparent as water. Now, what strange thing is happening? All these objects come alive, move and dance in an elfin circle. The trees walk, run, and chase each other wildly. “The moun¬ tains leap like rams, and the hills like sheep.”18 The plateaus break and yawn. They laugh wide mouthed, then close. The earth seems to invite humans to madness. I rub my eyes, or rather my glasses, to assure myself that I am not the plaything of a vision from beyond the grave. Sive in corpore, sive extra corpus, nescio, Deus scit. [Whether within the body, or outside the body, I do not know, God knows.] Am I dreaming or is it a trick of my fevered imagination? I scarcely dare to tell my companions about it. But no, they too see the same eerie images and heartily laugh at them. “Yetikodija!” shouts the Indian. “It is a marvel!” “Well, what is this marvel?” I called to him. uNni na-ourintel. It is the earth which rises,” he replied smiling. That told me nothing more than what I saw, except that I was witness to a natural phenomenon, peculiar to these northern climes. It was a mirage. Still, I did not know what could produce it at these high latitudes with more liveliness and strangeness than in hot countries amid arid sands heated by the fire of a tropical sun. Soon everything changed shape around us. We are surrounded by immense con¬ centric circles that resemble the seething of boiling water. The whole horizon begins

18 Psalms 113:4.

A Tenderfoot Trip

19

to dance at the same time as if driven by the contagion of example. Heaven and earth seem to have told each other to put on a kind of grotesque carnival. Big Island, Slavey Cape, Partage [Sharing] peninsula (Netii) appeared before us as if in an Ossian1’ show. I hey came towards us from the four points of the horizon, squeezing ever closer the magic circles of ice and forests whose transformations surrounded us in their trembling grasp. In front of these false shadows the real earth had disappeared, swallowed under a completely artificial and deceptive horizon, which invaded like a flood right up to us. It sometimes made itself part of the indentations of the fluid ho¬ rizon, across which the real ground appeared indistinct, vague and as if surrounded by smoke. Then it was swallowed up again, and we were once more the prey of these aerial hallucinations, swimming in the air, walking on its waves like ghosts. From one moment to another we expected to clothe ourselves in kaleidoscopic shapes. The dazed guide, losing his way, turned towards us. uEtin! douye. Seni. Can’t see any more,” he said in the Slavey jargon that the Creoles of the Mackenzie invented. And he stopped, waiting for the earth to reappear so that he could find his way. In the morning of this day, we went along a line of ice hillocks on the summit of which perched a multitude of snow-white ptarmigans, as motionless in the sun as the sunken knolls that were their nesting places. At the foot of these Vour-yidhe, we found a smooth and polished ice surface that allowed us to take off our snowshoes. That was a great relief to me. Suddenly, on the black surface that had white veins like a huge marble table, La Porte discovered an autumn trail. He followed it carefully. There, where I could see absolutely nothing, he saw the prints of dog claws, faint traces of snowshoes, and sleds. He even made out the marks of a stick with, he said, a small round snowshoe on its end. “Dene! (People!)” He called out. “An old man was part of the band that passed here a month ago. Who can he be? ... This band was made up of three people and four dogs ....” To me, this information seemed fantastic. From place to place the track was lost un¬ der snowbanks many feet deep which the wind had piled up and hardened there. The Indian is not bothered by this. He goes over the bank and on the other side finds the trail which is heading for the mouth of Buffalo River, where we arrived at midday. To our great joy we saw a plume of white smoke there, then a peaked bark roof, and finally a real American-style cabin, with a door, windows and a chimney. A quar¬ ter of an hour later we shook hands with Ttazin-zene, Black Back, a pure-blooded Chipewyan whom we found standing proudly on his doorstep, like a lord in front of his castle. He was the builder and owner of the cabin. Before taking us inside he proudly showed us the plane he had made. With it he had stripped and dressed the

19 [Legendary Irish warrior and bard, a stock figure in the Romantic movement.]

Around Great Slave Lake

20

boards for his door and his floor. For lack of nails he had tied the planks of the door with moose laces. The hinges were made from pieces of rifle barrel evenly cut and hied with the patience and skill of a galley slave. In the Indian’s house a large hre of hrs burned in the upright chimney, giving off the pleasant odour of incense. We approached it with gratitude easily understood. But the most difficult thing was to get some meat, because Chipewyans are not gen¬ erous by nature. “Beer oulli la, taodi!” Black Back exclaimed curtly when we entered his house. “There is no meat. No, none at all!” I had been expecting this declaration, I had been warned about it. “All the same, we are going to dine with you, are we not, my son?” I said to him. “So show us your biggest pot. We have tea. There must be enough for everybody. Do you like sugar in your tea, seghenl” “Lla-khou! Of course!” said he, with a gleam of joy breaking through his curtness. The pot was brought forth and hung in the fireplace on a real pothook. Soon after, Ttazin-zene returned proudly with a fat moose hindquarters to fill another pot, mur¬ muring as an excuse for his first lie, “Beer taodi, dessi la! I say truthfully that there is no meat at all!” Suddenly, he carefully examined us, and said to our guide, “Ttaditta, se ghen, re¬ ally, my brother-in-law, those two there, are they not priests?” “Eltthi adinni, you are right,” I answered before La Porte could, to show our host that I understood him. “This one (Mr. Boisrame) is the brother of the men (Deneounnaepe), and I am the Father (Denetpa) who arrived last autumn.” His face immediately lit up, and the ice was broken between us. “I thought so, just by looking at their faces,” he said. “Truly, this young praying man al¬ ready speaks like a native; would he like to take the rest of this cut of meat with him?” And he made me a present of the rest of the displayed meat. This fresh meat restored my strength and my courage. I remained convinced, thinking of my weakness of the previous day, that however hopeless the situation seems, a person can come through it triumphant thanks to patience and time, but above all thanks to good friends. We camped much further on. No more than a long day’s march remained to reach Moose Island which, however, we were not to see either the next day or the day af¬ ter that. In this long crossing of eleven or twelve hours’ walk in the open, we were surprised and surrounded by a great snowstorm from the northeast that entirely obscured the sky and even robbed us of any sight of the lake. “Khamasan!” exclaimed the guide. The khamasan or khambatsan, a blizzard from the northeast, is the simoon20 of the Mackenzie. It is said that this same wind also exists in Siberia where it is just as

:0

[A hot, dry, dust-laden wind blowing at intervals, especially in the Arabian desert.]

A Tenderfoot Trip

21

terrible. I have forgotten the name of it, “Yakuts” or “Ostiak.” It raged all of a sudden. It struck with inordinate fury and without respite across the lakes and steppes which it swept and scoured in a few seconds, burying our caravan under drifts of fine icy snow that pierced from all sides like cinders from an erupting volcano. It is useless to battle against this terrible wind. Its continuous, harsh, and biting blowing takes away all stiength, all heat, and all life. It burns like fire without ceasing to be ice-cold. We found ourselves among the islands. Except for this we would have been lost. But as soon as the Indian felt the grip of the khamasan, he quickly turned to the right towards the island nearest to us, and without stopping called to us, “Inpah! douye walili! Quick, it is going to become impossible.” Then he took to his heels, without looking back once to wait for us or to see if we were faithfully following him. Without our dogs, who could follow the trail by scent, neither Boisrame nor I could ever have reached the island or caught up with the guide; in an instant everything had disappeared into the blizzard’s whirlwind of powdered snow. But, at the very moment when we least expected it, the tall spruce of the blessed island became visible, right there in front of us; we had reached it without seeing it. An hour later we were comfortably installed in the thickest part of the woods in front of a good fire, defying the cold, wind, and powdery snow, eve¬ rything that makes up this dangerous thunderbolt that the Dene rightly call Tpedheounl’tpan, The Night That Sweeps. We spent two days and three nights in this bivouac, waiting for calm to return. During the last night, that of 14 to 15 December, we were awakened by noisy explo¬ sions sounding like cannon. The wind had ceased. “What’s that?” I said to La Porte, without stirring from beneath my covers. “Ice broken,” he replied in Slavey jargon. And he added this eternal refrain of the Dene, “Douye walili, it will be impossible.” We got up at once, even though it was not past midnight, and resumed our march with¬ out even having eaten. Twenty minutes later, we encountered a fissure three metres wide and probably extending several leagues across the lake. We halted in consternation. “Ice broken,” repeated my Indian. “Seni kekke-odejyon ninlay. Myself, I knew it well. Douye walili, dessi la. It will be impossible, I said.” Fortunately, it looked worse than it was. The crevasse dated from last night and had had enough time to be half-filled with snow. Testing it, we easily reached the water, but in some places we found the bottom sufficiently solid to allow us to pass. We crossed it without difficulty. The end of our trip was near. It was marked by a rare enough event. Thanks to cold of at least minus 30° Celsius, the moon being half covered, and the cloudy sky, there escaped from the neighbourhood of a star a real flash of dazzling light, without any crackling or explosion whatever. Was this a gas flaming in the regions above the air, a fireball, or even a magnetic flash, the tail end of some northern lights whose source was hidden from our sight by the clouds? I do not know and I leave it to those

Around Great Slave Lake

22

more informed than myself to explain the nature of this lightning bolt. 1 only sur¬ mised, by the terror displayed by our guide, that this time he was not used to such a phenomenon. People have since told me that similar flashes had been seen on cold nights when the sky was cloudy; but I admit that in twenty-one years I witnessed it only this once. Another phenomenon, this time psychological, furnished new material for my studies and occupied my mind until our arrival at Moose Island. The rocking of the sled on which I ended up sitting, the extreme cold, the feverish overstimula¬ tion caused by so many strange impressions I had just undergone, and above all the absolute silence of the solitude, produced the most unusual sounds in my ears. I heard bugle calls, the rolling of drums, joyous fanfares, and above all the merry chiming of bells. From where did these deceptive sensations come? From the throb¬ bing in my arteries, sensed in the emptiness and deathly silence that reigns over this little frozen ocean; from a strange ringing in the ears that the blood produces when one hears absolutely nothing; finally, from the beating of my own heart. As for the fantastic hallucinations which accompanied these sounds, they were due to drowsi¬ ness caused by cold and tiredness. I had only to shake myself to see them fade away. After so many experiences obtained at such great expense of suffering and exhaus¬ tion, ahead were a warm cabin, a substantial meal, and a bed which would make me forget a little the spruce branches at the bottom of an icy hole, a foretaste of Pere Lachaise.21 That is what the little mission of Saint Joseph on Moose Island offered me. When we arrived there, my fatigue was such that I had to stay in my room and almost in my bed for eight days, during which I remained prey to fever and the same tiresome sensations. One fine morning, at the end of that period, I felt some hard and prickly objects at the bottom of my socks. I put my hand in and what did I bring out? My wounded and frozen toenails. They had completely fallen off, as black as ink. That is what, in America’s Far North, they call a tenderfoot’s trip. It is an excellent apprenticeship for life in the wilderness; but you have to be hardy to get used to it.

21

[Well-known cemetery in Paris.]

Missionaries travelling on Great Slave Lake

24

CHAPTER II Hebraic Customs Return to the Rapid—Departure of Our Servants—Meat Shortage—A Meal of Dog—Meals without Government Approval—The Moose Hunt—Hebrew Regulations Concerning Meat and Hunting—Women’s Observances—The Spirit— I Take Charge of Saint Joseph

I he return trip was a lark, so to speak. I was dressed in a comfortable outfit of cured moose skin. I had got small snowshoes, as sturdy as they were light. We carried with us substantial and appetizing supplies but, in addition, we had the pleasure of travel¬ ling with the head trader of Fort Resolution and one of his servants. They were both owners of good carts which they put at our disposal more than once, and more good food which they shared with all the generosity that characterizes our fine friends, the English. Under these conditions, a trip on snowshoes, however tiring it may be, is tolerable enough even for inexperienced people. Nevertheless, we arrived tired out at the Rapid after forty-five days’ absence, find¬ ing that the delights of the North that we had enjoyed during this pleasure trip are much more painful than the work we would have been able to accomplish if we had remained quietly at Providence. The return cost us five or six days of complete pros¬ tration and as much absolute far niente [doing nothing, in Italian]. This was the most important result of that trip. But after that I was seasoned. We found the mission reduced to three persons: the prelate [Grandin], who was the interim administrator, and two Metis children. The staff had cleared out, leav¬ ing some debts in spite of the director’s efforts. The day before, on Great Slave Lake, we had met the last of the departing Dene servants, Jean Beau-Chemin and his wife, Marianne Wentzel, a Metis. It was nine o’clock in the evening. The husband was pulling a birch-plank sled that held their clothes. In his hand he waved a pine torch to guide the steps of his unhappy mate, who followed him at some distance carrying her newborn son on her back. In the extreme cold and in the teeth of an icy east wind, they were travelling in the middle of the lake. “What have you got to say, Beau-Chemin?” I said to him. “My boy, are you insane, to leave at night in this sad way?” Serious and downcast, the Indian held out to me a small dirty paper contained in an even dirtier open envelope as his only answer. It was addressed to my colleague at Moose Island. In it I read the following: “I send Beau-Chemin back because his household is a subject of scandal. He is in debt for five hundred francs. Try to make

25

Around Great Slave Lake

26

him earn the sum by keeping him busy at Saint Joseph. The signature followed. 1 he other servants had not done any better. In the absence of any coercive or repressive measure, they laughed at the prelate and at his lonely situation. They had taken flight, some to the north, some to the south, with blackbird whistles and lark songs. Reduced to inaction, the administrator announced to me that with the spring mail, he would send me back to Moose Island to take charge there, whereas Mr. Eynard, after visiting Fort Rae, would replace two missionaries at Athabasca who were or¬ dered to The Rapid. One of them, Mr. Grouard,22 my friend, was cousin to the prelate. These frequent transfers are a deplorable system, as discouraging for both the Indian population as for the pastors whom it deprives of the confidence of their flocks who are always new. The real results are the indifference of one, the discomfort and dis¬ gust of the other, continual travelling and useless expense. There was nothing but fish to eat at The Rapid when we arrived there. This was one of the main reasons that caused the departure of our Dene servants. For a long time our hunter, Le Noir, only came to the mission to sigh and complain that the animals mocked him ever since he was baptized. “There are moose,” he said, “I see them, I follow them, but they do not want to let me kill them. Sepan nadaptlo. They laugh at me.” It is difficult to rebuild the morale of a discouraged Indian, convinced as the Indians are that animals have more spirit and insight than people, that they are former people retired from service and metamorphosed into quadrupeds, that they condescend to the need of the hunter in letting themselves be killed when they like him, or even that they mock him and become invulnerable when they despise him. Here, it is not at all a matter of attacking quite unreasonable ideas head-on by rea¬ soned arguments. The only way to succeed is to pretend to yield to these strange be¬ liefs, to convince the discouraged hunter of the superiority of our power over that of these super-intelligent animals who laugh at his dexterity, and to provide the Indian with the magic powers which enable him to kill any animal he meets. In a word, to give him that self-confidence which is bound to influence the accuracy of his sight and the steadiness of his hand. This tactic succeeded for us beyond our hope, and it was not at all blameworthy since the power that we inspired in him was no other than prayer and confidence in God: two motives unknown to the unbeliever and which are two powerful levers for human energy. But, while waiting to see the effects of this moral remedy, we grew long in the tooth, and our gorge rose at the sight and smell of fish. What were we to do? Mr. Boisrame put his knife to the throat of poor old Cabri, the chubbiest of our sled dogs,

12

[Emile Grouard (1840-1930), a secular priest, took his final vows as an Oblate in 1863 and travelled to

the Northwest with Petitot in the summer of 1864. He became Vicar Apostolic of Athabasca-Mackenzie in 1890, of Athabasca in 1901, and of Grouard in 1927, from which post he retired in 1927. He was Bishop Grandin’s cousin.]

Hebraic Customs

27

and made him into veal that he served us boiled, roasted, as steaks, and as stew. Our good administrator did not eat any at all, but I can assure my delicate female readers that never in my life have I eaten a more delectable and flavourful flesh. On this point, I agree entirely with the Chinese, the Sioux, and the Chipewyans regarding dog flesh. Our first culinary success encouraged us to do it again, in order to get the meat that our weakened stomachs imperiously demanded. This time it was I who got the game meat, after we had consumed our dog right down to the dewclaws. I killed a grouse, the only one that I had ever seen at The Rapid where they had never been found before. Actually, in the snow I saw the body of an old raven frozen for the previous two months. It had seriously insulted us one day and I had tried to kill it because of its impertinence. The cat then played with it for the rest of the day, prolonging its loud iniquity along with its agony. I carefully gathered it up, piously plucked it, cut off its head and feet, and I baptized it, thus transformed, a capercaillie grouse,23 to give him to a white partridge as a companion. Together the two travelled to the headquarters of Mr. Boisrame, past master chef of hereabouts. Further, I had noticed a certain ermine and a certain mink (Viso lutreola) in the fish shed, who had got in there surreptitiously and could not get out because of the fat they had gained at our expense, and who undoubtedly lived there in immoral concubinage, or at the very least in a relationship too suspect to be tolerated any longer. I put an end to the scandal with my gun; I had Baptiste, one of the young boys, skin them and also sent them to our chief cook, calling them young rabbits. All these differently flavoured pieces, cut up, cooked up, sauteed with a little filched wine, and prepared with a little piece of moose lard, a pinch of flour, some semifrozen potatoes, and a handful of bitter cranberries, rewarded us with a stew in an appetizing gravy with an aromatic bouquet. You cannot find the recipe in the Cuisinier frangais,24 Mr. Boisrame and I have since obtained our non-governmentapproved cooking diplomas. The administrator, who had never been able to overcome his repugnance for dog blood sausage and grilled dog, had no scruples about tasting raven stew although he found that certain pieces had a very gamey flavour. In these pages I have often enough mentioned the North American elk—moose in English25 or orignal in French, as it is called here—so it is time that I introduce my reader to this ugly animal. “Orignal” and “original” are synonyms. We never give this name to a quadruped of the Cervus family, such as the stag, reindeer, Axis deer, or the buck. It makes up a distinct family under the name of Alces [elk]. His

23 [A large European grouse.] 24 [A famous cookbook originally composed in the Middle Ages and which has had numerous editions.] 25 [“Elan” in Europe, “orignac” or “orignal” in North America.]

Around Great Slave Lake

28

rack is neither thin nor pointed; it is made up of two wide palettes similar to shoul¬ der blades, on the edge of which small tines in the shape of fingers are situated like spokes. The moose or American elk has long legs. The body is short, stocky, mal¬ formed and strange. His greyish coat seems wet and curled. Hence his Dene name, inttse [“moose in water” in Hare dialect]. His head is enormous with a camel-like nose and drooping lip, flanked by long mule-like ears. The moose always walks with his nose to the wind. He rarely runs away. His gait is an amble that is as long as a pony’s gallop. It is useless to pursue the animal s trail when it has been startled; it defies the best Indian runner. Only when it is at rest do the Indians hunt and kill the moose. Wounded, it turns on the hunter, knocks him down, and tramples him with his cow-like hooves which are as sharp as knives. When he wants to lie down or rest, the moose hides himself in the bushes. First, he walks in a circle, and then lies down in the very middle of his ramble, his muzzle turned towards the part of the woods which he has crossed and where he has just lett his hoofprints.This animal, then, instinctively foresees that if a carnivore is unrelent¬ ing in its pursuit, it can only overtake him by following his tracks. By lying down outside this path, his nose facing towards the direction he has come, he outsmarts the manoeuvres of his four-footed enemies for whom wind is the usual giveaway if his long hare-like ears do not catch the sound of its approach. The Indian, who has studied the moose’s intelligent technique, takes good care in not following the track since it would reveal his presence. He counters the animal s native intelligence with cunning. After making sure that the moose is at rest, he begins his search with care by travelling in a large circle. If, after having made the first circle in his walk through the woods, the hunter sees no more hoofprints, it is obvious that the moose is within the circle. If, on the contrary, the trail of the beast cuts the circle, the hunter traces another circle from this point tangential to the first; and so on until he has discovered the moose’s fort. A good hunter judges the age and sex of the moose more or less from the time it has spent in one place by a simple examination of its tracks. Above all, it is by this diag¬ nosis that the wisdom of the Redskin is displayed. How many times in my wander¬ ings with the Dene or Dindjie have I received hunting lessons, unhappily fruitless in my case. “It’s a male,” or maybe “It’s a female,” my companions would immediately tell me. “The animal passed the night here. It got up. No point in bothering about it. It is already far away.” Other times, on the contrary, from seeing just a single track, they would hold their breath and speak in a low voice, “Oh! Father, the moose has just passed here, only a moment ago. Look, it is grazing, it is walking carelessly. It is not alone. There are at least four or five of them together.” And, in fact, at the first bend in the path, we saw up to four moose browsing together on the sickle-shaped dry leaves of the shining willows. If the weather is calm and very cold, if the snow is frozen, crusted, and if it crunches underfoot, there is no point in trying. The moose will bolt long before

Hebraic Customs

29

the hunter could see it. But when it is windy, when soft snow is falling or covers the forest with a thick blanket that deadens the footsteps, then the hunter has every¬ thing on his side. He will pass like a shadow through the harriers,26 making no more noise than a cat, without stirring a single branch, without breaking the small¬ est twig. He will often take hours in this patient and cunning approach, because he can only kill the moose when he surprises it at rest. The meat of a running moose is foul. It stinks. But in short, see the man in the presence of the beast. The happy hunter sees it; nay, contemplates it. He trembles with emotion; he holds his breath while approaching it stealthily. Slowly he readies and raises his weapon. Slowly he steadies it on a branch if he can, and takes aim. Will he fire at the resting animal? No. Whether from fair play, to give the beast the chance to escape, or whether to let it expose its vital parts when it stands up, which is more probable, the hunter then deliberately breaks a small branch. Because the wood is frozen, this breaking makes a clear and ringing sound that causes the moose to leap up. He has noted the difference between this artificial noise from that made by the passing of an animal or the wind’s rustling of the branches. It stands up quivering, sniffing the air, fearfully searching the depths of the woods with his limpid eye. He is about to bolt—now is the moment. The hunter aims at the heart, squeezes the trigger, and the king of the forests, taking three steps forward, falls heavily on the blanket of snow which he stains and melts with his red blood. When the moose has been cut up and dismembered, the hunter gathers the pieces and puts them in a cache until he can inform his employer or his wife and children if he hunts for himself. The Indian who hunts for the forts and the missions ordinar¬ ily has an assistant called the “maker of the cache” to whom he gives this secondary chore. This assistant then goes to inform the employers, who send their servants to pick up this meat and take it to the fort or mission on sleds. As for the hunter, on the spot he takes the skin of the animal, its head, and its entrails. That is his share. He immediately lights a fire, roasts the moose’s head, and eats it alone or with his assist¬ ant. He never leaves anything for carnivorous animals and never, ever, carries any leftovers to his wife and children. If a woman had the impudence to taste so noble a food, never, but never, would a moose let itself be killed by her husband. You can well appreciate this. Encouraged by our good words and the assurances of success that we had given him, Le Noir successively hunted and killed two moose that I fetched by sled with Baptiste Pepin. As a cache, the Indian was content to bury the meat under a heap of snow which he next stamped down and drenched with water. But, with the intention of keeping wolves and wolverines away, he performed several superstitious signs over the mound,

26 [A type of tangled brush wood.]

30

Around Great Slave Lake

pronounced some reputedly magical incantations, and planted a spruce pole deco¬ rated with bunches of porcupine skins. This blessed branch was protective medicine. Near the cache was the Indian camp, and in a tree, stuck on the end of a stick, was the moose’s massacre,27 as polished as if a mass of swarming insects had exercised their jaws on the head for a month. In a sacrifice to Demeter, the goddess of plenty, whose sculpture is in the National Museum of Saint Germain-en-Laye, one sees the head of a wild or a domestic sow stuck up in a tree, in the Danite manner. We were thus in the presence here of an ancient practice, probably a votive offering to the earth, represented by Ceres, or else a present to the Moon, her sister, goddess of the hunt. It is useless to ask the Indians the reason for these customs. It is the way it is done. Such is the reply. We ourselves have no reply for an infinity of things. For a long time I looked without finding the blood of the moose that ought to have collected in the belly. I knew that Dane, Dene and Dindjie never left it with the flesh of the animal but buried it separately. In fact, we found it hidden under the snow at a considerable distance from the other parts of the moose. Another sacred branch marked its position. I then recalled this Levitical prescription: “Any man also of the people of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, who takes in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with dust. For the life of every creature is the blood of it.”28 I have said above that a wounded moose often turns on the hunter and slays him in its anger. In this case nothing can persuade the Dene to eat the meat of the homicidal animal, whatever kind of animal it is and even if the man did not die. They burn it without saving anything for themselves or their families. I have seen several examples of this anathema: Dos-Noir [Black Back] at Great Slave Lake, Grosse-Tete at Lac la Biche, Tatekoye at Fort Good Hope, and Sida Beni-hay at Fort Norman furnished me with examples. Then, look at what Exodus says in this matter. It is identically the same. No one will accuse me of imagination: “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten.”29 Our Dene are only a little more scrupulous. They sacrifice the animal even if the wounded man does not die. They are also fearful regarding meat chewed by dogs, as well as the remains of caribou half-eaten by wolves and left on the ice or on the steppes. I have never been able to convince my travelling companions to collect the remains for our use. They throw them to the dogs, again following the Hebrew custom: “You shall not eat any flesh that is torn by beasts in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs.”30 Since I am in a chapter on legal proscriptions, permit me to pass to another practice

27 [The moose’s head or antlers.] 28 Lev. 17:13-14. 29 Exodus 21:28. [Exodus 17:28.) 30 Exodus, 21:31.

Hebraic Customs

3i

that I had occasion to observe quite often during my stay at The Rapid and else¬ where. It is the severe manner in which Dane and Denb Etcha-Ottin£ behave towards women in labour or women who are suffering from their periodical infirmities. The wretches cannot follow the tribe’s beaten trail, nor one used by the family when travelling. They must painfully clear a path to one side in the soft snow. They have no access to the village or to their husband’s tent. Soiled and humiliated by every¬ one, though now a sacred and taboo object, people build a hut for them where these unfortunates live during the days and nights of their languor. What if it is summer and the family are travelling by water? The poor creatures have no longer any right to a seat in the family boat. What then is done? People bring two canoes together, tie a plank across, and the sick ones take their seats on the plank. If the two boats make a wrong move and separate, well, too bad, the women get a bath. They have undergone more and crueller situations during their abject and miserable lives! One night we were awakened by a woman’s piercing cries, by repeated calls for help, by blows and the voice of an angry man that we recognized as the Metis Flanquet, our worker, who lived as a savage. The house of our servants contains several house¬ holds and we were not worried by this clamour, which is frequent enough among the Indians. They are people easily overexcited but still more readily calmed. The next day we learned that Flanquet, having discovered his wife sitting on his bed, had im¬ mediately seized her by the hair, dragged her outside into the minus 30° air so that she spent the night in the snow, but not without his having heavily thrashed her first so that she would better recall the hygienic precept about the temporary separation which her condition necessitated. I reproached this Indian severely for this barbaric excess. “It is the way,” he an¬ swered me. “All the Dene act this way. If the sick women stay with us, it will make us die.” What other reason did Moses invoke when he promulgated this precept to the Hebrews? “If a man lies with a woman having her sickness, and uncovers her naked¬ ness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood; both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”31 Does this mean that the people themselves will put the delinquents to death as Genesis 17:14 seems to say: “Every male who is not circumcised will be exterminated by his people; because he has broken my covenant”? I do not believe it. The Bible does not give any example. It was the angel of death, the exterminator, who removed them from the living. The proof is in the same passage of Genesis, whose Latin text reads: “Delebitur anima ilia. That soul will be exterminated. We well know that the soul is never touched even by death. Here, it means a divine punishment capable of reaching the soul in another life, lost through damnation

31 Lev. 20:18.

Around Great Slave Lake

32

while saving the body in this earthly life. Here again are other texts that prove more fully that it was not, in every case, the death penalty decreed by Moses, but only a. providential punishment that the wise law-maker wished to make the children of Israel fear: “If you let yourself be seduced into making a graven image (to adore it) ... I swear by heaven and earth that you soon will be exterminated from this land.... The Lord will destroy you.”32 And again further on: “You will not worship strange gods ..., for fear that the anger of the Lord your God is aroused against you and that He will exterminate you from the face of the earth.”33 Moreover, the Dene do not exterminate each other; but they do not fear any the less to expose themselves so boldly to the hate of Edzil' or Edzee, the Heart, of Ettsene or Ettsonne, the Spirit or angel of death. And, on the same matter, let me add that the Bible also calls the Devil thus: “Egressus estautem Spiritus et stetit coram Domino. The Spirit stepped forward and approached the Lord.”34

1 return to the Danite proscriptions. “The wife who suffers at the beginning of her month according to nature,” it says in chapter 20 of Leviticus, “will be separated for seven days. Whoever touches her will be soiled until the night, and the place where she has slept or where she sat down during the days of her confinement will be soiled.”35 Behold, Flanquet’s Slavey wife was not ignorant of this, nor of the proscription that she should not have transgressed under the pretext that her husband, although raised as a pure savage, was a Christian Metis living with priests. On this subject our Metis them¬ selves do not entertain any debate any more than do purebred Indians. We perfectly respect these sound practices which have their justification in the Bible and in nature; but we certainly do not demand that Christian Indians go beyond them. Mr. Louis Jacolliot, who has found identical practices in Hindustan—where they resemble those that the consul, Humbert, discovered in Japan36—has made too much out of sacred history by deriving the Mosaic code from Hindu practices. What would the learned writer say about my own assertions? Would he have still maintained that the Hebrews’ lawmaker had been inspired by the red-skinned tribes of Arctic North America? That, however, is where the spirit of systemization or complete denial will ultimately lead. It misrepresents so much that no one can recognize it. The Dene woman who is placed by nature in the position I have just written about takes the name of Inti ninandjay, “The One Who Has Gone Out,” or that of Tpinttcha Nardhoeri, “The One Who Lives off the Trail.” If it is a girl who has reached

32 Deut. 4:23-37. 33 Deut. 6:14-16. 34 3 Kings 22:21. [I Kings, 22:21.] 35 Lev. 20:19 [Lev. 18:19.] 36 [Aime Humbert, Swiss plenipotentiary to Japan in 1861,] Tour du monde, 1866. [Louis Jacolliot (18371890), author of Les traditions indo-asiatiques (Paris, 1876), and Voyage au pays du hatchisch (Paris, 1883).]

Hebraic Customs

33

the age of puberty, one gives her the name of Dza-ttini, “She Who Has the Sickness,” or Ttsa-ttini, 1 he One Who Wears a Hood,” because they then cover her head and chest with a large wimple that hides her from men’s sight. Although these creatures cannot visit anyone until they have finished their days of separation, it is not at all forbidden for men to keep company with them, to visit them, to carry food to them, and cut wood for them. The law that governs women affects men only by forbidding them all dealings other than that of etiquette and charity.

fc=5=?

On 19 March 1863, the courier with mail from Europe arrived and opened a trail for me between Moose Island and the mission at The Rapid. Once more I took the road from Saint Joseph, never to return to Providence. During my earlier wanderings, I had for the most part suffered from the cold, snowshoe sickness, and camping in the snow. It no longer caused me discomfort to travel on foot, and the return of spring had prepared a way so smooth that you could have said it had been swept especially. There was no more snow on the ice of Great Slave Lake. On the shores, no more blocks, no more dunes nor ranges of heaved chunks of ice. What had become of the very many harshnesses, those obstacles that had been so serious two months ago? Yes, they had evaporated, nothing else. Yes, more or less, evaporated under the combined action of the cold nights and warm days. The snow, melted and heaped, had become one with the ice or had even filtered through it. The fallen icicles had become part of the icefield, by virtue of the phenomenon that car¬ ries objects left on the surface of the soil to bury themselves and to hide themselves under the earth. There remained nothing but an ice floe, smooth, polished, slippery as a vast mirror, which had all the sparkle and all the burning refraction for travel¬ lers’ eyes. By 24 March, I had reached Saint Joseph with Charbonneau, called the Loucheux, my only travelling companion. I immediately took charge of this mission from my kind colleague the ex-chief forester, Mr. Emile Eynard, who had to leave for Fort Rae. This unexpected news troubled the good missionary a little, but he promptly recovered, “I would have been quite happy at Saint Joseph,” he calmly said to me. “It is already four years that I have been here and it is my first mission. It is very painful for me to leave. However, God’s will be done!” That was all. The excellent priest never spoke another word about this business. He left, leaving me master of the goods and everything else he had possessed up until then. Such is the life of a missionary. But how many moves would he have to make thereafter, conforming to the absurd system of the good prelate who then governed us, of never leaving a missionary at the same place more than two years in a row for fear that he would become too attached to his parishioners!

St. Joseph’s Mission and Fort Resolution

34

CHAPTER III On a Desert Island Where One Sees How Pilate Lost His Way in Front of Jesus—And How Jesus Could Not Find Malchus Ear—Spirit Sickness at Fort Yukon—A Ghost Appears to Antoine Houle—Knocking Spirits—Providential Punishment and Consoling Apparition—Flood of Rats—The White Bird—Tabachach, Bird Killer—Marvellous Hunt—Rates at Great Slave Lake—My Kind of Life—The Crowned Sparrow—Dry Provisions—Fisheries—The Birch

During Holy Week of 1863,1 got to know the Chipewyans, better known by the French Canadians as Montagnais. They must not be confused with the other Montagnais, inhabitants of the Saguenay River in Lower Canada, who are of the Hilline tribe.37 To avoid ambiguity in speaking of the Montagnais of the Dene race, I ordinarily use their Cree name, Chipewyans. There arrived at the mission about 150 people who had not hesitated to make a trip of twenty-five to thirty leagues in order to have the happiness of making their Easter devotions and of taking part in the beautiful Holy Week services so little appreci¬ ated these days by many of the old Christians of France. I had studied Chipewyan with such zeal that since the month of January, I was able to preach to these Indians in their maternal language. Mr. Grouard, my travelling companion, was just as advanced. This was considered by the Metis as a tour de force that we both had accomplished, or instead as a gift for languages that we had received from Heaven, for until then our administrator had asserted that it was impossible to speak Chipewyan without four years of study because of its extreme difficulty. The excellent colleague that I had come to replace on Moose Island took charge of preaching the Passion of the Saviour, but because he was so timid, he could not bring himself to recite Pilate’s famous question: Quid est veritas? [What is truth?] This is understandable since the word “truth” and other abstract nouns do not exist in na¬ tive languages. So Mr. Eynard spoke French while expressing himself in Chipewyan. “Ekhou Pilate aoubel’ni ... then Pilate said to them ...” Then turning towards me: “You intimidate me, get out of here.” Then, continuing: “then Pilate, seeing that the Jews had decided to have Jesus killed, said to them ...” And turning towards me: “All the same, I say you distract me. I cannot go on. So, leave for a bit....” Then, before I

37 [Petitot’s mistranscription of “Illinois.”]

35

Around Great Slave Lake

36

had time to leave my seat, the preacher began again, a third time: “Then Pilate said to them .... Well, my brothers, I cannot go on. Douye, douye! I must stop there.” And the_ good missionary turned his back to his audience, who were put in a better humour by this exaggerated timidity regarding Pilate. The following year, a similar incident happened to the same jinxed priest. Only he had not even reached the court scene. He stopped at the Garden of Gethsemane after having cut off Malchus’ ear. “Then Jesus said to Peter: ‘Put your sword back in its scabbard, for whoever uses the sword will perish by the sword.’Then, bending down, he ... he ....” The unfortu¬ nate priest stopped, making a gesture to pick something up; but without being able to recall the Dene word naneltsi, which describes this action. He did not finish his sentence; the audience began to laugh and the embarrassed speaker had to interrupt his story. At the end of the ceremony, one of Mr. Eynard’s colleagues who was there said to him, “Hey! Dear master, why did you stop in the middle of such a beautiful road? You were getting on so well!” “My friend, what could you expect,” the ex-forester replied to him, “I had lost Malchus’ear and I could not find it again to stick it on him.” On 9 April, from the Far North arrived a courier who brought from Fort Yukon, an English post in Russian America, the most absurd, the most incredible news about spirit manifestations. I spoke of this in my first volume.38 At that time you heard talk of this spirit sickness only in the United States. How astonishing that the infection had overtaken the two lonely Scots who served a fort as remote as the Yukon fort. One of my colleagues, Mr. Seguin,39 who had followed a Protestant minister to the Yukon the preceding September, communicated this to me. His letters told me that immediately after the departure of a certain fur factor, whom we shall call Mr. Loon, at Fort Yukon people began to hear the most mysterious and sinister noises at nightfall. There were rhythmic knocks against the partitions and doors, in the attics and the cellars, sometimes in one room and sometimes in another. At first Mr. Jones, the new chief of the post, paid no attention to it. Then he believed they were jokes in bad taste. At last he became convinced, people said, that it was in¬ explicable and that these strange noises could not possibly be human. However, he

38 See: En route pour la mer glaciate (Paris, 1888), 351. 39

[Jean Seguin (1833-1902) arrived at Fort Good Hope in August 1861 to join Father Grollier in com¬

batting William Kirby’s plans to establish a Church of England mission in the valley of the Mackenzie. Seguin worked from Fort Simpson to the mouth of the Mackenzie, concentrating on the Loucheux, and in the autumn ot 1862 travelled to Fort Yukon and wintered there. After Grollier’s death in 1864, Seguin was joined at Fort Good Hope by Emile Petitot. Seguin was an accomplished linguist and assisted Petitot in the preparation ot Petitot s polyglot dictionary of native languages which was used in the Mackenzie Basin. He remained active at Fort Good Hope until 1901.]

On

a Desert Island

37

did not readily give credence to the evidence of his senses. His reason preferred to be¬ lieve that he had become the plaything of a cerebral upset. So the knocking became voices that talked or argued in an unintelligible language. But when Mr. Jones rushed into the apartment where the noise came from, he found the room empty and silent as the grave. The Reverend M.,4° invited to consider this phenomenon, also heard the same strange sounds. The Catholic missionary, called on in his turn, heard abso¬ lutely nothing. He asked Mr. Jones to let him celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass in the room they believed to be haunted. But the factor refused to consent because, he said, he did not believe either in the noises or the virtue of the holy sacrifice. Soon, the letter went on, the noises changed and burst into an intolerable din. As soon as night came, the furniture began to move, the cutlery began to dance, the papers scattered as if carried by the wind. Then Mr. Jones felt a shudder of terror that irritated him. He could have believed in an aura that precedes all neurosis, but there was a little dog who spent the night in the factor’s bedroom, and lying at the foot of his master’s bed, he began to growl and shake, too. His hairs bristled. Finally, he jumped on Mr. Jones’ bed and hid, trembling, under the covers. This is evidence that no one will refute if it is true. Mr. Jones just pulled his covers over his head, paying no attention to these strange noises, and succeeded in going to sleep. When the hul¬ labaloo became intolerable, he took up his covers and, followed by his little dog, he went to bed in the huts of the fort’s servants, who, unlike him and his dog, were not at all bothered by the ghost. The din was not so continuous that there were no breaks and pauses. The racket redoubled after a picture of Mr. Loon’s deceased father was taken from the haunted room, which Mr. Loon had occupied before he left the Yukon, to be sent back to him. Someone was heard in the chimney striking flint on the bricks. People whispered and laughed behind Mr. Jones’ back. He was called by name. A hand knocked on his work table. The doors opened and closed by themselves. Furniture moved about. Today, thanks to the telephone and the phonograph, many of these noises are explainable. But there was neither telephone nor phonograph in Russian America in 1862. After a certain length of time these phenomena spread beyond the factor’s house. They were also felt in the other huts of the fort. There was then at Fort Yukon a French Metis interpreter named Antoine Houle, a bad person, a known bigamist, and an admitted renegade. One day when this man was working alone in his boss’ kitchen, he suddenly perceived in front of him, he says, a middle-aged man, dressed all in black, having a sad, long, and wizened yellow face. He was extremely thin, and

40 [Robert McDonald (1829-1913), priested in the Church of England in 1853, was missionary to the Ojibway at White Dog, Canada West, until posted in 1862 to Fort Yukon, where he worked successfully among the Loucheux for the next forty-two years. He discovered gold in the Yukon in 1863, became first Archdeacon of the Diocese of Athabasca in 1874, translated the Bible and Anglican Book of Common Prayer into Loucheux, and promoted the cause of a native ministry.]

3»

Around Great Slave Lake

his hair was black, as well as his beard which was forked. At the sight of this spectre Houle fell to the floor, unconscious. When he came to, he was completely deaf, and.' remained so for several days. Mr. Seguin only restored his hearing by putting a drop of sulphuric ether in each ear. Judging by the description that Antoine gave of his vision, everyone agreed that they found in the phantom a resemblance to Mr. Loon’s father, whose portrait had been taken away. Such is the succinct summary of the extravagant stories that arrived from Fort Yukon. My neighbour at Fort Resolution, to whom Mr. Jones also told the story, al¬ ways believed the latter was bewitched. Until 1866, that is, for more than five years, Mr. Jones patiently endured the same hullabaloo, growing visibly thinner and suffer¬ ing in his soul. Finally, exhausted by the battle, he decided to return to Toronto, his birthplace, where he arrived only to die of consumption. With his departure, every¬ thing returned to normal, and people no longer heard talk of the knocking spirits at Fort Yukon, but it is said that in leaving the ghost had predicted that people would soon hear talk of him in the Mackenzie region. Strangely, the boat that carried Mr. Jones from Fort McPherson to Fort Simpson was not at all a shelter from spiritual annoyances. All those who found themselves on board heard blows being struck, and the boat remained infected as if with malaria. In 1867, when travelling in that craft, I myself and every one of the five other persons who slept on the haunted boat distinctly heard, between ten o’clock at night and three o’clock in the morning, distinct blows—three in all—striking throughout the boat, on the benches, on the gunwales, against the sides, on the mast, along the oars, on the packages and even against the tarpaulins that served as our little tents. This occurred under the mountain called the Rock, a precipitous rock face descending into the water, a high headland between Forts Norman and Simpson. Had Mr. Jones’ ghost stopped in this lonely and arid place to harass passing travellers? At the risk of being taken for superstitious—which, however, I do not believe I am—I must add that, repassing that spot during the summer eleven years later and camping there in a tent with Mr. Seguin and two Dindjie Indians, I was bothered all night by the same strange and inexplicable knocks. They resounded on our boat that we had run aground, on the pots, on the firewood, on the tent outside and inside, on our covers, and even on the pillow next to my face, to the point that it woke me up with a start and made me jump when I was again falling asleep. Awake and perfectly calm, I heard the knocks move away as if walking in the direction of the boat from where they seemed to call to me by doubling their speed and intensity, inviting me to go back to Fort Good Hope since I was sadly making the return trip. Naturally, I thought little of these strange invitations, treating them as crazy imag¬ inings, and fought, like Mr. Jones, with my reason against the evidence of my senses. These knockings were in unequal numbers. I took the trouble to count them, in order to assure myself of the degree of confidence I could attach to them. I got only the letters, H and G. No others. “H, G ... H, G ...” But these letters are the initials of the

On

a Desert Island

39

apostle of the far North, Henri Grollier, whose religious zeal, sometimes excessive, was well known to me and of whom Mr. Loon had been an open enemy. What can we think of this? Upon my soul, I do not know what to think. Errat qui putat. [He who guesses, errs.] Here, however, is some lovely material for Madam Lucie Grange41 and for her spiritualist magazine, La Lumiere. Fiat lux! Indeed, let there be light! If, in 1863, Mr. Seguin gave no more credence than I to spiritualist manifestations at Fort Yukon, he told me, however, some other curious facts in which one could only see a demonstration of justice or of divine grace. A French-Canadian servant named Jeannet Ruel refused the missionary three times to attend Mass on Christmas day, always offering some miserable excuse for not leaving his card game. At the fort the evening of the same day, according to Scottish custom, after the Christmas day dinner, they had games dear to the Highlanders, consisting of displays of strength and agility. Ruel, who was of uncommon strength, carried two bags of bullets, each a hun¬ dredweight. He carried one hanging from the little finger of each hand, and bet that with these loads thus arranged, he could run three times around the fort. People took the bet. Alas! The unfortunate man did not know that he just confirmed by this agreement the terrible punishment that God was going to inflict on him for scorn¬ ing His law three times. On his third lap, and although people begged Ruel not to go beyond two, the unfortunate French Canadian, paler than a corpse, dropped the weights hanging from the first joint of his little fingers, injured by the load, and he himself fell backwards like an inert mass, choking, groaning, foaming, and flounder¬ ing about in a hideous speechless seizure. God had just struck him with epilepsy. When the seizure had passed, Jeannet, who was basically a Christian, rushed up to the missionary. “Ah! Father,” he said to him all in tears, “what have I done? It is really all my fault that God has punished me for my irreligion and my egoism. I certainly deserved it.” Ruel was sorry for his bad behaviour, but the punishment remained for the rest of his life. The following year he left the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and returned to [the United Provinces of] Canada, his native land. In 18711 learned of his death. He had had fifteen epileptic seizures on the same day. Ruel’s accident chilled the hearts of the good Highlanders, his Presbyterian com¬ panions at Fort Yukon. Among them was a Wesleyan Swampy Cree Metis named William Charles Burke, whose young wife, Annie, my travel companion from the Red River, had gone to rejoin him. Both had some drops of Scottish blood in their veins. That was several generations back to judge from the small amount of white in their complexion, but in their hearts they were the gentlest, most affectionate, and

[Lucie-Anne Poujoulas, Madam Grange (1838-C.1908), published and edited the monthly La Lumiere from 1882 until 1908 to popularize her theories on the new spiritualism.]

Around Great Slave Lake

40

most honest of Indians. Even their appearance won them confidence and the savages agreed in saying that Ouyam [William] gave them only good advice. True or false, innocent or not, the spiritualist phenomena that surrounded Burke at Fort Yukon had considerably shaken his Methodist opinions. One night in December before supper, while Burke was chatting at the corner of the hearth where a great spruce fire crackled, his companions saw him suddenly lift his head with an aston¬ ished look but without fear, stare fixedly and open-mouthed for some minutes at the corner of the ceiling above his bed. Then he sighed and remained lost in thought for the rest of the evening. The Algonquin is normally reticent. In vain Burke’s companions questioned him about his eccentric behaviour. He answered none of their questions, refused to eat supper, and threw himself on his bed with a mournful look. When he was alone with his wife, William spoke. “Oh! Annie, if you knew what I saw.” “What you saw?” “Yes, what I saw before supper, there ... at that spot over our bed....” The young woman made a gesture of fright. “Oh! Don’t be afraid, Annie, it was nothing terrible. Nothing. On the contrary, it was comforting. Eh! Well, there, at that spot a beautiful woman appeared to me sit¬ ting on air and holding in her arms a child as beautiful as the day. She held a rosary out to me, and the child had a book of prayers in the Cree language which I recog¬ nized as one of those that the Catholic priests distribute to their new converts. It is quite true what I tell you, Annie. I’m not lying. Wasn’t this Mary and the Child?” Annie listened with an air of unbelief and scoffing. She shrugged her shoulders, let out a burst of mocking laughter, and called her husband a visionary and a crazy per¬ son. That is always what people say under similar circumstances. But William was convinced that he had been the object of a heavenly and merciful communication. He spoke about it to my colleague Mr. Seguin, had himself instructed in the Catholic truths, asked for baptism according to the rite of the true Church, and received it after having abjured the errors of Wesley. As for Annie, she was determined to re¬ main Protestant, more faithful than ever in attending the preaching of the Reverend M[cDonald], even though he was not a Methodist but an Anglican. However, some time later it was this simple and good woman’s turn to ask for Catholic baptism. Her conversion was as sudden and as strange as that of her husband, but she owed it to another cause. “Last night,” she said to her husband, “I had an extraordinary and frightening dream. I was on the shore of a river, alone, sad, on an arid and awful riverside where I fell prey to a fear that I will remember for a long time. Suddenly, I saw you, Willie, on the opposite bank. You were there with our children, cheerful and happy, in a bounti¬ ful and magnificent land. I held out my arms to have you come and get me, but you called to me: ‘No, no. It is you who must come and join us.’At that moment I woke up, covered in sweat and seized with a nameless restlessness. I immediately had my dream

On a Desert Island

4i

explained. Now my doubts are gone. I do not want to belong to Wesley any longer, but to J [esus] C [hrist]. I won t be happy until I am of the same religion as you.” This is the strange way that these two good people were called to the true faith. One can deny the miracle. Only the deserving receive them, but it is no less true that these two souls received, while one was awake and the other asleep, a spiritual warning quite different from that which troubled Jones, Antoine Houle, the minister, and his assistant. The two Swampy Cree did not resist the supernatural call at all and they owed their household happiness and the joy of possessing the truth to the humble submission of their spirit. I knew and visited William and Annie Burke at Fort Good Hope. They never contradicted the good opinion that people had formed of them at Fort Yukon. My heart fills with emotion and regret at the mere memory of these Christians of the Arctic wilderness, the likes of which our civilized countries, skeptical and enlightened, no longer produce. On 15 April, Mr. Eynard left for Fort Rae, leaving me entirely alone for six months on Moose Island, my only companions a cat and a regiment of rats and weasels to devour my supplies. In my granary, the ermines undertook to chase away the ro¬ dents, only to commit afterwards more depredations than the rodents themselves. The steeplechase that these graceful ermine burrowers performed in pursuit of their food, the rodents, transformed my nights into prolonged insomnia. At ground level, where my room was, it was necessary for a cat to be on constant guard. Notwithstanding the good will of [the cat] Mitis, there was not a night that a mouse or a leaping rodent did not come into my cell and engage in a multitude of movements that I easily compared to the gymnastics of the Fort Yukon knocking spirits. I heard their little claws writing on my paper. I felt them run across my bed in all directions like the pony post, and cross over my face like will-o’-the-wisps. They even had the audacity to gnaw my pillow. One of these rodent spirits, no doubt less experienced than the others or perhaps more absent-minded, even put his teeth into my right ear. I clapped my hands and suddenly the short-legged tribe tumbled down from above where they became like the Lilliputians on Gulliver’s stomach. These frolicking spirits went under my door to another room. I did not know how to get rid of these spirit-rats until I suddenly became aware of a simple and effective way. I put a full barrel of water in my room. On the barrel I placed a plank which I made into a seesaw. On this seesaw I stuck some bait and a piece of fat. I made a kind of ramp so that mice could reach the platform of my lit¬ tle guillotine, and I went to bed full of joy and hope, my head filled with evil plans. The result crowned my efforts. On the first night, there drowned in my barrel three jerboa rodents and one weasel. From then on I was amused to see all the knocking spirits, rodents, and nibblers that haunted the big house, where I lived alone, dimin¬ ish from day to day as my barrel filled. However, 1 was not alone on Moose Island. Four of my servants shared my Robinson Crusoe solitude, living about ten metres from my dwelling. These were

Around Great Slave Lake

42

the French Canadian Narcisse Pepin, general handyman of the mission and father of six children; the Chipewyan Jean Beau-Chemin, whom our readers already know; • the fisherman Ttatsan-Khe or Raven Foot; and a young Chipewyan of fifteen springs, called Tabachach, who had come from Red River with me. His parents were servants at Fort Resolution, my neighbour. Tabachach was a skilled hunter. Fie fed me snow buntings which he killed with arrows. In less than an hour he had collected about thirty of them. These birds are all white, plump and excellent to eat. At the end of September the little white birds (Ernberiza nivalis) migrate from the polar region where they have spent the summer, and they reach the harvested fields of Canada and the northern United States where they winter. The first autumn snow makes them leave the north. The first snowstorm sees them crouch on the ground, whitened like their plumage, and peck away there in crowded flocks. Does it become noticeably colder with the freezing and the ice? Whoosh! No more snow buntings. They continue to the south, which will witness the happy and lively frolics of these little snow buntings. For four or five months the white bird will be the landlord of fields deprived of greenery and abandoned by the labourer. He travels nonstop and always in flocks for he is essentially republican and even a bit social¬ ist despite his white livery. His name is legion. If these are the same buntings that came after the manna in the Sinai desert, as the Hebrew text suggests according to Durocher,42 one can believe that the Hebrews may have found them a delicate and abundant food. These sons of the polar barrens, that one meets in Greenland and Spitzbergen43 as well as in the Mackenzie, avoid forests, tree foliage, and thatched roofs. They seek out bare ground, elevated plains, open fields, lake shores, and river banks. In spring, they again begin their eternal trip in the opposite direction toward the Arctic zone. They go there to nest and raise their young. They come to us from southern Canada extremely tired and hungry, for their trip is long and there are very few farmlands on their journey. As soon as they arrive, they joyfully settle down in my little seeded and cultivated field. Immediately, they start to work like our own sparrows, whose cousins they are and whom they replace in the other hemisphere. They have the same appearance, familiarity, gentleness, and even the same voraciousness as their cousins. But they are not charmers like the innumerable sparrows of the Tuileries and of Luxembourg. Tabachach could have provided me with an ample supply of snow buntings, fol-

42 [Flavien Durocher, O.M.I. (1800-76), born and died in Quebec, entered the Oblates in 1843, worked mainly in the Saguenay region, and authored several Montagnais dictionaries and grammars.] 43 Audubon.

On

a Desert Island

43

lowing the example of the Eskimos who are fond of them,44 but I preferred that he busy himself with the hunt for big game which swarmed in the muddy estuary of the Slave River. Its waters were literally white with swans, geese, Canada geese, ducks, divers, scoters and teals. Grebes, puffins, harlequins, coots, Cape petrels, and gulls kept company with cranes, bitterns and shore rails. One also saw white pelicans there. In the junction formed by its multiple currents and covered with mudbanks of silt, one could have believed that it was the day after creation. When this army of web¬ footed birds and amphibians, frightened by the exploits of numerous hunters posted in game blinds the length of the wet shores, rose into the air, their cries sounded like rolling thunder. I heard the noise of it at my house, a league from the hunting place. In order for me not to become a mighty hunter like Nimrod in these regions, given the exceptional conditions created for me by the nearness and the profusion of game, the possession of a good gun, and plenty of hunting ammunition, heaven would have to deny me any luck at all. From 27 April to 12 May, there were killed hundreds of large birds in Slave Bay. Mr. Loon, having become Fort Resolution’s factor, singlehandedly killed ninety large birds in four days, not counting the ducks and teals which he considered to be of no account. Although Tabachach was only a child, he brought me thirty cackling geese in his bark canoe, and my hunter, Tchiezele, nearly a hundred Canada geese. Several Indians also sold me large game birds at the rate of one franc twenty-five centimes each. For double this price, the cost of one pelt, I had a swan or a dozen ducks. As for me, I must confess that my best hunting day never exceeded one or two geese and fifteen ducks. I blushed with shame about this because everyone made fun of it. The only thing that gave me some of my pride back was the thought that not all the hunt¬ ers of Europe return from the hunt with such a well-filled gamebag. We ate game at every meal, three times a day, prepared in every way possible. I employed all the wives and daughters of my servants to pluck and prepare it. I gave only geese to my men for their food ration,45 at the rate of two a day for a man, one for a wife or two children. The Pepin family did not get fewer than six plump geese each day. They did not eat them. In all, I distributed from twelve to fifteen of them daily. I salted the rest and filled three small barrels. An excellent way to preserve game consists of dismembering it after boiling it, and packing it in a barrel that you then fill with melted and lightly salted lard. My dear reader will no doubt be interested to know the price of foodstuffs at Great Slave Lake when I was there:

44 Audubon.

45 Prit, daily food

[ration] of servants in Canada. [Also “advance on wages or loan. ]

44

Around Great Slave Lake

Summer moose (600 pounds46 or 272 kg. 254 g.; equals 2 centimes per kg.)!.5 pelts,4/ say 12 fr. 50 Winter moose.4 pelts—10 fr. 00 Caribou (400 pounds or 181 kg. 436 g.).4—10 fr- 00 Wild deer (150 pounds or 68 kg. 0.38 g.).3—7—5° Bison and muskox (280 kg.).5—12 50 Fruit-eating bears.2lA—6—25 Beaver, skinned.'A—1—25 Swan, skinned.Vi—1—25 Cranes, Canada geese, geese.V4—o—65 Ducks, puffins.‘A—0—3° Teals, ducklings.Via—o—to Hares, field rabbits.Vie—0—07 Pheasants, partridge.Vio—0—05 Dry meat, moose, bison, (2 sides).1 pelt—2—50 Dry caribou meat (2 sides).Vi—1—25 Chopped meat in a bag (8 pounds or 3 kg. 62 g.).1—2—50 Fresh meat (8 pounds, idem).1—2—50 Tongues of moose and bison, 6 for.1—2—50 Caribou tongues, 6 for.Vi—1—25 Moose muzzles, 6 for.1—2—50 So much for the kitchen. Let us see what it cost us at Great Slave Lake for certain absolutely necessary things. Untanned skin of moose or bison.1 pelt, say 2 fr. 50 Untanned caribou skin.Vi—1—25 Dried beaver pelt.1—2—50 Dried pelt of moose or bison.3—7—50 Sun-tanned pelt of moose or bison.4—10—00 Moose or bison pelt in thongs.V2—1—25 Dried pelt of caribou, goat, or sheep.V2—-1—25 Sun-tanned pelt of caribou, goat, or sheep.1—2—50 Caribou, goat, or sheep skin in thongs.1—2—50 Caribou robe, finely worked (4 pelts).4—10—00 Caribou coat (4 pelts).4—10—00 Moose sinew, 10 for.1—2—50 Caribou sinew, 20 for.1—2—50 Large assababich,48 6 packets.1—2—50

46 The English pound equals 453.59 grams.

47 Pelu, beaver pelt or skin of the beaver with hair. It is the common currency. Value, 2 fr. 50. 48 [Possibly a loan word from babiche, a French-Canadian word from Mi’kmaq, meaning animal sinews or hides strips used as thread or cord in making of tents, clothes, snowshoes, etc.]

On

a Desert Island

45

Fine assababich, l bundle for.

.V2—1—25

Caribou snare, 8 for.

.1—2—50

Wood sled.

.4—10—00

Meat sled.

.4—10—50

Birchbark canoe, from.

2 to 12 pelts 7.50 to 12.50

Melted resin, 5 pounds for.

.1—2—50

Spruce bark for roofing, 20 for.

.1—2—50

Snowshoes, pair.

.2—5—00

Snowshoe lacing for one pair.

.1—2—50

Weaving of a five-bundle net (35 fathoms). Moose pelt for moccasins (15 pair).

.3—7—50 .6—15—00

Cranberries, bushel (double decalitre).

.2—5—00

Saskatoon berries, raspberries, gooseberries, bushel

.3—7—50

Since I am on the topic of prices, allow me to exhaust the subject, dry but neces¬ sary to economists and travellers, by supplying the prices quoted in the fur trade as it existed in 1864 at Fort Resolution. In fact, since then it has suffered frequent fluctua¬ tions that have raised the prices, but such as they are they will serve to illustrate the profits made by the different fur merchant groups who followed one another in the country while working under the monopolistic commercial regime of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Black fox.

10 pelts, say 25 fr. 00

Silver and crossed fox.

.4—10—00

White and blue foxes.

.1—2—50

Marten.

.1—2—50

Otter.

.4—10—00

Foutreau or Mink.

.2—5—00

Beaver (token money).

.1—2—50

Wolves.

.1—2—50

Bear.

.4—10—00

Muskox or Ovibos.

.4—10—00

Wolverine or Glutton.

.3—7—50

Lynx.

.2—5—00

Musquash or Muskrat, 6 for

.1—2—50

The six months of solitude that I spent on Moose Island were a great trial. My soul experienced a boredom and distaste that overwhelmingly proved to me that I was not made to live as a hermit or even a monk. To tell the truth, nothing could be drearier than Moose Island, four kilometres by two of dry and stony soil, with thin and res¬ inous vegetation. The shape of its spruce trees made them look like the cypress of a Turkish cemetery. There, Great Slave Lake is flat, immense, as devoid of shores as it is of mountains. One can scarcely make out the buildings of Fort Resolution grovelling on a low point five kilometres from the island, on the other side of a muddy bay. On Moose Island I led the same Robinson Crusoe life as at Providence. After Mass

Around Great Slave Lake

46

came breakfast and work in the fields because I myself grew my own garden. From nine to ten o’clock I studied Chipewyan with the eldest daughter of my servant Pepin. Then I taught school until noon when 1 prepared and had my second meal. For rec¬ reation, 1 went hunting on the island, or else I collected plants, picked wild berries, or took a trip in my bark canoe. From two to five o’clock I returned to the savage children to teach, the most exhausting profession that I know. At five o’clock an old blind man named Ekhounelyel, Warble Fly,49 came to sit with me to tell me the legends of the Yellowknife. He did not leave until seven o clock; I even would have to ask him to leave. I would repeat his stories and they would be in¬ terpreted by Marie Pepin for me the next day. For practice in translating, I composed sermons in Chipewyan that I got her to correct. Finally, the evening service for the Chipewyans—when they were there—ended the day as it had begun. My hunting expeditions were rarely fruitful. Moose Island nourished only black grouse in summer and hazel grouse in winter. Quite often I came back with my gamebag empty, having encountered nothing but shrill-voiced starlings and the pur¬ ple-breasted thrushes who greeted me with repeated “crebillon! crebillon!”50 But the white-crowned sparrows (Fringilla leucophrys) charmed me with their question endlessly repeated in a clear sweet voice, “Oh, dear, what can the matter be?” For this little bird speaks English like all other birds. He will ask for an an¬ swer for a long time, the dear little one, before a philosopher or a lover guesses the reason for his sadness and gives him an explanation. Such is, in effect, the meaning that a poetic English doctor found in the delightful refrain of this young bird, and I swear that this time Richardson51 was right. Much more prosaically, the Slavey

49 Louis Abraham Ekhou-nelyel [which has also been translated into French as Deer Tick or Worm by Petitot] also called Layelle, Old Blind Man, was 65 in 1863, an excellent man, endowed with much honesty and affability. He had with his wife, Marie, Naltti-zae-aze, Remains of the Little Twin, six children, whose names are: 1. Lin Dzen-nalpi, Thawed Rat, 35 years old, 5 children; 2. Thomas Ethi-tchoue, Bristled Head, 30, 2 children; 3. Denis Ethi-zenn, Black Head, 28,1 child; 4. Jules Tthou-Ttel, Trembling Breast, 26,1 child; 5. DorotMeTsan-tpou, Diarrhoea, 24,1 child; 6. Tobie Edinlpa-^zfe, Little Grey, 18. 50 [Either Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon (1674-1762), French tragedy dramatist whose works were a model for Voltaire, or his younger son Crebillon fils, Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon (1707-1777), whose nov¬ els satirized the corruption of Parisian high society.] 51 [John Richardson (1787-1865), surgeon, explorer, and naturalist historian, accompanied Franklin’s Arctic expeditions of 1819-22 and of 1825-27 when he explored the Arctic coast from the mouth of the Mackenzie to the mouth of the Coppermine River. He contributed natural history notes for Franklin’s Narrative of the first expedition and an account of his discoveries on the second expedition. He was in charge of the search for Franklin in 1848 but retired the following year in favour of the second-in-com¬ mand, Dr. John Rae. He published highly respected works on Arctic and Antarctic zoology and in 1851 An Arctic Search Expedition. He was knighted in 1846. DCB, 1X1658—61.]

On a Desert Island

47

Dene have the same bird say, “Kfwe-khe-gottine bekke kotsekluyal” (The people of the Rocky Mountains are very funny!) These good people certainly have not even met an onomatopoeia. In the month of lune, the Dene headed to Saint Joseph to follow the exercises of the spring mission there.521 counted 660 individuals, from whom I drew up an exact statistical record by tribe and by family, with the family and given names for each. Since then I have faithfully made this census everywhere I went, and have kept these documents until today. Some of these Indians camped at the fort and some at the island. They only came to the mission each morning and evening. The others came only Sundays and feast days, but they came regularly. I made use of some ttseankwii [old woman] to bone and smoke my venison, of which I had a full storage shed. Dressed and well dried in the sun above the smoke, this meat lasts indefinitely. Before the ice on the bay went out, I had Pepin saw blocks of it and we piled them in a pit dug in that shed. On this ice I put a certain amount of fresh meat that could not easily be cut up. We covered it with other ice blocks, then with packed snow, and finally with sawdust and wood shavings to make it airtight. This icebox kept the meat fresh until August. I noted only that, although frozen as it was, it was sometimes green on the surface as if it had rotted. I attributed this to the formation of hydrocarbons as a result of the partial melting of the ice. From 17 May the ice had left the bay in front of Saint Joseph. I made a whitefish net thirty-five fathoms long which we pulled in the next day filled with two hundred red carp. The wives of my servants worked all day preparing and smoking this fish over a gentle fire of green branches. I even hired for the whole summer an old Indian woman whose sole job was to open, gut, and smoke fish that my fisherman brought her. When it was quite dry and golden as sour herring, she made twenty-five-kilo bundles of them that I stored for the winter. Dry fish is the best food ration (pret) for dogs when travelling. And, in case of a shortage of meat, two-legged humans are perfectly happy with it. With the heads and entrails of these fish, old Blanche made lamp oil for me so that I had a supply. In the short [winter] days I used it fill my kalen, a lamp of antique shape revived from the Greeks or the Etruscans, and at that time it was the only lamp known and used throughout the whole Northwest, including Fort Garry. In our nets we took only the large fish, ignoring the small fry. We had three kinds of carp: white, red, and a bony kind, called piconou. We had dore or lucioperch, and a

52 [The word “mission” has a double meaning in Catholic vocabulary. It may mean a chapel or outpost of evangelization, or it may mean a series of morning and evening instructions and evening sermons over a number of days, usually over a week or two, leading to conversion or confession and communion. In new territories, it was intended by missionary congregations that occasional visits and missions would become annual preached missions and, eventually, residential missions with regular mission exercises in a chapel, prior to becoming stable parish communities.]

Around Great Slave Lake

48

species of pike called the muskellunge which was enormous, and monkfish, m isnamed loach in that country. I enjoyed the eggs and liver of this species of lamprey. There are also true lampreys in Great Slave Lake, but no one fished for them or ate them. The ottonibi or toulibi is common there; but the most abundant fish there is the whitefish (Coregonus lucidus) that I have spoken of elsewhere. The Indians are fond of this salmon fry. They do not wait until they are cooked to eat their fill of them. Nothing is more disgusting than to see the fishermen raise the live fish to the level of their mouth and squeeze the sides to express the eggs which they swallow all raw and slimy. Other times they suck on these poor beasts to get the same treat. I was nauseated by it. Of all the fish of the Northwest the carp is the most scorned. The Indians do not want any of it, and even dogs spit on it. Pike and monkfish are eaten only by Indians. However, you can make excellent fried fish with the first. What I am saying here is the best proof of the extraordinary tastiness of the fish of the Northwest. They are simply exquisite. However, an unknown fish (Salmo Mackenzii), which is so good in the lower river, is too oily here, and has a bitter taste that even the dogs dislike. Like mackerel, to which I would compare it, it needs a sauce. After boiling only a short time it is inedible. And another thing, the salmon trout of this interior sea are reputed to be the best in the North with the exception perhaps of those of Great Bear Lake. Their average weight is fifteen to seventeen kilograms, but there are some that weigh thirty. You only fish for these monstrous fish in autumn and off Moose Island, under the thick ice with bottom lines armed with sturgeon hooks. From the end of April, my employees’women and children go camping in the woods to make birch syrup on the mainland. Here the birch for canoes (Betula papyracea), the most precious tree in the Northwest, replaces the sugar maple. From its bark one gets paper, cardboard, and the best material to make an instant fire. Under the bark you find an excellent natural touchwood, the only one used in the whole North. With it you can make bowls, boxes, all kinds of utensils, light canoes, and roofing for cabins. Birchwood, very hard, with a smooth grain like the boxwood and at the same time very flexible, serves for making snowshoes, chairs, sleds, frameworks for canoes and boats, drums, rattles, and a host of other objects. Finally, the sap of this precious tree, collected in the spring and prepared like that of the sugar maple and the box elder, becomes a syrup that you can keep in a barrel until the following season. You can transform it into sugar by prolonged cooking. The willow and the spruce also give sap that is sweet, but much less so than that of the birch, and it is not used. Birch syrup is a delicacy much appreciated at this high latitude. I used it to season my cakes of fish fry and other pastries ejusdem farince,53 but above all to season the pemmican and offset its very nauseatingly fatty taste.

53

[Latin: of the same flour, or of the same kind.]

CHAPTER IV The English and the French at Great Slave Lake Topography of Great Slave Lake—Hearne, Pond, and Mackenzie—Metis and French Coureurs de Bois—Franklin’s Disastrous Expedition—Sir George Back at Whale River—Anderson and Stewart—First French Missionaries—Reputation of the French among the Danites—Tactic of the Hudsons Bay Company for the Elimination of the French Element—Arrival of the Little Englishman—French Canadians and Canucks—French and English Metis

The Great Lake of Breasts (Tthou tpoue), known to the French Canadians and the Europeans as Great Slave Lake, owes its name to a Dene tribe found there by the first explorers, that of the Etcha-Ottine or the People (living) in the Shelter, understood to be the Rocky Mountains. An extreme complacency and servility neighbouring on abjection earned these Indians the name “Slaveys” from both the English and the French. As for them, they call this little inland sea, which enjoys a magical reputation in their splendid legends, Samba tcho tproue, Great Trout Lake. It is considered as the kingdom and preferred dwelling place of Ya-tpeh-nonttay, the Fallen One who travelled across the heavens, and it is from this place he swiftly hastens when called by a magician. Great Slave Lake, one of the largest freshwater basins in the Northwest, extends from ii2° to 1190 30' longitude west of Paris, and from 6i° to 63° north latitude. Composed of alluvial soil in the south and of igneous rocks in the north, the lake is not believed to be very deep54 at least in the course of the river which crosses it completely from southeast to northwest. At the extreme western end of the lake it leaves from there under the name Des nedhe yape or Lower Big River [Mackenzie River], This is a Chipewyan name. The Slaveys call it Tpi-kka; the Hareskins, Nakotsia Kotcho; the Loucheux, Nakochtpro ondjig; and finally the Eskimos, Kour-vik or Big River. Such is also the one and only name that the French Metis give to the Mackenzie River, because this is, in fact, the river that I am describing here.

Great Slave Lake is like a filtration basin. This vast depository receives no fewer than twenty-five rivers. The The-lape-Nene or Country at the End of the Rocks, which is in the south, supplies seven of them. The Otpel-Nene or Barren Lands, on the east, provides three. The Tpatsan ottine-Nene to the north or Land of the Yellowknives

54 [The Eastern Arm is widely believed to have one of the deepest points on the surface of the earth, but this has not yet been established (2004).]

49

Around Great Slave Lake

50

gives thirteen. Finally, four rivers flow from the Netii-Nene or Shared Land which occupies the northwest. Of these twenty-five rivers, five are of the foremost size: the Des nedhe tchape or Slave River, the Tpa-tcheghe or Water Tail which comes from the east, the Tsan-tpie d£s or River of Excrement Lake [La Martre River], the Ra-klo desse or Horsetail River, better known as Hay River, and finally the Tsa-des or Beaver River [Kakisa River], These last two watercourses enter the lake at its extreme west. I discovered this last river in 1878. It was the Englishman Samuel Hearne55 who officially discovered Great Slave Lake in 1772, on behalf of the honourable Hudson’s Bay Company. He arrived there from the southeast where he surveyed the rivers more or less exactly, and left them their Danite names, Snowstorm, Wolf, Breasts, and Rock. He reached Slave River from the Bluefish, also called the Tsettine River. Eight years later, the English Canadian Peter Pond56 descended to Great Slave Lake by following the river of the same name. He crossed the lake from south to west, and traded with the Indians on Big Island, the upper delta of the Mackenzie, but he did not go any farther. In 1789 Sir Alexander Mackenzie, chief factor of the Franco-Scottish Northwest Company, took the same route but he followed the river down to the Arctic Ocean, and this beautiful river has carried his name ever since. An old French Metis patriarch of the country, Francois Beaulieu,57 still had a vivid recollection of these two expeditions. In a visit he paid me at Moose Island in the summer of 1863, he told me in Chipewyan language about the arrival of the Canadian explorers at Great Slave Lake. It was one of his favourite topics. He told it to all the new missionaries. I wrote it at his dictation to enrich my growing collection, later published as Traditions indiennes du Canada nord-ouest.58 Beaulieu died at the age of more than 101 years. At Great Slave Lake I also made the acquaintance of two old Franco-Dene Metis, both septuagenarians. One, Louis Cayen, was the son of a Parisian who ended up among the Chipewyans for some obscure reason. I gathered this from his language, more refined than that of the general Metis, because his accent was purer; but above

55 [Samuel Hearne (1745-1792) explored the Arctic for the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1769 and 1772, being the first white to reach the Arctic Ocean overland from Hudson Bay on his third voyage in 1771-72. DCB, lV:339-42.] 56 [peter Pond (1740-1807), fur trader, map maker and explorer, established the first trading post in the Athabasca country in 1778 and may have reached Great Slave Lake. From 1787 to 1790 he was a partner in the Northwest Company. DCB, V:68i—6.] 57 (Francois Beaulieu (1771-1872), chief of the Yellowknives, acted as guide and interpreter for Sir John Franklin and accompanied Mackenzie to the Pacific. He waged war on the Dogribs, Slaveys, and Sekanis. DCB, X:38.] 58 (Paris: Maisonneuve et Ch. Leclerc, 25, quai Voltaire, 1866), 7 fr. 50

The English and the French at Great Slave Lake

5i

all because of his skepticism. This white-haired old man was a sort of Voltaire to judge by his face, an intelligent appearance but double-dealing, cunning and grin¬ ning. His obsequious politeness was accompanied by the sardonic smile of a cheeky street urchin who scoffs at you by flaunting his superiority. Three years before, the unfortunate man had sold himself to the Protestants. For some tea, flour, and sugar he had renounced the faith of his fathers, his baptism, and the religion of his children. He tried everything to serve the Anglican cause and to win for them the Chipewyans who were already Christians or in the ranks of the catechumens. By a contradiction that you meet in some people, Cayen combined the greatest devotion to the rosary and to religious pictures with an open profession of irreligion. He tore away the rosaries, the crosses, and medals from the natives, and hurried them to the minister’s house when he was passing through Fort Resolution; then he would pray to God on both knees in the privacy of his hut while invoking the “Holy Varjin” on the beads. Many people saw this. It was a devotion worthy of a Neapolitan bandit. Well, Louis Cayen, twice excommunicated, apostate and persecutor of the faith, died like one predestined for heaven. He confessed piously and with contrition and, as soon as he saw the priest enter to bring the sacraments to him, he threw himself from his bed like Leonardo da Vinci and wanted to receive his Saviour only while kneeling on the floor of his wretched hut. He died piously reciting his rosary like a Dominican. Metis and Indians said of him, “Well, there goes one who stole his way into Paradise. If he gets in, we will certainly all get in there, too.” That was his funeral oration. His brother-in-law, Baptiste Le Camarade de Mandeville, a Metis of Norman an¬ cestry, was entirely different. Much more ignorant and much less intelligent than Cayen, he was naturally open, straightforward, and fundamentally Christian.59

59 Fran^ois-Baptiste Le Camarade de Mandeville, aged 65 in 1863, Franco-Beaver Metis, raised among the Chipewyans, and married in a second wedding to a Slavey, Marie Tsa-shire-tpa; excellent man, sec¬ ond interpreter of Fort Resolution, hunter and fisherman. At that time [from his previous marriage, and together they had] twelve children, whose names were: 1. Dorothee de Mandeville, Sha-koedh, Side of Marten, 45 years old, 8 children; 2. Germain de Mandeville, Eneshedape, 40,3 children; 3. Alexis de Mandeville, San-reldhel, Lively, also called Chi-edin, Husky Voice, chief of the Chipewyans, 35, 4 children; 4. Baptiste de Mandeville, 32, hunter for the fort, oldest son of Marie, 6 children; 5. Isaac de Mandeville, Edjiere-konn, Skinny Bison, 30, 5 children; 6

Laurent Jerome de Mandeville, Ttazin-zene, Black Back, 28, 5 children;

7. Franpois de Mandeville, 23; 8. Joseph de Mandeville, 18; 9. Guillaume de Mandeville, 14; 10. Michel de Mandeville, 12; 11. Angele de Mandeville, 9V2;

Around Great Slave Lake

52

His five sons were models of virtue, especially the eldest [of his second marriage.], Baptiste de Mandeville, a man of astonishing innocence of life and the wisdom of a . sachem or a leader. If 1 speak of these two men, it is because the second was Sir John Franklin’s interpreter during his first expedition of 1820—23, and because both later helped Mr. MacLeod60 to construct Fort Reliance at the eastern extremity of Great Slave Lake, for the use of Sir George Back’s6' expedition. The presence in these subarctic regions of very old French Metis born in this very country, such as Beaulieu, Poitras, his brother-in-law Cayen, Le Camarade, Lafleur, de Charlois, the Touranjeau brothers, and others, is proof that our compatriots ar¬ rived in the North Country before our good neighbours from across the English Channel. Sadly, poor adventurers, obscure coureurs de bois, unlettered people with¬ out any declared goal, they never bothered to claim the honour and the glory of hav¬ ing been the first to discover and live in these remote and inhospitable regions. Between 1789 and 1819, I know of no document that can shed any light on the history of Great Slave Lake. The English Hudson’s Bay Company and the FrancoScottish Northwest Company filled this period with their internal quarrels, which the Indians also shared. In 1819, the English naval captain Sir John Franklin un¬ dertook his first expedition by land in search of the famous Northwest Passage.62 Having left England on 22 May, he lost much time en route. He only arrived at Fort Moose-deer, or Moose, built on the island of the same name in Great Slave Lake, on 24 June 1820. The ruins of this former post of the Northwest Company were on the eastern shore of my island, twenty minutes from my residence. There is a charm¬ ing sandy creek there where I often went to take baths. These ruins are situated at

12. Henri de Mandeville, 3. All of Le Camarade’s children were true Dene savages, not understanding a word of French, with the exception of Baptiste and Michel who had been raised in the fort, who took Indian names at the birth of their first-born and wore loincloth and leather leggings like true forest dwellers. And that is how they became wild. No need for centuries to pass for that. At the second generation the change happened. There is nothing left but backsliders. What a pity! 60 [Probably Alexander Roderick MacLeod (c. 1782-1840), former employee of the Northwest Company who became a Chief Trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company and was stationed from 1821 to 1833 successively in the Athabasca and Mackenzie districts, Fort Vancouver, and Fort Simpson. Between 1833 and 1835 he was with Sir George Back’s expedition and in 1835-36 at Great Slave Lake.] 61 [Sir George Back (1796-1878), explorer and artist, entered the Royal Navy in 1808 and by 1867 had risen to the rank of admiral. He accompanied Sir John Franklin on his three expeditions to the Arctic in 1818,1819-22, and 1824-27. In search of Sir John Ross he commanded an expedition to the Arctic in 1833-35 that resulted in the exploration of Great Fish River and its renaming as Back River. In 1836 Back explored the coast of the Arctic Ocean from Regent Inlet to Cape Turnagain, and three years later was knighted in recognition of his services. DCB, X:26-9.[ 62 [See Richard C. Davis, ed.. Sir John Franklin’s Journals and Correspondence: The First Arctic Land Expedition 1819-1822 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1995), for a detailed account.]

The English and the French at Great Slave Lake

53

6i° n' 8" north latitude and 1130 51' 37" longitude west from Greenwich, according to Franklin s calculations. 1 heir distance from Fort Chipewyan is 260 miles, or 418 km. 340 metres. Franklin had brought with him only four other Englishmen, the midshipmen George Back and Robert Hood,63 Dr. John Richardson, naval surgeon, and a sail01 named Hepburn,64 the captain s valet. But he had brought from Lower Canada sixteen voyageurs of French origin who, in that day, were still considered to be in¬ dispensable auxiliaries and the sine qua non for the success of all undertakings in unexplored country. In our day, the Metis have become excellent replacements for them.65 Franklin also had four interpreters with him: two for the Danite dialects, Pierre Saint-Germain and Jean-Baptiste Adam, both Chipewyan Metis, and two for the Eskimo language, the Eskimos Oglibouk and Augustus Totanouk, from Nain, on the eastern coast of Labrador. From Moose Island Franklin crossed to Fort Providence which was then situated on the eastern shore of the North Arm, short of the mouth of the Yellowknife River. Mr. [William Ferdinand] Wentzel was the officer of the Northwest Company.66 At this post, Franklin took guides from among the Yellowknives and had several meet¬ ings with these Indians, who suggested to him that he build winter quarters on the shore of a lake that was three days distant by road to the southwest of the Coppermine River.67 On 21 August 1820, that is to say, in the middle of autumn, the celebrated sail¬ or then left Fort Providence to reach the place that the Indians had indicated. After having gone up the Yellowknife River and a chain of lakes that it leads to, he reached Grey Bear Lake, at the end of which a portage led him to two other lakes called Snare

63 [Robert Hood (c. 1797-1821), naval officer, explorer, and artist who accompanied Franklin’s Arctic expedition of 1819-22, recording such discoveries as the Hood River and drawing hitherto unknown birds. Near death from illness, starvation, and exhaustion, Hood had to be abandoned and was subsequently killed by a native voyageur. DCB, ¥1:327-9.] 64 [John Hepburn (1794-1864) accompanied Franklin’s Arctic expedition of 1819-22, during which his vital role in saving its members from starvation in 1821 earned him promotion in the navy and later em¬ ployment with Franklin in Tasmania. He subsequently participated in the 1851-52 expedition in search of Franklin. DCB, IX.’389-90.] 65 Here are the names of the sixteen valiant coureurs de bois who became Arctic explorers: Joseph Pelletier, Matthieu Pelonquin called Credit, Salomon and Jean-Baptiste Bellanger, Joseph Benoit, Joseph Gagne, Pierre Dumont, Joseph Forcier, Ignace Perrault, Franfois Samandre, Gabriel Beauparlant, Regis Vaillant, Jean-Baptiste Parent, Jean-Baptiste Bellot, Emmanuel Cournoyer, and Vincenzo Fontana, along with the Iroquois Metis Michel Teroahante. See Sir John Franklin, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (London: John Murray, 1823). 66 This Mr. Wentzel was the father of Marianne, wife of the Chipewyan Jean Beau-Chemin, my servant on Moose Island in 1863. 67 Franklin, Narrative, ch. VII, 204.

Around Great Slave Lake

54

Lakes,68 then finally to a third and smaller one, Winter Lake, on the shores of which he decided to spend the eight winter months of 1820-21. Franklin, carried away by his zeal and the desire for discovery, wanted to push further ahead and stop only at the shore of the Arctic Ocean, but on 23 August the Yellowknife chief refused to accompany him any further and returned home, al¬ though leaving the guides with him. Franklin decided, therefore, to leave the expe¬ dition at Winter Lake, where Mr. Wentzel and the French Canadians immediately began building Fort Enterprise. It was situated at 64° 3«' north latitude and 1150 20' longitude west from Paris, at quite a pleasant site. They spent the ten months of win¬ ter there, that is, until 4 June 1821. However, the indefatigable sailor did not want to take up his residence there before making a reconnaissance of the Coppermine River, which he did in the month of September 1820.1 will not recount here the long meanderings and the exceptional misfortunes that befell this disastrous expedition in 1821. After descending the Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean, Franklin followed the coastline to Cape Turnagain, from where autumn forced him to retrace his steps. Alas! Of the numerous persons whom he took with him, no traveller survived except the English. However, Midshipman Hood, killed by Michel the Iroquois, left his bones in the wilderness. All of the French-Canadian voyageurs, hardy and expe¬ rienced men, perished from hunger and misfortunes. Only the foreigners, the weak¬ lings, the tenderfeet were able to reach Fort Enterprise again. This fort had been left in the charge of Salomon Bellanger, who alone thus had the luck to escape the fate of his fifteen compatriots. If Ekhe-tchop, Big Feet, chief of the Yellowknives—whose children I baptized69— had not arrived unexpectedly on 7 November 1821 to save the six unfortunate whites left without provisions and dying from hunger and cold at Fort Enterprise, no one would ever have known what became of the crew of this Arctic expedition, so happy and courageous at their departure from Moose Island. Thus ended an expedition of which every page of its journal is an obituary notice, and which left an indelible

68 [“Snare Lakes” are widenings of the Snare River.] 69 Ekhe-tchop, Big Feet, for whom the English write the name “Aka'itcho,” also called Ouskkedhe, Old Cheat, grand chief of the Danite Yellowknives in 1820-1835, died in 1863; but I saw his widow Lisette Sha-ttseghe, Low Marten, on Moose Island, when she was about 60 years old, along with four remaining children: 1. Elzear Tsinnay-tchop, Big Orphan, 40 years old and childless. He was the best of the Yellowknives. He was motivated by great honesty, by faith and admirably delicate feelings. His poverty and his mis¬ fortunes made him humble and modest. He was a real saint, a worthy descendant of old Ekhe-tchop, whom Franklin and Back talked about so much. 2. Elodie Epolal-dzare, Iliac Bone and Legs, 38, 4 children; 3. Marianne Ellousse, Fish Bladder, 37, 4 children; 4. Elie Kkpa-aze, Little Arrow, 35, 2 children. Excellent man, mild, and very peaceable, called by the Canadians “White Hood,” loyal and good Christian; but apathetic and not very intelligent.

The English and the French at Great Slave Lake

55

impression ot grief and sadness in the memories of the inhabitants of Great Slave Lake. It remained engraved in the minds as a “perfect example of a tenderfoot.” As for the practical results of this costly enterprise, they were next to nothing. They can be summarized as simply the knowledge of several hundred miles of frozen and de¬ serted shoreline to which no European or American ship will ever venture. In !^33—35> one of Franklins lieutenants, who became in his turn a ship’s captain, Sir George Back, accompanied by Dr. Richard King/0 proposed to plot the course of the Big Fish or Whale River which Hearne had crossed in 1771. At the same time, he wanted to find the trail of the two Rosses/1 absent from England since 1829. Back lost less time than Franklin. Having left England 17 February 1833, that same sum¬ mer he built Fort Reliance at the mouth of the Tpa tcheghe or Aquatic Big Tail in Sacoche [French: Bag or Purse] Bay on Great Slave Lake/2 It was Mr. MacLeod, a Northwest Company agent, who supervised the work done by the French Metis and a troop of English soldiers. The bay was given this gentleman’s name. During this time, Captain Back went upriver across several large lakes which he called Artillery, Clinton-Colden, and Aylmer. Reaching the headwaters of the Whale River (Chloue tchop desse) [Back River] by way of a short portage, thanks to the help of his old and excellent friends the Yellowknives, Back retraced his steps to winter at Fort Reliance. He recorded minus 70° Fahrenheit; there he endured the cruellest famine, knew the taste of his old shoes, made soup out of his boots as well as the tough, wrinkled skins of his sleds. He saw nine of his companions, all French Canadians, die of hunger at his side, and only owed his own salvation to that same Ekhe-tchop who must have been the second “Saviour” of these unlucky expeditions where death spared only the feeblest and most inexperienced foreigners. Being at Fort Reliance, Sir George Back summoned the Eskimo Augustus Totanouk from Fort Churchill, located about four hundred leagues to the southwest, to be his interpreter with the Inuit of Whale River. This man worked wonders of bravery to join the celebrated sailor. En route he lost his two French-Canadian companions and reached Great Slave Lake alone. But at the moment when he was about to arrive safe

70 [Richard King (c. 1810-76), medical doctor, Arctic explorer, ethnologist, and writer, was second in command of Back’s 1833-35 expedition and contributed botanical and meteorological appendices to Back’s official report. Although he never returned to the Arctic, he continued his interest in the explora¬ tion and description of the Arctic and, for more than a decade, forcefully urged the mounting of an expe¬ dition to search for Franklin. DCB, X:4o6~7.] 71 [Captain Sir John Ross (1777-1856) and his nephew, Captain Sir James Clark Ross (1800-1862). The former explored King William Island and Boothia Peninsula in 1818 but on a second expedition in search of the Northwest Passage in 1829 he was icebound for four years. DCB, VIII:770-4. The nephew accompa¬ nied his uncle on this latter expedition and located the Magnetic Pole on the west coast of Boothia in 1831. In 1848-49 he commanded an expedition to search for Sir John Franklin. DCB, lX:69i-4.] 72 (A long peninsula on McLeod Bay, the most easterly point of the lake.)

Around Great Slave Lake

56

and sound on Moose Island, he was surprised by a khamasan in the region of River a Jean (John’s River), one of the mouths of the Slave River. He got lost, froze, and died of hunger and cold alone and without help on the desolate shores less than two leagues from Fort Moose-deer! Poor Totanouk! His faithfulness deserved a bettei end. His sad death drew tears from Sir George Back. But I am not far from believing that it was this incredible succession of remarkable setbacks that gave the English the reputation of being accomplished Mansila73 that they have earned among the Metis and Chipewyans of this country. On 7 June 1834, Back and King started off again under the guidance of the French Metis de Charlois.74 They went down the Whale River nearly to its mouth, to find, to their disappointment, that this gigantic watercourse is barred by an impassable cataract. Like the Coppermine River, like the Rideau River and so many other North American rivers, this river is consequently closed to navigation except by means of canals and locks that would permit avoiding and bypassing these dangerous sections, canals that will never be dug. Back saw no trace of the two Rosses in Elliott Bay,7'1 which receives the Back River to which he gave his name. The year 1855 saw the last of the Arctic expeditions that left from Great Slave Lake, that of Anderson and Stewart,76 officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company. These gentle¬ men also went to Elliott Bay via the Back River, this time not to look for the Rosses but for Sir John Franklin himself and his unfortunate companions, lost in turn in the ice. What if they had pushed their investigations to Montreal Island in the delta of the Whale River in this same Elliott Bay? They might have encountered the last wreckage of this naval expedition there, perhaps even some survivors? It was left to Dr. Rae and Captain MacClintock77 to make the sad discovery on that island, a

73 Tenderfeet, fledglings, novices. 74 This name has been corrupted by the Metis into Desjarlais. 75 [Back River actually empties into Chantrey Inlet, and Elliott Bay is part of the Inlet’s western shore.] 76 [Alexander Caulfield Anderson (1814-1884) entered the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1831 and from 1832 until 1858 was engaged in the fur trade on the Pacific slope. Thereafter he held several senior positions in the civil service in British Columbia. DCB, XT16-18. Alexander Stewart (?—1840), fur trader with the Northwest Company in 1806 in northern Alberta, became a chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821 and served at several northern posts until his retirement in 1833.] 77 [Dr. John Rae (1813-1893) and Captain Francis McClintock (1819-1907). Rae was employed as a sur¬ geon by the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1833 to 1846 when he was sent to explore and survey Committee Bay. In 1847 he joined Sir John Richardson’s party in search of Franklin, and in 1851 he undertook another search during which he travelled some 8,800 km. of the Arctic Ocean’s shoreline, 1,100 km. of which were newly discovered. Rae proposed the expedition of 1853 which finally established the fate of Franklin and his party. DCB, XI11876-9. Sir Francis Leopold McClintock served on all the official expeditions in the search for Sir John Franklin, and in 1857 commanded Lady Franklin’s yacht, the Fox, exploring the area between Boothia Strait and King William Island, where documentary evidence of the fate of Franklin’s expedition was found in 1859.]

The English and the French at Great Slave Lake

57

little later, but too late. From this point on, all the information I have about Great Slave Lake belongs to France and to its missionaries. Humble priests, our compatri¬ ots, were the heroes. Fort Moose-deer no longer existed. Instead, the two rival companies, the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwest, henceforth united and pacified by Franklin, built Fort Resolution on solid ground five kilometres west of Moose Island. This post was visit¬ ed beginning in the month of April 1852 by Henri Faraud, a missionary from Avignon, who retui ned to the post in 1856 to construct the wooden buildings on Moose Island where I wrote these lines. This institution made a great impression at Great Slave Lake. The missionary, who spoke Chipewyan admirably, was visited there by all the Indians who hunted on the shores of this great lake. He baptized all their children as well as about fifty adults. It was a complete success, a victory without any struggle or controversy. But it is right to say that Father Faraud led the life of a hermit. A skilful carpenter, he moved from the altar to the timber lot, only leaving his preaching for the axe and the wood plane. The following year, Mr. Henri Grollier from Montpellier came to make his home on Moose Island, which he only abandoned in 1859 to go down to Fort Good Hope. He was replaced there by Mr. Emile Eynard, from Gap, whom I had just quite wick¬ edly dethroned. With these three brave southern Frenchmen, who were not at all disoriented at these high latitudes, whatever one may think, the history of Great Slave Lake comes to an end.

Although this subarctic country has become basically English, all the geographic names have remained French because wherever the Hudson’s Bay Company officers are located, they have to employ the services of the French Canadians and the French Metis to act as interpreters, guides, voyageurs, and carpenters. Several British writers have shown a certain indignation at an assumed conceit which they attribute to the Metis who carry our blood. They have accused them of continuing to speak and act as if they were still French subjects, as if the Northwest still remained a part of the New France of former times. Nothing could be further from the truth than this reproach. The Metis speak of France as their mother country because they are its children, because they are and remain French in their hearts and feelings, even while they are British subjects by the brutal fact of the Conquest. That is all. What could be more justifiable? We hear in fact these good Creoles call the dusting and melting snow that falls in the autumn neige frant^aise [French snow] because it resembles what their fathers had known in the mother country. They call canard de France the iridescent-throated mallard which migrates from Chesapeake or Florida because it is the same bird that their fa¬ thers hunted in the swamps of Sologne/8 They have baptized the sturdy but inelegant

78 [Close to the Loire, some thirty kilometres southeast of Orleans.]

Around Great Slave Lake

58

shoes they get from Glasgow or Edinburgh

soldiers fran^ais,

in contrast to their fine

Dene buskins, because this shoe is like those which their fathers, the French from France, wore. Is there anything in this that can wound their conquerors' egos and deserve the scorn of a Thomas Simpson?79 It is ignorance and simple-mindedness on their part, and nothing less than self-conceit. One day I heard a Metis innocently ask his English bourgeois if “England, M’sieu, is as big as Paris, or is it ’nother city in old France?” The Englishman began to laugh, as I did, at this naive ignorance, instead of becom¬ ing annoyed like the explorer cited above. However, I ought to mention that the Dene give to their French Canadian or Metis compatriots a name which is an implicit and constant insult that the Indians throw in the faces of their English masters. This name is

Banlay,

a contraction of Ba-ni-oplay (The Earth Is His. The One Who Owns

the Earth). From Frog Portage as far as the Eskimo shore the name for the French has the same meaning in each and every dialect. This can do nothing but irritate the conceit of the people that these same Indians otherwise only call the Dwellers in the Stone House, a humdrum name. Never have I heard it said by an Indian in praise of himself, “I am like an Englishman, an American.” No, his comparison is always in favour of the French. “Si,

si!”

Banlaylastte

(Me, I myself am a true Frenchman!) How many times have I heard this phrase

by savages who were trying to build themselves up in my estimation! And they feel no false shame in repeating it in front of the English themselves, to whom, as a com¬ pliment, they then apply the epithet of “Frenchman.” Similarly, in the east, the name of “Franks” has become a cosmopolitan name applied to all the western nations of Europe. But the Dene do not stop there. They show little enough courtesy to their new masters by taking them as a measure of comparison only when it involves some¬ thing other than common sense, skill, or courage. It is absurd, it is wrong; but what can we do about it? Faced with a mindset that bestows on the English merchants a reputation of inferi¬ ority as regards their own subordinates of French origin, what did the officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company do? They began by dismissing from their barges all the Iroquois Metis, the bravest among the mixed-bloods. The year 1862 saw the last of them leave. Then it was the turn of the French Canadians. Finally, they refused to introduce in the northern regions any Manitoba Metis. They contented themselves in inviting crews made up of Protestant Saulteaux or Swampy Cree, who were semicivilized and under the control of the Orkney or Scottish Metis, to work on their

79 [In 1837 Thomas Simpson (1808-1840) and Peter Warren Dease (1788-1863), working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, completed the survey of the Arctic coast west of the Mackenzie delta as far as Point Barrow in 1837, and during the next two years they surveyed that coast eastward from Point Turnagain as far as the northeastern point of Adelaide Peninsula. For Simpson see W.S. Wallace, The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 3rd ed. rev. and enlarged (Toronto: 1963), 694; for Dease see DCB, 1X1196-9.]

The English and the French at Great Slave Lake

59

barges. These are almost the only kind of people we find today on the barges that still go to La Loche Portage from Fort Garry. However, since there lived in the interior of the Pays d’En-Haut (the North) and even in the most isolated forts of the Mackenzie a certain nucleus of good FrenchCanadian families or Metis of French origin who were born there and did not wish to abandon their cold and distant motherland, the Company or rather the chief factor in Manitoba decreed that, beginning with the year 1866, the said Company would no longer supply the

pret or

daily rations except to men capable of working and who

carried out their work. The unproductive ones, such as women, children, and the elderly would only be fed when they worked for their respective fort. So far, nothing contrary to fair treatment. No one feeds idle people. But where the Company over¬ stepped its powers and its rights, in the less honourable hope of discouraging these sons ot the French and inducing them to leave the country, was in forbidding the marriage of all young people employed in its service, on pain of dismissal

ipso facto.

This was tyrannical and immoral. This would encourage licentiousness and put an obstacle in the way of populating the country. The Metis had long been accustomed to being well paid and copiously fed, and to working little or hardly at all. This absurd system was the doing of some bourgeois of the first Company who, to cultivate popularity, too often forgot to protect their organization’s interests. The Metis could not see themselves getting a smaller share from the International Financial Company, which succeeded the former Hudson’s Bay Company, without making some protest. It was thanks to their pastors that they yielded to the new law, of which they could only recognize the justice with difficulty because it was a comedown from the previ¬ ous contract that they had formerly and so easily had. But everywhere in the world, only the workers are fed. Why should they alone be the exception? They consoled themselves by starting some small secret trading with the Indian purveyors of the trading forts. The latter, as much by affection as by interest, passed on to the Metis

petto

in

[Latin: under the table, secretly] the dried goods needed by their family, and the

deed was done. Moreover, the women went bravely to work. Instead of lying around and dawdling all day long or spending time in useless embroidery, they went fishing for monkfish and pike; they undertook to chop firewood in the forest or gather dead wood. They tended to the traplines for the legions of Arctic hares

(Lepus americanus)

which abounded in the forest. They made themselves agreeable to the agent by doing many small housework jobs, and thus more than earned their keep. As for the law against marriage, nobody paid any attention. They considered it unjust and null and void. The young people, encouraged by their priests, continued to get married as before, knowing well that they would only briefly run the risk of the anger of the post’s factor, who would not fail to seek them out as in the past for their natural and special talents. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s new regulations did not dissuade the French Creoles from its service, so the organization flooded

6o

Around Great Slave Lake

the northern districts with Orkney and Scottish sailors and fishermen. “These little Englishmen,” as our Metis styled them, all with Gaelic and therefore Gallic blood, showed themselves to be so friendly, so lively, such good company with both Metis and Indians, despite an often doubtful morality, that they immediately won every¬ one’s good favour. Nevertheless, while they were all men of the North, they did not long enjoy t e Northwest of Canada. They could not take root nor establish a home and family there. Sailors and fishermen make slow walkers and poor voyageurs. It is only as fishermen and mariners that they show undeniable qualities. It was above all to these poor young men, far from their native land and homesick, pitied by even the Metis, that the Dene, who are often impolite, applied the discourteous term of Mansila, because they always had the misfortune to freeze themselves, to cut themselves, and to get lost when travelling, if they were not out-and-out dying. However, a small number of them distinguished themselves by the qualities that make the pei feet man of the North. Briefly, these unfortunates who had been tricked by the Company at the time of their hiring only stayed in the Northwest two or three years and left by the boatload beginning in 1872. The Hudson’s Bay Company agents had, however, attempted the impossible in order for the average Indian to give the British the name of Banlay or French, of whom they were jealous. They never called the new Highland or Orkney servants by anything but this honourable title. And from then on all the English and Scots of the Far North have become French, that is to say, Banlay. They shrewdly preferred to put themselves in our place by modestly assuming succession from us French, rather than resentfully setting themselves against those who had long held the trust ot the Redskins. An almost similar change in names occurred at this time in civilized Canada it¬ self. But there, another spirit had caused it. It was not at all the spirit of conciliation and respect which the officers of the Bay exercised, but a spirit of mean acrimony and unprovoked hatred which animates the Irish Orangemen of Ontario against the Catholic portion of Lower Canada. They now apply to themselves alone the name “Canadians,” which our compatriots born in Canada already carried. Meanwhile, to the Ontarians, these latter French-speaking Canadians, the original Canadiens are nothing more than an inferior race, stigmatized by the nickname “Canucks. In referring to the Great Slave Lake and Mackenzie regions, I must repeat what I said concerning racial interbreeding in Louisiana and Canada. There the Frenchman assimilates the Redskins by joining in true marriages with the Danite girls, and cre¬ ating a Metis family, heirs to the name, spirit, religion, and customs of the French. The English, on the contrary, only use the Redskins for their own interests or for a materialistic and temporary enjoyment without dreaming of settling down. The Metis families of the Northwest are then French or at least Catholic. The Metis who remain isolated in the woods close to their Indian mothers or even raised as Indians

The English and the French at Great Slave Lake

61

Danite—Yellowknife Indians

are all natural offspring of the British agents and are at least Protestant. I can cite names to support this. Social proprieties prevent me, but those who have lived and worked in the far Northwest know well that this is the case. The prestige and generosity of the English have made them respected by the Indians, even when they leave behind a living reminder of their virtue and race. Only the French are loved because they live among them after being assimilated with them. The first come and go. The second live and die on the spot. It is then always and only on these latter that the glorious title of Owners of the Earth, Banlay, will fall. That is a conquest. A word about the Yellowknives whose name I have often mentioned in these pages. I have said that the Dene population who frequented my mission on Moose Island amounted in 1863 to 660 souls. They belong to two tribes: the Chipewyans or Montagnais, and the Yellowknives or Copper people, for this is what their Indian name, Tpatsan-Ottine,80 means. These Dene owe their family name to a singular

80 From tpa, water; tsan, grime, dregs; ottine, people, nation. We know that mountain copper ordinar¬ ily appears in the form of carbonates that are green or blue; and that verdigris is primarily caused by humidity.

62

Around Great Slave Lake

tradition that I will now explain. Because native copper is red and not yellow, Franklin wished to correct the faulty name of these “Copper Indians” by naming' them “Red Knives.” This he did not manage, and the name Yellowknives has per¬ sisted nonetheless. Moreover, we do not find any ancient metal knives among the Indians. Long before the coming of the Whites they had lost the use, only retaining a memory of them.81 Franklin is in error when he writes the name of the Yellowknives as Tran-sta ottine. This word means nothing. He commits a second error in translating this name as “Birch-ring Indians.” Never has Tran-tsa or Tpa-tsan meant ring, bark, or birch. One must then blame this etymology on those who have moulded the imagination of people blessed with good will. 1 ask a thousand pardons to the ghost of the immortal Franklin.82 He has other claims than that on my admiration.

81

[Petitot is not aware that the use of copper was known to natives on the Ottawa River.]

82 The celebrated captain is scarcely happier in his naming of other Den£ tribes, because his orthography is completely defective. Sadly, his error has been the cause of many others. Here are the tribes: Thlingcha-dinneh for ‘Klin-tchanpe, Dogribs. Kawcho dinn£h, Hare Indians, for Kha-tcho gottine, People of the Large Hares. Tykothee-dinneh, Loucheux, for Dekkedhi, the Squint-eyed. Ambawtaw-hootdinneh, Sheep I ndians, for Espa-tpa ottine. People among the Antelopes. Edchawtawhoot-dinneh, Slaveys, for Etcha-Ottine, People in the Shelter. Nohhanies, for Na-han-nes, People of the West.

CHAPTER V Dan Judicabit Populum Suum [Latin: Dan Will Judge His People] On the Dane or Dene—Kindness of the Dene—Yaltpii-yousse Seized by False Hunger—Naturalism of the Chipewyans—Formation of Proper Names—Dreams and Night Visions—Probable Origin of the Response Amen—Vanity and Pretenses of the Danite Hunters—Treachery Thwarted—Where a Worthy Irishman Upheld a Point of Honour—-A Protestant Minister s Detestable Tactic

I left my Dene flock who were divided into Chipewyans and Yellowknives, the first camped at Fort Resolution, the second around my residence on Moose Island. Their real name, Dane or Dene, means “people,” without distinction of number; the plural can only be formed in the language of these people of the high North by using the adverb many added to the noun. Dane is the name of the most westerly tribes, such as the Beavers, Sekani, Nahanni, Sarcee, Carriers, Ingaliks; it is the oldest name. Dene is the name of the tribes situated east of the Rocky Mountains along the Mackenzie system, with the exception, however, of the Dogribs, who are called Doune, and those in the mountains, Dounie. Several other tribes of Redskins exist towards the south who belong to the Danite stock, improperly called by the American linguists Athapaches and Athabaskans. Nobody knows of these Indians among the Dene and Dindjie of the AthabascaMackenzie region. Thus, according to Mr. Albert S. Gatschet83 of Washington, the Lipans of the Rio Grande, Texas, as well as the Apaches of Arizona, are Dane. In fact, on examining a little Apache study that Mr. John Bourke, a cavalry captain, had the goodness to send me recently, I could understand all the words of this language at first sight. I can say as much about the Navajos. In the West, the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey84 found several tribes of the Danite race from whom he has collected their vocabularies. These Indians live in the state of Oregon.85 I formerly believed I could explain the word Dene or Dane by the verbal demon¬ strative pronoun da, de, di, du, which means “that which is,” and the noun “earth,”

83 [Albert Samuel Gatschet (1832-1907), American linguist and ethnologist, author of numerous pub¬ lished and unpublished studies on American natives.] 84 [James Owen Dorsey (1848-95), author of studies on Indian languages of the American West.] 83 Smithsonian Report (Washington, 1884-85), xxxiii-xxxvi.

63

64

Around Great Slave Lake

which is nan, tie, ni, nu. Dene then means “that which is earth,” or “earthling,” “in¬ habitant of the earth.” That may be, but it is not absolutely certain. There is an excel¬ lent argument that directly attacks this presumption: it is the large number of people who carry almost the same name with whom it is quite permissible to compare the American Dane. Were they relatives of those people called Dan or Tan, descended from Tanub, whom the Toltecs claimed as ancestors, and who were long believed to be Danish or Danes?86 Were they the brothers of the DanaT or Greeks, from whose language one might say their vocabulary has borrowed more than a word or two? Is there some connection that ties them to Dana'i, the king of Argos, father of the Danaides, and brother of Egyptus Sesostris; or even to the Danayers, the first inhabitants of Dana, the Arabian desert that extends from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf? Are they brothers of the Danaiens, the first Semitic aborigines of Ireland,87 or even of the Tana of the Philippines?88 Can one fearlessly connect them to the Irish Dans, the Danes or Danish, the Doenes or the Gaels of Scotland, or even the Denes of Lower Brittany? As for me, I can make the connections. When using what I already know of their eminently Hebraic practices and customs, I do not hesitate to see Dane or American Dene as the sons of Dan ben Yacoub or as the Danites. Now I hear a universal chorus of protests rising up against me. The superstitious, the fainthearted, the enemies of the Bible and of Hebrew tradition will not fail to cry out in disagreement. But it is above all Christians, fearful and imbued with apocalyptic ideas, who will jump. “Invoke Dan? That wretch Petitot is out of his mind! It is absolutely necessary to silence this man. Dan! But this is the Antichrist. Dan ought to come from the North, and also the Antichrist. Dan is a serpent, according to the testimony of Jacob him¬ self: Dan coluber in via [a snake at the side of the road].89 He is the horned serpent who must bite the horse’s heel to make the rider fall. And so, you understand, Petitot is dangerous. He outstrips the oracles. He is a converted Jew or a Judaizing Christian, a false brother, an enemy of the Church, and so on and so on.” God! What a noise about one word that no one understands. Do you understand anything in Jacob’s prophecy? And is it only the wretched American Dane who carry the name of the patriarch Dan? As for me, I do not know the meaning of the serpent which Jacob attributes as a prophetic emblem to his third son. In which sense, in what country, and in what era will Dan be a serpent? Has he not been one already? Besides, for whom and for what

86 Mr. de Brotonne, according to Father Brasseur de Bourbourg. 87 [Thomas] D’Arcy McGee. [A Popular} History of Ireland: [from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, Cameron & Ferguson ed. (London; Glasgow: R. & T. Washbourne, [1867?])]. 88 True name of the Tagalogs, a circumcised people. 89 [Genesis 49:17.]

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

65

will he be one? Will it be for a foreigner or for his own people? Anyone who torments himself with these obscure prophecies of which no one understands the first word is quite crazy. Upon my soul, here is another, clearer prophecy which will not frighten you: Dan judicat populum suum.’ (Dan will judge his people.) I know well that the prophecy was already fulfilled when the Danite Samson became a judge in Israel. But then why frighten yourselves with the previous prophecy since this same Samson is a true serpent and sower of traps in the path of the Philistines? Dan will judge his people, and I declare to you and assure you that he really judges according to the striking evidences that the Arctic Danites have given and still give of their faith in God and in his Christ Jesus, by their hope in the life eternal that was also the hope of Abraham and Jacob, by their love for the Church, daughter and successor of the Synagogue, by their charity to one another, by their courage in professing their religion, and finally by so many other Hebrew and Christian virtues that a great number of the sons of Israel and of Christians better instructed and more civilized than the Arctic Danites do not know. Such is my opinion. Now think and believe what you will. Let us pass on to another question. Some persons who have never seen nor studied the Dene, who have never heard them speak, persist in pronouncing their name and writing it English-style, Tinne, Thinne, or Dinne, Denne. These spellings are not only incorrect but senseless. The English—who otherwise have many excellent qualities—have not received from heaven the gift of languages. Their tongues just do not permit it. Also they are en¬ tirely incapable of grasping, of writing, and of pronouncing the difficult sounds of the Dene-Dindjie language. Mr. Horatio Hale,90 of Clinton, Ontario, does not hesi¬ tate to call the Dene tongue an “unspeakable and unwritable language.” Richardson, in his attempts to write in Dene, has proved Hale right. One could be a famous sailor, a capable medical doctor, a courageous explorer, a knowledgeable professor, and yet have absolutely no ear or tongue. It is obvious. That explains the strange information that one finds in the writing of some great travel¬ lers. I will only cite one passage from the work of Sir John Franklin as an example: “There is,” he says, “a little tribe of Indians in these regions called Tymothee Dinneh, which means “Squint-eyed Quarrellers.” There is also another tribe called Sheep Indians, and another known as Strong Bow or Strong Wood Indians, who frequent the Liard River.”91 The name of the watercourse is written in French by

90 [Horatio Emmons Hale (1817-96), philologist and ethnographer, author of numerous works on the Six Nations Confederacy. DCB, XII:400-3.] 91 Franklin wrote of Fort Enterprise. There exist several editions of Franklin. In that of John Murray (London, 1828), Franklin called these same Loucheux Deguthee Dennee. Deguthee is close to dekkedhi. That is not too bad. But as for the word Dennee (denni), it means simply “elk” or “moose,” and not “men.” The explanation that Franklin gives of this name is not better: “Deguthee dennee which means,” he says, “the people who avoid the arrows of their enemies by keeping a look out on both sides. ’ Preposterous.

Around Great Slave Lake

66

Franklin. Follow these instructions and you will go down an absolutely wrong path. The Tymothee Dinneh do not exist anywhere. The Quarrellers of Sir Alexander • Mackenzie are none other than the Loucheux or Squint-eyed Indians according to the French Canadians, and they call themselves Dindjie, or simply “people,” and certainly not Dinneh. Furthermore, they live several hundred leagues from Fort Enterprise. Then Richardson arrives and thinks to correct his predecessors by calling these same Dindjie Koutchin.92 Now this word is an interrogatory pronoun meaning: “Is it?” Perhaps Richardson wanted to call them Kouttchin, which is a little different, but then we have in this word a verbal noun derived from the verb “to make” or “to do” and which means “inhabitants,” “people” or “nation,” and it is never a proper name. It never means “men” and can only be used as a suffix.93 Franklin’s Sheep Indians are equally unknown in the north, but I may guess they are the Esba-tpa-Ottine, or the People among the Bighorns. Finally, Franklin con¬ fused the “fork” (fourche) and the “strong bow” (arc fort). Our Metis call all river confluences “fork.” The Dene who live at the meeting of the Liard River (cited by Franklin) with the Mackenzie call themselves the People at the Fork, not Arc-fort. Their real name is Etcha-Ottine or People Living in the Shelter, understood to be the Rocky Mountains. By these short citations my reader can judge how easily one can misunderstand the simplest etymologies and the most elementary spellings. But it is true to say that this happens when one knows the language of the people one is describing only very superficially or not at all. There is nothing easier to pronounce and to write than these two syllables: Dane or Dene. Well, there are some people who have not been able to do even that, and they struggle every day without being able to achieve it. The Yellowknives are a small fraction of the Danite nation. They are not distinct enough from their brothers, the Chipewyans, in physique and language for a newly arrived European to be able to perceive the marked differences between them. Both are serious and fundamentally religious. Do not look to them for any strange prac¬ tices, curious morals, or customs other than those of the Flebrew people. The follow¬ ing pages will prove this fully. Among these Indians I performed thirty-two baptisms, and distributed the Eucharistic sacrament to 259 persons; 515 out of 660 approached the sacrament of penance. That means that not a single one stayed away. Aside from the religious

[(Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea; 24.)] 92 |The Kuttchin (Loucheux, Gwich’in) occupied the basin of the Yukon River and the basin of the Peel River to its junction with the Mackenzie. Early writers gave the name Loucheux to its eastern bands on the Peel and Porcupine rivers.] 93 [For further information, see the note on tribal names at the end of this volume.]

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

67

question, they all were great, lovable children. They were as simple as children but without a child's malice. Although they were seeing me for the first time, neverthe¬ less, they received me like an old friend, giving me the absolute trust and openness of their hearts. They spent long hours at my side, talking about everything, curious to learn the secrets of making paper, cloth, iron, glass, etc. They questioned me on the nature and the movements of the stars, on the formation of storms and of lightning, on the nature of the aurora borealis and sun dogs. Well, they wanted to know my views on everything. Did they accept all my theories? Were they convinced by my explanations? I can¬ not say for sure. It requires as much faith on the part of the uninformed to admit, on the word of a man, the spherical shape and the rotation of the world as to believe in the incarnation of the Word of God. However, they left satisfied. In their eyes I was as much an authority on astronomy as on dogmatic theology and biblical morality. The Dene had given me a name: Yaltpii-yousse, The Bearded or Bristly Praying Man, because I was the first missionary at Great Bear Lake who had a full beard. My pred¬ ecessor, Mr. Henri Grollier, loathed beards. The name had a double meaning like most Dene and Dindjie words; it also meant the gentle Praying Man because what he wears is ordinarily soft and gentle to the touch. If we believe them, these poor children of the woods arrived on Moose Island in June 1863, without any food. Famine, they said, had forced them to turn to their good friends, the Banlay, and above all to their father, Yatpii-yousse,94 for help. I was new and inexperienced, and the good people took advantage of me. What else is new? “Yatpii-yousse (my bearded father), I am hungry, very hungry. There’s not a mouth¬ ful of meat in my lodge. I haven’t eaten for two days.” How do you resist such entreaties? How can you bear the sight of such destitution? It is so easy to make them happy, so hard to refuse. I soon saw myself in the presence of a small starving tribe that ur¬ gently needed my help if I wanted to prevent their death from starvation. Fortunately, I had plenty of dry meat and I also had many smoked fish. I distributed some to those who said they were the most needy, I loaned some old fishnets to the heads of fami¬ lies, and immediately there arose a chorus of praise from everyone. Alas! To my cost, I soon knew the depth of duplicity in human nature wherever one meets it under the sun. A savage with the most straightforward of appearances is no more a stranger to duplicity than a peasant elsewhere showing the most innocent of looks. Innocence does not exist on earth. That became obvious to me. Several days later Nancy Pepin, a Chipewyan Metis, daughter of the old patriarch Beaulieu and the wife of my Canadien hired man, came to me. “Father,” she said to me, “I come to warn ya dat you’ve been beautifully set up by da savages. When dey leave here dey come to us and den dey have good laugh at ya. ‘Ah! dat fadder dere, he’s very good,’

94 [Petitot changes the spelling of his name at this point; compare with “Yaltpii-yousse” above.]

Around Great Slave Lake

68

dey say, ‘notting more dan dat, he’s a real tenderfoot. He got no sense. If he keep on giving us his dry meat, very soon dere won’t be any for him or for you in da store-' house.’ Dat’s what da savages say.” What! Such outbursts of emotions and thanks hid only craftiness? I had heard enough. It is pleasant for an honest man to believe in the virtue of his fellows. However, I felt that it would be better for me to gain the public reputation of a good administrator than that of a charitable little innocent. That same day an opportunity presented itself to put an end to this totally unjustified begging by which I had been duped. A very proud and vain Indian, although a good Christian, Simon Ekpoundhe, Fish Spawn, came to me to renew his complaints of hunger: “My six little children have nothing to eat. The net you loaned me is too old. It is falling to pieces. I do not catch fish with that. If you cannot help us in some other way, were going to die of hunger.” Uh, oh! I said to myself. This is serious. Would Nancy have tricked me for fear of lacking the necessities of life? Quickly I went to look for a large piece of dried meat, and I presented it graciously to Simon. “Eyiyi? (Nothing but that?)” he said in a bitter tone. “Oustchou ille, sin! (I do not want any of it!)” And he rejected my offer with a scorn that went to my heart. I bit my tongue to restrain my indignation. Not only did I not give any more meat to this caribou hunter, but I took back the net that I had loaned him, indicating that, if his children were hungry, he should go and hunt instead of hanging around my place. The next day the great chief of the Yellowknives, La-tteze, Blackened Hands, a good-natured and sensible old man, came to see me in order to tell me, in a con¬ fidential and open way, that Mr. Loon, the English factor of Fort Resolution, had offered him four sides of caribou as a present, but he had refused them as a gift too insignificant for so grand a chief as himself. Consequently, he said, he came to me to ask me to make him an advance of a bigger piece of meat which he would pay back to me next autumn, or a little later. I had my response all ready: “How sad, my Grandfather, that you, who have so much intelligence and good sense, that you are behaving in this circumstance just like one of your young people who are still crazy! When one is prey to such a famine as you tell me of, one ought not be so difficult. You have rejected the factor’s four sides of caribou! But then, do you think I am so rich that I can give you a dozen? If the bourgeois had refused you, I would have been able to manage to do without a small side of caribou to please you because you are the chief; but how can I offer you that now, when you have refused four?” On that note I left the great chief to his thoughts. If on this occasion I was disillusioned, I was not angry to have learned a lesson. It taught me that for the Redskins to beg is not demeaning. It is a masterful act. Here begging does not indicate wretchedness but superiority. He who asks and freely receives takes his due, his tribute, from strangers and subordinates. The prouder and haughtier the Indian, the more he is a beggar. The Chipewyan and the Eskimo

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

69

are very much beggars. The Dogribs are even more so. Quite the contrary, Slaveys, Hareskin, and Loucheux never ask for anything for free because they are more hum¬ ble. That shows then that it is part of the native character and not due to the way that they are treated in the forts. The English respect the Redskins enough not to demean them by making them scroungers. They care too much about their own interests to let their customers and their suppliers die of hunger. The Chipewyan Dene were the first and only aboriginal people in whom I did not discover a definite notion of God. This belief, which I found later throughout the North, was to them, they told me, entirely foreign. In truth, one of their legendary heroes, The Man in the Moon, Bettsin-nouli,95 seems to comprise even in his name the idea of a Creator God. The old Metis Cayen divided it as Be ttsen ni ounli, the One by Whom the Earth Is Made. But the natives admitted to me that they had never thought of that, that they had never conceived of so lofty a concept. They were happy, however, that I had brought it to their attention so that they were able to take pride in also having their Earth-maker, like their good friends, the Whites. The old blind man Ekounelyel, my storyteller of Chipewyan legends, repeated to me: I assure you that before the coming of the French priests, we did not know any de¬ ity. For my part, I saw this daily brilliant light, dzinde-sae, which, although very small, brightens the whole world, and I found it good, bepan san odil’ni. I admired the nocturnal light, tpedhe-sae, which lights up our long winter nights, the aurora borealis, which delights us with its beams of light and its dancing vibrations, and 1 find that this was good, bepan san odil’ni. I contemplated those animals so varied, to whom we owe everything, food, clothing and shelter, and I found them good, ubepan san odil'ni. All of my religion came down to that. I did not complain at all about the extremes of the elements. I didn’t condemn anything that I did not understand. I did not curse any living being. But I admired all things, without ever thinking they had a creator who was superior to me. I believed myself to be the king of nature. The term that Ekounelyel used to express this admiration for nature—bepan san odil’ni—is the same that all Chipewyans use to express adoration. Its literal meaning is: Upon it well I thought, or better, I thought it good. Thus it was not at all an idola¬ trous or pantheistic religion. It was the same testimony that Moses ascribed to the Creator himself, in the first chapter of Genesis, after each of his works: Et vidit Deus quod esset bonum. And God saw that it was good. If there is adoration in this expression, it is a satisfaction like that of a man for a woman whom he loves, and neither subjection nor worship. It is an intellectual delight, an approval of the order established in nature, a conformity of reason to the

95 The Ettsen-noule of the Hareskins.

70

Around Great Slave Lake

sovereign good spread throughout all His marvellous works, capturing the heart of that man. Well, I do not hesitate to say that such thoughts should rightly be a credit to the Dene, because these simple and virtuous people practically recognize an immense degree of goodness in the forces and powers of nature. This goodness, like these forces, is nothing less than God Himself. Greater philosophers than we, even if they do not know it, they feel God naturally and admire Him without knowing Him, without having even heard of Him. Unfortunately, these Platonic abstractions, suitable for elevated souls, were brought down to day-to-day earth by most Indians. I did not see anything more than a superstitious and reverential fear for lowly animals. Divinity indeed appeared to their eyes, but in the form of an eagle or a wolf, a squirrel or a duck; whereas an evil spirit transformed itself into a bear, a wolverine, or a raven. They fell again into childish shamanism. The Dene have traditions that join one tribe to another like the dialects of their beautiful language. Do not be put off by the childishness, by the details of daily life, by the descriptions of trips and meals. Savages need travel, meat, and women. Every legend reinforces these three materialistic elements, but anyone who stops at the coarse outer bark would be too quick. Peel away the layer to find the fundamental fact. What is left? A biblical story or at least a Semitic one. People deny it. No matter. I have personally made a deep study of these traditions. I know the language and I know the spirit of the Dene people. In their traditions one finds an excellent version of the universal flood, joined to Zoroastrian ideas, the fact of language diffusion at Babel, the knowledge of the longevity of the first people, the presence of giants at the beginning of the world, the fall of the first and only human couple caused by the younger of the two, the redemption of man by the Son of God, in whatever animal he was: a gigantic eagle and white as snow, named Olbale: Hugeness and Openness. Their ideas are funda¬ mentally Aramaic and biblical. Thus far, however, the Dene version does not leave the universal domain. But some Dene heroes bring to mind Moses, Abraham, and Samson; others remind us of Jonah, David, and Tobias. That is all. Their legends end there. The rest is a web of pantheism, of shamanism, and of metempsychosis, with some depravities sewn on. All the popular stories are dressed up in that saucy and spicy style. This is the salt for long winter nights in their well-heated tents, surrounded by plates full of grease and sizzling sirloin. Let us cite some Dene nouns. They express a good quality: Dene-zon, a good man; or a defect: Dene-kon, a thin man; a handicap: Dzi-edin, deaf person, Lla-edin, onearmed person; or a state of being: Ethi-tchoue, a bristly head, Ebcer-elni, he rubs his belly; Eta-dzar, a leg in the air; the name of an animal: Edjiere, bison, Denii, moose, Dzen-tldre, hairy rat; or concerning one of its parts, Ttatsan-dziye, the raven’s heart, Ouldaye-dhae, a pike’s mouth; etc. These nouns are formed like Greek and German

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

71

nouns by the juxtaposition of an adjectival epithet to a substantive, so as to make compound words. Let us establish some comparisons. The Greeks called Aristocles Plato (latum), because of his broad shoulders; Laonicos means man of the people; Leonicos, he who resembles a lion; Stratonicos, the conqueror of the army; Aristoteles, the principal portion; Hippocrates, he who has the strength of a horse, etc. Thus among the Germans, Frederic means rich in peace; Leonard, like a lion; Bernard, like a bear; Gerard, ferocious vulture; Adelgire, noble spirit; Pharamond, beautiful mouth; Leopold, lion’s feet; Guilhelmus, William or Wilhelm, golden hel¬ met; Lothaire, heart of lead; Wolfgang, pack of wolves, etc.96

Such also are a large number of English names: Gladstone, Summerfield, Goodchild, Cockburn, Goodenough, Norfolk, Summerset, Whitefox, Wiseman, Newman, etc. Finally, so are most French names: Bonnechose (good thing), Courtepanse (small belly), Maisonneuve (new house), Vieilleville (old town), Painbrun (brown bread), Leboeuf (the ox), Letourneau (the turner), Mouton (sheep), Merle (blackbird), Dulac (of the lake), Dunoyer (of the walnut tree), Lecamus (the pug-nosed one), Lelong (the tall one), Lecourt (the short one), Meunier (miller), Boulanger (baker), Masson (mason), etc. So, on this point, there is absolutely nothing deserving adverse com¬ ment regarding the Dane, nothing that does not resemble everything that one sees elsewhere. The Chipewyans have a weakness for dreams. One cannot imagine how much they believe in them. All the knowledge of the shamans or sorcerers is confined to their dreams. In the eyes of a Dene, these deceptive and bizarre fancies clothe so much of reality that they see a heavenly revelation in any dream if it has a religious or a super¬ natural character. Truly, many civilized people as just as superstitious. Nevertheless, it becomes difficult for a priest to tell these converts about the pro¬ phetic visions mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, because the Indians, taking the ball on the bounce, pester you with an account of their supposed revelations. Do you avoid their questions? Do you play down their wild nocturnal imaginings? Their response is always ready and puts you on the spot: “Then why do you talk to us about Joseph’s dreams, about those of Daniel and Peter? If their dreams were real and divine, ours can be and just as good. God is just as powerful today as he was yesterday, but you, a priest, you haven’t enough faith to admit it. If our dreams are illusions and deceptions, as you tell us, what assures us then that those you tell us about are not the same?” Try to get out of that dilemma. Moreover, certain strange dreams of the Dene are often of a kind so close to revela¬ tion—beyond an ignorant and uncultivated mind—and they are explained at length in such a way that they demonstrate a sane judgement and ideas so true that they back

96 Cornelius a Lapide, Canones in Pentat., 28.

Around Great Slave Lake

72

you into a corner despite all your suspicions. My fisherman, Ttatsan-khe, Raven’s Foot, a former conjuror who had lost his oldest son before knowing the Christian religion, worried far too much about the probable fate that had been reserved in the other world for this dear child.97 He was so preoccupied with this pointless and inex¬ plicable question that he lost sleep over it. Everything I said to inspire him with trust and faith in divine mercy left him inconsolable and even dissatisfied. He wanted to receive an assurance from me that his son was with God, which 1 did not know any more than he did. One morning, however, he came to find me, his face beaming as he came back from his fishing nets. “Good news, se tpain, my father.” “What is it, se tsiye, my grandfather?” “Ah! I have seen my poor dead child again.” “More dreams, David? Oh! I beg you, leave that alone. You will drive yourself crazy, my poor fellow.” “Listen to me for just a moment, and you can decide for yourself. You’ll see if it is not God who has enlightened me last night about the fate of my poor child.” “Look, David, you still have eight, all healthy and baptized. Why be so distressed over one that God has asked you to give back? It is your sick imagination that sees all these things.” “Not at all. Listen instead. Last night while I was still crying and thinking of my dear eldest, whom I may perhaps never see again because he was not a Christian, I earnestly prayed to God to let me know what happened to my son’s soul. While I was praying I fell asleep. Then I saw my poor child on his deathbed. Above him was a young man clothed in white who smiled at me. He held in his hands a scroll covered with writing, which he unrolled slowly before my eyes without speaking to me. But while he was doing that, he wiped off the writing and finally showed me a com¬ pletely blank scroll. At the same moment, I saw my poor child give up his last breath.

97 David Amable Ttatsan-khe, Raven’s Foot, 50 years old in 1863, my fisherman on Moose Island, had then nine children by his wife Jeanne Chantal Tpou-eldha, Disgusting Water, aged 45. Here are their names: 1. Deceased son before the coming of the French priests; 2. Gertrude Sha-inttsel, Burned Marten, 28, 5 children; 3. Caroline Tsin-tts£ri, Snub Nose, 25, 2 children; 4. Marie Tta-tpoue, Feather Water, 20; 5. Fabien, Ttatsan-dziye, Raven’s Heart, 17;

6. C£sar,

11;

7. Macrina, 9; 8. Melchior, 4; 9. Joseph, 2. My assistant fisherman, Joseph Tsepan-khe, was Ttatsan-khe’s nephew by his mother, Ttatsan-khe’s sister.

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

73

The young man clothed in white pointed to heaven, then everything vanished, and I woke up. “I do not know what you’re going to think about this dream,” continued the Indian. “As for me it has taken away all my grief. My sorrow has changed into joy. I am certain that 1 received from heaven the assurance of my child’s eternal salvation which you could not give to me. It was his patience in pain and his resignation to the suffering of his long sickness that has purged him of his faults. That’s what I understand from this dream. Now, you, what do you think?” What I thought about it was very simple. To admit it to him was something else. If David Ttatsan-khe had lived in the good days of the Synagogue or in the first cen¬ turies of the Church, his dream would have been recorded on the tablets. He would have been in the prophetic books or in the Acts of the Apostles. He would have been the topic of an epistle to some Church or to a certain chosen woman. He would have entered posterity as a new sign of the protection that God accords to every man who has faith in Him. And we would have been edified and consoled by it. In the nineteenth century it is altogether different. People discuss psychological phenomena. David had seen the angel on a poster several times at my place in an engraving by Epinal98 depicting the death of the righteous. This picture, seen again in a dream, had served to ease his sorrow by changing into certainty the desire he had for his son’s salvation. That could have been very natural, and it was not the occasion to shout that it was a miracle. However, as this brave man had obtained what he had asked for from God, it would have been cruel on my part to destroy this childlike trust, which had needed only a phantom of his sick imagination in order to be com¬ forted, and especially as I was and am still convinced that God is a good Father, that He does not ask from a soul what He has not given, and that, since He is better than we, He must heed the tears and supplications that are addressed to him for the dead who are dear to us. So, I left Ttatsan-khe with his heartwarming certainty. Another time it was the old chief La-tteze who gave me the following information: “My little eldest brother," you do not know what brought me to believe your word? Well, I’m going to tell you, because I and my old wife, too, do not want to go back to the steppes without being baptized. It was a dream.” “Dreams again, Grandfather? That gets wearisome.”

98 [Epinal, a small city on the Moselle, best known for its popular and inexpensive coloured prints, images d’Epinal. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Jean-Charles Pellerin and his son Nicolas developed this genre of pictures with accompanying text on current events, lifestyles, and reli¬ gious themes, comprising one-third of their total production.]

99 The elderly Dene ordinarily give to the young people, but above all to their grandchildren

if they are

very young, the names of “little eldest brother,” s’ounnape aze and “little eldest sister,” s’are dze. Similarly the Iroquois, moved by the same affectionate sentiment, call young children “my little grandfather” and “my little grandmother.”

74

Around Great Slave Lake

“Long before the arrival of the French priests in this country,” the chief went on, when I was still young, I had hunted all one day without any success through moun¬ tains and valleys. When night came, I made camp at a spot deep in the forest, I lit a fire, tightened my belt, and I lay down with a sad heart, thinking of my fruitless efforts. There was nothing to eat in my lodge, and my children were waiting impa¬ tiently for my return. At that time, I didn’t yet know religion. No one talked to us about God or prayer. 1 was a shaman and I called on Nou-hansin, The Spirit Far Away From Us for the sick people who called me near to them. Alone in the forest, with nothing to eat since the day before, demoralized by hun¬ ger, fatigue, and failure, it did not occur to me to curse my lot or complain about it. 1 peacefully fell asleep, thinking about my family. During my sleep, 1 had a frighten¬ ing dream. I saw above me a forked tree, on the two main branches of which were nailed a man’s two bleeding hands. On the trunk of the tree were also two feet, simi¬ larly nailed, bleeding, and blood dripped on my head. There was no body at all. I saw only these feet and hands, severed and bloody. I woke up, terrified and sweating. I relit my fire and began to think about the probable meaning of this frightening dream for the rest of the night. The next day I killed a moose and returned to my lodge where I recounted my dream to everybody I knew, including my wife. No one could explain it to me and I soon forgot it. When the Praying Man Faraud arrived at Great Slave Lake ten years later, I was amazed to see in his belt an object similar to what I had seen in the dream, with this difference, however, that on the priest’s wooden cross the body of the crucified man was intact. That set me to thinking, but I didn’t say anything to him about it. When I heard Father Faraud explain that the figure of the crucified man was that of the Son of God made Man and killed on the wooden cross to wash away our sins with His blood, I believed it immediately. Was that not what had been revealed to me in a dream before I saw the priest? Only the explanation of my vision was miss¬ ing, and 1 received the explanation from one who didn’t know anything about my dream since I had never talked to him about it at all. However, I wished to be sure that this explanation was true before I abandoned the animal spirits to become a Christian. But five priests, one after another, told me the same thing without their having consulted together or even known one another before hand. From that time on, then, I see that your word is true and I do not hesitate anymore to be baptized. Now, what do you think of that dream?

I say again, what can you reply to that? Is it not embarrassing? If this man told the truth, was there not something in his testimony to inspire great faith and great trust in God? Would I not have been guilty of destroying these heartfelt sentiments in this novice Christian? Is the arm of the Eternal then foreshortened so that He cannot show himself to simple souls who, without knowing His name, behave as though they know Him? Once again, no. And still, prudence imposed on me a duty to show reserve in this delicate circumstance, for fear that these poor Indians might

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

75

become dangerous religious fanatics, giving themselves over to every indiscretion of a disordered imagination. Although the Dene are too prone to believe in dreams and to take pride in their visions, they are not, however, inferior on this point to the most civilized of the Ancients. Everyone knows that Galen, the rival of Hippocrates, claimed to owe the better part of his medical insights to dreams and divine help. Caracalla, Pericles, Julius, Cicero, Pyrrhus, Vespasian, Hadrian, Plutarch, Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, and a host of others, says Mr. de Mirville, attached absolute faith to dreams.100 When I spoke in front of the Dene, they felt obliged to voice their approval at the end of each break even when we were in church. “Enh! Yes! Ttatto adi! He speaks the truth! Llakou! Certainly!” These approbations reminded me of the response Amen! which ends all of the pub¬ lic prayers of the Church and is uttered by the people. It is probable that, in principle, this response may have no other origin than the spontaneous action of an audience, satisfied in its reason and swept along by its faith. What is, in fact, the sense of the Hebrew word Amen, if it is not: “It is the truth! It is true! That can be believed!” Our French phrase Ainsi soit-il [so may it be], then, is wrong since it expresses only a wish, a desire, instead of an affirmation. So, I tried not to suppress the marks of approval that my flock gave me out loud. They were worth more than our Ainsi soit-il. Do not believe, however, that the sanctity of life, the love of their religion, and receiving the sacraments, which the Chipewyans professed, excluded pride, vanity, uncouthness, grubbiness, and quite a lot of duplicity in their character. The heart of the tree is fun¬ damentally sound among these forest people. Its bark is still harsh and ungrateful. The outsides become polished only after the interior is renewed. Among them the hunters especially have the habit of lying shamelessly when com¬ ing to announce to their employers that they have killed some large game animal. This is done in order to enjoy your sudden enthusiasm at the unexpected display of a good trophy of the hunt arriving at the very moment when they have disappointed you most. It is in order to cause a sensation, which is the only motive of the Indians in all his actions: to draw attention to himself and to show off in public. One can go along with this childishness once or twice. More often than that is tiresome. One gets tired of being treated like a baby or of always pretending to be an enthusiast. In this connection, my hunter Tchie-zele, Trembling Magpie, was so enamoured of these games that I despaired of being able to get a serious word out of him. “Ah! There you are, Louison? Otpie pinna oussan? Are you well, my friend?”

100 [Jules-Eudes de Mirville (1802-73)], Des Esprits et de leur manifestations fluidiques, [6 vols. (Paris, 1863-64.)] 233. [Vol. 1 is entitled Manifestations fluidiques devant la science moderne.}

Around Great Slave Lake

76

“Soupa pesna lakou. Certainly I’m well since I am here.” “Well! Have you been hunting, my good man?” Taodi! Beer oultt. Nothing, absolutely nothing. There is no meat.”

“

“Ah! Then what brought you here, Louison? You might have done better to con¬ tinue hunting longer.” “At home we are forced to fast, and I come to ask you for meat for my family. Eltthi tile yenindhenaV' “As for that, that’s new. Now, I have to feed my hunter? Yaltpii-yousse is going to take his gun and gear, while Master Tchie-zele sings a high Mass.” The Indian gave a little laugh, shrill and short, then he sat down on the floor, his legs crossed, drew from his smoking kit his serpentine pipe, a chunk of plug tobacco that he chopped in the hollow of his hand with his hunting knife. He mixed it with equal parts of roasted sapwood of the Viburnum oxycoccos [wayfaring tree], stuffed his little pipe, struck flint and smoked while looking at me, silently and mockingly, watching me sidelong with his dark little eye half-closed. I was furious inwardly, but I prudently imitated his silence and his unruffled calm. At the end of a quarter of an hour my man exploded in bitter reproaches: “You are a tiresome man, you are. You are angry, you always receive me badly. I do what I can to make you happy and you are never satisfied. It is becoming necessary for us to separate from each other. That’s obvious, lakou!" “What are you getting at, Louison? Come on, explain yourself. I can never under¬ stand your thinking, my baffling man. What are you doing here, and what do you want of me?” “Well, then! I come to look for tobacco, powder, and bullets which you should have already given to me. Have I not killed two caribou and six deer? Look, here are their tongues.” And drawing these double spoils from his meat bag, the eccentric Indian threw them down at my feet with an air of wounded triumph. “Why didn’t you say this at the outset instead of lying, my good fellow? I would not joke with you, and we would have been happy with one another.” “That is what I was saying. I will never get along with you because you cannot un¬ derstand me. Do I not always have meat when I come to see you? It is only a two-day walk away in the woods. The trail is well marked. No forks in the road. Your servants cannot miss the way. Then, send them tomorrow, and quickly reckon my supplies because I’m leaving immediately. I do not want to sleep here at all, ikkela.'" I gave him new ammunition for the hunt, matches, and a twist of tobacco; he said his prayers, confessed himself, and after having eaten with me, he departed in the moonlight, repeating by way of goodbyes and with a half-surly, half-cheerful air, “I tell you, truly, we can never agree because you do not know how to understand me unless I tell you everything.” I could never make him change his ways no matter what I did. It always started again. 1 ended up getting another hunter. In the month of July 1863, I sent Tchie-zele to the Barren Grounds of the north

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

77

shore of Great Slave Lake, along with Ekpoune, to hunt wild caribou there. For this purpose I had to get them a big birchbark canoe, and had arranged to go to Fort Resolution to purchase one when old Jacob Klo-aze, Little Grass,101 father of Ekproune, offered me his for ten pelts or twenty-five francs. I am giving it away, he said to me, se tpain; a large and excellent canoe that can carry ten people. It is entirely new and doesn’t take in a drop of water. By letting you have it tor ten pelts, I am making you a real present. But my son is using it and I do not need it.” Before clinching the deal, I asked Jacob to let me see his canoe. '‘It is at the fort, I tell you. I’m going to send it to you via my son himself. But, I beg you, do not make me come back for such a miserable amount. I am old and cannot strain myself too much.10- Pay me now. Would I dare cheat a priest, me, who took communion last Sunday?” Convinced by these sincere tones of old Jacob’s honesty, 1 paid him ten pelts worth of good merchandise, and sent my fisherman-helper to fetch the canoe from Fort Resolution. When leaving, Klo-aze, Little Grass, complained, “Ah! God! What misery! Such a beautiful canoe! To sell it for ten pelts! Give me at least a bit of tobacco over and above the deal, kind Father, Yaltpii san-yenindheni.” “Not a penny more, old father. It is fully paid for as it is.” He went away whining. On leaving my place, Jacob had nothing more pressing to do than to go to Nancy Pepin’s to tell her about the fine trick he had played on me. “An old rotten wreck, my daughter-in-law, it was a paltry shell of a canoe that was not worth four pelts, that I had abandoned. Imagine, he bought it from me for ten pelts and without having seen it! How naive this Praying Man is! How stupid!” And the little old man laughed hilariously. Immediately warned by Nancy and indignant at the swindle, I hastened towards Jacob and took back from him all that I had given him. Then, for the same price, I bought an entirely new canoe from another Dene. There was, however, some honesty in old Jacob, since he immediately admitted his misdeed to some people that he well knew would betray him, but I doubt that he would have done that if he had not been a Christian. Cunning minds can occasion¬ ally be sincere; they do not know how to be straightforward. This quality, so natural to anyone who values his own good name, is a virtue lacking in the Redskin, who only appreciates it partially and scarcely considers it better than human folly. For him, true wisdom lies in shrewdness and slyness. My excellent colleague Mr. Eynard came back at the end of June with the boat from Fort Rae, but left immediately when the administrator [Grandin] officially ordered

101 A totally Greek name, one must admit. 102 It is five kilometres between Saint Joseph Mission and Fort Resolution.

Around Great Slave Lake

78

him to go to The Rapid instead of Athabasca. By the same boat, there also arrived an amiable clerk, Mr. Carrel, an Irish Protestant, along with his family, all baptized by Catholic priests. 1 offered them a gala dinner to which I also invited my good neigh¬ bours of Fort Resolution, Messrs. Loon and James Flett. At that meal we had a grouse vol-au-vent, pemmican with potatoes, roast pheasant, plum pudding, whipped cream pie, and pancakes instead of bread. Doing the honours to this Balthasarian feast, my guests never suspected that I had been my own provisioner and cook. At the end of the meal, Mr. Carrel took me to one side and said to me confidentially in a kind of jargon that he thought was excellent French: “Master Petitott, as you are in charge of the mishien, at this point in time, I wished to give you one errand for Doctor G[randin].You to say to him that 1 have one complaint to make against Master Allonge,103 why had he insulted me fearfully. And ... I wished Doctor G. to make to me a good satisfaction.” “What is it then that Mr. Allonge can have said to you, Mr. Carrel?” “It was vile, Father. If Master Allonge had accused me that I was in good spirits with the gentlemen of the Company, I would say nothing about it. People know that all these lords of England, and all the dukes, and all the earls, they bend their elbow a little bit, like me, too; they put themselves in good spirits quite often.” “Certainly, Mr. Carrel, witness the famous Marquis of Malmesbury, isn’t it, who along with Sir Walter Scott drank all his guests under the table and could drink still more, having one foot on the tablecloth and the other on the back of his armchair.” “Very welll I’ve done that too, myself this autumn at Fort Simpson. But, Master Allonge he had accused me of a thing which attacked my status as gentleman.” “As a drinker?” “No, no, Father, as an intelligent man. He had said that I spoke French like one Spanish cow. How can that be, one Spanish cow? I was not one cow, me; and, me, I was not one Spaniard. I was one good Irishman. I never learned French, nothing, except in the forts with the Metis, and ... I believe I talk as well as any of those gentlemen.” “Certainly, Mr. Carrel, certainly. For my part, I assure you I understand you as well as if you were born in Paris.” “All right! Everyone in the world says that to me. Only Master Allonge doesn’t say the same. You understand this, Master Petitott, and you are going to say it to the Doctor G., but he must come here.” This was an errand that strongly resembled the one that the governor [James] D.[ouglas] had given me the year before.104 It just shows how far the vanity of certain

i°3 [Petitot’s pejorative nickname for his colleague Zephirin Gascon, which translates as “lounge lizard” or “loafer.”] 104 [Sir James Douglas (1803-77) served the Northwest Company in 1820 and joined the Hudson’s Bay Company the following year, retiring as a chief factor in 1858 after spending most of that period on the Pacific coast. In 1851 he was appointed governor of Vancouver Island and in 1858 of British Columbia, a

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

79

people goes and where they can see a point of honour. It mattered very little to this gentleman that he had been reproached for being a tippler, but to say of him that he mangled the French language which he had never learned in school, that was slan¬ der for which he demanded satisfaction with might and main. Mr. Carrel left the Mackenzie that same summer. Besides the Reverend M.[cDonald], who had settled at Fort Yukon, there was an¬ other Anglican minister in the Mackenzie.105 He lived at Fort Simpson. This was a quite small man, gossipy, formerly a schoolmaster at Red River. Although he had vis¬ ited all the northern posts looking to make some converts there, his zeal had quickly chilled. He loved his little house, his little wife, his little children, all little like him. A Lilliputian family. I did not envy him his happiness. I did not even reproach him for it. One can perfectly well admit with St. Paul that “he who does not know how to manage a family is not capable of governing the Church of God,”106 that “it is good that every man should marry, because of the danger of fornication,”107 and that “it is better to marry than burn,”108 if one cannot remain continent. We ought to meditate more on these salutary apostolic counsels, and not consider ourselves stronger or holier than were our fathers in the faith. We did not have to accept a yoke that God never imposed on any man, and which neither J.[esus] C.[hrist] nor his apostles made a duty for the Lord’s priests.109 So, a truce on this subject. Marriage is not at all incompatible with priesthood; no one denies it. Catholic celibacy, which was only adopted in the ninth century, was a disciplinary measure, required no doubt after a century of disorder and abuse. Another century could perfectly well decide to abolish it in response to public enlightenment. One word from Rome is sufficient for that. But what I reproached this little gossip for was the trouble that he gave himself in trying to convert fervent Christians, but to what purpose? It would have been quite difficult to say. When one has the fullness of Christianity, it is quite ridiculous—if

post held until his retirement from that office and from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1864.] En route pour la mer glaciale, 275 et seq. 105 [William West Kirby (c.1827-1907) came to Canada in 1852 to teach in the Winnipeg area, was priested in the Church of England in 1856 and soon moved to Fort Simpson. In 1862 he descended the Mackenzie, ascended the Peel River, crossed the Rocky Mountains and followed the Yukon River to Fort Yukon in Alaska, a journey he repeated in 1863. Petitot followed the same route in 1870 and describes it in Chapters 11-13 °f Quinze arts sous le cerclepolaire. Kirby settled in York Factory in 1870, becoming the first archdea¬ con of the Diocese of Moosonee in 1876, but three years he later moved to New Jersey where he died.] 106 1 Timothy 3:5. 1071 Corinthians 7:2. 108 Ibid., v. 9. 109 [Having himself “married” while still a missionary, Petitot may have felt obliged to condemn celibacy.]

Around Great Slave Lake

8o

not a crime—to give up the whole tor a part. One does not call that a conversion; it is a fall, an apostasy. Having scarcely arrived with the boats from Portage-la-Loche [Methye Portage], the little preacher promised the Catholic Chipewyans plenty of tea, flour, and sugar for those who were willing to be rebaptized by him. He offered to buy the Catholic books and the religious objects, promising twenty-five pelts to anyone who would bring him a quantity of these things. To replace our books, he distributed little pam¬ phlets printed in a Slavey jargon incomprehensible to the Indians, and in which the unfortunate man had not been afraid to add to the Ten Commandments an eleventh commandment of God phrased as follows: “Mary, dessi, yaounltpi ille!' This was incorrect and sacrilegious, but it means: “Mary, I command you, do not ask him about it!” Admit that this was funny enough from the mouth of Moses. It played on the word “Mary.” Most fortunately, the savage, above all the Dene, has good sense. The ludicrous methods of the Rev. K. [irby] ended only in his defeat and shame. By clever moves, Metis and Indians got from him as much of the tea, sugar and flour as they could, without any of them letting themselves be rebaptized. They made wadding from his pamphlets for their guns. When he asked to buy their books and devotional objects such as crosses, rosaries, and religious pictures, the Dene replied, “We know very well that these objects are not gods or charms. They are only emblems or souvenirs. However, if they are evil, why do you want to buy them from us? People do not buy anything that’s worthless.” Others said to him, “If your religion was as good as you say, you would not pay us in order to attract us to you. The priests have never offered us anything to get us.” All in all, even though it was easy for him since he had the protection of the clerks at Fort Resolution and a native French-Metis interpreter, Louis Cayen, the little min¬ ister did not win over even one of my Indians and left Fort Resolution just as he had come. Here is a little anecdote that happened that same year concerning the same rev¬ erend person as told by one of my best colleagues, Mr. Emile Grouard, whom I have already spoken of elsewhere. When passing through Providence, where this friend already resided, the little Anglican minister went to visit him and prided himself, rubbing his hands, for having performed a small miracle when getting aboard the boat from Fort Simpson. “Yes,” he said, “we had the wind against us for several days, and everyone was on edge, overcome with fatigue and soaked in sweat. All begged with might and main for a favourable wind, but heaven seemed closed and hostile towards them. Finally, they all came to find me, Catholics, Protestants, and heathens, to ask me to pray for a good following wind that would let them rest. ‘So that this may happen,’ I said to them, ‘get on your knees, I’m going to pray to God for you.’ Well, the next morning

Dan Judicabit Populum Suum

81

we had a terrible following wind that carried us right to here under sail. What to you say to that, Father Grouard?” And the little preacher puffed up with laughter. “That doesn’t surprise me,” my dear colleague said to him with vigour, “not at all, for I think you are a very lucky man, Mr. K., to have got this bit of wind, by the grace of God. In this circumstance you accepted with faith and trust to be the mediator for the natives, and your intercession has been received and rewarded immediately. I rejoice in it with you. But then, Mr. K., why do you prevent the poor Indians from speaking to the Virgin Mary or to the other friends of God? Do you believe then that their intercession is not as valid as yours, and that God would be angrier at receiving their prayers than He has been with yours?” You can imagine, my dear readers, Mr. K.’s embarrassment.

CHAPTER VI Sketches of Life in the North

Soon to the Arctic Circle—Monotony of Life in the North—Indian Exaggerations—A Chipewyan Family at Home—Porridge of Boiled Leather—Rock Tripe—Travellers Lost on Great Slave Lake—Distress and Vain Searches—Nabobs of the North—A Christmas Repast—How Tsepan-khe Confused a Circumference with a Straight Line—New Wanderings

After six months of solitude on Moose Island, I was awakened suddenly one night in early October by the familiar voice of my servant Pepin. A colleague, Mr. Allonge, was being unexpectedly landed on the island by boat from Fort Simpson, headquarters of the Mackenzie district. It involved another change, the third that I endured in less than a year. Mr. Seguin was returning from the Yukon to Fort Good Hope. His arrival had caused the departure of Mr. Allonge whom the administrator [Grandin] sent to Saint Joseph to replace me there, with orders for me to go down to Fort Good Hope beginning next spring, there to succeed Mr. Grollier whose health was visibly failing. Why had they not let me go the previous autumn, as I had been ordered to at Red River by Bishop Tache?110 That would have saved much money and useless voyages. First I was invited to go to visit the Dogrib Indians at Fort Rae. I immediately con¬ ceived of the plan to travel from this last post to Fort Good Hope through the interior of the country without returning to Moose Island. I did not tell anyone about my project, for fear of meeting opposition from my colleagues. The first snow of winter fell 27 September, but it melted. Snow fell afresh on 11 October, and stayed on the ground right until the end of the following April without any thaw. For some time, the feathered game had retaken the route to the south, form¬ ing great flights that had the appearance of a reversed V or of a wedge, the better to split the air. The fish had plunged down into the deepest waters that the frost cannot reach. We had set out our long bottom lines for the salmon trout. They soon provided us with excellent fish, whose weight on average was not less than thirty-five pounds. The last Redskins left with the last animals and we remained, Mr. Allonge and I, alone for the whole winter. We took turns at doing the cooking, chopping the wood

110 [Alexandre-Antonin Tache (1823-94), a Canadian-born Oblate, was consecrated in 1851 by Mazenod, Archbishop of Marseilles and founder of the Oblates, as titular bishop of Martyropolis and auxiliary to Joseph-Norbert Provencher, bishop of the Northwest, whom he succeeded two years later. Tache, whom Petitot met at Red River in 1862, became a friend and correspondent of Petitot, who considered him a father figure.] 83

Around Great Slave Lake

84

for the fire, and fulfilling the occupation of teachers, him at the mission, me at Fort Resolution. At three or four o’clock in the afternoon I returned with the night. Then we lit our antique lantern which recalled to me the Greek and Provencal kalen, and, by its red and smoky light, we studied Chipewyan until supper time. Our food, abun¬ dant and substantial, varied little. It was made up of moose or caribou meat, whitefish or trout, potatoes, and white turnips. Neither bread, nor wine, nor fruit, nor other vegetables. We had milk products because the mission possessed a cow, and an unusual one since she was quite content with boiled fish when the hay ran out. We had the talent to make a carnivore out of a herbivore. But the order arrived from The Rapid to sell our poor Blanchette, and we had to give up butter and milk products. After having made good use of our twilight days, we each took our rest on a camp bed of plain planks barely covered with a bison pelt. One can sleep on it as if it were the softest eiderdown without being a convict or a Trappist. Thus did our winter pass, in peace, work, study, and the privations imposed by necessity. But we could be considered the most fortunate in the country since we had maids and servants and we were well provided with supplies. Sundays and feast days were our only distrac¬ tions. Those days, all of Fort Resolution’s personnel with the exception of one man left as a caretaker took the road to Saint Joseph so as to attend the religious services of the Church. The Protestants also came, because they, like the Catholics, were strict Sabbath observers. From nine o’clock the frozen bay was covered with a picturesque procession of men, women, and children in multicoloured costumes. The heavily hooded caftans, grey, white, blue or black, the beaver and otter furs with leaden or tawny highlights, the Scottish robes, checked with vivid colours, the multicoloured ceintures flechees [herringbone sashes], the red dresses, the blue or white shawls in floral patterns, the rainbow blankets, all were stretched out in long lines on the white and frozen surface of that small section of Great Slave Lake. There were heard the cries of the chil¬ dren, the barking of dogs—because the largest number arrived by sled—the happy refrains of French-Canadian songs, the cracking of whips, the crunching of snowshoes on the frozen snow, the joyful peeling of silver bells and of the copper sleigh bells that ornamented the harness of the sled dogs. On entering our house, they formed a circle around the big cast-iron stove, hum¬ ming and red-hot, which sat in the middle of the room that we were soon going to transform into a chapel. It was a brief time of unrestrained gaiety and of agreeable ex¬ pansiveness, an exchange of handshakes and sincere compliments, a scene of perfect fraternity and happy equality. There the savage rubbed elbows with the English trader, the servants mixed with their masters. Every difference of class and race was forgotten. People were in the presence of God. Unfortunately, for lack of newspapers and any kind of news, the usual inexhaustible and always fresh subject of all conver¬ sations was nothing more than the qualities, the docility or malevolence, of the sled dogs. Each person boasted about having some fabulous runner, avoiding with great

Sketches of Life in the North

85

care any criticism ot the shortcomings of other people’s dogs, which would have been a bloodier injury than an insult of the owners themselves. These days of devotion were the only feast days that these happy people of the high North had. They were our happiest days, too. And how punctual they were for the weekly rendezvous! What care they took in their personal appearance, what sadness when it was their turn to guard the fort! Their only theatre was the quite modest ceremonies in our chapel, separated from the room by a large double door; our songs and my concertina were the only music, unless the clerk brought his violin to accom¬ pany the sacred hymns; our speeches were their only parliamentary addresses, our descriptions of Europe their only official newspapers. What I say here about Great Slave Lake I could repeat about all the forts in the neighbourhood where I stayed over twenty years, about all and each of the missions in the Northwest where I stayed. I do not want to repeat myself. The lifestyle is the same, the existence equally monoto¬ nous, the life equally isolated, equally hermit-like. During the course of the winter, I made a short trip of some days by snowshoes on the Slave River to visit a sick young Dene. It was Djiye-kpane, Dry Fruit, my new hunter, who came to get me. “Father,” he said to me, “my brother-in-law, Young Rat, Dzen-aze, is dying and calls for you.” “Can he still eat?” I asked him. And on his affirmative reply, I reassured him about the outcome of his illness, promising that he would soon recover. The Dene are so excessive in metaphorical expressions that it is necessary to guard yourself from taking them literally. There is always something killing them or some¬ one murdering them, although the Dene is the most inoffensive being in creation. Sleep kills him, fatigue kills him, hunger or any other necessity of life kills him. But do not let yourself be taken in by hyperbole, the stock favourites of their rhetoric. As much as a Dene speaks only of death, it is still a question of life. If he tells you he has killed his wife, be careful not to believe him; he no doubt clouted her a few. If he says to you that his wife is dying, that means she has a headache or indigestion. Do not go out of your way. But, for example, if he adds that she is burned up, bekke oyindhoer, that she went up in smoke, ninidhet, that her breath sails over the water, beyou dekhi, then you can believe she has died or, at least, is dying. This tendency to exaggerate is characteristic of the savage. I often heard the Indians announce that many people were arriving on the lake, a great crowd: “Dene Van, dene Van.” “But really, how many are there?” The Indian would turn his hand over, look at it, count his five fingers, then, at the end of counting: “Ah! Douye, ountladhe Dene Van! Ah! It is impossible, there are a great many people!” I would stick my nose outdoors and what would I find, exactly? Three or four na¬ tives would be coming one after another in single file. It would seem very lengthy on the ice with their sleds and their dogs following each other. But in the end, there were

Around Great Slave Lake

86

only three or four people. These poor people would be so frightened by the crowds they saw in the smallest of our hamlets that they would lose their heads. However, two weeks after his first visit, Djiye-kpane again returned to tell us that he had meat from a moose that he had just killed for us. Then he repeated to me as before, “Young Rat is dying, I tell you. Won’t you come to see him?” “Is he still eating?” I asked him as before. “Not at all,” he replied. “Oh! Then it is getting serious. I’ll follow you to your camp.” And I went there the next day along with my servant Pepin. After having shaken hands in silence with the whole family, I went and sat down cross-legged in the middle of the skin tent in the place of honour, which means in the father’s place. Etiquette and precedence can find a means of working their way even into the humble hut of the wood child because it is so true that absolute equality in society is incompatible with human nature. In the Danite lodges the central position, tpa-nize (middle-middle), is occupied by the father, dene-tpa (the middle man). At his right the children come next, beyaze (his little ones), ranked according to birth; at his left, be ttse-yanne [his old wife]. If he is a bigamist, the husband sits between his two wives [the old wife and the young wife], with the respective women’s children facing them on the other side of the central hearth. The place of the mother of the family or of the eldest of the women is always be¬ side the door, so that she can keep the fire going, fuel for which is ordinarily left on the threshold of the lodge itself, according to ancient custom and routine. So it was in Abraham’s time. Everywhere the wife is the guardian and tender of the hearth. But if a stranger of importance is received in the Dene tent, the father gives his own place to him out of courtesy, and makes his guest sit in the centre of the lodge, between himself and his wife. Before becoming a Christian, he gave him even his wife, or his daughter, or his youngest wife. Hospitality made him forget the rules of propriety. As a Christian, however, he knows how to respect his honour and the honour of his family. Immediately on arrival, I busied myself with the sick young man, whom I noted had only a neglected and very bad cold. He was far from being in agony, and I soon perceived that his greatest illness was severe hunger that nobody was doing anything to satisfy because of the shortage of food where these good people were living. Young Rat was in fact an orphan and, among all savages, an orphan is a poor wretch con¬ demned to every suffering, indeed to every degradation, until he has proven himself and is able to take care of himself. His name, tsi-nay, Pain-sufferer, or tpinay-tse, The One Who Goes out Crying, indicates well enough the lot that awaited him in this world. Oh, how accurate is that short but powerful definition of an unfortunate soul deprived from his early age of his natural protectors, and who survives among stran¬ gers on public charity and pity! I cared for the young Chipewyan’s piety and religion;

Sketches of Life in the North

87

I gave him medicine and left him some more for the following days, assuring him that he would not die of this illness. In truth, he recovered promptly and completely. Our appetite had been sharpened thanks to the errand we had just accomplished from three o’clock in the morning to four o’clock in the afternoon. So the wife of the hunter hastened to faire chaudiere [boil water for a meal], using the Metis expression. Lacking other meat, the moose that was intended for us was thrown in. At that moment, two small white bears arrived carrying the result of their hunt that day, two rabbits and two grouse which also were as white as the little hunters. These bears were Djiye-kpane’s sons, two children of nine and eleven years, entirely clothed in hare skins sewn into a single garment. Their seamless clothing covered them from head to toe, and included hood, mittens, and shoes. That is what is called a Samoyed outfit. The style has spread over the entire northern hemisphere, from 6o° north latitude. Now, let me return to the children. Here, everyone works. A small child or a decrepit and tough old woman often saves the family from danger by ini¬ tiative and skill. What a profitable school this absolute solitude is! Hare and grouse were skinned and plucked, gutted, and then thrown in the pot without further preparation. A half-hour later, the worthy cook drew a single tin plate which had never known scouring from a leather bag that she used as a pillow, passed it through the fire, wiped it clean with a piece of her leather dress, and presented it to me loaded with half a hare and half a grouse. She evidently took me for a kind of Gargantua. I had some difficulty in overcoming my loathing. However, I let none of my disgust show and since I was hungry, I finished my share, astonishing myself by my voracity. Only then did I perceive that I alone had eaten. My hosts had waited in deference until I finished before beginning their meal. These good Chipewyans were not the savages one might think. Nevertheless, they served me again along with themselves, with two moose cutlets as long as a sabre on which my new set of den¬ tures vainly wore themselves out. Not being able to make a dent in this tough and half-raw flesh, I gave it to the sick young man, whose eyes, sparkling with desire, were rivetted on the meat which was so little appetizing to my delicate nature. I thought the meal was over, but then Marc asked me with a half-joking, half-serious air if I wished to taste the contents of a certain jar where one could see a brew of uncertain colour. I hesitated to reply, having in mind the anathema that legitimately attaches to all uncovered jars, when I saw myself served a yellowish and slimy glue that I bravely swallowed without too much thought about its appearance or its repul¬ sive colour. But my coated tongue encountered in this sauce, similar to the mustard of Meaux, so many moose hairs, pieces of charcoal, evergreen needles, and other ingredients less culinary in their nature, that I almost threw up. I pushed aside my plate with an embarrassed air, trying not to show the unconquerable revulsion that I felt. Dry Fruit, who observed me out of the corner of his eye, could not hold back a real burst of laughter.

88

Around Great Slave Lake

“How do you like that, Father? Pretty awful, isn’t it?” “Yes! ... no ..., not exactly..., but then if I knew what it was ....” New peels of laughter arose from the master of the lodge and from all of his brood. Then he showed me an old tanned moose skin that served as a door-flap for the smoky tent and, in the corner, a large moose femur with a bevelled edge that was used to scrape the skins for tanning as in the stone age. Marc said to me, “There is the stuff for the soup, and there is the cooking utensil. You have just eaten the scrapings of boiled tent, of eVtpan-tsin.”1U At this unexpected declaration, I thought I was going to vomit all over myself. And Djiye-kpane, quite happy to have an occasion to amuse himself, provoked me to his heart’s content by inviting me straight out to have a drink of hot water. Nevertheless, I admired the ingenious way that necessity and love of life inspired these poor wretches to triumph over the rigours of an implacable Nature that threatens them with death at every step. It so often happens that venison is in short supply, that fish is scarce, that the hares eat the snares intended to strangle them! There are as many causes of famine as there are dangers of death. Which of us Europeans would not believe ourselves lost in a similar position? Who would think to use our old beaver pelts or to squeeze the juices out of our old shoes? The Indian does not turn his nose up at it. He wants above all to live and he appreciates the gift of life. So he scrapes his tent skin, his wife’s oily skirts, and his own leather leggings. And from these he makes a cheap and tasty meal which is still better than committing suicide with a bullet or by drowning. Instead of complaining and cursing life when performing this miserable work, he does it cheerfully and enjoys his eVtpan-tsin with indifference if not with joy. Tomorrow, perhaps, he will have a good meal; what good is there in despairing? The days follow one another but they are not all the same. He knows that better than anyone else. He alone is truly the philosopher in this wretched land. However, if there are any rocks in the neighbourhood he would prefer to scrape them rather than uselessly thinning his tent, not that the gyrophor [plate-like] lichen are tastier than the glue from his leg¬ gings. But it is a simple measure of economy. He will get a really tasteless gelatine from boiled moss, but it will snatch his children from death. I have named it “rock tripe,” which one might better call “rock scum,” as it is called in Dene, the-tsin. I slept in Djiye-kpane’s lodge on the frozen earth which was barely covered by some small fir branches. The little children, dressed in their only Samoyed garment of white hare skin, lay down side by side under a single blanket also made of hare skins, their feet towards the hearth. They snoozed until morning, while I spent the night groaning and poking the fire, shivering with cold and unable to sleep. The Indian of the Far North is like a Rocky Mountain woodchuck, alive and alert in summer and slow moving and sleepy in winter. It is only at ten o’clock in the

1,1 El’tpan, back of skin; tsin, grimy.

Sketches of Life in the North

89

morning that this family tore themselves from the arms of Morpheus. The house¬ wife was the last to decide to return to active life although her bed of boughs was far from being a bed of sensual pleasure. Drawing his children to him, the father ran his fingers through their shaggy hair to give them an appearance of neatness. Next, he made them recite the morning prayer; then, he put a pot in their hands and sent them to look for clean snow to add to the cooking pot. As the last act of the evening had been eating, it was also the first of the next morning. Our meal finished, we again took the road to Moose Island where we arrived in the depth of night and in the middle of a snowstorm. Very sad news awaited us there. We learned that the northern mail leaving for Europe had just arrived at Fort Resolution carried by two English clerks. These gentlemen, when taken by surprise on the lake by the snowstorm, had left there the prelate [Grandin], who was our temporary su¬ pervisor, and his manservant, Narcisse Pepin’s oldest son, both of whom had taken the opportunity to visit us by joining them at The Rapid. This news shattered us, as well it might. Two men alone on the ice at eight o’clock at night in December and in a dreadful storm, when the khamasan raised thick swirls of frozen snow so that one could see nothing at four paces in front of him; alone in the night, on the ice with¬ out a trail at minus 350 Celsius, meant death, and what a death! So Pepin and I, no longer feeling any weariness, rushed onto the ice of Great Slave Lake, followed by the Yellowknife Ttsepan-khe, Scabby Skin Boots, my servant. It was no joke to search for two lost people in the midst of the darkness and raging storm. But it was a matter of life or death for them and we did not hesitate one second. We ran through the swirls of powder snow, brandishing torches, let¬ ting out loud calls that the howling of the wind drowned out. When we stopped to hear if anyone answered our cries, we seemed to hear a distant call, some dying moans. But we were fooling ourselves. It was only the thousand voices one hears in the midst of a storm, especially when one’s imagination is overwrought as ours was by the approaching double calamity. At the mission Nancy Pepin, a veritable Chipewyan amazon, did not stop firing off gunshots. We did not even hear them, how then could the travellers detect them in the open? Moreover, during extreme cold, the sound of gunshots does not produce any more noise than if someone broke a nut beside you. Insensible to the freezing cold, to the violence of the wind, to drowsiness and the snowstorm, we lit a large fire of evergreens at the end of the island. It is in such a situation that one observes, without being able to explain it, how a power¬ ful motive, a very lively feeling, a brief overexcitement, can render the lesser part of the human being, the body, insensible to a certain degree, because these influ¬ ences sweep away and distract the soul, which is the superior and sensitive part. We were soon convinced that our fire itself could not penetrate the dense snowstorm because we saw no one arrive after our having kept the fire burning for two hours at the edge of the great lake. Our fear was that the travellers, lost in the darkness,

90

Around Great Slave Lake

were going further away instead of towards the mission or the fort. In that case their death was inevitable. After two hours of calling in vain, useless waiting, and suffering from the storm and snow, we sadly retraced our steps to Saint Joseph. It was obvious that either our travellers had made camp or that they were already nothing more than corps¬ es. There remained one other possibility, that that they had already arrived at Saint Joseph while we were calling them by the lake. A gunshot fired at our approach by Nancy Pepin sounded like a funeral knell in our ears. It was eleven o’clock at night and the two lost persons had not been found. We spent the night filled with anxiety, listening to the smallest sound, always believing we were hearing the howling of the dogs and cries of distress. It was only the raucous eruptions of the khamasan. At daybreak, two French Metis servants from Fort Resolution, Louison Lanoie and Pierre Beaulieu, defied the orders of their master, Mr. Loon—orders I could never understand—harnessed their dogs to their sleds, supplied themselves with provi¬ sions and warm blankets, and in their turn dashed onto Great Slave Lake. At ten o’clock in the morning, they finally returned, bringing back to us the two travellers, safe and sound. They did not even have frostbite, while the two officers who had left them the night before had frozen their faces even though they had stretched out on their dogsleds. When they had separated from the bishop and his manservant, these two gentle¬ men found themselves trapped, they said, by the khamasan that was about to enve¬ lope them. They were halfway between Burnt Islands behind them and Moose Island in front. If the mission dogs had been less tired, the young Metis could have whipped them enough to reach shore before nightfall. Unfortunately, these poor animals were at the end of their strength, and their companions were just as worn out as they. For some time, they crawled along in what they thought was the right direction, unable to distinguish anything, although aware that the wind had changed direction; that is to say that they had just unwittingly made a semicircle, turning away from their path. However, they walked until the depth of night, calling for help and letting their dogs follow their own instinct. It was truly a case of being completely lost, because the fierce wind kept these intelligent animals from smelling the ground. So, worn out, they tried to camp on the ice, not knowing that this would tempt certain death. They dug a pit in a snowbank, placed the sled on the side where the wind blew, slipped into the hole side by side, wrapped in their blankets, pulled the snow over themselves and, after commending themselves to God, tried to sleep. But their body heat melted the snow that they had brought in on their clothes and the wind froze the water, so that they had to spend the night moving about, rubbing themselves and blowing on their hands to keep them from freezing. Day found them in this dangerous position. With daylight they saw land at a slight distance. It was Moose Island, which they did not recognize at all. They ran to it, lit a fire and warmed themselves. This was how the

Sketches of Life in the North

9i

Metis found them. The place where they had landed was not far from the mission, only a quarter-hour s walk, and just two paces from our fire the previous night. The same night, the Chief Trader of Fort Resolution and his agent, as well as the two unknown officers, came to visit the travelling prelate in order to express their regrets. They displayed the luxury of nabobs. Mr. Loon was dressed in an overcoat of thick leather-wool material trimmed with black fox, the most expensive of all furs. For that alone, this overcoat had cost him fifty pounds sterling. His mittens in royal blue striped with gold were held by white strips ornamented with tassels of silk flowers. Beaded moccasins and a fur cap in black marten and blue velour completed this rich French-Canadian costume. The other gentlemen were no less elegantly and strangely dressed. But it was above all the dog teams of these bourgeois of the North who attracted the most looks from the curious. They were outfitted with black velour rugs embroidered with glass beads, rugs of red cloth trimmed in silk, harness of Russian leather, dog collars decorated with sleigh bells and surmounted by sheep bells, pompoms of coloured wool, ribbons embroidered with gold, and silver bells. The sleds were equally equipped. The two strangers tried to offer their condolences. They excused themselves with a very embarrassed air. As one does in such circumstances, they excused their ignorance, but one saw, by their bearing, that they were pained and humiliated by this misadven¬ ture. Our administrator put them at ease by his good-naturedness, and did not show to them either discontent or bitterness. They seemed touched by his generosity and invited him, as well as Mr. Allonge and me, to share Christmas dinner, for the next day was Christmas. No sooner had they left than their four-poodle-dog chariots ate up the distance, trying to get ahead of one another. In the twinkling of an eye, they appeared to be only little black spots on the lake’s surface before disappearing completely. The next day our team was far from being as dashing or impressive. We each, how¬ ever, had a sled on which we crouched like Chinese monkeys. Our dogs, who were feel¬ ing the previous day’s exhaustion, trotted at a rather more modest speed. Our servants, like good savages, profited by the invitation that their masters had received, and went to nibble in the fort’s kitchen in the hope of picking up our leftovers. For a small cake and a cup of sugared tea, an Indian might run for five days. Besides, we knew that Mr. Loon, who liked to think of himself as being one of the gentlemen of the North, did things in a grand manner and that there would be something tasty to eat for each of the servants of the fort and of the mission. So, they followed us on wooden sleds and even on a simple board pulled by some skinny, wheezing, mangy mutt who looked like death. Anyone who saw our cavalcade that day could not have suppressed a smile of pity. One would have said Mr. Goguelu112 was going to dine in town bringing with him his wife,

112

[Old French for an overly pretentious, arrogant, and conceited character; however, “goglu” is a

bobolink in Canada.]

Around Great Slave Lake

92

children, dog, cats, hens, turkeys, and even his parrot. The dinner was splendid, the table sumptuously set. 1 will describe it so that my kind reader may have a glimpse of the resources and good things of the great North after having seen its miseries. The first course was composed of main dishes, such as moose meat boiled and roasted, medallions of caribou in sugared gravy, steaks of moose heart, caribou tongues, muzzles, beaver tails, game eggs stuffed with turnip and rice, fried potatoes, and kohlrabi in marmalade. For the second course, there were sweetmeats such as rice pilaf with grapes, rice with milk, currant pudding, fruit pies, and dumplings. Finally, the third course was made up of sweets brought from England: cookies, sugar-coated almonds, figs and raisins, almonds, pine nuts, and cranberry jam. This meal, the most complete and the best prepared of any that I attended in the Northwest, began with a crudeness that I leave to my readers to judge. Mr. Loon in arranging the seating—there were no women in the fort—gave me the place of hon¬ our, placed the administrator-bishop on his left, and did not assign a particular seat for my colleague, Mr. Allonge, contenting himself by calling out to the other guests, “Gentlemen take your places.” This invitation was then only a newly disguised insult except towards me. 1 did not feel any gratitude towards this gentleman because of the pain that he quite needlessly gave to the prelate and to my colleague. The return of this “jinxed” prelate to the mission at The Rapid seemed much like his departure. One could have said that misfortune dogged his steps. My servants, Narcisse Pepin and Joseph Tsepan-khe, were to accompany him as far as Fort Big Island. Leaving 26 December at five o’clock in the morning in clear weather, our travellers decided to breakfast on an islet situated only one league from the mission. Warm and with full stomachs, they briskly set off again with Tsepan-khe serving as guide. At this juncture, the moon became hidden, the darkness increased, but the Indian continued on. At the end of an hour’s walk, an island appeared to their astonished eyes. “What island can that be?” exclaimed my good fellow. “Can we be at Burnt Islands already? That’s impossible. It must be Eggs Island.” However, it was impossible to account for this. But the island stood out better and better. One made out the pointed evergreens and the steep cliffs, then covered with snow. “Well, what’s that fire shining under the trees and throwing off showers of sparks? Are there some Indians camped at this place?” While the stunned group were asking themselves these questions, the dogs hurried towards this welcome fire to warm their noses there. Suddenly, to general embarrassment, what do you think they recognized? The campsite they had left an hour ago! Master Tsepan-khe had given a complete tour of the island to the three travellers, by confusing a circumference with a straight line. They decided it was best to await daylight before setting out again. At the approach to Fort Big Island, there were new adventures. During the night, our travellers had made the long crossing from Rock Point to the end of Big Island. At least

Sketches of Life in the North

93

that is what they thought they did. It was fifteen leagues of bare ice and blue sky without even a horizon. When the first light of 31 December dawned, they found themselves in a place that none of them recognized, having in front of them a large point of land that stretched out a long way. Tsepan-khe maintained that it was the point on which was situated the fort they were looking for. Unfortunately they could not see any trace of it. A new disappointment. Which way to go, forward or back? However, the supplies were spent, the dogs tired, and the two young men at the end of their wits. They continued to go on without knowing where they would end up. Tsepan-khe and young Pepin had become dizzy from being lost. Their heads spun, and they felt sick to their stomachs. Such is the natural effect on a lost traveller who travels an unknown route. His imagination performs endless circles. The day was, however, splendid and the sun gleamed. From all sides, islands seemed to rise up out of the lake. They thought they recognized them, but the islands suddenly disappeared, in¬ creasing the disorder of their thoughts. It was a mirage. The two Pepins, father and son, as well as Tsepan-khe, decided to retrace their steps to Moose Island. In truth, they had only enough supplies for two meals, but they counted on killing and eating their dogs along the way. The prelate went ahead as a scout. He thought he could see the fort on the other side of a channel and hear the baying of dogs. But he did not dare believe the evidence of his eyes or his ears because he did not remember this place. His story, marked by hesitation, could not convince his unhappy companions, who immediately took the road back. What a disappointment! They went back when they were so close to their goal! Fortunately, in retracing the crossing from Rock Point in the opposite direction, they found a marked trail on the ice that they recognized as the one that led to the Desmarest Islands fisheries at Fort Big Island. They must have crossed it the first time during the night without seeing it. Immediately overcome with joy, they turned their backs on the lake and retraced their steps for the second time. On 5 January, a little after midday, they reached Big Island Fort after eleven days of walking on Great Slave Lake including six whole days of unbelievable wanderings. Never had tenderfeet so distinguished themselves since the Europeans came to the Northwest. But all these emotions, these poignant anxie¬ ties, caused Mr. Administrator a sickness from which he suffered for such a long time that he promised himself never to undertake a useless trip during winter with inex¬ perienced children for companions. Thus, in the following month of June, the prelate left the Mackenzie District, which he had provisionally administered, forever leaving it entirely in the hands of its titular bishop, Monseigneur d’Anemour [Faraud],

St. Michael’s Mission and Fort Rae

94

CHAPTER VII National Legend of the Yellowknives113 Legend of the Metal Woman—The Woman Who Holds up the World—Same Tradition among the Eskimos, the Greenlanders, the Kollouches, and the Dindjie Travelling Woman of the Japanese, the Irish, and the Tripolitanians—Where Is the Real Copper River?—Symbolic Personification of the Nation That Introduced Metal—Volcanic Cataclysms—Pele in the Four Quarters of the World—Where Are the Signs Erected by the Metal People?—What Was This Mysterious Nation?

—

Each tribe of the Danite nation presumes to glorify itself with a transcendental or magical origin. Chipewyans and Yellowknives say they are born of the union of the first man and a grouse that metamorphosed into a woman during the man’s sleep. The Loucheux or Dindjie have almost the same tradition. They recognize the woman of the day or of the morning, also called the daughter of the Moon god, as the wife of the first man, and whose sons, born before mankind, were grouse, who later meta¬ morphosed into Dindjie. Much more modest, the Hareskins and the Dogribs claim descent from a Dene woman and a Kollouche114 magician who had the decency to metamorphose himself into a black dog during the night. The Dane and Kenai of Alaska claim descent from a raven through two women. But all of these tribes agree in saying that, before their arrival in North America, they received a visit from a strange woman who gave them knowledge of metal, then disappeared as she had come from the western shores of the continent. It is this curi¬ ous legend that I have undertaken to explore in this chapter. The Chipewyans’ and the Yellowknives’ tradition mention that, in a distant age, the Eskimos kidnapped a Dene woman and took her westward beyond the sea after having covered her head so that she would not know the way. There she was married to an Eskimo by whom she had a son but even this could not make her forget her na¬ tive land and her countrymen. She took advantage of an opportunity that was given her at an Inuit feast to steal an umiak115 with which she and her child escaped. Not knowing in which direction lay her native land, this woman headed towards the east because in those areas the sea was not very deep and was covered with islands

113 This chapter constitutes a pamphlet which I had published at Meaux, in 1888, and which is now out of print. E.P. [La femme aux metaux (Meaux: Margerith-Dupre printer, 1888), 24 p.] 114 [Native of the Pacific coast of Alaska, also called Tlingit, or Koluschan.] 115 [A large open boat, traditionally used by Inuit women, was made by stretching animal hides over a wooden frame.]

95

96

Around Great Slave Lake

close to one another. She travelled from island to island in search of food. When the crossings could not be made in a single day, she planted a long stick in the sandy bot¬ tom of the sea, tied her cockleshell to it, and camped on the peaceful waves. By this means, she reached the eastern continent, that is to say, North America, not knowing where she was or where she should land. Then a white wolf (Pele) came to meet her. He swam in front of the fugitive’s skiff, landed at the mouth of a river, and ran away into the woods, throwing a piteous look at his protegee. The foreign woman under¬ stood then that the white wolf was her guardian spirit. And she venerated him. Other accounts do not mention this trip across the Aleutian archipelago at all. They say that the woman wandered a long time on the shore of the western sea, look¬ ing for a ford by which she could return to her country. At that moment the white wolf approached her. Then, heading towards the sea, he resolutely went into the waves with water only up to his belly and so crossed at a narrow place. Seeing this, the woman did the same and landed on the American shore. Then turning around, she saw something that resembled an island in the sea, and she thought she was being pursued by a party of Eskimos. But she soon realized that it was only a herd of caribou that was also crossing at the narrow ford. The woman hid herself at the sight; she fixed a long pole to her awl of iron, stabbed a passing caribou, killed it, and ate. After she had eaten her fill, she smoked the rest of the meat to have enough for her travels, but having perceived that her little Eskimo was stealing it, she pitilessly abandoned this child on the shore of the sea and went off all alone in the woods, going back up the river that she had discovered. Suddenly, on the shores of this waterway, she spotted a high mountain that spewed flames. That made her think that people were camped at the summit. So, she climbed the smoking mountain, but she only saw a red metal, that is to say it was molten, that gave off the light and the fire that she had seen from below. After leaving this volcano, the travelling woman set up big stones wherever she went throughout the country as signs that she had passed there and as guideposts to find her way later. Thus she arrived among the Dene who recognized her as one of their own. She informed them that she had discovered a red metal at the edge of the sea. This metal is called tsa-’ntsane, beaver dung, or sa-tson, bear smoke, because the droppings of both these animals are red and this metal resembles them. Immediately afterwards, the woman returned three times to the western sea, ac¬ companied by these Dene, to gather this mineral. They thought of her as a woman who came from heaven. But the last time she made this trip with her new compatriots, they were violent with her, so that she did not want to follow them into the interior of the country anymore. She then sat down on the ground next to her metal, which she no longer wished to leave. In vain the Dene begged her to follow them. She no longer trusted them and did not want to do anything, so they ended up by leaving her. Nevertheless, the Dene returned to the sea some time later to look for the metal of the flaming mountain. They found that the Metal Woman had sunk into the bosom of the earth as far as her belt. Again she refused to follow them because she no longer

National Legend of the Yellowknives

97

trusted their word. But because she liked some of them, she again gave them some of her red metal. She also said to them, “I will supply good metal to those who will bring me a gift of good meat. If they bring me caribou’s lung or heart or liver, I’ll give them in return some iron that has the colour and shape of these organs. As for those who only give me bad presents, they’ll find here only metal that cracks.” When they returned later to look for the metal, the men noticed that the wom¬ an had sunk into the earth up to her neck. In this condition, the Dene again gave her food, and in return they found good metal. But the last time they returned, the woman had entirely disappeared into the bowels of the earth. In vain they brought her their best meat, but the woman had sunk so far down that she could give them nothing more. From then on, people said, they could find no more of the metal on the shore of the Copper River (Tsan-tsan-des). However, one still sees to this day the large raised stones that the woman had placed everywhere she passed. It was by means of these landmarks (eyaolshen) that this woman had managed to return to the place whence she came. And it was those Dene whom she had helped and who had abused her that bear the name of the Copper People (Tpaltsan Ottine). This curious legend seems to me to be a variant of the one that Admiral Baron Von Wrangel116 found among the Kollouche Indians on the Pacific shores. It has been reported by Mr. Alph. L. Pinart117 as well as by Mr. W.H. Dali118 from a Russian text. This legend causes a fabled creature, whom these Indians called “The Woman Who Holds Up the World,” to vanish in the crater of Edgecombe volcano near Sitka island near another Copper River in Alaska. They claim that she supports the terrestrial disk above the waves of the ocean, in the same way as the giant Atlas of the ancient Greeks, the elephant of the Hindus, the tortoise of the Algonquins, the post or prop of the Chipewyan Dene, and the Foot of Heaven of the Hareskin and the Loucheux. In 1879 I found among the Dene Thi-lan-Ottine at Cold Lake another version of the same tradition which had been current at Ile-a-la-Crosse, when Mgr. Tache heard it in 1851. Here is how His Lordship speaks of it. In the age of giants one of them, while walking on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, met another giant. He engaged him in fierce combat, and he would have been beaten if the man whom he protected had not saved his benefactor by cutting the thigh

116 [Ferdinand Petrovich, Baron Wrangel (1796-1870), Russian explorer, mapped the Siberian coast from Cape Chelagskoi to the mouth of the Kolyma River between 1820 and 1823.] 117 [Alphonse-Louis Pinart (1852-1911), French linguist, cartographer, author, and explorer of Central America and the west coast of North America to Alaska. Petitot dedicated his D£ne-Dindjie dictionary to him. See also Ross Parmenter, Explorer, Linguist and Ethnologist: a Descriptive Bibliography of the Published Works of Alphonse Louis Pinart, with Notes on his Life (Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1966).] 118 [William Healey Dali (1845—1927), explorer in Alaska and author of Alaska and Its Resources (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870).]

98

Around Great Slave Lake

nerve of the bad giant. The latter fell into the sea in such a way that his large body formed a bridge between the two continents. The caribou migration took place across this bridge. Later, a foreign woman also undertook the trip over the bridge. She arrived from the west after several days’ walk, and was very well received by the Dene because she brought them iron and copper. She even made several trips, but having been offended by those to whom she had been the benefactor, she sank into the ground with her treasure, and after this the migrations ceased.119

The eminent narrator added that the Eskimos of Hudson Bay, at the mouth of the Churchill or Missi-Nipiy River, had the same tradition in his time and claimed that the caribou alone had continued to make the crossing after the disappearance of the woman of the metals. He acknowledged, however, that before the Europeans arrived among the Dene, these Indians no longer had any metal, but that they knew of it and recalled having lost the use of it at a very recent date.120 These facts were fully corroborated by the learned Dr. H. Rink121 at the Congress in Nancy in 1875, in which he reported that the Greenlanders themselves had the same popular legend: “There is a story about a foreign woman who made fre¬ quent trips between the American continent and Greenland, then about a voyage that the Greenlanders undertook to a distant country to procure metal knives for themselves.”122 The name carried by the Dene, Yellowknives, and the proximity in which these Indians lived to the Eskimo tribes on the shore of America, as much in the west as in the north and the east, prove that it actually involved objects of worked copper and not simply “of a little native copper,” as Professor W. Schmidt123 thought. But this tradition must be quite ancient for it to have penetrated from America to Greenland, which the Eskimos have occupied since the thirteenth century. Moreover, I can do nothing better than to cite these curious traditions here. I hope that my kindly readers will agree with me. The first originated from Okak (the Tongue) Island, which is situated at the mouth of North River, 570 30' north latitude, in Labrador. It is entitled “Yavraganak.” At Kivalok (Muskrat), on Okak Island, there formerly lived a large Eskimo tribe among whom resided a Redskin woman called Yavraganak. From childhood she

119 Letter of Mgr. A. Tache to his mother, Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, 1851.

120 Emile Petitot, Legendes indiennes du Canada N.-O.

(Paris: Maisonneuve et Ch. Leclerc, 1886), 4t2ff.

121 [Henrik-Johan Rink (1819-93), Danish geographer and administrator of southern Greenland.) 122 Congress of Nancy, 1875, vol. II, 188; and legend of Kumagdlat and Asalok, in Dr. H. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimos (London, 1875), 109. 123 [Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954), German linguist and ethnologist who urged missionaries to study the cultures and languages of peoples with whom they were working and who published their reports.)

National Legend of the Yellowknives

99

lived in slavery with these Eskimos, dwelling like a stranger among them. One day when she wanted very much to eat her fill of one of the foods used by her Redskin compatriots, she said, “Ah! At Pangma, my relatives have an abundance of caribou tongues!” Upon which an old Eskimo retorted laughingly, “I really defy you to prove that you have relatives in that place. You would do much better to summon them here.” Cut to the quick, she left during the night to warn her compatriots. In those times hares abounded on the Eskimo beaches. One even saw them run to the top of the snow yurts. So, one night when Yavraganak returned as an enemy, fol¬ lowed by her Redskin compatriots, the Eskimos heard a lot of noise outside, but the same foolish old man thought that it was the hares that made it, and he did not take any notice. Moreover, he was the only man left guarding the village, as all the others were at sea or hunting. Thus, it happened that the Redskins massacred the inhabit¬ ants of Kivalok. Several of them who fled to a cave were trapped and suffocated by the smoke of a large hre lit at the entrance. On their return from the hunt, the other Eskimos found only the dead, and set off at once to avenge them. Among these warriors was a magician who traced out for them a shortcut across the mountains. They surprised Yavraganak’s Redskin rela¬ tives and massacred them. But they could not find her because she had hidden herself. Again the magician came to their aid. “Oh! How I wish that Yavraganak still worked for me!” he exclaimed. Hearing this wish, which deceived her, the Redskin woman came out of her hiding place, still frightened and uneasy. The Eskimos immediately fell on her and tied a rope around her body and dragged her on the ground until she died. In this way, she paid for the evil that she had done to them.124 At least, this is what the Eskimos said. In the north of Greenland, the same legend exists with a variant: the travelling woman there was named Navaranak; she was a servant of the inland people or Erkileit. She was often sent by them to their brothers on the coast, the Inuit, to buy there some matak or whale blubber in exchange for caribou fat. After a certain pe¬ riod, she was tired of this work and won her freedom by starting a fight between the two peoples who proceeded to cut each others’ throats. The Inuit then decided to kill this Erkilek woman. When the time arrived to cut up the belugas, Navaranak did not appear as she usually did. She even seemed to have completely disappeared. When the next sum¬ mer came, the Eskimos looked for her as usual. They travelled the country calling, “Navaranak, come, we have some matak for you!” But she did not show herself. They went still farther and began again to call, “Navaranak, come.” This time, she came towards them but very hesitantly. They assured her she had nothing to fear, but when

124 Dr. H. Rink, Tales and Traditions, 175.

100

Around Great Slave Lake

she was very close, they tied her with a rope and dragged her on the ground until they had torn her to pieces.125 For the Greenlanders as for their clever interpreter, the learned Dr. Rink, the in¬ land people of Greenland or Erkileit (singular Erkilek) are fabled beings because, as the translator remarks, the interior of Greenland is occupied by an eternal glacier that makes it completely uninhabitable and uninhabited. But, for me, the Erkileit, Greenlanders, are none other than Redskins, that is to say, American Indians: first¬ ly, because such is the name that all Eskimos of the American Arctic give to the Redskins of the interior: Irkpelei't, Ingaleit (plural of Irkpalek, Ingalik); secondly, because the Greenlanders say of the people of the interior, the People Whose Eyes Twinkle Lengthwise, to which the learned Dane adds quite aptly that it calls to mind the Loucheux (Dindjie) Indians or Squint-eyes, one of the American tribes most at war with the Eskimos. It is certain then that the Greenland legend has been imported into Greenland by the migration of the Eskimos from the American continent. Thirdly, in the legend of Koumagdlat or of the Eskimo who went in search of the owners of metal knives and other objects in worked copper, the Erkileit, who are the possessors of these objects, are indeed the Redskins who live in tents around a very large interior lake. This could be either Great Slave Lake or Great Bear Lake.126 Finally, there is a fourth Greenland tradition, entitled Malaizi or the man who travelled to Akilinek,127 that is to say to a very distant country located to the west of Greenland. The American Eskimos remember this country and they place it in the vicinity of the Bering Straits. The same tradition reappears even in a Danite form. Two Eskimo women are led captive beyond the seas to Akilinek in the west. Then they escape in an umiak, reach the ice, cross the sea, and after having abandoned their children, come into their own country, America, where they find their relatives again. Then the relatives, in their turn, out of curiosity and the desire for riches, follow the two women to Akilinek, whose inhabitants they massacre after having stripped them of all their matak or whale blubber. Permit me to make an observation here: in these Danite legends of the travelling woman, it is the metal that is the motive for the Redskins travelling back and forth. In the Eskimo legends, on the contrary, it is the matak or whale blubber they want. Originally, could there not have been a confusion between metal and matak although it would be impossible today to confuse these two trade articles linguistically? Here is a singular fact: I have never found among the Dindjie of the lower Mackenzie Basin the tradition of the woman of metals or her travels, but these Indians name Intsi Dindjich, People of Iron, that part of their tribe nearest to the Unalaska Peninsula,

125 Dr. H. Rink, Tales and Traditions, 174. 126 Dr. H. Rink, Tales and Traditions, 109. 127 Ibidem, 169.

National Legend of the Yellowknives

101

probably the Dane Yellowknives or Atnans of the western Copper River. It is true to say that they apply this name equally to the Russians. Nevertheless, the Dindjie have a story about an expedition that two brothers of the red race made by sea to different countries. Lost in their boat, they were picked up by unknown sailors who traded with several tribes. With these strangers, they traded in turn with different nations, and then were landed at the mouth of the Yukon River, where they recognized their fellow kinsmen. Mr. Rodolphe Lindau, in his Voyage autour du Japon,118 reports a Japanese tradi¬ tion that offers a number of points close to those that I have just cited. Immediately after the earth had come out of the waters, a woman came to live on the most beautiful island of Japan, which the Ainu race occupies today. She had ar¬ rived in a boat driven by a favourable wind from west to east. Amply supplied with tools for fishing and hunting, she lived happily for several years in a magnificent garden which still exists, but no mortal knows its location. One day, on returning from the hunt, she went to bathe in the river that separates her domain from the rest of the universe. Having seen a dog swimming rapidly to¬ wards her, she fearfully got out of the water. However, the dog reassured her, asking her permission to stay near her, and be her companion and friend. She let herself be persuaded, and from their union was born the Ainu people.129

I must compare this legend with that of the Hareskin Dene, entitled “The Little Boatman,” where it is said that a Dene child discovered an island in the western sea where a very beautiful woman lived and where absolutely nothing was lacking, but it was an island that the Dene were unable to reach.130 Almost identical traditions have been found in our hemisphere. Among others, there is the legend of Ossian, the son of Fionn, who one day saw a marvellous woman appear. She was named Niamh (the Shining One), and she arrived from Tir-Nanog or the Earth of the West, a delightful country to which she led him and where he fol¬ lowed her, and was happy with her for many years.131 This Fionn, chief of the Fianns, was the enemy of the Danans whom he successfully drove out of Ireland. They sought for a refuge beyond the Atlantic. Such is again the Irish legend of Condla, son of Conn or Konn, king of Ireland in the second century of the Christian era. One day a strange woman invited him to follow her into a beautiful country where neither death nor evil nor sorrow were known, and where she led him in a crystal canoe, after which no one heard tell of him again.132 In that country there lived, they say, women of great beauty, and trees there were always loaded with fruit. Another Irish hero,

128 (Paris, 1864), 99. 129 Cited by Mr. de Charencey, Les Hommes-chiens (Paris, 1882), 5. u° Petitot, Legendes indiennes du Canada N.-O., 236. 181 Mr. P. Gaffarel, Les Irlandais en Amerique (Paris, 1890), 7. 132 Ibid., 5.

Around Great Slave Lake

102

Cuculain, who unintentionally reminds us of Cuculcan of Yucatan, also went there, married the beautiful Fand, but later managed to revisit his homeland, Ireland.133 It is impossible not to see an allegory in all these women, the personification of an intelligent and civilized nation, who introduced metal and came from the west. But before coming to an important and scientific discussion of these interesting legends, I must report another from memory, in all respects similar to these, furnished to me by the Tripolitanians of Mauritania. The inhabitants of African Tripoli claim that, in an age long past, their country was visited by a superb, magnificently adorned, and very rich woman. She arrived from the sea mounted on a large black fish, probably a dolphin. She and her fish entered the waters of the Bagrada River which they went up as far as it was navigable. Then the princess stepped ashore and entered into negotiations with the inhabitants of the country. The young king made her an offer of marriage which was accepted. Things went well for a while, but finally the savage people of Mauritania drove away the travel¬ ling woman by throwing rocks and forced her to mount her fish again, by which means she escaped these barbarians and regained the open sea whence she never returned.134 From the time of the explorer Samuel Hearne, that is, 1772, the Yellowknives or Copper Indians hunted as far as the shores of a river that empties into the Arctic Ocean to the east of the Mackenzie and Great Bear Lake. To this river they gave the name Tpaltsan-des or Metal River because it was on its banks that these Indians placed the scene of the legend that I have just recounted. That is why Hearne, who officially discovered it, named it the Coppermine River. Nevertheless, no explorer ever found copper on the shores of this waterway. They did not even find a volcano there, but only some smoke and gas wisps caused by the combustion of shale oil, like those one sees along the Mackenzie, the Athabasca, and the Smoky rivers.135 All the details of the Yellowknives’ national legend refer to the Metal Woman’s travels as being on the edges of the Beaver or Bering Sea, where we find in fact another Copper River inhabited by the Dane or Atnans, also called Yellowknives by travellers. There are numerous volcanoes in this river’s vicinity bor¬ dering on the Beaver Mountains range, among them Saint Elias, Wrangell, and other active volcanoes. The mouth of this western Copper River is close to the large Kodiak Island, whose Eskimo inhabitants claim to have descended from dogs.136 The Unalaska Peninsula as well as the Aleutian islands are also in this neighbourhood. This geographic precis

‘33

Ibid., 6.

134 Mr. Schott, Tour du monde (1861), 79 and 80. ‘35 [The Smoky River flows northward to join the Peace River at the community of Peace River in north¬ western Alberta.)

136 H.H. Bancroft, The Tribes of the Pacific Coasts.

National Legend of the Yellowknives

103

is corroborated by the Kollouche legend which identifies Edgecombe volcano, situ¬ ated on the same coast, as the mountain where the travelling woman was buried in the bowels of the earth. Finally, the Kollouches have always made use of metal, as did the Intsi-Dindjich known as the Loucheux. We are thus led to conclude, first, that the Denii Yellowknives or Copper people, who live on the Great Slave Lake steppes, are only an offshoot of the Dane or Copper people of the Beaver [Bering] Sea who immigrated from west to east long ago. It was these Indians who brought to the shores of the Arctic Ocean and Hearne’s Coppermine River a story of their migration which originally took place from the edge of the Bering Sea and the mouth of the other Copper River. So this explains how the same western tra¬ dition reached the shores of Hudson Bay and as far as Greenland, whence it has been carried by immigrant tribes even to Europe. Thus, we do not have to seek at the Arctic Ocean any more for what cannot be found there. This is our first conclusion. People have gratuitously denied to uncivilized people the faculty of idealizing or of symbolizing their own history or that of other people, of personifying elements or divinity. This assertion is not at all applicable to native Americans. My Traditions indiennes137 amply proves this. It is superfluous to affirm here that the Metal Woman is the personification of a nation introducing metal to the Danites. Although one of their versions says she is of the Dene race, she was not their kins¬ woman, since they took her for a woman descended from heaven. Other versions call her a total stranger. She brings unknown metals to the Dane which she gives to them only in barter; in other words, she trades with these Indians. She erects along her path signs that allow her to retrace her way to the sea; she then had no intention of always staying with the Dane. She makes as many as three trips with them, and the Dene make three more without her; this then involves the migrations of a people. She disappears little by little into the earth on the shore of the Bering Sea, proof that the Asiatic migrations across the straits of the same name, or by way of the Aleutians, gradually died out. Finally, the Dene pick out two points of the American continent where the woman had landed, a strait or the mouth of the Copper River, proof that there were two different streams of immigration. I possess, moreover, an excellent and final proof of the symbolism of this immigrant and heavenly woman. It is that when I arrived in the Mackenzie, I found the Dene Indians fully persuaded that the Hudson’s Bay Company was also a Metal Woman, who sent servants north to distribute to the unfortunate Dene things necessary for life, on condition that, like the first travelling woman, they never leave her without provisions or warm furs.138 Let no one tell me, however, that the Dene were trying perhaps to symbolize, under

137 Paris: Maisonneuve and Ch. Leclerc, 1886. 138 [This approximates the “cargo cult” concept.]

104

Around Great Slave Lake

the figure of this woman, the Russian Company which preceded the Americans in the possession of Alaska. That Company still existed and operated in America when the Chipewyans told me about the disappearance of the Metal Woman, which they gave me as a very old fact. The Russians themselves found this legend scattered around the shores of the Bering Sea, as other travellers heard it in Greenland and at Hudson Bay. Besides, whenever that was, the resemblance between this American tradition and that of the Ainu, the Irish, the Greenlanders, and the Tripolitanians remains to be explained, and that can only be done by the similarity of the travelling woman on the three continents. Therefore, if the Dene recognized this foreign society as their compatriot, it is because it had to resemble them in type, colour, language, place of origin, or in the places through which it had passed. That society was superior to the Dene in riches, knowledge, and industry, but not in point of numbers, otherwise the Dene would not at all have gravely offended it, frightened it, or forced it to stay in its trading posts on the western shores, from which it forever disappeared one fine day. Does someone say that this woman symbolizes the Enak people or the western Eskimo? This assumption cannot be sustained upon examination. The travelling woman had suffered from the violence of the Eskimo people, who were the first to op¬ press her. Among the Eskimos, on the contrary, she is definitely a stranger who came to them to buy matak, but who ended up betraying them and sowing discord in their land. According to the Dene and the Inuit, this woman did not hesitate to abandon on the shore of the Bering Sea the Eskimo element that she had assimilated through the forced union which these violent people had imposed on her. Furthermore, the eastern Eskimos also swore that when this foreign woman landed on the western shores of America, they were still travelling up and down the northern part of the continent. Finally, if these eastern Eskimos had known and possessed metal, they would not have undertaken such long trips into the interior of the American conti¬ nent to get copper knives from the Yellowknives. One can say the same about the foreign woman in the Irish and Mauritanian tradi¬ tions. This traveller was not of the Semite race of Danans who came from Greece;139 since the Fianns, Formorians, or Kings of the Sea140—their conquerors—were Semites. Still, it was a third seafaring nation, perhaps the race of Iberians or Phoenicians, who followed the Tuatha of Danans as well as the Formorians in Ireland, under the name of Gaels, Piets, Scots, Irish, or Milesians.141 The votive offerings that the Dane continued to carry to the mysterious mountain,

139 D’Arcy McGee, Introduction to History of Ireland. 140 [Supposedly an ancient linguistic group from Egypt. D’Arcy McGee, from whom Petitot borrowed these details, believed they were all seafarers who helped to settle Ireland.] 141 Ibidem.

National Legend of the Yellowknives

105

in the crater of which they claimed that the woman traveller had disappeared and to which they attributed the power to transform them into worked metal, prove that for a long time they still kept the hope of causing migrants to return by these offerings. Their visits, unfortunately, were never to be renewed. But what is it that the Dene wanted to symbolize by the gradual disappearance of the Metal Woman into the bowels of the smoking mountain? It is probable that a vol¬ canic eruption was followed by the more or less slow and gradual submersion of the western portion of the American continent lying between the Unalaska Peninsula and old California. A host of traditions, Dene, Dindjie, Kollouche, and others, speak of a transformation of the earth, which had occurred in the west and of something which arose from the ocean. La Perouse142 observed that the entire coast is precipi¬ tous, and that the mountains there plunge perpendicularly into the sea and seem to lack a counterweight which in the east is provided by the wide American plateau. These American legends about cataclysmic volcanoes, the crumbling of moun¬ tains, and the heaving up of islands in the middle of the sea agree with scientific data. It is not an empty hypothesis. We know that, according to Elie de Beaumont,143 the great American fold, which crosses Alaska, reappears in central Asia, which it next crosses, and ends at the Taurus Mountains [parallelling Turkey’s Mediterranean coast], a “towering volcanic fold, [which] presents striking characteristics of relative newness.”144 This theory and these legends also agree with the disappearance of Atlantis, of Solon, and above all with the Polynesian traditions that attribute to Pele, goddess of volcanoes and subterranean fire, the disappearance of the great land of Havai'ki, first homeland of the Kanakas. It was Pele who caused their misfortune by giving them a handful of volcanic rocks and scattered atolls in the middle of the ocean in exchange for their first and eastern homeland. In the Dene legend, the woman at the volcano is not called Pele; but Pele, the white wolf, accompanies and guides her. Mr. de Mirville says Pel signifies movement or strolling in Greek.145 From this comes the name of the Pelagians, predecessors of the Greeks, a travelling and nomadic people par excellence, People of the Sea, or Pelagos. We have the same root here as the name of the wolf in northern Dene, that is to say, a vagabond and travelling animal par excellence. Now we know why the Latins, a

142 [Jean Francois de Galoup, Count de La Perouse (1741-1788), French navigator who sought to find the Northwest Passage eastward from the Pacific Ocean and travelled extensively from Alaska westward to Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, and the Siberian coast. His journal of this voyage, with maps, plans, and notes, was published in 1808-09.] >43

[Jean-Baptiste-Armand-Louis-Leone Elie de Beaumont (1798-1874), mining engineer, geologist, and

professor at the School of Mines, established the geological map of France.] 144 Fr. S. Beudant, Corns de geologie (Paris, 1872). 145 Des Esprits, vol. V, 137.

io6

Around Great Slave Lake

maritime people, said they came from the wolf, as do the Kollouches, the western Eskimos, the Danites, and the Aleuts. In Greek mythology, as with the Kanakas and the Dane, Pele is at one and the same time an underworld divinity and a traveller. We find him in the busy Argo ship, with the first navigators, as well as in the Orcus, as an infernal judge. At his wedding with Thetis, or the Sea, the ruin of Troy was predicted. In the Bible we also find Pele, which means admirable, chosen, separated. It is the name that is given to the Hebrew celestial messengers, the psychopomps:146 Quid queris nomen meum, quod est pele (wonder)?” the angel said to Manoah.147 Now, in Danite mysticism, wherever the wolf, Pel&, plays a role, he takes the place of the soul’s guiding genie. He is a protector and a defender, like the Egyptian Anepou, with this difference, that he is white instead of black. Also the black Pele, who pun¬ ished the Kanakas and took away their first homeland, here becomes the white Pele who protected and led the travelling nation to the virgin land of America. One peculiarity that I find to be of equal interest to that of the introduction of metal to America, and which is just as mysterious, is the erection of these big stones (the tchop nadashedhii), veritable menhirs, trilithons, or kisthavens, that the trav¬ elling people placed along the route as signs of their passing. This is the first and only American legend among those that I have gathered which mentions Cyclopean monuments so clearly. Votan likewise reports that he left along his route signs of his passing on the land of the Chivim or Columbian Serpents.148 But until now, scholars have asked what were these signs and where could one discover them? In truth, the traveller W.H. Dali assures us that menhirs and triliths are found on the Asiatic shores bordering the Bering Sea, in the lands of the Panting Eskimos or Tuskis, as well as in the lands of the Khassias and the Chanes of the Himalayas, the Nairs of Malabar, and other Asiatic peoples. But, it is a long way from Bering to Hindustan on one side, to the eastern valleys of the Rocky Mountains on the other! The Redskins, Dane, Dene or Dindjie, could not have erected these monuments. Their natural apathy and their negligence prove that to me. The only memory of raised stones among these Indians necessarily carries us back to other shores and other people. I do not hesitate to say that it is a memory brought with native American immigration. However, as the large rivers and the big mountain ranges must have been the earliest natural paths for people in their migration to the four winds, it is absolutely impossible to deny that some such monuments exist in America just as

146 [Spiritual guide of a person’s soul.] 147 Judges 12:8. [Judges 13:18, “Why do you want to know my name? It is a name of wonder.”] 148 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisees du Mexique, vol. 1, Chap. 3 (Paris: A. Bertrand 1857).

National Legend of the Yellowknives

107

they are found in the Himalayan valleys, until the valleys of the Beaver, Wrangell, and Rocky Mountains have been entirely explored. But it has never been done. It is noteworthy that Votan raised signs of his passing in the land of the southern Serpents, or Chanes. It is also among the Asiatic Serpents, the Chans, that people have discovered megalithic monuments. Who can assert that they do not exist among the North American Serpents, the Shoshone, while the entire valley of the Columbia or Serpent River is full of ancient and puzzling ruins? The Culhua Aztecs were Serpents. Are not these vestiges of an ancient civilization the signs that are mentioned in one or other American legend? It only remains for me to clarify and name the nautical nation that introduced metal to America through the Alaska region in a time long ago. In this matter, I admit that if I only used Dene tradition, this research is entirely pointless. I could have named by chance any people whatsoever, without being able to prove my theory. It would remain merely an hypothesis. I must then proceed by way of analogy. To this end, the Mauritanian legend cited by Mr. Schott serves me quite well thanks to the correlation that it has to the American versions cited above. There too, the civilized and travelling nation is symbolized by a rich woman. She arrives by sea and goes upriver. She is welcomed by the natives of the country; she comes to terms with them and shares her treasures. Then, attacked and driven away, she remounts her fish and reaches the open sea, never more to return. Such is this moral fable. Let us consult the earliest history of these shores, as told by the famous inscription of Tanger.149 The Chivim or Heveens, that is to say, Palestinian and Punic Serpents pursued by Joshua and fleeing before his victorious armies, trusted themselves to their national god, Dagon, the fish-visionary, and went away by sea to create another kingdom in Moritania, or the country of the sea (al Mor), where they became the Carthaginian people and later the Mores or Maures, people of the sea. This is precisely what we discover in African Tripoli’s legend. But the sun’s Punic race did not content themselves with these shores burned by the African sun. History shows them sailing every sea, exploring every river, searching for all strange products. To the Scilly Isles they go asking for tin, to the Baltic for am¬ ber, to the Asturias and Morvan for copper, to the Caucasus for crystal salt, to Ophir for gold, peafowl, ivory, and monkeys. Everywhere they went, they left colonies and trading posts. Everywhere they raised the same signs of their passing, which served as reference or rallying points, the same in India as in England, in Egypt as among the Tuskis, in Moritania as in Armorica: dolmens, menhirs, karnacs, cromlechs, kisthavens, and fairy circles. Called Kelts and Gauls in western Europe, Philistines or Palestinians in Syria, Gallatas in Greece and Gallas in Madagascar, in Gallilee they

H9 Regardless of how distant this Moroccan city is from Mauritian Tripoli, one can consider the two peoples as apparently having the same origin.

io8

Around Great Slave Lake

are Khallars and Bhils in Hindustan; Khillini in Tartary; Khills, Khillistino, and Kallinago in America; Hallani, Dana-Kils, or Khabils in Africa. In a great number of places, this Semitic race finds Semitic colonies already planted and flourishing. In Ireland, the Danes or Danans came from Greece; in Scandinavia the Dans swept out of the plains of Media. In Brittany they mixed with the Denes from Spain; and in Scotland they find the equally Semitic Doenes. Finally, in America we still find the Dane, the Dene, and the Dindjie. In the two hemispheres, the race’s history is the same. Joyously welcomed in friendship, because of its riches, recognized as sister and compatriot, because it came from the same shores, this Punic or sun race was later mistreated by the Danite or lunar element, who insulted it and chased it out of the country, probably because of its proverbial immorality. However, in several places it overcame and conquered the first inhabitants. This is history; but it becomes vague nearer the prehistoric era. It is history; but it is necessary to know how to pluck it from its legends. Analogy alone guarantees us that we have the truth. There is more than this large black fish, a dolphin, the symbol of the vessel that brought to the Bagrada River the Punic people who founded Carthage, Hadrumete, Utica and Hippo, and which we find in each of the countries where this Caananite nation arrived. The classic example was furnished by Dagon, the fish-god, lawmaker, and guide of the Phoenicians and of the Philistines. It is a seahorse150 who brought the Kelts to Armorica, the Moritania of the North. It is a unicorn of the sea, a narwhal, that guided the Gauls and the Irish towards Scotland and Ireland. It is a swordfish that directs the Tsequils to Yucatan. It is a horned fish, or pisciskiw, that carries Ayatc, the ancestor of the Killistino, from the west into North America. It is a sperm whale that is the ancestor of the Kollouches. It is a blower or dolphin that is the father of the Tuskis and Greenland Eskimos. It is a giant beaver who is the father of the Labret151 Eskimos. It is the busy ship Argo that carries the explorers of the Colchis towards the country of gold. Essentially seafaring and sailing, the people of Tyre and Sidon have left their stamp, the phoenix, known in China under the name of phang or fang, and in Japan under the name Foo. When the temples of Central America show us pictures of a mysterious bird, are we not permitted to believe that this enchanted island situated in “the Indian Ocean to the south of Arabia, this Panchea of Evhemere, described by Pomponius Mela and by Diodorus,152 and where the phoenix builds its nest on

150 According to Mr. Maspero, the Kymris named their ships seahorse. 151 [A piece of bone or shell inserted in the lip as an ornament.] [Pomponius Mela, first-century Spanish-born author who compiled a description of the world from Greek geographers and who believed the earth was flat; Diodorus Siculus, first-century Greek historian, wrote a world history in forty books covering the Middle East, Greece, and Rome.]

National Legend of the Yellowknives

the altar of the sun,

109

was nothing else than the American kingdom of Palanche or

Palanque when it has sun temples and palaces, tcoculli,1^4 and altars, sculptures of high priests, sacred bird and censers that carry us back in spite of ourselves towards the ancient civilizations of the old eastern world? My conclusion then is this: the nation that introduced metal to America was none other than the Phoenicians, but while penetrating the continent, at least into the north, it found established there some children of Israel, some Danites.

153 Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amerique. 154 [Aztec or other Mexican temple.]

Dogrib wilderness

no

ii. The Dogribs

CHAPTER VIII The Dogrib Wilderness Snow Ophthalmia—North Arm and Fort Rae—-A Dogrib Tribe—Sought by the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine—Leaving for the Northern Steppes—The Wolverine—Lake and River La Martre—Grouse—Discovery of Four Lakes—Ptarmigan Stupidity— Stutterers’ Argument—Concerning the Arctic Copper River—Lakes Faber and Rae—A Grave—Arrival among the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine

Like the larks of the fields, I was singing as I began my flight towards the high regions of the globe, not of the air. The time had come. I started with a three month explora¬ tion in an unknown country among the Doune Dogribs who provisioned Fort Rae. This Hudson’s Bay Company post is situated towards the bottom of the North Arm of Great Slave Lake. My first day was passed entirely on the still-frozen lake. Leaving at three o’clock in the morning, 12 April 1864, with two Yellowknives, Pacome Kpaay-khaa, Hare of the Willows, and Fiacre Glie-ttop, Squirrel’s Nest, we only reached land at seven o’clock in the evening, on the little island Foot of the Crossing, a scarcely visible rock close to Slaveys’ Big Point [Gypsum Point] on the lake’s northern shore. We only reached this point at noon the following day to eat there. Leaving from this headland, we entered the long North Arm. It was springtime. In the middle of the day the temperature rose so much that we were exhausted by the heat. If the surface of the big lake was not at all softened by it, at least it was flattened, polished, and levelled. There was no obstacle in our way, except the reflection of the sun on the snow and ice. This refraction burns the eyes and creates very painful little caustic blisters. These little blisters form between the socket and the eyeball, where they produce a painful throbbing so intense that I have seen the natives roll on the ground in paroxysms of suffering, their eyes swollen, bloody, unable to tolerate the sight of fire or daylight, literally blinded. It is called na-shounsh, lancet of the eyes, or snow ophthalmia [snow blindness], of which the English explorers have spoken. Myopia is a happy preventative for this ter¬ rible affliction, so I have never experienced it. But the Dene’s black and fiery eyes are

111

112

Around Great Slave Lake

affected by it each spring, always with renewed intensity. Blue or dark glasses, made of a simple metallic screen, are enough to prevent it. The Hudson’s Bay Company sells them to the natives. Lacking these instruments, one can cover one’s head effec¬ tively with a black or dark silk scarf. I advised my two guides to imitate the Eskimos, who make visors of birch or light wood pierced with a small slit in front of the eyes. These Indians shrugged their shoulders with pity and laughed at me. “Don’t you know,” they said to me, “that na-shounsh is caused by yash-kpate, which swarm and sting like mosquitoes? What good is a visor against these little insects?” The yash-kpate exist. They are snowfleas, the size of microbes, that come out of the snow in the month of May thanks to the sun’s heat. The snow is black with them under the larch trees. Above all, the hollows are full of them, especially the depres¬ sions in the trail. But nothing is more absurd than that these little beetles with their hard outer wings are the cause of snow blindness. Nevertheless, my Dene would not be convinced. From time to time, I have effectively used laudanum, a green iron-sulphate solu¬ tion, soapy water, and powdered sugar against acute snow blindness. But the best remedy and the least dangerous to one’s sight is that used by the Metis: the tongue of a healthy person who does not smoke. You move it around the eyeball where it sweeps and carries away all the caustic blisters. One gets almost the same result from a little feather. In the middle of crossing Great Slave Lake and in its most dangerous part, when we had no other horizon than the sky all around us, we were surprised by a sudden unleashing of the khamasan. This east wind is a veritable plague during winter trips. It recalls the famous khamsin of Africa. In the blink of an eye, we were wrapped in a ball of cotton. It was impossible to go on, for the sun was the first thing to disappear. If I had not had my compass we would have been lost; to the right and to the left the lake stretched for 203 miles.155 In the other direction, the north side, we had no hope of reaching land to sleep on except a granitic island I have mentioned. How were we to find it? Before the unleashing of this blizzard, I had marked the exact point on the horizon where the rock lay. At that time, a single little grey cloud betrayed it to us. I consulted my compass, adjusted our direction according to the angle that the needle made with that point, taking into account the [magnetic] declination, and we threw ourselves bravely at a run into the snowstorm. At seven o’clock in the evening, we landed on the mountain island Tra-tchape-ndou and camped there. If I were to transcribe my trip journal here as I wrote it at the time, these pages would resemble a ship’s log. I faithfully described the windings of the shoreline; I

155 375 km. 956 m., makes 94 French leagues.

The Dogrib Wilderness

113

picked out all the promontories and all the islands, retaining for each its Indian name in the two languages, Chipewyan and Dogrib. But I must spare my readers’ patience by taking them immediately to Fort Rae, where we arrived in the afternoon ot 15 April. It resembles all the trading posts in the Northwest, and stretches along the sandy and infertile shore of the mountain island Ndou-chesh-kke. The North Arm is no more than six kilometres wide, but it is a good thirty leagues in length. It is bordered by high, reddish, dreary cliffs covered with coniferous for¬ ests. 1 he eastern shore is completely sterile and granitic. Some conical mountains and flattened hills break the monotony. These are volcanic swellings that have not been able to come to a head, failed boils on the earth’s skin. Moreover, the entire country I crossed thereafter, on my northward way, is entirely composed of molten rocks. Quite close to the fort a profusion of little islands, also granitic, rises from the lake like so many little volcanic cones. One of them even occupies the middle of a charming circular basin that was obviously an ancient former crater. Today, all that is drowned in the sparkling waves of a freshwater lake. Fort Rae’s bearing is 62° 28' north latitude and 1170 49' longitude west from Paris. I was received with courtesy by the agent, Mr. Smith, a young Scot who had arrived in the North the same year that I had. We already knew each other. He immediately of¬ fered me accommodation with him and a seat at his table. I only accepted the second of these two hospitable offers, and as the French mission at Fort Rae had a building, I retired to my place after dinner. There, I found a cabin seventeen feet by twenty-five, made up of a single ground floor room without a ceiling. It had only one window and a camp cot, a wooden table and chair for its only furniture. Next to this cottage was a chapel under construc¬ tion, capable of holding a thousand people, but which had not been finished and which I could not use. It was thus in my cabin, placed beneath the patronage of Saint Michael, that I opened the mission exercises. Fort Rae was constructed to replace old Fort Providence that the old Northwest Company had on the North Arm at Red Point. It is one of the main posts of the Mackenzie district for provisions. It annually furnishes four hundred bundles of dried caribou meat, that is to say two thousand kilos of sides and as much in pemmican. Moose never frequent the North Arm nor the country beyond because they abhor granite, the sterile steppes, the heath without brush and timber. Even the caribou or large caribou of the woods (Rangifer caribou) cannot be seen. The only species of car¬ ibou that frequent these desolate places is that of the wilderness (Rangifer groenlandicus). They are often seen even around the fort itself and abound in the interior. For the same reason, the absence of dense forests, the North Arm and the surrounding country are poor in fur-bearing animals. Beaver, mink, and mountain goats are un¬ known. The otter and the marten are rare. Foxes are few. The only fur that abounds in these granitic regions is that of the musquash or muskrat. The North Arm is too cold to offer good fishing. The whitefish (Coregonus lucidus) there is detestable. Its

114

Around Great Slave Lake

flesh is soft, pasty with a pronounced lemony taste. On the other hand, the bluefish (Coregonus signifer) teems there and the inconnu [French for “unknown ] fish, also called the Mackenzie salmon (Salmo mackenzii), is renowned for its flavour and the colossal size it reaches. There are no trout. The Arm is not deep enough for this salmonoid which frequents the larger waters. That is all that one can say of interest about this little post which carries the name of a distinguished Arctic explorer, Dr. John Rae, one of the courageous men who devoted themselves to the search for Sir John Franklin and his companions. He was a chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Mr. Henri Grollier was the first Frenchman to visit Fort Rae. He evangelized that post in March 1859 and baptized 130 children. Fort Rae was then frequented by 1,200 Doune Indians of the Klin-tchanpeh tribe of Dogribs. One strange epidemic illness known in the North as the Fort Rae Sickness has reduced this population to 788 souls. I believe it was caused by loose living and the formerly shameless morals of these Indians. Other illnesses, such as syphilis, pulmonary consumption, scrofula, and the common cold, accompanied this mysterious illness. I have been told that, of all the Indians that our compatriots evangelized in the Northwest, the Dogribs were the best disposed and the most sincere of the catechu¬ mens; my stay among these natives convinced me that I had not been misled. A few days after my arrival at Fort Rae, I saw a numerous band of Dogribs on the lakeshore. These Indians made up the tribe nearest to the fort. They live almost always with the Yellowknives or as their neighbours, and they understand Chipewyan perfectly. Many even speak it. Therefore we got along very well. They were led by their chief, Enna-kray or White of the Eyes. On seeing me, these unfortunates fell on their knees as if in front of a living Buddha and did not want to get up until I had blessed them. Yet, there was not a single one who had been baptized. “We are starved for prayer, Father,” the chief said to me. “We thirst for your word.” After shaking my hand, they silently and piously continued to look at and contemplate me as if they had as much need to see me as to hear me. Their respect touched me profoundly. Then I perceived that they were standing around a little sled. There was a poor, young consumptive lying wrapped up on it. Named Henri Tsan-hi, Soiled Clothing, he was about twenty years old, and death had already pitilessly marked him for the grave. “I was baptized five years ago by the first French priest who visited us,” he said to me in a sepulchral voice. “Now I am all eaten up, se kkie oyinwd; I am going to die and I wanted to die in your presence, because my heart is not strong.” I took him into my little house where I lit a good fire, and kept this unfortunate until his passing, after having prepared him for the great journey through the recep¬ tion of the sacraments. The Dogribs are to the other Dene what the Irish Catholics are to other people of the same faith. The liveliness of their belief in God gives them the trust and easy-

The Dogrib Wilderness

115

going attitude ot lovable and devout children. 1 hey talk to Him in a loud voice with¬ out seeing Him as though the best of all fathers were before them. From their behav¬ iour, the priest feels as if a living religion were reborn, in the sense that they give him more respect and attribute to him more power than we ourselves recognize. They are without mere human respect, without timidity, and without false shame with him. They demonstrate a childlike simplicity as well as the depravities of their pagan life which often cause shameful sicknesses. Some couples came to ask me for help in having children. One bleeder, endowed with a faith as strong as the Gospel, wanted me to perform a miracle to cure her. “Ah! I know very well that you could cure me if you wanted to,” she said to me. “But I do not seem unhappy enough to you.” Tsan-hi himself, poor child, believed that it was enough for him to look at me and to take my hand often to be out of danger. On 6 May there arrived from the Barren Lands, situated midway between Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes, a deputation of fifteen Dogribs from the steppes who are called Tpa-Kfwele-pottine, or People of the Wave’s Beginning, that is to say of the Lively Waters. Word had reached them, they said, of my coming to Fort Rae, and they immediately started out from Hare Snares Lake, where their camp was, to come and invite me to follow them into their wilderness. The previous year they had made the same proposition to Mr. Eynard, who had neither the strength nor courage to face the dangers of this long trip and a prolonged stay among these Indians. They came to extend the same invitation to me this year. “If the priest doesn’t come to see us at our home,” said their chief, Olivier Sa-tl’e, Bear Grease, “our wives, children and old people will never be baptized. We are too far from the fort for them to be able to go there. They do not even know what a white man is. They have never seen a priest.” I was even happier than they were with their pious visit and did not need the long speeches that were addressed to me to make up my mind. I saw several advantages to this time-consuming and distant excursion. It was an exceptional opportunity offered me to regenerate some souls and win them for God, which was the main pur¬ pose of my missionary life. This was also the chance to make geographic discoveries and to explore a country where no European had yet entered, a secondary, but defi¬ nite, purpose for my travels. Finally, it was a chance to realize my plan to get to Fort Good Hope by way of Great Bear Lake, a colossal trip which had never been achieved in the North and which made me quiver excitedly with anticipation. The Tpa-Kfwele-pottine were then governed by three chiefs: Jean-Baptiste Sa-nai'ndi, Shining Sun, surnamed Confidence by the English, an old man of nearly eighty years who had known and worked with Dease and Simpson at Fort Confidence, whose name he bore; Olivier Sa-tl’e, Bear Grease, surnamed Governor, son-in-law of the great chief, whom he was destined to replace in office; and finally Pierre Detchin-yie, Wood Pith, surnamed Little Chief. With the exception of these three men, baptized opportunely by Mr. Grollier, the

Around Great Slave Lake

n6

entire tribe were catechumens or candidates for baptism. Governor called to me at the top of his voice. Will we be the only ones to go to heaven? What will we do there all alone, without our relatives, without our children? We are going to long for them when we die. We have a wife and she still belongs to the Devil. We are fathers and our children are still covered in sins. That thought is painful to us. The Doune people die like dogs after having lived like caribou. When we are sick and the priest is not there, people call the shadow man who invokes the evil spirit on us instead of fortifying the heart with prayer. Come with us. We think you are a man. Are you afraid of fatigue? We have fifteen sleds at your disposal. Do you fear hunger? At our place you’ll eat more caribou tongues than the English agent can offer you at his place. Are you interested in hunting and excitement? We promise you’ll see more caribou than there are stars in the heavens.

Three days later, 9 May, I left Fort Rae with my new acquaintances, the People of the Wave’s Beginning, despite the objections of the Metis, who were a little jealous. They cried like peacocks. Fourteen of my amiable companions owned sleds. Fiere are their names. I cite them because they are curious: Bear Grease, the chief, Little Otter, Big Intestine, Sharp Belly, and Little Tobacco, all sons of the great chief Confidence; Astragal, the Crazy One who, let it be said, was rather crazy; Fine Sand, Slim, On the Dung, Little Unlucky, FFoney Buns, Rosebud, and Wobble. All these Indians, with their more or less exquisite names, were married and had children. Two young people, whose names I do not know and who had no sleds, ran in front of the dogs. One of the two came down with pleurisy because of this and died a few days after our arrival. Two others on the fifteenth sled had taken the lead in order to call together the six hundred members of their tribe on Inconnu Nets Lake,156 where it had been agreed that we would meet them. Our course was due north. We steered directly for the end of the North Arm where we passed through a short narrows into Pike Lake, a beautiful basin of crystal-clear water which lies on an extremely flat and smooth granite bottom, an immense slab. My companions had made a cache of food for their return trip on a little island in this lake. They had enclosed some pemmican, some ground meat, and fresh caribou mar¬ row in a leather bag that they had suspended from an elevated pole in a tree deliber¬ ately stripped of its branches. The pole was there but the bag had disappeared. Some tracks of an animal in the snow, some remnants of meat, and remains of chewed cord showed that master wolverine had found a way to clamber up the stripped trunk and even up the pole, thin as it was, to chew the cord and make the bag fall. When this animal, so well nicknamed the glutton (Gulo lascus) has satisfied his

156 Or Bear Snares; the Indians varied this name, some pronouncing Sa-mi-tpie, Bear Snares, others Simi-tpie, Inconnu [Mackenzie Salmon] Nets; hence the two variants above.

The Dogrib Wilderness

117

hunger, he hides what he has not been able to devour in different places under the snow, and then he sprays uiine on his hiding places in order to keep the contents from the teeth of other carnivores. His urine helped us to find the rest of the pro¬ visions, alas! quite reduced. This animal is the same as the English wolverine, the Swedish gerf the German wilfras or wulfranc, the Chipewyan kwichkeatch, the Cree kakwaakes, the Dene nanpaye or nonpa, the Dindjie netsiw, and the Eskimo kpavik. With reason Buffon15? calls it a four-footed vulture, and the Hareskins call it the little brother of the Devil. The malice of this brute is such that people believe it is endowed with reason and its aim is to harm mankind as much as possible either from deliber¬ ate intention or sheer pleasure. The wolverine walks flat-footed. We could not reach the end of Pike Lake that same day. We camped at eleven o’clock in the evening, in an inlet. It was protected from the north wind by a mountain of bare porphyry called Weye-zatla, One Has Penetrated Its Interior. This is a bizarre name that likely refers to some absurd story. On the edge of Great Bear Lake, also in Dogrib country, a mountain made of limestone carries the name Weye-kpadeja, Its Interior Is Gone. In fact, a few metres from this rock containing a cavern, there arises from the lake a rock, extended and horned, similar to a slug with its antennae displayed. This belief in hollow mountains and rocky origins instinctively reminded me of this verse from Isaiah: “Attendite ad petram unde excisi estis, et ad cavernam laci de qua prcecisi estis.,n5& The next day at sunrise, a great distribution of eagle feathers was made by the chief to the people in his party. Each wore his feather in his hat as an ornament or kerikeri. We scaled Weye-zatla and after a very short portage we found ourselves at Big Belly Lake, Bes-tchonhi [Sabre Lake], another quiet basin in a granite bed. From this point we reached the river of Lac la Martre in one day. We went up on its ice, avoiding detours by means of small portages across a country horribly ravaged by recent fires. The real name of Lac la Martre is the French equivalent of the word stercus [shit]. So much the better for those who do not know Latin. This time, whether in good faith or by design, the English have committed a mistake useful for geography. However, the good French Canadians have done nothing but translate the Dogrib name of this lake: Tsan-tpie, and it might be called Lake Cambronne.159 Towards midnight we reached the junction of the river of this excremental lake with the river of White Hares Lake, to which I gave the name Gaudin River,160 in accordance with the right given to me as its first explorer. This waterway is as wide

157 [Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count of Buffon (1707-88), French naturalist and an early founder of palaeontology.] 158 Isaiah 5:1. [Isaiah 51:1, “Think of the rock from which you came, the quarry from which you were cut.”] 159 [General Cambronne (1770-1842) reportedly replied “merde” to a British challenge during the Battle of Waterloo.] 160 [Perhaps for James Gaudin, captain of the Hudson’s Bay Company bark, Lady Lampson.}

Around Great Slave Lake

n8

and as voluminous as the Isere.161 It is interrupted by falls and can be considered as one continuous rapid. We camped at two o’clock in the morning, already short of provisions, and were obliged to send two men to the camp of the Lac la Martre Indians to beg for meat. They came back empty handed, telling us that those Indians were just as short of food and reduced to eating pheasants and hares, a meagre sustenance when they are cooked without salt and only a little broth. The day of 11 May seemed to me as long as it was boring. We crossed an elevated and granitic country that offered the most desolate view that could be seen: bogs, burned trees, ashes, charcoal, and a black, foul mud. Stripped of the little evergreen with which nature had hidden their dryness, these reddish quartz rocks looked like giant corpses and the whole country like a charnel house. The snow, which melted while you watched it, was blotched with large tufts of black and shell-shaped lichen, earth’s own leprosy. A belt of dark mountains encloses this dismal valley of the Hares which had been so stupidly devastated. “You complain of being short of provisions, and you treat your country like this!” I said to the Dogribs. “What will the caribou or hare find to graze on in the middle of these embers?” From the highest summit we saw the frozen surface of Fish Lake, Tpe-mi-da-tpie [Faraud Lake]. We avoided it by a detour. In this mountainous portage I saw some grouse as white as snow with jet-black necks and heads. The males were decorated with little red crests similar to those of young cocks. This is the spring livery of the big southern grouse that the Dogribs call kha-’mba, Sister of the Hare. Another smaller grouse species does not undergo this transformation, that is tpa-natpie-a, The Small One That Sleeps on the Lake. It is native to the barren lands of the North. During this day, I suffered from the heat and the reflection of the sun on the spar¬ kling snow. We had no more than two or three hours of night. The continuous heat and light burned my skin and made it painful to the touch. My skin became yellow, dry, shiny, and burned. The Indians kept me from washing; it would aggravate the peeling, they said. They drew from their sacks some bones, extracted the marrow, and made me rub it on my face, hands, the nape of my neck, and even on my shoul¬ ders. I immediately felt relief. On a low mountain covered with a beautiful poplar and birch forest whose buds filled the air with sweet perfume, we found the camp of two Dogribs, Sunbeam and Little Rabbit, who gave us something to eat. But they could not lend us provisions for the following days. I baptized six in this camp and prepared the rest for the sacra¬ ment for when I returned. The fourth day was satisfying. We crossed White Hares Lake, Kia-go-tpie [Hardisty Lake], as well as the lakes called Squirrels, Rocks, and

161

(A tributary of the Rhone. At the Oblate college, Notre-Dame de l’Osier, on the banks of the Isere near

Vinay, Petitot received his clerical formation.]

The Dogrib Wilderness

119

White Deer, Kon-kka-tpie. To this last lake, I gave the name of Mazenod. In the morning my companions began to hasten their pace because they had no hope of meeting anyone and they knew that they would not find any caribou on this arid granite. Hallo! Boys, take to your long skinny legs and whip up your mutts. I have just shared my last morsel of dry meat with you. From here on there is nothing to eat until we reach your own camp. We bivouacked on the shore of big Inconnu Nets Lake—or Bear Snares, whichever you prefer—to which I had invited the whole tribe. This magnificent basin, sprinkled with granite mountain isles, is surrounded to the south and to the east by other gran¬ ite masses one thousand to twelve hundred feet high that separate it from the sources of Hearne’s Coppermine River. The mountain to the south, that we had to cross and on which we camped, is named Ta-tpa-tpou-inha-kfwe, a beautiful example of polysynthesism. It literally means higher-to-cross-waters-that-unite-mountain, that is to say, Mountain of the Water That Unites Two Higher Lakes. The fifth day, before leaving the bivouac where we had taken our last very meagre meal the previ¬ ous night, the chief mysteriously pulled from his sled a little parchment bag, and from this bag a handful of ground meat which he served me on a plate with a small morsel of caribou fat. “You have been good to us,” he said to me affectionately. “You have shared with us all your provisions without holding back anything. But look, I have been prudent. I had put this aside for emergencies. This evening when we camp, I will give you as much again, but you must go all day without eating because I have absolutely nothing left for tomorrow. Pray God that my relatives have not left the camp and that they have meat!” This statement made me thinner. I felt the belt on my pants get larger by five cen¬ timetres. There is nothing that sharpens hunger like the thought that there is noth¬ ing to eat. How little these unhappy beginnings matched the beautiful promises of Homeric feasts that had been made to me at Fort Rae! I gave the name Lake Faber to big Inconnu Nets Lake in honour of the venerable English Oratorian.162 Its still surface, framed by high promontories and sprinkled with little granite islands forming a chain, seemed delightful under the May sun through the chaste veil of diaphanous fog that half covered the tips of the rounded rocks. You must forgive my passion for mountains and the admiration I express here for a country which a very practical Flemish person would have seen as only a fright¬ ful and arid stone wilderness. It took twelve leagues to cross Lake Faber. A low and long point cuts it towards the middle and forms Big Bay, Kla-tcho. There, on a horizontal branch of a large red pine we saw six black grouse that were warming themselves in the morning sun,

162 [Frederick William Faber (1814-63), prolific writer of hymns and devotional literature, a close ac¬ quaintance of John Henry Newman and like Newman a convert to Roman Catholicism in 1845.]

120

Around Great Slave Lake

promising us a good meal for dinner. The chief, a very skilful man, signalled us not to move. He shouldered his long flintlock gun, loaded a ball, and fired. One hen fell, decapitated. I waited to see the other five black grouse fly away. They did not move. They were content to stretch their heads in an inquisitive or silly way, looking with¬ out seeing, probably because of snow blindness. The chief shouldered his gun again and a cock followed the hen into Pluto’s em¬ pire. A third grouse followed him there. All six were about to take the road to the spirit world when Tsinzire, Crazy One, began to shout that it was unfair and contrary to the principles of absolute liberty that rule savages the world over, that one man assumed such a right over the others simply because he was their chief when he, poor Crazy One, was quite capable of doing as much. During this tempestuous protest, made with a stentorian voice, the ptarmigans had taken flight, leaving the Dogribs shocked and flabbergasted. Tsinzire’s intrusion into the chief’s hunting party caused a quarrel that amused me very much thanks to the spectacle that it presented to me. I have not yet mentioned that the majority of the Dogribs are stutterers although in different degrees and in different ways. Some are satisfied to repeat the same word two or three times. Others experience considerable discomfort in expressing themselves. They blow, spit, sweat, roll their eyes, splutter, without being able to pro¬ nounce a word. Nothing is as comical as a quarrel between two stutterers. But can you imagine a dispute between fifteen people affected with this particular handicap, divided into two camps and arguing, one trying to outdo the other? The chief justly remonstrated with Crazy One that he had deprived his compan¬ ions of a necessary sustenance by clumsily interfering between his gun and the black grouse. Crazy One reproached the chief for being exclusive, authoritarian, and want¬ ing to be first in everything. I thought they were going to eat each other, so nasty were their looks. But it was the spasms of stuttering that caused them to make these faces and rather funny faces at that. Incoherent sounds came out of their throats. Their voices clashed without producing any human sound, without the power to express a single word amidst raucous shouts and an impossible uproar. We did not meet the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine on Bear Snares Lake. Only two men waited for us there on Shoulder Blade, Eye-kokkwene, a flat, bare rock out in the open. They announced to me that the caribou were gone, that the tribe had gone further north, and that it had been impossible for it to gather on Lake Faber because of the distance from their hunting boats and summer trails. But they informed me that I would probably find those Indians on Lake Yanehi [Lake Seguin], three days further north, beyond the second watershed. Finally, they added that on Hare Snares Lake, Khami-tpie, I would probably find some of the tribe who would give us something to eat since these two men had brought absolutely nothing with them. Only one day’s march separated us from the rest of the tribe. It seemed to me wise, given our absolute lack of supplies, that we reach them as quickly as possible. My companions saw things differently. They thought that, since their relatives were

The Dogrib Wilderness

121

so close to them, they could well finish the day in games and singing with the two newcomers although they all had Spanish bellies [empty stomachs]. So they lit a fire, made tea, stuffed their snake-like pipes, sat in a circle on the polished pebbles in spite of the wind and cold, and began to play hand games (Oudzi), singing, making faces, and nodding like caged baboons. These amiable Sons of the Dog made me mark time until sunset on this bare rock with nothing to do but study the granite outcroppings of Lake Faber. From the topo¬ graphic details provided by Arrowsmith’s best maps,163 whose salient points I could see from my observation post, one thing astonished me and altered my ideas regard¬ ing the geography of the surroundings; that is, the Dogribs make the Coppermine River come out of Muskox Lake, Akka-tpie (in English, Buffalo Lake), whereas Franklin marked the source as Point Lake, and he placed Hearne’s Muskox Lake to the right of this watercourse.164 Did Franklin make so serious a geographic error? It is true that he stayed a very short time in these regions165 and that it would have been difficult to observe eve¬ rything by himself. In that case, he could have put information received from the Yellowknife Indians on his map incompletely and without really understanding it. One can imagine that the hint of an error made by a man of such valour is too tricky for me to dare settle the question. I submit it simply for examination by future explorers. But if the Coppermine River comes out of Muskox Lake, as my travelling com¬ panions assured me was the case, where then does Point Lake empty its waters? It appeared that this was into McTavish Arm of Great Bear Lake, and by means of a river that the Dogribs call Minkpa-al’a-die, The River We Were Looking For [Calder River], This Arm has never been explored scientifically. It should be noted that the only river that Franklin sought was the Coppermine. If the Indians had so badly misunderstood the celebrated sailor as to believe that it involved a tributary of Bear Lake, leaving the captain to believe that it was the Coppermine River that emptied from Point Lake, we have the solution to this strange misunderstanding. One branch of the river, broken by a waterfall, unites Bear Snares Lake or Lake Faber, to Hare Snares Lake, which I had given the name Rae Lake. We camped between these two magnificent basins. There I once more received a handful of powdered meat and a small bit of fat as had been promised me, but that was the last mouthful I swallowed until two days later at ten o’clock in the evening.

163 [Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823), London cartographer who drew maps of Mackenzie’s 1789 voyage and of other Arctic explorations. His popular “Map exhibiting all the new discoveries in the interior parts of North America,” published in 1793, was updated nineteen times thereafter.] 164 [Coppermine River rises in Lac de Gras and flows northwest through Point Lake and other lakes to the Arctic Ocean.] 165 Winter of 1820-21.

Around Great Slave Lake

122

Hunger made me think this raw grease to be delicious. I sucked it; I kept it in my mouth like a hard candy with all the appreciation that a Don Cossack could have given it. The prospect of Lucullan166 meals that I had been promised at Fort Rae gave me strength to continue my trip the next day. Our unfortunate dogs had had noth¬ ing to eat for five days. I do not know how they could continue to run that day. These animals are the dromedaries of the North. Olivier showed me a granite outcropping that rose to the left of Hare Snares Lake. They call it Rock Cape, Kfwe-eta. Opposite it, on the other side of the lake, rises Kfwe-na-reti-eta, the Cape That Has Broken Away from the Mountain, which is still another geological fault. Between these two low mountains the lake measures only half a league wide and it is cluttered with little islands of evergreen. This place is also the summer path of the caribou when, from the interior, they return to the barren steppes of the Arctic Ocean’s shore. It was at this narrows that we ought to have met the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine tribe who were to give us something to eat. We found nobody left there and, to my grief, I contracted snowshoe sickness in my left foot to the point where I was obliged to remove the shoe. There was no hope of relief nor respite because we had to speed up. But this time we went blindly, be¬ cause Rock Cape had been the tribe’s last known stopping place. Thus we reached the northern end of Hare Snares Lake. There we saw a grave surmounted by a pole to which was fixed a long red streamer. A wooden cross was erected on the other side. All this was recent. “Who sleeps there?” I asked Governor. “Soundil I do not know. We do not know who. This misfortune happened after we left the camp. One of Detchin-yie’s children was ill. Perhaps it is he who died. Each day carries off its victim. You see we are all perishing. Are you going to pray for the dead?” “Definitely.” We knelt around the fresh burial mound and we prayed for the dead. I blessed its final resting place. There was a beaten trail; quite naturally we followed it and passed from Rae Lake into Icy Water, Tpa-wokkpa-tpie, which is smaller but also quite picturesque with its myriads of small islands and bordered by porphyry mountains. This was the elev¬ enth important lake that I discovered since leaving the North Arm, but there was nothing there to give an inkling of any human presence. Exhausted and scarcely able to put my left foot on the ground, I climbed on one of the sleds, warning my companions that I would not get off until we reached camp. We were going to enter a bay that opened on our right when very fresh prints of cari¬ bou hooves caused shouts of joy from my companions. It was the first track of this

166 Horace reported Lucullus (B.C. 110-57) as a rich Roman soldier and glutton noted for his extravagant self-indulgence, especially in food.

The Dogrib Wilderness

123

animal that we had encountered since our departure from Fort Rae. On the lake, all trace of the trail had been wiped out by the thaw. It was exactly what we feared. Then the idea came to us to follow the caribou’s track. It led us shortly to some recent hunt¬ ing snowshoe prints. There were new cries of joy: “Ekhou soupa! We are going to eat fresh meat. Doune nivwa ille lon\ The men are certainly not far away.” A moment later, my Dogribs’ nostrils dilated. They sniffed the air like blood¬ hounds who have the scent of an animal. Then they shouted, “Kodekfwe! Smoke!” And immediately they began to fire their guns, without thinking about the caribou they would frighten and put to flight. The dogs had as good a nose as their masters. They pricked up their ears, lifted their tails, which had been hanging between their legs from hunger and, forgetting their weariness and their raging hunger, they threw themselves forward with howls of joy. Northern dogs never bark, they howl. Soon some prolonged gunfire answered our repeated calls. The enthusiasm of my companions knew no limits. You might have thought that they were returning from Europe or a round-the-world trip. One would not believe that they had left their families and their pointed lodges hardly twenty days before, so great was their joy at seeing them again. Some exiles back from Noumea167 or the depths of Siberia could not show more happiness at the sight of Paris by night or Holy Moscow. At six o’clock in the evening, on the seventh day since our departure, we made our appearance in the middle of the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine tribe that was on the move. It was about time. The next day I would have arrived flat on my back and dying.

167 [Capital of the island of New Caledonia.]

CHAPTER IX In the Tents of the Dog People Friendly Reception—Timontsate,

the Fanatic—A Forced Fast—A Horde of

Crusaders—In Camp—The Great Shadow—Ellonhism—Shamans and Seers— Egyptian Names—Sorcerors in Revolt—Suspicion of Shining Sun—Womens Curious and Loose Morals—Weakness of the Indian Character—a Nighttime Alert Followed by an Easy Miracle—Friendliness of the Dogribs

On a little flat island of Lake Tpa-wokkpa the whole tribe of People of the Waters Beginning was gathered like an immense and swarming anthill. Long lines of sav¬ ages came down from the rock to meet me. Women, old people, and children hurried there first, more curious than the men, to gaze on a priest, an individual they had heard talk of a great many times but whom they had never seen. Most of them drew back in fright when they saw me, withdrawing their hand that I wanted to shake. This was not surprising, for it was the first time that they had seen a man who did not resemble them at all, a human being with the skin of a corpse, with blond hairs on his face and under his head as well as on top, wearing on his nose eyes of ice that shot lightning, and who nevertheless understood and spoke the Dene language. I remember the question that the women asked my companions, as if the latter were more knowledgeable than themselves: “Asou doune enli on? Is it a man?” “Tfl oni on\ For sure!” they answered. Kpatou! tanakkwin, yjnikorijial That’s too much! Quiet! It is a marvel!”

“

I saw myself being looked at in the same way as bearded women and so-called wild men at our country carnivals. I was literally taken by storm on the island. Following the example of the tribe’s great chief, the venerable Confidence, a slightly obese but handsome old man with white hair, it became a contest to see who could give me the strongest handshake, who would solemnly kiss my hand and then make the sign of the cross devotedly. Endless t’ank-yous came from every mouth because, in order to produce a bigger sen¬ sation and to enhance their standing in the eyes of their countrymen, my travelling companions had hastened to announce, without my knowledge, that I was a Great Praying man, that is, a bishop. I only learned this when it was no longer possible for me to undo the too-favourable impression that I had made in this camp. One can well imagine that the detailed examination of my person gave birth to some curious reflections. I saw myself transformed into Adonis and into Antinous by all the women and the girls in the camp. Ah! If my mother had been present, how

125

126

Around Great Slave Lake

proud she would have been, she who repeated the following words from my youngest years: “How ugly you are, my poor child, but you are really ugly!” “There is, however, only one thing in this face that displeases me,” one gossip finally exclaimed. “It is these awful hairs on your chin. One might say a bedzi-tcho.’n68 This witticism raised gales of laughter. A host of similarly friendly remarks followed, with as little respect for me. To cut it short, I indicated with my hand that I wished to speak. Immediately, Chief Sa-nai'ndi, Shining Sun, made everybody sit down in the snow, and I delivered a short arrival speech. I told them that having received their message and having learned with joy how much it was their great desire to change their lives and embrace Christianity, I had hurried to satisfy them without thinking of the distance, the difficulties of the trip, my loneliness among them, their unfamiliar way of life, and above all my being uninformed of whether it would be possible for me to leave it when I wished. “In return,” I added, “I have a right to expect from you obedience to my words, an end to conjuring, and faithfulness in attending to my teachings.” All testified that they were ready to obey the Gospel. I repeat that in this tribe they had, nonetheless, three catechumens, the three chiefs. I was satisfied that not only had I been under¬ stood, although I had spoken in Chipewyan, but I had also pleased them. “Eji doune,” they exclaimed, “eji doune ahentte lion! There is a native, there at least is a real native!” The good people believed, in comparing me to themselves, that they were paying me the most flattering compliment in their power. Where is the tribe, no matter how barbaric, that does not esteem or believe itself truly the best nation in the world? And we, the French, are simple enough to believe that we are the only possessors of this personal conviction, and we absolutely want our neighbours to believe it. How naive! They immediately brought me several sick persons, among whom was a handsome twelve-year-old boy who, despite a still rigorous air temperature, had no clothes at all except a two-inch-wide bandage and a caribou skin. His name was bizarre, Ti-montsate, He Who Goes Around the World, undoubtedly a name given by the shamans. His father and his uncle, who held him in their arms, indicated to me that the right hernia was the reason for his sickness. He had neither a fever nor the appearance of being sick. His body was plump, his face still that of a child. He only displayed some fear on seeing me, which was easily understandable; he had never seen a black robe.169 Suddenly and without doubt under the impression of the terror that I had just unwillingly caused him, the child let out a shrill cry and fell back motionless in the arms of those who were holding him. Then his belly and his stomach heaved and

168 Old

male deer [caribou], the stag of the deer.

169 (The original name for the Jesuit missionaries of New France.]

In the Tents of the Dog People

12 7

twitched in horrible convulsions, cramps tore howls of pain from him. His two pro¬ tectors hastened to clamp his intestines which swelled and tensed in their hands, and it took all their strength to restrain them. They tried to hold his abdomen; its mem¬ branes seemed to display the rigidity of tetanus. The unfortunate Timontsate let out screams that would make your hair stand on end. He resembled a wild-eyed character, like one possessed of long ago. The two savages pressed with all their weight on this poor little body without being able to control his convulsions. The crowd was chok¬ ing with fear; the unfortunate boy shouted on the rock, naked as a worm, twisting as if he were in the grip of a horrible neurosis. In this sad scene there would have been enough material for a picture stamped with the singular savagery worthy of a Michelangelo. “You see, Father,” Timontsate’s father exclaimed, “how pitiful my son is. Well, twice a day, morning and evening, the snake enters him in this way, nahtewori yena denkwo. Baptize him quickly so that the sacrament’s goodness chases out the evil that troubles him.” The seizure lasted a quarter of an hour, gradually diminishing in intensity. As the boy’s nerves relaxed, his groans became gradually weaker. Finally, he went to sleep. The behaviour of this unusual neurosis is like epilepsy. Moreover, it is not a serious illness. The patient did not froth, he did not lose consciousness, he spoke and shouted, and the seat of the spasm instead of being the brain was the right hernia. Here was a case of the unexplained and very recent Fort Rae sickness. I asked myself if it should be attributed to some unclean relationships of which nature disapproves, and about which public opinion, understandably alarmed, had accused the poor Dogribs until then. But how to ask such questions of these savages? I also asked myself if this child had not been suffering from strangury.170 They assured me that was not so. But can they be believed? That same evening I baptized the boy, but he was not cured. He got worse, and ended by dying of this dreadful illness soon after I left the tribe. If everyone dreamed to satisfy their curiosity about me, nobody thought of sooth¬ ing the bulimia that was torturing me. My travelling companions contributed in no small way in prolonging my perishing hunger. “In this land!” said one, “this Praying Man has the stomach of a sparrow. Imagine, my friends, are-khe, since our departure from Fort Rae he has not even eaten as much as a whole rack of ribs.” “He trotted all day long like a real caribou,” added Governor, “and like that animal he can go several days without eating.” “For pity’s sake,” I said to them, “for pity’s sake, do not put my stomach to a further test. If you have anything edible, do not continue your experiments, give it to me so that I can regain some strength, because I’m literally dying of hunger. ’

170 [A painful urinary condition.]

128

Around Great Slave Lake

Shining Sun let out a big hearty laugh. “We have absolutely nothing,” he said to me. “For two days IVe had nothing more to eat than you have. You see those little children playing down there? They are fast¬ ing like the grown-ups. Nobody in the whole tribe has eaten today. But, be calm,” he added with a look full of confidence, “you will eat tomorrow.” “Tomorrow? You say tomorrow?” “Yes, yes, for sure. My young people have gone to hunt caribou in every direction. Others have gone to stretch the fishing nets in the nearby lakes. It is impossible for any of them to arrive back tonight.” This answer redoubled my hunger, whatever assurances it contained. It was already such a very long time since they first promised I would eat tomorrow! Try to believe after this any promises of feasting that savages make. Four-legged feasts which run as fast as they can through the forest! We stayed not less than two hours on this bare and flat rock, waiting for what? ... waiting for the chiefs to decide to camp somewhere, because we had met the tribe while it was on the move. For several days, the tribe had beaten the bush looking for caribou without finding any. We had just seen the first spring tracks, and it was we who brought news of them. But they did foretell a great number of other tracks in the very near future. The time of the caribou crossing had arrived and we found ourselves on the trail itself. After having consulted a bit, the three bigwigs of the tribe decided that we would camp on the firm ground opposite the small island where they had happily met me. By chance, I served as a favourable omen for the counsellors. There was a natural granite terrace there and below it a sort of flat land where the fir trees, victims of a fire, would furnish firewood. Immediately, like an anthill into which one has thrown a firebrand, this hairy, black horde scattered in every direction to harness the dogs to the sleds. The small children were gathered up, some in a bag, others in a large pot, and firmly lashed to the sleds. Everyone put their snowshoes on and the tribe began to walk in Indian file. It was a picture worthy of Gustave Dore, this horde of uncircumcised gypsies from the steppes, all descended from the Dog, like the Kodiaks, the Ainu, and the Shoshone. On the ice, you saw a long line of sleds and sled dogs of ghostly leanness, of women bent under heavy loads, and of men walking jauntily, a rifle and a Basque drum being their only load. Some children scampered at the sides. Then there were shouts, a confused sound of voices, very deep among the men, ringing and musical from the women; oaths directed at the canine chargers, happy shouts thrown to the wind, mixed with the monotonous refrains of the shamans or oudzi [hand game] players. In the midst of the movement, I noted that everyone, big and small, young and old, men and women, was adorned with crosses. Cross on the chest, cross on the back, cross on the hats, cross on the hunting weapons. There were crosses on their mocas-

In the Tents of the Dog People

129

sins, their knife sheaths, on a bag full of white lichen that served as cradle cloth for the infants, even on the sleds and dog harnesses. These crosses were generally white embroidered with glass beads, silk, or porcupine quills, but there were also lead, cop¬ per, and iron. A young man named Ettsouze wore a twenty-centimetre wooden cross around his neck. This type of cross was really that of a Cayapo Araguaya Indian from Brazil of the Carib race. There was nothing in this Christian religious device that indicated any evidence of or reference to my presence in the tribe. These emblems were old. They were not made yesterday. They were visible symbols and proof of a living faith in Jesus Christ and in our redemption through His death on the cross. In any case, if the wearing of this sign was tainted by some superstition, in the final analysis it was connected with the worship of the true God. Nevertheless, I was pained to see some phallic signs in the midst of these Christian emblems. They did not surprise me, seeing the total ignorance of the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine. Reaching the designated place, some poles were gathered in bunches and covered by the nanpali, huge coverings of caribou skins sewn together which remind one of Phoenician mapalia. Their name signifies the object that spreads out, the tent. Everyone took care of his own family, and I remained alone and crestfallen under the falling snow, shivering with cold and holding the skin of my belly in my arms, according to the picturesque expression of the Dindjie. I shared some of my frustra¬ tion with Sa-tl’e. “Oh! Oh! We are thinking about you, believe me. Be at peace. But, since you have no wife or children, have a little patience or help me a bit instead. Your turn will come later.” When everyone was comfortably settled in, when the fire sparkled merrily in all the tents, when the cranky and hungry little children were tucked into their furs in front of the blazing fire, Governor called everyone together. “Aoh! Aoh! Young people, come and make a shelter for our Father. The Praying Man is cold, come and cut wood for him.” In no time at all I was housed. Because my tent was to serve at the same time as a chapel, it was much larger than the others. It was made up of two large nanpali joined together. It was round, open at the top to let out the smoke from the central hearth, and its hard granite floor was covered with a thick blanket of green fir branches. This way I had the advantage of sleeping under the beautiful stars without leaving my bedroom. Unfortunately, through this upper opening I also received all the gifts of the outdoors: snow, hail, rain, wind, everything except what I would have wished with all my might: the warming rays of the May sun. I needed an altar. How and with what to make it? I explained my problem to Bear Grease. “You’re going to have one,” he said to me. He took a little sled, cut off its curled front, placed it waist-high on top of two sticks stuck in the ground, and the altar

Around Great Slave Lake

130

was finished. I put a portable altar stone on it, which I covered with a white napkin. Behind it, 1 hung a piece of calico on which I hung my missionary cross between two pictures, and the chapel was completed. I was too tired to call the tribe to my lodge that evening. I merely baptized the sick in their own tents. On this occasion, I had an interesting sample of the moral corruption that can be united to the greatest simplicity among pagans. In order to bring the sick, including children, to make a full and sincere confession of the errors of their lives, their rela¬ tives spontaneously and before everyone gave an examination of conscience which was such a catalogue of infamy and licentiousness that I was shocked by the possible immorality of the youth. There is a certain cynicism that one meets only among simple and upright souls. They ought to be less blameworthy, because their depraved and savage upbringing excuses them, but do not tell me that primitive peoples have a different way of viewing and feeling things than we do, that their conscience is far from being as scrupulous as ours. No tribe is more primitive than the Dogribs, and none better acquainted with what we call evil and immorality. The corruption of these infidel Indians, publicly admitted and confessed by them¬ selves, without my having asked for their confession, proved to me once again how it is unnecessary to seek in a so-called difference of origin and blood the reason for the extinction of the Redskins. I was to encounter this proof many times later on. These people were destined for the grave because they had worked only for the grave. In his day, Saint Paul proclaimed to the Gentiles: “Qu; seminat in came, mettet et corruptionem-”171 It is a dreadful consequence, implacable, but logical and rigorous. Nature wishes it so. Going to bed at ten or eleven o’clock at night, I asked myself how it would be possi¬ ble for me on Sunday morning to sing high Mass, deliver a homily, and baptize about a hundred children with my stomach empty since the night before, except for two handfuls of powdered meat, when an unknown woman’s hand timidly opened the flap of my lodge and gave me a small wooden bowl containing a beaver tail and some cold bits of boiled whitefish. Kind soul, may God reward her good heart! I would have needed six times as much, in truth, to calm the worm gnawing me. Meagre as it was, this food nevertheless soothed my upset stomach. The next morning I baptized sixty children after the morning liturgy. The result of this exertion, on top of my weakness, left me completely voiceless. Only at one o’clock in the afternoon was I able to satisfy my hunger with a plentiful meal of meat. From then on, food arrived freely and in abundance in the form of caribou hams, haunches, sirloins, ribs, breasts, tongues, etc. Each hunter and each mother of a family came to hang generous gifts in my lodge-chapel, transforming it into a

171

[Galatians 6:8, “For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption.”]

In the Tents of the Dog People

131

butcher’s stall. The chiefs advertised this by shouting, “Hey! you people, the Praying Man eats and drinks like everyone else. Let those who have had children baptized do something. Let them bring their gift of fresh meat to him.” And the meat flowed in. It hung in front of my nose on a line of poles across my lodge. This prosaic sight, far from distracting my flock, inspired them with devotion. I would never have believed it if someone had told me. In front of these pieces of meat I celebrated morning Mass; these sirloins and sausages received my blessings and my prayers. That filled the Dogribs with pleasure: “Oh! God, Creator of the caribou, give, give us meat galore. Multiply these haunches and these hams; bless, sanctify these rich rumps; make the meat very fat, O Holy Father, and we will bless you for it forever and ever!” I was enchanted with the prayers and the excellent spirit of these good Doune. That is how I like Christians. And these people were still only catechumens. I con¬ gratulated them on understanding religion so well and beginning that day, I did not make a public prayer without assigning to my flock a praiseworthy and practical goal. Sometimes we asked for the cure of the sick, sometimes the protection of travellers; this time for the hunters’ good luck, another time to obtain crowds of caribou, etc. This is how I taught my Indians to pray, and they took to it with enthusiasm. From the first days of my arrival, the caribou began to teem all around the camp and above all on the Lake of Icy Waters right under my very eyes. The camp was made up of twenty-five large lodges, each containing a dozen to fifteen people, because the Dogribs have as many children as the Irish. The rash de¬ bauchery of youth did not at all prevent fecundity or wisdom among those of mature age. That made up a group of 350 souls. But the tribe was not all there. I soon learned that the tribe from Hare Snares Lake had not yet arrived, and when they were present, my audience would increase to 600 people. That would make a nice parish, everyone being a practising Christian at heart. The aforementioned tribe made its appearance on 17 May and presented me with ninety-seven children to baptize, which brought to 157 the number of children that I had baptized among the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine. This important function fulfilled, I consecrated myself entirely to the adults, gath¬ ering them morning and evening to give them the instruction necessary for the re¬ ception of the sacrament of baptism. I rarely saw people more delighted, more filled with wonder at the truths and mysteries of the Christian religion. Their entire soul showed in their eyes, a smile of satisfaction appeared on their lips. By voice and ges¬ ture they showed their approval at the end of each session; they looked at one another with admiration, audibly making a small clicking with their tongues that I had once heard in Liverpool among the Irish. For both it expresses astonishment and approval. I would never have believed that these simple natives would appreciate the evangeli¬ cal truths so well. However, I was quite astonished to hear several of them say to each other: “Jyaze! we kojae gunl’i. Excuse me a moment! But that man has intelligence!

132

Around Great Slave Lake

Wepele gunl'i ikhelal There is one who has dreams! I very much wish I could dream like him. Inkkponhe tchd onettil He is evidently a Great Shadow (a great magician).” Then, I had to correct their faulty judgement and teach them that I did not preach my nighttime inventions but the Christian teaching that I had received from those older than I and which has come through the ages from Christ to us. The supporters of dreams and shamanism seemed disappointed to learn by what an ordinary way I had learned that which I was teaching them. They would have very much preferred that I had been instantly inspired from on high or from below, as they were. But those among the people who had already seen and heard missionaries assured their relatives and friends that I did not speak differently than those who had already evangelized them, thus supporting my teaching with all the weight of their authority: “That is true. I already knew it. Yes, yes, that is very true. That is what others have already taught us at such and such a fort. Clearly, the French Praying Men all say the same thing.” Despite these public testimonies, I sank in the esteem of partisans of the super¬ natural way of teaching, as soon as I declared to them that I did not see God nor had I ever seen him any more than Jesus Christ, that I had never received any supernatural insights, and that some of the things I talked about had happened some four thou¬ sand years ago, and the more recent ones 1,864 years ago. In times like this, one feels all the weakness of the Christian teaching for souls incapable of thinking through their faith and, consequently, of all the power of God’s grace to produce belief in events so long ago and the decision to obey a law established thousands of years ear¬ lier by a strange and unknown people. I still seem to see the confused looks of these Doune when they heard me assure them that I was a man in every way like them, born of a man and a woman, subject to human infirmities and death, in spite of my being a priest of Jesus Christ. I must admit I was not believed at all. That was too simplistic, too vulgar. This brought too harsh a blow to their childlike faith—a robust faith but poorly enlightened—not to say to their inherited superstitions. “To have gone so far looking for the Great Praying Man, who would, we thought, deliver us from sickness and save us from death, and to find only a simple mortal like us, subject to sicknesses and death! Oh! No! That cannot be. Don’t believe it. He only talks this way out of modesty and to hide his power from us.” That is what they were saying, and the surname of Inkkponhe tcho, Great Shadow, the great magician, stayed with me still although I did not much care for it. It was necessary to go through this. To make you understand, dear readers, the honour that the Dogribs claimed for me by conferring such a title, I must tell you that the shamans occupy an honourable place among the Redskins, thanks to the fear that they inspire and the visions that they falsely appropriate, or by sickly hallucinations. Rightly or wrongly, those people think they see, or really do see in trances or dreams,

In the Tents of the Dog People

133

a lot of twaddle and bizarre things that they give to their too gullible followers as statements of the truth. Four-legged animals, birds, vegetation, and the elements come alive for them and become superior beings, talk to them, reveal supposed mysteries of another world, give them success in the hunt, the healing of their illnesses and a long life, but above all, they say, pleasures of an erotic nature. These are incubi and succubi, as in the days of witchcraft. In return for advantages real or imaginary, the animal that reveals itself to the shadow man and who has become his ellonhe or animal god, orders him never to kill it, never to eat it, and never to pronounce its name before unbelievers, in a word to consider it as his protector, his guiding genie, his god. Is this revelation real or imaginary? I cannot say. If it is real, as certain shamans have assured me that it is, these men are just like those crazy people who say they speak to ghosts. But many of them have assured me that they have received these communications only in a dream. A very large number of them have admitted to me that they lied when they said they were inspired. These were without doubt the most sincere but also the most evil. Here, then, is the true character of this cult which one calls shamanism in Asia, fetishism in Africa, nagualism in Central America, totemism among the people of the Illinois race. Among the Doune, we must call it ellonhism because these people call ellonhe the heavenly animal that reveals itself to them. But in all of these coun¬ tries it has the same characteristic, the vilest worship, that of animality. It is the greatest honour one can bestow on these brutal creatures to the detriment of the divine: that of taking them as genies or spirits superior to man. Nobody will be astonished, I think, if I assure my beloved readers that those among the shamans who take their profession seriously, who give themselves body and soul to the animal genie that they have seen in a dream, end up by becoming really crazy people full of hallucinations, of erroneous and ridiculous perceptions and day¬ dreams. Their intelligence is atrophied in this abstract and ideal life yet is entirely turned towards an animal or inert matter. Those people have perverted their spirit; they have caused their souls to go astray—when their natural tendency is towards spirituality—by turning towards creatures inferior to man. From there, they descend to a mindlessness close to imbecility and idiocy. Most of them are dedicated to nameless depravities which they commit as easily as one drinks water. I will furnish numerous examples of this assertion in the course of my stories. Not one of them has been of the nature to cause me to modify my opinion about shamans. When the conversion of all of the Dane-Dene-Dindjie to the Christian religion had reduced that class of degraded yet dreaded people to inaction, all did not em¬ brace the true faith with a determined will. There were some backsliders. Several of them wanted to arrange a compromise with their old practices and declared them¬ selves shamans of God. They continued to dream, chant, blow, to put themselves into

134

Around Great Slave Lake

trances, but their inspiring genie was no longer the Arctic wolf, the raven, the pike, or the shrew; it was Nioltsi, the Whites’ Creator of the World. As for denying them their visions, apparitions, and divine revelations, they never could agree. This was a new phase for shamanism. It produced these crazy fanatics of whom I have already spoken and who could only be cured by scorn and ridicule, the strongest weapon one could use with the Dene. When an Indian laughs at and mocks someone, that man is judged. He can only withdraw into silence or nothingness. Among the sixty shamans, ten per cent of the tribe, that the tribe of Tpa-Kfwelepottine took pride in, I found five of them who called themselves seers and priests of Nioltsi although they were no more baptized than their compatriots. Among them was a woman. The best and the stupidest of the five, Ttcha-bedeti, Miracle Worker, explained to me confidentially the doctrine which, he said, had been revealed to him. He retained the three great mysteries of the Christians as well as the cult of the Virgin and the Saints, but he rejected all the rest. No more Mass, confession, or communion. He had, he further said, been elevated as far as the third heaven which was white, the heaven of the elect and of the beatific vision. But he had had to pass through a grey heaven and a black heaven, horribile visn [horrible to see]. This holy man had replaced our sacred hymns with a monoto¬ nous and plaintive vocalization that his followers repeated ad nauseam while sway¬ ing like idiots. All this had been revealed to him, he said. Through this one visionary example, one can judge all of those that sprang up in each tribe and whom I had seen almost everywhere. None of them remained when faced by our unconcern. If we had risen up against them, if we had met them with angry sermons, these crazy people would have given birth to heresies. Innovators need scorn and indifference instead of inquisitors and the stake. I was astonished to find that several Dogrib shamans had recognizable Egyptian names, such as Menkhere, Large Branch; Raskenen, Son of a Goose; Khaa, Little Hare; Teti, Elk; Seboekotih, My Belly Is Active; Tpa-rakka, Ice Water; Kha-khepa, Hare’s Paw Fur; etc. I baptized eighty-five adults among these People of the Wave’s Beginning; this brought my baptisms to a total of 242. I blessed thirty-three marriages there. The five enlightened persons asked me for the sacrament of regeneration in vain, but I wanted to give them only the sacrament of penance and see them again the following spring in order to have proof of their faithfulness. They had me baptize all of their children; then, seeing that I would not yield to their pestering, they separated them¬ selves entirely from me. One beautiful Sunday these crazy people led three quarters of the tribe onto a knoll at the summit of which they had raised a great medicine lodge, renewing the ancient superstition concerning high places. Governor, the chief, accompanied by Augustin Ettsouze, a Dogrib who had been baptized when dying at The Rapid in October 1862 and who had been cured, came to warn me about what was happen¬ ing, begging me to do something. I went immediately to the hillock and found there

In the Tents of the Dog People

135

unbaptized Dogribs who were squatted in front of the half-open chouns in which there were four conjurors. They were chanting the appalling vocalization of which I have already spoken, accompanied by their idiotic swaying. Among savages there is no dance, song, or game without pulling faces or other extravagances worthy of a madhouse. However sensible a Redskin may be, as soon as he plays he goes crazy, or he pretends to be. On seeing me appear, the crowd was upset. Hesitation and fear showed in their looks. I noticed it. Clapping my hands as if I were a bit angry, I immediately made them stop these ridiculous squawkings, kindly reproaching the Indians without bit¬ terness at their sudden forgetfulness of God and the promises they had made to me. Then I ordered them to return to their own tents. They were getting up to obey me when the most violent of the four visionaries, Ekfwi-takkwe, Fallen Head, turned purple with anger and shouted at me with fiery looks: “Who are you to oppose our plans? What is your strength? Where is your power, you who admit that you have never seen God and have not received any revelation from Him? As for me, I see Him, God, and I talk with Him face to face. So stop making yourself the master here and go back to where you came from. We have nothing to do with you here, since you do not want to baptize us.” “It was unnecessary to ask me to come,” I answered him calmly, “if you did not want to either change your life or renounce your farces and fetishes. But since you do not want to have anything more to do with me, I am going to prove to you that I didn’t come here to impose my religion against your will. I take you at your word. From this moment on, I am going to get ready to leave as fast as possible.” At this point I went away, but the crowd had already left, dreading the consequences of my displeasure. It dispersed in every direction, leaving all alone the four fanatics, who left the camp the same day, covered with confusion. Then began visits without number to my lodge. Each came to apologize and express their greatest regrets. Each excuse was invariably the same: “I wasn’t there, merciful Father, I wasn’t there. Don’t let that wretched scene keep you from baptizing me. I hated it with all my soul.” In the whole tribe not one person would admit to having taken part in that ridiculous meeting which had included at least four hundred of them. The three chiefs came in succession to present me with their excuses and to get me to stay among them longer. They assured me that they disowned Ekfwi-takkwe’s sharp words. “It is not for nothing that he’s called Fallen Head, believe me,” they said to me. “His poor head isn’t sound. Have pity on him and baptize him. You can see that he is stupid. If you take pity on him, he will become good and sensible.” I demurred for some time. I ended up agreeing to their request and again began my instructions to the catechumens. But I insisted on delaying the baptism of the visionaries until the following year. The night of that same day, I climbed a granite hill that dominated the country. I needed a change. I went there to recite my breviary and to get a panoramic view

136

Around Great Slave Lake

of the wilderness of the Dogribs. From this diorite pedestal, veneered with large patches of lichen, the view extended over a wooded valley that spread out between the Dogrib mountains to the east and the grotesque neck of Rock Cape, Kfwe-eta, to the west. This basin holds a forest of evergreens interlaced with lakes, but what evergreens! Six feet high, trunks thick as hazelnut trees, loaded with greenish lichen like a bald old man with a stringy wig. From far and wide the granite that makes up the soil of this dry land pierces the dark surface of these woods with conical and bare knolls. At their feet extends a narrow white belt. It is a lost edge of Hare Snares Lake seen from afar. Then around my pedestal, polished by the storms and winds, the motionless surface of Lake Icy Water. My breviary recited and my sketch drawn, I went down again to my place. The three chiefs were waiting for me there in council, stiff, suspicious, and their faces dark. “What did you go to do on the mountain?” Shining Sun said to me in a shifty way. “Praying and sketching.” “Why on the mountain rather than here?” “Because I needed exercise. Your young people had given me a migraine with their endless visits and long talking. I needed fresh air.” “Show us the paper that you have blackened up there.” “Here it is.” “What’s that?” “A picture of the valley, lakes, and mountains.” “Why have you sketched the land up there?” “To fix it in my mind. So that I can recall your country when I am far from here. I do the same with the words of your language and the names of your children. I draw every beautiful countryside that I encounter.” “That’s good. We trust our Father. He only remembers us so that he can pray for us.” The three chiefs gave me a long, piercing, and suspicious look, as if to read in my features whether I had told them the truth. It appeared that their silent examination satisfied them regarding the harmlessness of my nature because they immediately assumed a simple-minded look and entreated me not to leave them. I promised them that. The daily and constant instruction of the catechumens tired me very much. Nothing dries the throat like these long talks, the endless repetitions, seated on the ground on a blanket, in the open air or in a tent open to every wind, during the thaw, shivering from the humidity and lack of fire, uncomfortable in an awkward position, a prey to hunger; because I could no longer stand boiled caribou meat without salt or seasoning, a lean, insipid meat cooked in an old, untinned, red copper cauldron. Loathing, weariness, and weakness were not my only afflictions. My audience soon covered me in vermin. The mere arrival of the savages to attend the instructions or

In the Tents of the Dog People

137

Mass in my lodge was enough to cover me with fleas. At night these insects gave me a sort of fever that let me rest only in the morning, that is to say when the little flesheaters had finished me off. There was another reason for my difficulties. I could not escape for one instant the Indians looks and attentive watching, whether it was for the most common of things or the most private. The Indian is curious, skeptical, and suspicious. Like a child, he wants to see everything, know everything, judge everything. He trusts only the evidence of his eyes. Therefore, they wanted to be certain that my conduct did not contradict my words. Living in a tent, that is to say at everyone’s mercy, if I had nursed perverse plans when coming among them, I could not have concealed my deeds for more than a day. They well knew that. But, on the other hand, since their life is a kind of partial communism, and as each person there knows the life and conduct of each other, these good people also wanted to know about my life. Above all they would have liked me not to feel ill at ease at all about the necessities of our poor nature. But we are prouder than that. When I got ready to go to bed, I always had a half-dozen patient witnesses around me who, after having emptied my pot and licked all my dishes clean, attended the ceremony like the courtesans of Louis XIV when the king went to bed. When they went out, dismissed by a sign from me, and the shadows had begun to spread, I would hear mysterious whisperings just outside my lodge, and I would perceive three or four laughing young girls who had watched me indiscreetly. “What do you want?” I would shout at them in my deepest voice. “Oh! Nothing, Father, to say a little prayer, to receive a blessing.” They would leave in gales of laughter, satisfied with their research, happy with their lie, and I would hear them exclaim in their lodge, stuttering: “He sleeps all... all ... all... all alone, al... al... always alone, th ... th ... this funny man!” Without knowing it, I nonetheless provided the women and girls many an occa¬ sion to believe that I was courting them. It happened when I was speaking to them pleasantly, smiling at them, joking decently with them, as I did with the men, above all when I offered them something to eat when they surprised me as I ate. “Among the Redskins,” said an English traveller whose name I have forgotten, “to look at a woman, to smile at her, to offer her a mouthful of something, especially some tobacco” (from which, by the way, I myself have always abstained), “is consid¬ ered as a direct overture that all women understand without further explanation.” That is perfectly true. The exchange of smiles and the acceptance of a mouthful is a pledge of assent. That is something I did not know then. Moreover, had I known it I would not have changed my behaviour. When people have wrong ideas and a perverted moral sense, it is up to the priest to correct them, to lift them up, and not to sink to their contemptible level. I wished that they could talk, laugh, joke decently with anyone, woman or man, without seeing evil in it. When they saw I had no bad intentions, the men themselves ended up by laughing, telling me that I had been,

Around Great Slave Lake

138

without knowing it, a danger to their wives and daughters: “Ede-nontpaghe-ttsendou tsedenendi,” they said to me. “You’re a libertine without even being aware of it.” 1 only understood it fully when several times I saw a beautiful girl of twenty years 1 was then twenty-five—come and sigh in my lodge while gazing at me with a lan¬ guishing look. She was still a pagan. “What is it, Wa-tpan-tsa-ze?172 You seem to me to be suffering, my daughter.” “Your daughter! You are as young as I am. Don’t you see that I’m suffering for you? Nepa douye el’i. Do you want me to go and wait for you in the woods? They were not subtle, as one can see. That would have been an unusual sight, the Praying Man wenching a coffee-coloured kitten. Well, the others would have seen nothing out of the ordinary. These people, like the Irish, forgive their priests every¬ thing, providing they loved them. Only one thing shocks them: anger. While the number of adults I admitted to holy baptism was great, I could not sen¬ sibly allow everyone to participate without exposing myself to conferring the sacra¬ ment on some badly disposed people, such as the conjurors, or those who understood the faith poorly, for example, Watpantsaze. I had to postpone many of them to the following year. This was followed by respectful remonstrances, then by tears that were soon followed by reproaches. They accused me to my face of having a hard heart, of treating them with haughtiness, of not even thinking highly of their pret¬ tiest daughters. Alas! I love the savages too much to bear these insults without any emotion. My only consolation was that it was their ardent wish for spiritual regen¬ eration that dictated these snubs, and that I was doing my duty by my refusals. Bear Grease himself, who had always been so good to me, came to find me and said: “Father, since you have finished with us regarding baptism, it would be well for you to go farther away. We’ve no more food to give you.” “For the honour of your race!” I said to him. “Have you thought about what you are saying, my son? Was it to leave me in distress that you brought me into your camp? These last few days, when I wanted to leave, you prevented me from doing so. Now that I have decided to stay with you, you send me away? I’m quite angry, but I’m staying.” Sa-tl’e said nothing, and everything went on as before. From then on, the Dogribs no longer bothered me. “Kkagowd,” they said. “He is the master.” And they came back to me for baptism. To say that there was no more grumbling would be false; but at least no one expressed it in my presence. Nevertheless, I once heard the grand chief Sa-naindi shout very loudly in his lodge, so that all the camp heard him in spite of his stuttering: Eh! Menounlay-yatpii, the French Praying Men are hard and inflexible. With them you are never the master. No, never, not even in your own house. For example, here

172 “One with a Fang Like a Beaver.” Literally: “Mouth-inside-beaver-tooth,” or, “In its mouth is a beaver tooth.”

In the Tents of the Dog People

139

is one we summoned hoping that all of us would be baptized. We wanted him to come. We welcome him like family. We listen to him. We treasure him. We feed him. We house him. Well, can we, we the chiefs, order him to do even the small¬ est things? No more than the children that are here. He’s alone, without relatives, without protection and, nevertheless, he stubbornly defies everybody. Everything must be done the way he wants it. Yet, I am a chief. I have white hair. Why does he not obey me? Our Doune priests obey me well. If I say to them: Sing for us! They sing. Cast your shadow on this sick person! They do it. And this little French priest wants to do only what he pleases. If we want to pay him for baptizing us, he gets angry and says that it is not done for money. He baptizes bad persons because he believes they are good; and those who are good he sends away because he thinks they are bad. Do we want to keep him? He wants to leave us. Do we dismiss him? He stays. Truly, he makes himself the boss, kke-odeha, and we are never our own masters, even in our forests!

This sad but funny tirade well depicts the weakness of the Dane character, and above all of the Dogribs, these uncircumcised among the circumcised. A little white child could rule a hundred of these big Redskin children. To hear the grand chief shout and rage one would have thought that he was going to devour me. Quite the contrary happened. I said quite quietly to someone who was in my lodge: “Well, what’s bothering the chief this morning that makes him speak wrongly and at cross purposes like one of the visionaries from the other day? Have they won him over to their side, him, too, an old Christian, all of whose children are now baptized?” A few moments later, the poor old man learned that 1 had understood and mis¬ judged him. He immediately rushed to my tent, armed with ... a caribou haunch. “Take this, my young brother,” he said to me with a tear in his eye. “Only a moment ago I was terribly angry with you, but I confess I was stupid to act that way. Here, have some meat. Eat and pray for me.” How could one not love men of such good nature, men who are so lovable? I have tears in my eyes from this memory alone. One stormy night I was awakened with a start by horrifying cries that rang out in the camp, in the middle of violent winds and splashes of a great downpour. There was wailing, women’s cries, and repeated calls, mixed with a stuttering that kept me from understanding anything. One soaking wet young girl lifted the flap of my tent and, in her shrillest tone, lisping and stuttering, she shouted to me: “Se ... se ... se ... setpa, se... se... se ... setchile e... e... e... el’adedenwd. Xiedi, xiedi, be... be... be ... bettsen din ... din ... din ... dintl’a llonl” Which means: “Father, my younger brother is dying. Come to him quickly.” Before I could ask her who she was, who her younger brother was, where he lived, where I had to go in the darkness to find his lodge, she had run elsewhere, carrying the sad news from lodge to lodge, and putting the whole camp in a turmoil. It is the custom in such cases. I thought naturally of Timontsate, He Who Goes Around the World, and I immediately went to his tent. It was certainly about him that all this was about. I found the child lying before the fire, naked as a worm, with a twenty-

140

Around Great Slave Lake

five-kilo stone on his stomach, and surrounded by his entire family, who were letting out shouts and groans. The father of the unfortunate boy said to me: “It is over. My son has given up his last gasp. He is dead. After a terrible seizure, he passed away just as you see him.” I leaned over the child. I put my hand on his heart. It was beating regularly. I put my ear to his lips. He was breathing peacefully like a child of his age in a deep sleep. “This child isn’t dead,” I said to those present. “Why such an uproar? He’s sleeping quietly. So let him rest in peace.” And I left smiling. But the father of Timontsate took hold of my arm. “Stop,” he cried. “Yenikodija! It’s a miracle!” Then, taking down a fat side of ribs hanging in the smoke, he put it on my shoulder, adding: “Thank you for the good words you’ve just said. Now we know that you are powerful. The child was dead and you did not believe it at all. Because he came back to life, take this and make him live still longer.” The next day they brought the poor child to me on a sled. He was all smiles and so handsome! Ah! How I wished I had the power to cure him, but besides the fact that I did not have any medicines, I understood absolutely nothing of his illness. Perhaps I would have done better to exorcise him. The impression that remains with me from my stay among the Tpa-Kfwele-pottine was that these natives come closest to the French character in their joviality and goodness of heart, and to the Irish in their faith and in their love of religion. I touched them deeply and they were ready to burst into tears when I talked to them about my beautiful country, my family, my dearly beloved mother who was visibly wasting away, always crying because she had no hope of seeing me again. They cried readily and had a tender heart. But I have always seen them laugh and gawk when I reproached them for their li¬ centious morals, for their propensity for love-making, and for the irresponsibility of their character. A constant joviality seems to be the failing or the quality of this tribe, just as moroseness and taciturnity are the lot of the Chipewyans. How many times in the middle of the most serious religious instructions or during the holy sacrifice have they interrupted or distracted me by following with their eyes, and regretful looks, a flight of wild geese or ducks which passed over our heads! Fifty pairs of arms would stretch out like guns in the direction of the flights, and pow! pow! pow! would inter¬ rupt me and make me laugh in the middle of the holy ceremonies. How that inspired eloquence or devotion! Some peculiar cases of conscience were proposed to me. One person hailed me to ask if it is still permissible for someone that has just received baptism to eat his fleas. A second questioned me on what should be done with his hair after it was cut off, and if it was necessary to bury it like all human remains. A third showed some scruples about stillborn animals killed in the hunt. I was asked if it was permitted to eat blood, fat from the intestines, and eggs—all Judaic taboos. Was it not a crime to kill a dog,

In the Tents of the Dog People

141

a caribou, to cut down a living tree for no reason, to urinate in the sunshine or in the wind? I was constantly being interrupted in my speeches. Finally, I found the Dogribs temperamental, willful, fickle, and even vulgar, as only people can be who are entirely self-indulgent, having received no education, knowing no other limitation than the secret warning of their conscience or the fear of offending one another. They were never indifferent, disrespectful towards me, un¬ godly, or rude. It goes without saying that this single visit was not enough to correct all their er¬ rors, to overturn all their superstitions, or to see all their prejudices disappear. They already had the faith before my arrival, and it was rooted in them more deeply by my visit. It was a success, and I am consoled. The glory belongs to God alone.

CHAPTER X The House of the French Caribou Hunt—Travel on Thin Ice—Pyrites Lake and the House of the French— Where Was the Site of Franklin’s Fort Enterprise?—Ignorance of the Indians in This Matter—Erection of a Cross

Nevertheless, I did have some distractions at Lake Tpa-wo-kkpa [Lake Icy Water]; I attended a caribou hunt. It took place under my very eyes since my lodge and the entire camp were located, as I said, on a stony plateau with a view of the lake. When the cry “Ekfwen! Ekfwen! Caribou ! Caribou!” rang out—this happened more than ten times a day—I had only to lift a flap of my tent and, without disturbing myself further, I could watch a rare and moving spectacle for a European, a slaughterhouse in operation. From the western end of Lake Icy Water I saw long lines of bay-brown caribou with white chests moving eastward towards the granite mountains that enclosed the scene. We were directly in their path. The caribou were returning to the high and barren lands. The whiteness of the lake was soon stained with big black spots that appeared to move; these were the caribou who gambolled there, the fawns leaping beside their mothers and rearing up on their hind legs. These different groups sometimes joined together into a single herd of several hundred head, sometimes divided into several droves, trotting lightly in the melting snow or walking peacefully head to tail, their heads crowned with their broad antlers. On seeing them, twenty hunters spread out around the frozen lake and attacked the horned mass at several points, firing into the crowd. At the sound of gunfire, the caribou broke away and bolted with the impetuousness of young colts. But they did not go far. These stupid beasts stopped again, looking around curiously with their big gazelle eyes. They seemed sorry for their faint-heartedness. “Let’s go, it’s nothing. It was only thunder. Weren’t we silly! What a false alarm!” And they again walked confidently. “Hou! Hou!” hooted the hunters, making a loudspeaker by cupping their hands in the shape of a cone. “Ah! Well, there is something new. Now what can that be? Could it be wolves? Let’s go to see what’s causing it.” And the foolish caribou turned in their tracks to walk right at the hunters. These fired point blank. The shots intersected from several points. Several caribou fell, the others scattered again, to begin once more at a distance their stupid game from which experience had taught them nothing. Ah! How much they resemble caribou,

143

144

Around Great Slave Lake

people who do not learn from experience! Meanwhile, the Dogribs decimated them. The bigger the herd, the more they seemed to have confidence in themselves and to disregard the danger. But now the hunters were on the lake; they revealed themselves in the end, made bold by so much stupidity. Then the caribou understood. They saw their enemy. They are stunned by the lightning flash. They smelled the powder. They scented the pungent smell of blood. They have counted their dead. “Quickly! Quickly! Everyone for themselves! Children, run for your lives!” Dazed, frightened, they flee in all directions, throwing themselves into the woods, climbing the rocks, determined to get clear of the terrible circle of guns and never to come back. A few, frantic and clearly out of their minds, even come into the camp, mouths wide open, their foot-long black tongues hanging out. They pass before my eyes faster than the arrows that the children shoot at them. But they are killed, in the midst of the women’s outbursts of laughter and transports of delight. This is the Greenland caribou. It differs little from that of Lapland, which one sees in our large city zoos. The Dogribs call them nonteli, the travellers, or the nomads. But the generic name of the caribou is ekfwen, flesh. Does it not make up the daily food, the native sustenance of these eastern Dene? On 26 May, my good converts came to ask me permission to have a big farewell dance. Their families were soon going to separate, to live apart from each other on the Barren Grounds until the following autumn. “Certainly, my children, dance, but dance, prance, laugh, and shout. Laugh now since none of you are getting any younger.” Servite Domino cum Icetitia. [Serve the Lord with rejoicing.] They leave frolicking, shovel the snow on the rock into a large ring, light a big fire in the middle, and start their performance at five o’clock in the evening without any advance notice. They dance all night—a night without darkness—shouting eh! ah! eh! loud enough to make the rocks shake. Dene dances present no danger to morals. I even found that you cannot perform them without a certain amount of virtue, be¬ cause they are trivial and tiring. You do not hold hands or the waist. You do not even touch. Everyone is covered with a fur robe or woollen blanket, the old men and old women participating as well as the children. The dances consist of little jumps and circular walking from left to right, then from right to left, accompanied by shouts and wild noises, but very rhythmically. It is in the monotone of the Brazilian Puris; it is a frisky dance and not more elegant than that of the Savoyard bears and marmots. On 30 May we broke camp to move closer to the mountains, or rather to the place where the tribe’s bark canoes were. It was only a day’s walk, but a tiring day for me, as much because of the intense heat and of the exhausting south wind as because I had to carry all my belongings, including provisions. About twenty-five kilograms. The condition of Lake Tpa-wokkpa was nevertheless very suitable for the walk. The water that had covered it until then had crystallized into ice that had split into myriads of fine shards, separated and lying edgewise like bundles of needles. The only thing

The House of the French

145

that kept them from giving way under our steps and disintegrating and throwing the walkers into the abyss was the very irregularity of their prisms. These crystals are so imbedded in one another that the pressure of the toot only serves to reinforce them by making them join and stick to each other. Some plants, obeying spring s renewed strength, manage to pierce this six to seven feet thick crust of ice with their feeble and tiny shafts. They create holes by which they come searching above for air, warmth, and light, in order to flourish and grow. In a few days these holes will be chasms that will cause waterfalls. Every object that falls on the ice also digs itself a pothole in which it hides itself. The pothole changes into a tube, the tube into a well, and the well into a precipice. Caribou droppings, a dry leaf, or a feather fallen from the wing of a bird thus acquire the ability to con¬ centrate heat and open the abyss. It is a mystery! It is thus that the small overlooked faults lead to damnation. This flat path, but bristling with pointy rough patches like awls, cuts the moccasins to tatters and makes the feet bleed. The Indians remedy this by sewing under the insoles of their thin boots pieces of skin from caribou legs, with the fur on the outside. These hairy and thick soles prevent the feet from being scratched as well as prevent slipping on the ice. On the other hand, on the rocks they become so slippery you have to be very agile not to fall at each step. At the end of Lake Tpa-wokkpa the Indians separated. Those from Hare Snares Lake had already left for Big Cape Rock. Here one part of the tribe went in the direction of Klo-ni-atche-retpin [Camsell River],173 which is a tributary of McVicar Arm in Great Bear Lake. The rest would spend a couple of weeks on Pyrites Lake, Kle-ti-tpie [Holy Cross Lake], which I had wrongly called Muddy Lake, Kotl’e-ti-tpie, in 1875. I did everything in my power to join the first group. I hoped to reach Great Bear Lake with them, from where I would be able to get to Fort Good Hope. What a great exploration that would have made! My hosts talked me out of it. They did not have, they said, canoes big enough to take me with them; Great Bear Lake was too far for them to undertake that trip during the thaw; and, having reached its shores, they would not have had the courage, they added, to brave its immense bays with their little bark vessels. The true reason, I understood only too well, was that I did not have anything with which to pay my guides, and they doubted that John Hope, the Swampy Cree who had reconstructed the former Fort Franklin at the bottom of Keith Arm for the Hudson’s Bay Company, was sufficiently well inclined toward me that he would pay my debt to them. Alas! I was then obliged to join myself to the Pyrites Lake Indians, and to see my secret hopes for exploration vanish into thin air. But the route that I had just opened

173 [Petitot uses three different names for the Camsell River. See Rachelle Castonguay, Inoccupation ter¬ ritorial chez les Amerindiens du nord-ouest canadien au XlXesiecle selon Emile Petitot, 2 volumes (Ottawa: Division de la recherche sociale nordique, Ministere des affaires indiennes et du nord canadien, 19791980), vol. 1, annexe 1, Index lexemique, entries 232, 233, 234.]

146

Around Great Slave Lake

stimulated the Hudson’s Bay Company’s agents to use it. During the winter of 1866, Mr. Cornelius King, agent at Fort Rae and son of the rear admiral of the same name, not only repeated my trip but, luckier than 1 because he was wealthier, he persuaded his guides to push on as far as Fort Franklin, in order to go there to get a newly ar¬ rived Anglican minister [W.C. Bompas]174 who afterwards returned with him by the same route. Then turning our steps towards the northeast, at the end of Lake Tpa-wokkpa, we walked along an extended mountainous peninsula that separates Lake Pyrites from Hare Snares Lake. It is a succession of bald, dry hills covered with loose rocks that slide away from under our feet. The valleys that separate the heights testify to the frequent visits that the tribe of the People of the Open Country [Horizon] make there from time to time. Those are the sad burned-over areas, the miry backwaters, the lichen muskegs (ttsd), full of glacial water, or finally muddy ponds into which I lost my balance more than once under the burden to which my shoulders were so little accustomed. One mountain higher than the others was the last straw. I felt myself falter, per¬ haps because of the cold water that I had drunk frequently on the way and which had chilled my stomach. I lay down on the mossy slope of the rock, waiting for this weak spell to pass. Moreover, I was not the only one to complain, for I saw before and behind me the old people of both sexes bent double under enormous burdens. Some puny women, besides their skin lodge and a big maskimow full of dried meat, still carried their infant astride the nape of their neck. Most unfortunate of all was Enatpehi pulling his son Timontsate all strapped up in his sled behind him. Fortunately, at the foot of the opposite slope lay Lake Kle-ti-tpie, still sleeping un¬ der the ice in its vast granite bed with shores polished by the endless rubbing of the ice. I rested there while making a sketch of the dry but busy countryside that pre¬ sented itself to me. Pyrites Lake, Kle-ti-tpie, is still more picturesque than Icy Water Lake, from which it is separated by the mountainous peninsula. We established our camp on another flat but lower peninsula that was made up of granite and quartz sand. In this place a small river abounding with fish connects this lake to Hare Snares. It is the Ttse-ra-niline or Canoe River (ttse) [Camsell River], There we found the tribes’ cache of canoes. From this point we saw, to the left, on a granite island

V4 [William Carpenter Bompas (1834-1906) was ordained in 1865 and arrived in December of that year at Fort Simpson where he assisted William West Kirby until he moved to Fort Norman the following spring. A few months later he was given a “roving commission” which seemed better suited to his nature than a settled station. He left Fort Norman in January 1866 and visited Fort Rae and Fort Resolution on his way to Fort Chipewyan. In 1874 he became first Anglican bishop of Athabasca, in 1884 first bishop of Mackenzie, in 1891 first bishop of Selkirk. No biographer of Bompas mentions a side trip to Fort Franklin with Cornelius King as reported by Petitot. Bompas and Petitot became militant rivals for their respective church’s hegemony in Arctic missions, but ironically it was to Bompas that Petitot appealed from France in 1884 for Anglican ordination so that he might return to his “wife” and missionary work in the Arctic.]

The House of the French

147

shaped like a gigantic building, the Kfwe-krp-nainha [Montolinet], and to the right, the Dogrib range that separated us from the Coppermine River valley. Opposite the village, Pyrites Lake spread its white surface, dotted with the klele or pyrites islands, and tson-ndou-nevitti or the line of swampy islets. My companions, marvelling at the admiration that this beautiful panorama pro¬ duced in me, assured me that from this lake one could reach McTavish Arm on Great Bear Lake by following the Asphalt River, Beye-dze-etlin, that exits from Lake Yanehi [Seguin], a short distance north of our camp in two days by canoe. I burned to visit these areas, but several families who arrived some days later from there informed us that the thaw was very advanced because of the long days and the hot wind which hastened the disintegration of the ice. Nevertheless, a young man of twenty-eight or thirty years, called Nonteli, Wild Caribou, whom I had baptized at Great Bear Lake in 1867 with the name of Cyprian, offered to guide me as far as the watershed, the only distance that we could travel without danger in view of the condition of the ice. So we went down onto Pyrites Lake which we crossed without a sled, having only a gamebag containing food supplies and hunting ammunition for Nonteli, who also carried his gun. We spent the whole day crossing the lake and camped under the slopes of the long mountain called Kokkwa-jyoue or Barrier because it completely separates the tributary waters of Great Slave Lake from those of Great Bear Lake. It extends eastward towards Point Lake which the celebrated sailor gave as the source of the Coppermine River. In the west, this same watershed continues under the name Chiw-kolla or Whole Mountain [Barrier Mountain range]. Then, reaching the height of White Hay Lake, Klo-tikha-tpie, at 1240 30' longitude west of Paris, which I had crossed in 1871, it takes the name Kfroe-tpe-niha, or Rock Standing in Water, and forms a remarkable hill on the shore of the Mackenzie River before joining the Rocky Mountains. At the summit, I found a little lake graced with an island in the middle, Seed Island, that I called Lake Seguin. Then the mountain descends again towards the immense Yanehi Lake bordering the southern shores with the name Ekkin-yedarel’a [part of the Barrier Range]. I named the lake after my honourable relative, Judge Tozelli. But I could not visit this large basin because time was short. I had to be content in view¬ ing it from the top of the mountain and leave again at once for our new campsite at Pyrites Lake. The Indians then informed me that the place where we were was called Kounhe-Manlay, the House of the French, except that they did not know why. A very strong doubt then arose in my mind regarding the identity of this House of the French, Kounhe-Manlay, the inexplicable name of our camp’s location. In 1820 Franklin established Fort Enterprise at the end of a very extended lake that he named Snare Lake, now called Hare Snares Lake [Rae Lake], like the one close to our camp that I had travelled from one end to the other. Towards the middle of its length, this lake underwent a narrowing like a river branch, exactly as Hare

Around Great Slave Lake

148

Snares Lake (Kha-mi) and that of Bear Snares (Sa-mi) [Faber Lake] are separated or rather united by the short river Tpa-tson-he or Raven Locks. The long Snare lakes of Franklin were separated in the east from other freshwater basins by “a primitive region composed primarily of feldspar mixed with quartz and mica, like the granite mountains Sa-mi-tpie-kfwe [Mont Losier]. Fort Enterprise was not, however, on Snare Lake. It was built on the edge of a tributary of the river that teemed with bluefish, and which linked this basin with the one Franklin called Winter Lake. In the same way the Ttse-ra-niline or Canoe River, where bluefish also abound, connects Flare Snares Lake to Pyrites Lake. Fort Enterprise was constructed on a high bank with a view extending thirty miles towards the north where it was bounded by a range of eroded mountains. At Kounhe-Manlay my horizon was also limited in this direction by the worn-down granite mountains of the Dogribs’ portage. To the east of the Fort was Winter Lake. And it was exactly the position that my Pyrites Lake occupied in relation to the Fiouse of the French. To the west was Round Rock Lake which was my lake Tpa-wokkpa or Icy Water Lake, beyond which one could consequently see the round top of Big Rock Cape. Finally, to the south flowed Winter River, whose banks were well wooded according to Franklin, and provided wood for the construction of the buildings of Fort Enterprise. It is exactly the same for Canoe River. Fort Enterprise is 64° 10' north latitude, the same as Kounhe-Manlay. The longi¬ tude alone of this post does not appear to me to agree with the position of my camp, which is certainly situated more to the west. Franklin says the wood all around Fort Enterprise was small, stunted, and unsuitable for construction.175 This is the same as in the Dogrib wilderness as we have seen above. Finally, the Indian name of the Fiouse of the French seems to be a peremptory clue to the former existence of some kind of fort or commercial post in that deserted place. So, these are certainly indications that old Fort Enterprise and Kounhe-Manlay are the same, and they are not the only ones. Comparing Franklin’s map of 1820-21 with mine of 1864, although the latter may be somewhat incorrect, I see still more clues. Thus, after having gone back up the Yellowknife River and going northward to its source, Caribou Lake, after being busy in the granite steppes as far as Brown Bear Lake, 64° 15' 17" north latitude and 1130 2' 39" longitude west from Greenwich, Franklin’s expedition quit this direction and veered west towards Snare Lake which it reached after crossing three portages and two other lakes. It was beyond Snare Lake that they stopped to build the fort. It would seem then that Franklin, after hav¬ ing followed the Yellowknives’ trail because they were the guides, would next have reached the Dogribs’ route that I myself have followed. And, after doing this, he

175 Narrative, etc., 211.

The House of the French

149

asseits that at Fort Enterprise he was in the Dogrib region and that these Indians were camped not far from him. On Fi anklin s map I see Lake Providence curl back on itself and connect with Point and Rtd Rock lakes, just as Intton-tcho-kka Lake of the Large Flat Leaves [Hardisty Lake] of my map empties into Lake of the Rocks Kfwen-ye [Isabella Lake] and Sheer Rock Lake Ktwe-kkpa [Grouard Lake]. I see Franklin’s Lake Providence crossed by the trail that the illustrious explorer followed returning from his disastrous expedi¬ tion, just as Lake Intton-tcho-kka is crossed by the summer portage of the Dogribs when they go to hunt caribou on the barren plateaus to the east and north. The gen¬ eral direction ot lakes Providence, Point, and Red Rock which, according to Franklin, would be the headwaters of the Coppermine River, is southeast to northwest; that is to say, it turns towards McTavish Arm of Great Bear Lake. But, the waters of lakes Intton-tcho-kka, Kfwen-ye, and Kfwe-kkpa actually flow into this bay on my map. It must not be forgotten that the Dogribs had assured me that the Coppermine River comes from Muskox Lake, which is placed on Franklin’s map outside the route of this river, far enough from the right bank and even more from Lake Providence. Nor must it be forgotten that the Indians only call Great Bear Lake Tpou-tcho, Big Water, as if it were the ocean itself, from which Franklin’s greatest misunderstand¬ ings could have arisen. In conclusion, I must add that McTavish Arm receives a water¬ course from the southeast and precisely from the direction of Franklin’s Point Lake. It is the river called The One We Were Looking For, Minkpa-al’a niline [Calder River]. Now, which river have people always sought in these regions if it is not Hearne’s Coppermine, and who else looked for it if it was not Franklin? From the facts presented must we conclude that the House of the French was really Fort Enterprise? That my Hare Snares Lake is none other than Franklin’s Snare Lake? That Lake Intton-tcho-kka is really Lake Providence? That Franklin took the Minkpa-al’a for the Coppermine, just as he confused the Peel with the Mackenzie in 1825? So, having noticed his mistake a little too late, he would not mention it at all on his map, or that he would have fused the Minkpa-al’a with the Coppermine? These conclusions are so awkward, and the last ones would be so outrageous to the memory of the illustrious sailor, in view of the impossibility of now mathematically verifying their accuracy, that I have preferred to believe in the similarity of the names of the lakes in similar neighbouring regions—a fact that is not unusual in a country where lakes abound—rather than casting doubt on the evidence of such a great man. If I could make just one more exploration, following Franklin’s Yellowknife River route, that would enlighten me immediately in this matter. Will the government ever provide me with the means? Probably not. There remained for me one way to end my puzzlement. That was to make use of the Dogribs’ testimony. It was only forty-three years since Sir John’s French-Canadian voyageurs had built Fort Enterprise. The old chief, Confidence, and a host of elders in the tribe where I was ought to have seen the famous and unfortunate mariner, or

Around Great Slave Lake

150

at least have heard speak of him. I had only to question them and that is what I did. Well, not one of them could answer me in this matter. “Why the name House of the French?” I asked Sa-nai'ndi. “Had they built a fort at that place? Who built it?” “Soundi. I do not know. We’ve never seen houses, but it’s possible that there were some.” “Nevertheless, the spot is levelled and stripped of brushwood. One would think it to be the esplanade of an abandoned old fort.” “We usually camp there each spring and each autumn.’ “Could this be the reason that the French built a fort there long ago?” “Soundi. I do not know, but it could.” “This is quite surprising. Haven’t you ever heard about the expedition of Captain Franklin?” “Soundi. We know nothing about those things.” “But then, where did you spend your youth?” “To the northeast of Great Bear Lake, along the river Tpa-tchewe-tcho, Great Water Tail, between Bear Lake and the mouth of Metal River [Coppermine], Tsatson-die.” “In that case you must have known Misters Dease and Simpson, the explorers in 1836 and the builders of Fort Confidence?” Old Shining Sun let out a shout of joy: “Ta oni on! For sure. Eyi s’inzi, that’s my name, Confidence. You can see that the French gave me the name of their fort.” “That was not the French. They were Scots, but it doesn’t matter. Then you knew Mr. Thomas Simpson?” “Missi Dease. I was the chief of the Doune who provisioned his fort.” “Very well. But before that time who were the people who lived in this land that you travel through today and where we are at this moment?” “The Tpa-tsan Ottine or Yellowknives, our sworn enemies in the past,” the old man answered. “These mountains that you see, the mountains of the Dogribs, were the boundary of our respective territories. Today they never hunt here. They, like us, have moved south.” That explained everything, or rather it was all I could get, and I remained with¬ out any explanation regarding the significance of Kounhe-Manlay, the House of the French. So, dear readers, believe what you will. Either I have had the glory of officially discovering these lands, and then what an honour for my family, you be the judge! Or, I had only been the first European visitor after Franklin, although by another route, and then at least I had the consolation prize of picking up some inaccuracies on his map that called for new measurements. But perhaps that will cook my goose. It is not just anybody who can correct such great men! Alas, alas, for my glory as an explorer!176

176 I believe, however, that it would have been to the Dogrib’s advantage to hide the truth from me when they told me they knew nothing of Franklin’s expedition. In the Journal of his second expedition the

The House of the French

151

Whether Kounhe Manlay was or was not the site of Franklins former Fort Enterprise, on 31 May 1864 I set up a large wooden cross177 on the shores of Pyrites Lake, whose name I changed to Lac Ste Croix [Holy Cross Lake], Detchin-ehpanihaytpie, the name it bears today. Unfortunately, when my cross was in place, I noticed that I was mistaken in the date because of an unpardonable distraction. I had writ¬ ten in Roman characters 1866 instead of 1864. This is a warning to any of my tireless readers who might wish to go to visit this site to see where I had been. As for the register of Saint Michael’s mission at Fort Rae, it will testify to all that I state in these pages. It is in the hands of Fort Rae’s current missionary, Mr. [Fr. Bruno] Roure, a Frenchman. Before raising this cross to commemorate my mission, I had made a reconnais¬ sance as far as lakes Yanehi and Intton-tchd-kka, to which I gave the names of Tozelli and Hardisty. To tell the truth, it is only one large lake bent into two with a narrow spot giving it the appearance of two lakes. It resembles Franklin’s Lake Providence exactly. The famous sailor places the summer trail of the caribou there, exactly the route of caribou going to the Barren Grounds, which is situated on the watershed separating Ste Croix Lake from Yanehi Lake. But let us not return to this again; it vexes me greatly.

famous sailor in effect reported “that most of the Yellow-Knives who had been in his service had been killed by the Dogribs.” It was Dease and McVicar who brought them together and who cemented peace between them. {Narrative of a Second Expedition, London: John Murray, 1828, p. 10.) [Robert McVicar (c. 1799-1864), a Chief Trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company and factor of Fort Resolution in 1825. See DCB, IX:532~3. The most northerly and most southerly of the Arms of Great Bear Lake were named for the two men.] 177 [Remains of this cross were located in 1903, but have since disappeared. Ninth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, John Russell diary, NWT Archives, 195. The cross was erected on 14 September, feast day of the Holy Cross.]

CHAPTER XI Return to Great Slave Lake Sufferings of a Nomadic Life—Departure-Hare Snare Lake Tribes—The Shouting Rock—Inextricable Grassland—Dangers of Interlake Travel—More Graves—Lac la Martre Tribe—A Sacrifice to the Moon—Arrow Fishing—Arrival at Great Slave Lake

Meanwhile, the ice became increasingly bad and compromised my return to Great Slave Lake. Without hope of reaching Great Bear Lake with the Indians and having nothing more to do among them this year, I decided to return to Fort Rae with two guides. They were two young men, Little Tobacco and Ankle Bone, both the fathers of families, who wanted to undertake the trip to Portage La Loche in the Hudson’s Bay Company boats. I confess in all truth that I did not feel brave enough to spend the whole summer with the Dogribs even though they begged me to stay. The women and the girls cried. Watpantsaze was crushed. Nevertheless, I remained deaf. Why not confess my error? Perhaps I can be forgiven. When you sleep long nights on the bare ground, when you sit for a long time by the hearth of a nomad, if you are not a nomad or a native, there comes a moment when you are impatient for a more comfortable bed, a table, a chair; for a house of any kind, even a shack. There comes a moment when your head has had enough of dances, songs, drums, and Indian harangues; when the stomach heaves at unsalted fish and meat boiled in melted snow, the primitive cooking of these bohemians of the steppes. To submit for months to this modern barbarism, you must have the unrefined tastes of the French-Canadian and Metis forest people and the rustic education of a a peasant or a sailor. I defy any man, well educated and having a taste for study, to remain alone more than eight days among savages without suffering that most profound of illnesses—the greatest impatience to go home. A European cannot imagine what a civilized man suffers in this wild environ¬ ment where I had stayed more than a month. There he sleeps between stinking and flea-bitten people who never wash themselves or change their clothes, in the midst of dirty children, of bad-tempered household dogs that start fighting or lie on top of you when you are sleeping. He eats on the ground among the garbage and ashes from rough dishes that have received no other scouring than the hostess’ tongue or the dishcloth of her skin dress. He dwells in a thick smoke that soaks him with the acrid smells of burned fat or rotten wood, that smokes him and tans him like a pickled her¬ ring, making him shed bitter tears both day and night over his sad fate. Through the top of the lodge he gets wind, rain, and snow while the cold penetrates the tent itself, often bespangled with a thousand holes. He is devoured by swarming 153

Around Great Slave Lake

154

vermin that nothing can destroy and which give him sleepless nights. He is fed on meats scarcely cooked and unseasoned. His soup is full of hare dung, bitter evergreen needles, and ledum,'78 and other filth sticking to the frozen meat put into the kettle without any prior washing. He drinks only melted snow, often boiled or scorched, and full of the same filth. He must put up with everyone sticking a hand into his pot, drinking his soup, making use of his cup and his eating utensils, without making any comments that would give him the reputation of being a proud and difficult man. Without anger or impatience, he must struggle against a host of complainers and beggars who would take even his shirt away if he listened to their requests. Like a father, he must suffer uncouthness, contradictions, even obscenities, without giving way to bitter complaints, without getting angry, for fear that people add irreverence to shamelessness and stubbornness to thoughtless wrongdoing. In these cases, he must pretend to have seen nothing, understood nothing, or heard nothing if he wants the delinquent to remain open to reform and to admit his fault. The savage who lies insists on his falsehood. It is up to a Christian to spare him by not backing his self-esteem against the wall. I will end here although I am not describing the half of it. These poor Dogribs showed me a touching affection at my departure. We knew well, on both sides, that we would not see each other again because I was going down¬ river to Good Hope. They reminded me of the Ephesian converts’ tender farewells to the great apostle Paul: “The crowd broke out in sobbing, and throwing themselves on Paul’s neck, they embraced him while crying, distressed above all by the words he had spoken to them: that they would never see his face again. And they went with him to the ship.”179 I left with my two native companions. At Faber Lake I took on a third, Cannonbone, Ekhie-Kkwene. The ice was exceedingly dangerous. Detached from the shore at the edges and made up of loose shards, it was nothing more than a floating and spongy raft. We got on it with the help of evergreens that we felled with our axes to form a rough bridge. We walked on it extremely carefully. We kept our distance from one another by using long poles that we put end to end under our steps and on which we placed our feet, retrieving them bit by bit as we advanced by putting them in front of us. In some spots the ice gave way and the water soaked our moccasins. It made disturbing up-and-down movements. Several times, we used blocks of ice as rafts to cross areas of open water. For the three of us we only had a small ten-foot canoe that Little Tobacco had brought and which he carried on his shoulders over the portages. The other two carried baggage, arms, utensils, and provisions. The first day, at ten o’clock in the

178 [Ledum or lede is a small bush whose leaves are covered with gummy, resinous matter from which laudanum is made; in this case scum or mucous matter.] 179

Acts 20:37-38.

Return to Great Slave Lake

155

evening, we reached Big Point on Hare Snares Lake where I found half of the small Tpa-Kfwele-pottine tribe camped and building canoes. Remember that the group included five seers or conjurors who had opposed me. Nevertheless, they received me with renewed enthusiasm because I had baptized all of their children, all of their old people, and even a goodly number of married people who were behaving well. We bivouacked at this spot. But the next morning my guides refused to go further until after the breakup on the lakes and rivers because those people, they said, were well supplied with fresh and dried meat, and it would cost them nothing to feed us free of charge. They proposed, they added, to build a big canoe for me, capable of cam ing me and my two men and from which I would not have to get out again until we reached Fort Rae. But they said that would require us to spend two or three weeks with the tribe. I was quite ready for that because it seemed a sensible plan, but it required me to baptize everybody, which I had not believed I should do on my first visit. I feared being blamed for my excessive indulgence. I dreaded being reproached foi proceeding too quickly. The future would show that I had been wrong, for the baptized Dogribs remained completely loyal to the faith and proved that their con¬ version had been sincere, but I could not know the future. So, I urged my departure and ended up by getting it, but among these good people there was heartbreak that I could and ought to have avoided. The women especially let tears and lamentations be heard as evidence of their genuine grief. Looking back fiom a distance, I ask myself how I could refuse such good and well-disposed peo¬ ple the grace that the Apostles themselves freely gave after a single sermon to eight thousand Jews. I admit that the fear of incurring my bishop’s reprimand—the only feeling which I would have indulged—was totally servile on my part and without any precedent in the practice of the primitive Church. I was thus guilty in regard to these lovable converts among whom I should not have left a single soul unregenerated. When the iron is hot, it must be struck and not left to someone else what can be done oneself. May the God of Mercy forgive me this because my intentions were good. We left on foot, carrying canoe and baggage and hunting the great northern diver, puffins, and scoters. We saw beaks, ducks, and teals that good luck had us meet at every step. The puffin is a superb bird, velvety jet-black with a red beak, yellow feet, and white cheeks. Flying, it makes a whistling sound similar to that made by the wind entering an empty bottle. Hence their Dogrib name, yawoule, the empty or hol¬ low one. That second day, at ten o’clock in the evening, we camped on the banks of the short river that connects Faber Lake to Rae Lake. A jagged block twenty feet high rises above the granite shingle at this spot, like a trembling rock. On Pyrites Lake I had seen other jagged masses similar to this. “This rock is fearsome, jyedarije,” my companions said to me. “People have often heard it utter cries of rage because, in times past, it was a powerful chief who was changed into stone.” “What do you call it?”

156

Around Great Slave Lake

“Kfwe-tsezil’-kkwe, The Rock That One Hears Shouting. So you mustn’t sleep in this place, there’s too much risk that we’ll never wake up.” “How’s that!” I said to them most seriously. “Is this what you think being a Christian and a child of God is worth? Listen carefully to what I’m going to say to you. You won’t hear this rock shouting ever again. From now on it will no longer be a danger to you. Instead, try something with me. We are going to sleep here tonight, and you’ll see.” Indeed, we camped at the foot of this tremendous rock which, alas! for my curios¬ ity, remained calm, impassive, and mute. “Naxetra kfwe honnejyedadijel Our father is more powerful than the rock!” my two Dogribs exclaimed the next morning as they saw themselves still part ot this world. “He knew how to stop the cries of rage.” One is a bit of a cut-rate miracle worker with such people. What would a Robert Houdin180 be then! Do you not think that it must have been a little like that at the beginning of every church and among everyone in the world? As for me, I am con¬ vinced of it. And that is why one no longer sees so many miracles. It is because the Christian religion has destroyed the old superstitions, because it has enlightened and opened people’s minds, and because it has replaced fairy tales with the gifts of science and civilization, its two elder daughters. Better still, let us say superstitions have been replaced by simple good sense. But carry yourself back to times long ago and imagine that I had been canonized. Do you not see the beautiful role that I would have played in the Golden Legend? “He chased out of this land a terrible spirit from hell that produced groans from the very rocks. After his passing and as he predicted, no one ever heard the stones cry out any more.” What a great saint! Ora pro nobis'. [Pray for us!] We know that the Provencals’ tarasque,lSl the Greeks’ dragon, the Flemings’wyvern, the Irish snakes and other fabled monsters who have made the reputation of a Saint Martha, a Saint George, a Saint Mamertus,182 a Saint Patrick, etc., had no more ex¬ istence than the Dogribs’ howling rock. They were created by pagan superstitions from which these saintly individuals released their disciples by instilling in them the teachings of the Gospel. At most, they were emblems of paganism that they van¬ quished by their faith and their virtues. I have found some of these shouting rocks everywhere. The Cree, an Illinois tribe, make even some lakes and rivers cry out which, you must admit, is even more dif¬ ficult. So the mythology of the Redskins is worth as much as that of the Greeks and

180 [Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, nineteenth-century French magician from whom the American magi¬ cian borrowed his stage name of Harry Houdini.] 181 [A monster of Tarascon, near Avignon, whose wooden effigy is drawn through the town annually.] 182 [Archbishop of Vienna (d. c. 475), author of prayers against earthquakes and other perils.]

Return to Great Slave Lake

157

other pagan nations, and the rock-chief of the Dogribs is in no way inferior to the tree-man of the Scandinavians, to the cabiris [gods of Lemnos and Samothrace] and the epileptics of ancient days. “Father,” Little Tobacco soon said to me, “I’ve a question to ask you. In the absence of a priest, should we confess ourselves to the big trees and the big rocks?” “Now what kind of idea is that! Who could cram such a thing into your head?” “This is what is said among us. For a long time our shamans made us declare our errors to the rocks and trees. I for one have often confessed to the rock-chief when I wanted to unburden my wicked heart.” This naive declaration made me smile. I repeated to the two Indians what I had already taught to the whole tribe concerning the sacrament of penance. But no mat¬ ter what explanations I gave them, I remained persuaded that at the first opportunity they would not fail to confess themselves to some evergreen more potbellied than the others. Such a confessor is so convenient and hardly compromising! Unless, however, the trees of the Dogrib country are as indiscreet as were the Phrygian rosebushes in the time of King Midas.183 Between Faber Lake and White Hares Lake, we followed the course of the Raven Locks River, Tpatson-he-des. Could not this be the watercourse that Franklin called the Yellowknife River, Tpatson-ottine-des, because of a certain similarity in the sound of the words? All this is intriguing. Our navigation was painful and danger¬ ous because of the waterfalls and rapids. We found White Deer Lake, Kon-kka-tpie, or Mazenod, covered with aquatic birds, especially coots, that made the wilderness resound with their piercing and nasal cries, honti! ti! ti! ti! ti! repeated time and again. The Dene only hunt webfooted birds with bow and arrow, except the swan and the geese, which they kill with a gun. A strong rain held us back for two days on this lakeshore with no other shelter than the starlike foliage of the evergreens. The trees did not prevent us from being soaked to the bone. This was one of the greatest sufferings of my return trip. Another equally great was the nighttime crossing of an appalling swamp formed by the rise in the water level and the long rains. We floundered for hours in stinking and slippery mud and ice water up to our knees, shivering with cold and having to overcome a host of obstacles. Sometimes it was a fallen tangle of trees, sometimes impenetra¬ ble thickets of elms and willows in a black bog, and sometimes floating water lily (.Nymphcea nelumbo) gardens, with arrowhead and water peppers that sometimes hid real quagmires. In one day on Hares River, we covered the distance that separates this lake from Fish Lake. This watercourse is a real disaster of rapids and waterfalls. I counted twenty-three of them of which I had a notion to run the least dangerous ones. The

l83

[Midas, fabled king of Phrygia.]

i58

Around Great Slave Lake

speed with which our frail canoe was swept forward was breathtaking. At the fork of Excrement Lake or Lac la Martre we met Djimy, second chief of the Indians of this lake, who urged us to accompany him the length of this river to go to meet his people who were the only ones who could supply us with three canoes capable of withstand¬ ing Great Slave Lake, or rather the crossing of the North Arm. This river is not as lively as White Hares. It glides between winding banks covered with Acorns calamus and other tall grasses, a resting place for the muskrats, almost the only animals that one encounters there. I found vegetation in full blossom, the air perfumed by the large balsamic poplars that were budding, the finely outlined fo¬ liage of the trembling aspens, weeping birch, and willows pleasing to the eye. We did not find any Indians from Lac la Martre on the river, but at their abandoned camp, we saw two recent mounds surmounted by wooden crosses from which were hanging bows and quivers full of arrows. On the shore opposite the crosses, we saw, floating in the wind, the inevitable streamers intended to keep the spirits of the dead in their graves by amusing them. This is a Chinese custom. A paddle stuck sideways into the silt of the shore carried a terse inscription traced out with coal in Chipewyan: “We left here yesterday evening,” it said. “Death has decimated us. Two of ours sleep here. If the Praying Man passes, let him pray for them!” There was no date, so how were we to determine the day of the week meant by the phrase yesterday evening? But the native gets along without a calendar. With the end of his paddle, one of my men explored an imprint of a man’s foot on the mud and said without hesitation: “It’s quite fresh. They came back just today to leave this writing. It was yesterday evening that the tribe left this campsite.” After praying, we continued to travel all night. At three o’clock in the morning of the next day, we caught up with the tribe on the shores of Big Belly Lake, Bes-tchonhi [Sabre Lake]. Its chief, Jacques Beaulieu called Nade, a Franco-Dogrib Metis, natural son of the old patriarch Beaulieu,184 received me with politeness and pointed out a tent to me to spend the night. They immediately served me newly pounded meat and raw caribou marrow. I supped royally. Here, as at Hare Snares Lake, I literally had to tear myself away from the over-attentiveness of the Dogribs, but this was for another reason. These Indians were no more than a day’s march from Fort Rae where they were going shortly. Was there any point in keeping them in the woods to instruct and baptize them when I could do it at my place much more comfortably? Furthermore, I wanted to change my underclothes, because my thorough searches, bravely carried out in spite of my eyes and my heart, had not been able to deliver me from the wingless and cruel beings that were eating me alive. I am sure that Saint James of Jerusalem would not have accepted my argument since he never took a

184 See my first volume, En route pour la mer glaciale (Paris: Letouzey and Ane, 1888), second part, ch. VI, 312.

Return to Great Slave Lake

159

bath in his life. But he never was my favourite patron saint. I believe cleanliness is next to godliness. So, profiting from the tribe’s sleep, I went stealthily into a dark grove where even Diana could not follow me, as she did long ago with the beautiful Endymion. My hunting gave me such horror and seemed to me, nevertheless, so futile that, despairing of ever exterminating my enemies, I pulled down a poplar branch and hung my nightshirt on it, like an offering to Phoebus, or a sacrifice to Savagery for this season. We camped at Cold Waterfall, Wokkpa-die, which measures fifteen feet high. The women, the elderly, and the children of Lac la Martre generally do not go beyond this southern limit. Here we added two more canoes to the one we already had. Thus there was one for each of my men. I placed myself in the largest. The Wokkpa-die Falls offer this peculiarity: the travertine limestone that composes it has been hol¬ lowed out or arranged by the waters like natural conch shells that empty one into the other and form a cascade. Tufts of maidenhair fern, hart’s tongue, and other fragrant ferns grow in each pool. The sun, which casts its beams of golden light into the falls’ silvery waves, hangs light iris-coloured veils there. In the lower pool I noticed some beautiful whitefish that frolicked in the sun. I went to inform my men, who had had nothing to eat that day any more than I had. At the sight ot the silver fish, they let out shouts of joy, sharpened some sticks, and began to spear the beautiful attekamekouts. But since this hunt was not going fast enough to suit them, they used their arrows and soon caught sixteen large fish each weighing three to four pounds. It was thus that God fed us that day which was Sunday. The twelfth day of our interlake trip, we disembarked on Pike Lake, a deadend in the infinitely vaster Great Slave Lake. As soon as we entered it, a white sparrow called to us in a little voice as sweet as a harmonica: “Oh! Dear, what can the matter be?” Poor little one, mystified by nature, he endlessly asks for a reason he will never know. Pike Lake’s basin is granite and so flat that I touched the bottom everywhere with my paddle. The only danger this basin poses is that, in rough weather, canoes caught between two waves are broken on the flagstone and sink both baggage and travellers. Finally, with shouts of joy, we reached Great Slave Lake at the end of the North Arm on the fourteenth day after our departure and marvelled at its vast horizons and its myriad islands. Facing us four or five leagues away, Island Mountain rose up solitary and bare. Fort Rae and my poor dwelling were at its base but on the opposite shore. The essential thing was to get there safe and sound in our frail bark canoes.

Kounhe-Manlay on Pyrites Lake

160

CHAPTER XII Perilous Crossings Almost Shipwrecked in a Bark Canoe—How It Is Proven That Ducks Produce Wind—Second Miracle of the Season—Travel by Boat on Great Slave Lake—The Osprey—Ice Crossing—Guano and Caribou Islands—Quartz Islands—Perils on the Great Slave Lake Estuary—Chipewyan Welcome—Kpilli-aze—The Influence of the Shamans—Departure for Fort Good Hope

We had arrived at Great Slave Lake, but our goal was to reach Fort Rae, that is to say to make a crossing of five leagues, and that was neither easy nor wise with little birchbark canoes. The Dogrib and Hareskin canoes are very tapered at the two ends and form horned points like the ancient Egyptian boats. As for interior accommodation, it is an elongated copy of the Eskimo kayak. There is only space in the middle of the skiff, the front and rear being covered with birchbark. When we refloated our canoes, the sun was setting in the north-northwest in a crimson horizon: a sign of strong winds. Puffins and waterhens were fleeing south, letting out discordant cries; swallows and gulls were whirling frantically in the sky. Immediately, the white wind, ninttsi-pa, started to blow from the northeast over the water with alarming strength. The white wind of the summer is the khamasan of the winter. Only the name changes. It causes cyclones. This wind favoured us in fact, but by its violence, it made our situation dangerous because of the height of the waves that pushed us from behind, any one of which might have filled a canoe and sent it to the bottom. So we angled left, where we saw a multitude of small islands, to gain shelter and calmer waters. We were getting along quite well until my companions hit upon the idea of joining the three canoes together to raise a sail. So they landed on a small island with the intention of cutting a mast and a yardarm. Scarcely had we come ashore, when we caused all kinds of ducks to fly up with a deafening clamour. What luck! Under each clump of willows and alders, we found large nests of these web-footed birds. Each nest contained nine to twelve eggs. At that moment, I doubt we would have been happier if they had been gold nuggets. Providence is a good mother. The previous evening, she had fed us freely with exquisite white salmon. Today, she sent us an abundance of boiled eggs. Without thinking any more about the crossing, without concerning ourselves with the wind that was getting stronger, nor about the increasing peril, my men immediately lit a fire, filled the cooking pots with eggs of all colours, and hard-boiled them. They only

161

Around Great Slave Lake

162

know two ways to eat them: hard or soft-boiled. 1 hat was the best and largest meal I had had since leaving Fort Rae. That done, we tied the three bows of our nut shells together, and we took to the lake again. We took off like arrows. But the canoes were violently slamming into one another, risked shattering, and were taking on the water splashing over us. We were forced to untie them to look for shelter on another little island. Nevertheless, we had already crossed nearly half the bay. Given the uselessness of our efforts, we could have waited at this place until the wind fell or attempted the trip on the bay by following close to the shore. But try to stop savages who, after a long voyage, saw themselves close to arriving at a fort! The three bark canoes were once more joined, this time with the help of crossbars. The mast and the sail were again put in place and we flew out yet again like three swallows. As long as we were in the lee of the island, we literally flew on the water. But as soon as we were exposed to all the fury of the white wind, oh, then, the swallows turned into ducks! At first this made me laugh. Three minutes later, each of us found ourselves in a bathtub. What kept our skiffs from sinking? The lightness of the bark from which they were made, in conjunction with the enormous column of water that was supporting us, kept us afloat. 1 here was not a dry thread on us. What the lake could not reach from the bottom to the top, great sprays, tossed by the wind that beheaded the waves, bathed it from top to bottom. These were ice-cold baths and showers. I was calculating coldly—yes, exactly—how many minutes it would take to sink straight down. I did not yet know that a bark canoe can capsize but it will not go down, at least if it is not too heavily loaded or punctured. But three canoes tied together like a raft! Oh! They were absolutely unsinkable. In my ignorance of this characteristic of Indian vessels, I took off my hip waders,l!,:) in order to be ready to swim in case of a shipwreck. My second precaution was to pass the cooking pot to two of my Indians while the third steered, telling them to bail. For my part I did the same using my hat. Until then we were sailing at the speed of a steamboat. It was the sail that kept us afloat. With a little self-control and directing our trireme towards the nearest small island, we would have been able to land with¬ out mishap. Instead of peacefully agreeing, my three stutterers now lost their heads and began to quarrel, blaming one another. The canoes made a wrong manoeuvre, and we were slammed by the wind. The mast and the sail struck me on the head. I thought it was all over for us. I pulled out my knife, cut all the rigging, and taking an oar, I shouted to the quarrellers: “Quickly! Quickly! Now, let’s man the oars. Perhaps we can still save ourselves.” We were able to maintain our course between two stretches of water without sink¬ ing. Separated, all three of us would have upset before long. Thanks to the wind and

185 [Also britches, pants, or overalls, from Greggs, an English company that manufactured such clothing.]

Perilous Crossings

163

our efforts, and to God first, we reached the island, the object of our desires, and our first care there was to kneel and thank Divine Providence like shipwrecked people. We lit a big fire on the rock, before which we warmed ourselves while our clothes were hung up to dry. “What rotten luck,” my three Indians said to each other. “Why did we eat those duck eggs! Their despondent fathers and mothers sent this tempest. We had it com¬ ing to us. Fortunately, the Praying Man protected us.” I had become more than a faith-healer. Such was the rumour that these three neophytes spread at Fort Rae where we arrived an hour later. Metis and natives remained convinced that I had saved the lives of my three companions. It was yet another of my easy and numerous miracles. I blame myself for this second supernatural event of our expedition. “Alone, we wouldn’t have travelled on the lake,” said my three converts to excuse themselves. “It was too difficult. But we well knew that nothing evil would happen to us with our Father there and that he would keep us from drowning.” What a strong faith simple souls have! The only truth in this story is that if I had not been with them to impose silence and distribute the chores among them, they would have fought instead of worked, and would have drowned because of their own stupidity and panic. After my arrival, I stayed another ten days at Fort Rae. The total mission was seventyfive days, during which I baptized 319, of whom 190 were children, blessed the mar¬ riages of 106 persons, and heard more that 1,200 confessions. It was the most fruitful and consoling mission that I have ever given in my life. With a little more initiative on that occasion, I could have christianized the whole Dogrib nation. It was neces¬ sary, however, that I leave these excellent people who so powerfully disproved the disgrace of their name and origins. On 23 June 1864 I took my place in the Hudson’s Bay Company boat that was going to Fort Resolution, from where it would take the Ta Toche Portage route with other boats. We spent two days crossing the archipela¬ gos called the School of Big Fish, the Residence of the Swampy Crees, and the Eggs Islands. We doubled the mouth of the Yellowknife River by which Franklin had reached the Coppermine in 1820, passing in front of Big Cape. After having left the North Arm, following entirely bare granite cliffs, we turned east to camp on the site of old Fort Providence No. 2,186 now called Jean-Kounhe be kpounke. Like the Falkland Islands, the Eggs Islands serve as a refuge for myriads of web¬ footed birds. There we collected a considerable quantity of eggs from all kinds of birds. It was like another manna. We had only to stoop down to pick them up. Among these eggs some were pink, pearl grey, white, olive green, beige, and mauve. Some

186

[This Fort Providence was located near the mouth of the Yellowknife River, on the Ingraham trail,

close to the present city of Yellowknife.]

Around Great Slave Lake

164

were speckled, some mottled, others seemed decorated with guipures.187 The pret¬ tiest were those whose wormy pattern imitated the delicate outline of a geographic map. On one of these small islands, we found some “nuns” or ospreys, two names for the fishing eagle, the American or bald-headed eagle.188 I had heard tell that the flesh of this bird is very white and excellent to eat. I wanted to try it and put two eagles in the cooking pot, in spite of the loud recriminations of our Dogribs, who warned me that this bird of prey was their great medicine. I swear I could not swallow a single mouthful of this stinking and bitter flesh, to the great joy of the Indians. On the fol¬ lowing days, we experienced all kinds of obstacles. “How can it be otherwise?” exclaimed the Dogskins. “The Praying Man has eaten our strong medicine!” We spent the whole day of 26 June within sight of the strait Tpa-thele, the Water’s Beginning [the mouth of McLeod Bay], which dumps the double currents of ice from Aylmer and Walmsley lakes into the big lake. In spite of a most violent east wind, we encountered a cold and thick fog from the river Tpa-tcheghe or Aquatic Tail of the Water [Lockhart River] which prevented us from distinguishing anything at a distance of four paces. It was caused by the breakup on the higher lakes coming in contact with the already warmer waters of Great Slave Lake. So, it was necessary not to lose any time crossing the big coastal current that was carrying the ice floes, or suffer the penalty of remaining on our granite plateau for more than a week. Such was the advice of the Dogribs. The mistakes of the savages with me some days earlier led the Metis to disregard their advice. At five o’clock in the evening, the east wind fell. The fog lifted and revealed a wide and long band of floating ice coming out of the Water’s Beginning, stretching far into the great lake. At that moment, the Metis no longer wanted to stay. Fear of a blockade led them to give the signal to leave, and we were soon in the middle of the moving pack ice. Fortunately, the wind had broken it into pieces. Two men shoved them aside with poles while the others rowed. A kind of feverish fear, produced by the uncertainty of success, gripped the crew so strongly that no one breathed a word. Each strained on the oars, helping the sail that we had raised to half-mast. Nevertheless, we encoun¬ tered enormous blocks of ice that could have overturned us if they flipped or came under the boat. Others hit our sides, threatening to smash us. A half-hour was spent in this dangerous crossing during which we heard nothing but dull booming coming from the drifting ice floe, the thumping noise of the long oars, and the heavy breathing

187

[Coarse large-patterned lace, like crochet-work, lacking any fine background netting.]

188

[Petitot errs in equating the osprey, the fishing eagle or fishing hawk, with the bald or American

eagle.]

Perilous Crossings

165

of the sailors. When we finally reached open water, they let the oars fall on the gun¬ wales with a crash. Everyone let out a great sigh of relief. At midnight, we reached some flat and bare islands covered with a thick layer of guano that let off a strong smell of ammonia. Neither the Metis nor the natives knew the value of this manure. The officers of the Company themselves had never spoken of it to me. These little islands carry the name of Sir George Simpson.1®9 Two hours’ sail from the Guano Islands, proceeding at ten knots an hour, we reached the quartz Caribou islands.190 This is an archipelago distributed as an extension and on the axis of a long winding peninsula called Kkpas-nou-tche-lla [the Arrow Presqu’ile], which separates the twin bays [McLeod and Christie] of the east—the Breasts—which give their Dene name to Great Slave Lake, Tthou-tpoue. We waited a long time on the largest of these islands for a more favourable wind since it was blowing west while we were headed south. Because of the wind direction, we rowed from island to island, always slanting east, in order to find the second narrows and to follow the coast along the south shore of the lake. The Dogribs did not stop muttering about all these long distances that tired their arms. Already I was no longer a valiant and benevolent miracle worker but a wicked and fierce sorcerer. Trust the constancy of human respect! Last’s night favourite is thrown away today. “It’s the Praying Man, our Father, who’s playing this dirty trick on us, onetti, onetti,” they said stuttering. “He was so afraid at the head of the lake that now he is working to make it calm.” There is nowhere under the sun where the priest is not attacked and discredited, and it is the greatest cowards who brag the most when the danger is past. From four o’clock in the afternoon until seven o’clock, we stayed on a little island waiting for a favourable wind. With the wind blowing at three quarters, we then left flying like an arrow. These islands are blocks of quartz as white as sugar. I wonder how conifers can get a foothold on this ancient rock which forms the nucleus of our planet. Is it possible that these masses of quartz contain gold? We continued on the lake at a kingfisher’s speed until five o’clock in the morning. In terror our crew saw the boat leaning on its side as if it had been hulled, bounce up, and fall back in the water gushing from its keel. I admired the self-confidence of our helmsman Louison

189 [Sir George Simpson (1787-1860), governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose service he entered in 1820, was influential in the merging of that Company with the Northwest Company the following year, and was appointed governor of the Company’s northern department where he showed great administra¬ tive ability and encouragement for exploration until his retirement in 1859. DCB, VIIL812-19.] 190 [Petitot’s reference to the Caribou Islands as close to the south shore of Great Slave Lake seems out of place because those islands would have been the first encountered when leaving the North Arm and entering the Eastern Arm.)

i66

Around Great Slave Lake

Lanoie, a Chipewyan Metis. He showed more courage than William Houle,191 and a coolness and a knowledge of his way that would have done honour to the most experienced of sailors. We waited again on Stone Island, between five and nine o’clock. It was not as fruit¬ ful as the first two halts. This time we wanted calmer water because we were going to cross the dangerous Slave [River] estuary, a flat mire towards which the blowing wind would inevitably drive us. It would be unfortunate for us if we were to run aground on these gluey shallows. It meant death, a frightful death, swallowed alive by the mud. As in the first two situations, it was necessary to leave without getting what we desired and to make a virtue of necessity. We squeezed to windward to gain as much leeway as possible. We did not succeed in this. We tacked unsuccessfully, because the square shape of our only sail refused to funnel the wind. After we used the oars to regain open water, we again hoisted the sail in the hope that we would be carried beyond the mouth of the Slave River. No such luck. Sounding the depth soon told us—for the depth was hidden because of the overcast weather—that we were completely on top of a strand of black ooze. “Haul down the sail and take your oars!” shouted Lanoie. “Back water, boys, back water or we are lost. There isn’t two feet of water under the keel.” Two metres further in the same direction and we would have been stuck in the mud like one of the numerous floating tree trunks that had become embedded and buried forever in this Stygian mire. The water is not deep on these mudbanks. The waves there are not to be feared. They run wide, flat, and weak, like the tentacles of an octopus on the flat and greasy bottom. But just the sight of them was enough to make the courageous Lanoie break out in a cold sweat. Ah! once grounded there, nothing in the world could have refloated us, and the unfortunate man had his entire family in the boat. It is impossible to get a foothold in this glue, impossible to find a bottom stable enough to support a prop, a strut, or any lever. “If it were daylight,” shouted Lanoie, discouraged by the futility of our efforts to regain open water against the wind, “if it were daylight we could easily recognize the entrance to the Riviere-a-Jean, one of the Slave River’s mouths. But how can we make it out in the darkness?” Suddenly, the Dogrib who was sounding in the bow gave a joyful shout: “Tpa tVon\ Lots of water!” he called. “In what direction?” “North-south. From open water to solid land.” “It’s the channel. We’re saved! Turn around, fellows, windward for windward. Hallo! Boys, to the oars!” We turned our backs to the lake and to the wind. Always sounding the waters, we

191 See En route pour la mer glaciate, second part, 357.

Perilous Crossings

167

went in gingerly at first, then at full oar in deep water. Finally, again hoisting our lateen sail,192 we went safely into a bayou bordered with aquatic vegetation that led us into the main branch of Slave River. Next, we went down this one westwards and reached Moose Island on 29 June at nine o’clock in the morning, after seven days of dangerous navigating. Three months earlier, I had used only three days on foot to cross the lake at its narrowest point. We had just made almost a complete tour of the eastern part of the lake except for the two Breasts. I do not know whether I or the Chipewyans felt the greater joy at my return to Saint Joseph. These Dene are not enthusiasts. They neither shout nor make a racket like the Dogribs, but they are sensitive although maintaining a calm and dignified attitude. At this meeting they stayed silent from emotion and joy, cried silently, and held my hand in theirs while they repeated, “Tanks, se tpa'in, t’ankyoul” On 2 July the boats from the Mackenzie arrived en route for La Loche Portage. In one of them was the prelate [Grandin] who had been our interim administrator for several months, and who was yielding his place to the titular bishop. He was leaving once and for all for the diocese which had just been entrusted to him in the south¬ west. He informed me that Mr. Henri Grollier had given up his soul to God on 4 June, and that I was officially named and recognized as his successor. So, one last time, the order was given to me to go to Fort Good Hope or Bonne Esperance on the lower Mackenzie. You can imagine how happy 1 was at this third announcement which answered all my hopes. In vain, the Chipewyans presented to His Grace a petition in which they begged him not to remove the Father whom he had given to them two years earlier. Not only was this petition not accepted but the petitioners were sharply scolded for their attachment to their pastor, whereas not one of them addressed the smallest prayer to the prelate entreating him to stay. This sentiment was quite natu¬ ral, but too much so. Several days later, some Yellowknives arrived who informed us of the death of five elderly people as a result of a cold epidemic which had ravaged their tribe. Louis Ekounelyel, the good old blind man who had dictated to me in his own language the traditions of his people, was among the victims. The Yellowknives brought me an octogenarian woman who had been abandoned in June on a small island in Great Slave Lake with a single smoked side of caribou ribs as her only provisions. They considered her a useless bother and they got rid of her because of the food shortage. Savages have frightful reasons to excuse their insensitive cruelty. Necessity forces them sometimes, they say, to sacrifice a useless mouth in order to save the children, the hope of the tribe. On their return from the barrens where they had gone to hunt caribou, the rela¬ tives of poor Kpilli-aze, Little Squint, wanted to know what had been done with the

192 [Small triangular sail hung on a long yardarm attached at an angle to a short mast.]

168

Around Great Slave Lake

corpse. To their astonishment, they found the old woman in good health although considerably thinner. Although her faculties were almost gone because of age and the sufferings of her rough life, the instinct for survival had stimulated them to the point of making her able to get through this terrible ordeal unscathed. She had cut the ribs into very thin strips for as many days as she thought her children would be absent. She made a rule to eat only one of these narrow strips of smoked meat each day. She filled up the emptiness of her poor stomach with juniper berries, bear grapes, a little rock tripe [lichen], and the scrapings from her leather dress, portable provisions that are never lacking to an Indian while he has an inch of leather on his body. This is how she saved her poor life. I received her at the mission. She was half crazy, always begging for something to eat, dancing, and frisking like a baby when she was given something. This childlike joy was unnatural. One saw that the pains of her long fast had permanently affected her mind. The Chipewyan Francois Wabisten and his wife, Fat Marie, mother of Tabachach, my little bird hunter, were still servants at Fort Resolution. They were very close and had a little boy in 1862 that I baptized at Lake-of-the-Woods. Since then Marie had become pregnant again. This woman was the widow of a Chipewyan conjuror who had left her with three children, of whom Tabachach was the oldest. Before dying, the sorcerer, who was jealous, made his wife swear that she would never remarry, telling her that if she broke her promise she would die in giving birth to her second child. Marie was poor. She had to remarry to support herself and her children. She found a good Catholic Chipewyan who agreed to take her. She took instructions, was baptized and, after her marriage, left for Great Slave Lake with her husband in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Good Marie’s second pregnancy being now very advanced, she recalled the threats of her first master and fancied that she was surely going to die. Haunted by this fixed idea, she soon gave some signs of mental illness and ended by becoming completely crazy. She gave herself up to despair, rage, and fury. This creature, so gentle and such a good mother, only thought about killing herself and her children. She swallowed needles, soap, and cinders; she pursued mice in her shack and devoured them raw in the hope that they would poison her. Completely stripped, she dragged herself on all fours like an animal, not recognizing her children, insulting everyone who looked at her. She became an object of dread to all Fort Resolution. Twenty drops of lauda¬ num had not managed to bring on the sleep she needed so much. Nobody warned us about what was going on until this madness was completely obvious and seemingly irreversible.

Mr. Allonge and I went to see poor Marie. She recognized us and greeted us with joy and trust. We got her to put on her clothes. Mr. Allonge had practised the Chipewyan language for several months at Lake Manitoba. He reasoned with Marie in my pres¬ ence; he assured her that she would not die, that God is stronger than a conjuror, and that He would protect her life and her children. In short, we left her consoled, at

Perilous Crossings

169

peace, and calm. We then got the others not to sew her into a moosehide and not to shut her up in her shack. Treated with respect, she regained her reason and happily brought her second child into the world. But another mystery occurred. The poor mother, completely cured, lost all the children by her first husband, the Chipewyan sorcerer, one after the other. People might have said that he got his revenge. Tuesday 16 August 1864, I left Great Slave Lake once and for all, to go to take pos¬ session of the mission of Good Hope, 341 leagues further north, on the shore of the Mackenzie River and five minutes [north latitude] from the Arctic Circle. I was not to see Great Slave Lake again for another seven years.

Dogrib Danites (Pyrites Lake)

170

CHAPTER XIII A Tribe of Stutterers Stuttering among the Cree—Among the Dene and the Dindjie—Statistics of Stuttering—Probable Causes of Stuttering—-Nature and Nurture—Mechanical Production of Stuttering—Stuttering among the Eskimos

Among all the infirmities that afflict humanity, there is none more unusual nor more difficult to explain than that of stuttering, because it is more the result of psychology than physiology. During my twenty-year stay in the Arctic and in the neighbouring region, I have noted that more than a fifth of the Redskin population stutters in vary¬ ing degrees. Having been in a position to compile exact statistics on all the tribes I visited, I had every chance to record my observations concerning the individuals suffering from this infirmity. And here is the result. Several of these comments date from twelve to twenty years ago. I believe that they will still be of value when compared with those that later observers will make about these same tribes after they have modified their lifestyle, changed their eating habits, and transformed their customs and above all after their intelligence has been enlightened and freed by the religion, commerce, and contact of Europeans. To speak with authority about the stuttering of the Dogribs, I must compare these Indians with their neighbours to the south and north. Among the Cree, a tribe of the Illinois race, who number from five to six hundred souls, with whom I travelled, talked, and lived in Saskatchewan, I have no recollec¬ tion of encountering a single stutterer in four years. The language of these people is resonant, soft, easy, and melodious. It is the Italian of North America. The alphabet does not contain more than twenty-two letters. Vowels dominate in the construction of words. Consonantal diphthongs are rare. Several of our consonants, such as b, f j, 1, r, v, x, and z, are unknown and unpronounceable. With the exception of k, m, n, p, s, and t, all the words begin with vowels. These Indians express themselves slowly, calmly, with self-assurance and honesty. They never interrupt each other. They do not give any impression that they want to speak before another. They know how to listen, which is a great talent, but when they speak, they do it with emphasis, playing to the gallery. From the point of view of elocution, they are scrupulous observers of prosodic quantity. They look for a sort of rhythm to charm the ear at the end of each sentence. They cultivate pauses and obviously aim for effect. In a word, they are orators and only pay attention to a man who expresses himself correctly and with elegance.

Vi

172

Around Great Slave Lake

Now, it is evident that their lack of emotion, their self-control, and the slowness of their pronunciation ought to have the natural effect of preventing stuttering or of correcting it early, if it appears in some children. But let us admit that if in their parliaments these grave sachems see themselves rudely interrupted, contradicted, or ridiculed by the individuals to whom they are speaking, the impatience or the anger that they feel would be of such a kind as to produce the infirmity among them that one notes among their northern neighbours, the Danites. This slowness of the Killistinok to express themselves comes from their apathy, their lethargic temperament and, finally, from their good manners. Manners make it a duty to respect and apparently approve of the ideas and the opinions of their fel¬ low citizens. This is quite simply politeness. They are, however, vindictive, but they know how to call on patience to help in their revenge. They enjoy perfect control over all the impulses of their spirit. They are marvellously self-controlled in every situ¬ ation. Now here is the number of stutterers which my censuses have shown among the Dane-Dindjie: Dene Chipewyans: 19 stutterers among 465 souls (19/465); Dene Yellowknives, 7/332; Dane Slavey, 15/315; Doune Dogrib, 394/788; Dene Hareskin, 60/772; Dindjie Loucheux, 5/150. Total: 500 stutterers out of 2,822 people, that is to say, more than one-fifth of the population. The Dane-Dindjie are generally moral and are enemies of matrimonial alliances between blood relatives. They extend the prohibition even to the fifth or sixth gener¬ ation. They have a horror of incest, but they are less discreet in the matter of affinities. The Dene, however, avoid choosing their spouses from another tribe, so that one could admit, in this way, that heredity or atavism can be a transmittable cause of stuttering as well as other congenital infirmities such as squinting, baldness, and a certain tendency towards blindness. The language spoken by the Dane nation presents the most arduous and the most difficult of pronunciations that one can hear. It contains nearly all the difficulties of known languages. It has several kinds of th, r, k, and t. It possesses hissing, clicking, dental, and hiatus sounds that have been the despair of many people. Its alphabet requires a total of sixty-five phonetic characters.193 Briefly, these Indians need the nimblest of tongues and the most sensitive of ears to be able to capture, distinguish, and express the nuances of a language whose dialects are as numerous as there are small tribes within their nation. Therefore, the Dane-Dindjie are intelligent and witty, quick to learn and to pro¬ nounce any language. While there is not a single Cree who understands and speaks Dene, a great number of Dene understand Cree and speak it tolerably well. However, in spite of the proverbial gravity of the North American aboriginals in general, and the moroseness of the Chipewyans in particular, I must state that the Dene-Dindjie

193 £. Petitot, Dictionnaire et gratnmaire Dene-Dindjie (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 28, rue Bonaparte, 1876).

A Tribe of Stutterers

173

are not masters of themselves in the same degree as the people of the Illinois race. One might say that as one nears the Pole, people are proportionately more impres¬ sionable and more easily overexcited. Dene and Doune gatherings lack the calm, dignity, and decorum that characterize the councils of the Cree and other Algonquin tribes. Impetuosity in the Dene charac¬ ter translates itselt into interruptions, contradictions, lively comments, and requests to be quiet. Sometimes it even permits itselt those unparliamentary invectives that mar our political assemblies. On this point, Gallic fury offers something akin to the petulant humour of the Dene-Dindjie. So I consider this collection of flaws as the principal reason for the stuttering that distinguishes the Dene from the Crees. The more I headed North, the more I found this a noticeable and frequent infirmity pre¬ cisely because of the character flaws mentioned above. It reaches the point where one can say that persons free of all stuttering among the Dogribs are exceptions among their compatriots. Naturally, regarding this infirmity that partakes more of the nature of acquired flaws than of congenital defects, we must take into account organic sympathy or the physical influence of innate imitation by children as much as heredity. But I must also note that petulance and liveliness of character are much more marked among tribes with many stutterers than in those where there are few or very few. I cannot compare the Doune Dogribs, the Dene Hareskins, and the Dindjie Loucheux in talk¬ ativeness, the need for expansiveness, the tendency to outbreaks of laughter, except to the most verbose and enthusiastic people of southern France and the East, such as the Gascons, Provencals, Neapolitans, and Jews. If heredity is considered by science and experience as the primary cause of some illnesses, as well as being the point of departure for qualities of intelligence and the virtues of the soul, one understands that it can similarly produce stuttering in such a way that the less exogamy there is among families tainted with this infirmity, the less chance there is of seeing it disappear or diminish among their descendants. Then, if these people affected with chronic and consequently incurable stuttering unite in marriage, the wager is ninety-nine to one that they will beget stutterers and incur¬ able stutterers like themselves. This infirmity can only be alleviated first and then, afterwards, dispersed in their descendants by successful crossing with foreign people enjoying the ability to express themselves clearly. As for saying that stuttering is the result of marriages between consanguineous non-stutterers, it is an obvious error, a conclusion as contrary to good philosophy as to sound logic: “Nemo dat quod non habet [No one gives what he does not have].” It is only by creating a mixture of blood with non-stuttering individuals and from another tribe, by cultivating the intellect and talents of the children of old Dogrib stutterers, that one has succeeded in hindering and partially dissipating the con¬ genital stuttering of these Indians. In 1879 I was assured that the descendants of the stutterers that I had known in 1864 were fewer than their fathers because they are the

V4

Around Great Slave Lake

sons of non-stuttering women that the Dogribs had obtained from the Slaveys of the Mackenzie and the Hareskins of Great Bear Lake. One would say that Nature herself instills these precepts in man through the ex¬ ample of the animals themselves. Does one not see the bull and the stallion spurning union with the heifers and the fillies over whom they have jealous custody, going to look elsewhere and often very far away, at the price of battles and real dangers to their life, for the object that they could easily and effortlessly get for themselves nearby? One must also attribute as the second cause of the improvement of Dogrib families, relative to stuttering, the education received today by the young and the obligation the young face to learn prayers and catechism by heart. But without contradiction, this cause is subordinate to that indicated above. I do not hesitate to assign as stuttering’s formal and determining cause impetuos¬ ity of character, liveliness of intelligence, and the spread of ideas, united to an unreli¬ able memory and a lack of self-confidence, and as the propagator cause the union of blood-related stutterers, that is to say heredity by sympathy, the power of imitation, and morbid, congenital affection. As for the mechanical production of the phonetic phenomenon, here is how I explain it. I compare intelligence to a more or less large vase, allowing, or not ob¬ structing, the pouring out of the liquid that it contains and the introduction of air. The ideas put forward by the intelligence are the liquid contained in the vase. Memory, which comes to the aid of ideas to help them translate into words or spoken ideas, that is to say, the pouring out of the intellect, is the air that pushes the liquid out by introducing itself into the bottle. Finally, the vocal organs such as the lips, the tongue, the throat, and the larynx are the intermediary engines between the intellect and the spoken word or idea emitted by sounds and are the neck and mouth of the vase. Tilt a bottle carefully in proportion to the degree of slant to the contraction or to the size of the opening and you will easily pour the liquid it contains. It will pour more quickly if it meets little resistance in the neck, more help from the air in the interior, and less impatience on the part of the operator. Unfortunately, the stutterer gives me the impression of a well-filled bottle whose contents one wanted to empty all at once by turning the vase upside-down. What happens? The bottle seals itself completely or almost so instead of emptying itself. The liquid that it contains only comes out drop by drop because the air enters only too sparingly to be able to force it out. It then produces rumblings, gurgles, and hiccups just like spasms. The liquid ends up, nonetheless, in pouring out but after how many hesitations, whispers, and convulsions? By virtue of what he experiences when he tries to speak, only the stutterer can confirm or deny the accuracy of my comparison. But, such as it is, it satisfies my intelligence and indicates the means of curing stuttering. Such are the thoughts that have inspired in me the exertions, often fruitless in their loftiness, of the Dogrib stutterers with whom I lived. I was able to convince

A Tribe of Stutterers

175

myself of their soundness by the comparison that I later made between the Dogribs and the Eskimos. I must give to the latter people the same description that I have given for the Crees. Of three or tour hundred Eskimos with whom I have frequently been in touch, I found only one stutterer. However, under the heading of morality, this nation has the worst reputation in all of North America. But it is lethargic, the nation expresses itself slowly, hammering out every word, stopping at the end of each sentence in order to judge the effect it produced on a public that is in no hurry. Its ideas are slow, its wit is heavy, however ingenious it may be in other respects. Furthermore, the Eskimo has the thick and plump tongue of the parrot, and fat lips, the lower one dangling. He is a true Berrichon.194 These organic flaws make his speech rather husky and awkward. One would say that he talks with his mouth full of beans. He is entirely in control when speaking and never stutters. But does the Eskimo become angry? The violence of his nature renders him suddenly, absolutely silent. He has turned the jar upside down. It is blocked by its own content. He is not in control of himself. He chokes up. He becomes red, crimson, and purple. He trembles. He makes a futile effort to speak without being able to articulate a single word. His anger translates more eloquently into a knife that he would readily give to the belly of the one who contradicted him, to see what was inside, if the other is not on guard against him.195

194 [Native of the old French province of Berry.] 195

Written at the request of my honourable colleague of the Anthropological Society, Dr. Chervin, Jr.,

in May 1883.

CHAPTER XIV Legend of the Dogrib Nation

The Dog Man-Death of the Dog-headed Sorceror—The Dene Woman and Her Little Dogs—Dogs Changed into People—Children of a Dog—Other Dene of the Same Origin—Charlevoix and the Dogribs—Portrait of This Tribe_Mr. De Charencey and the Dog People—Dog People and Dog Gods from Around the World—The Dog Peoples Origin in Ham, Son of Noah

According to the Doune Dogribs, here is a legend that is the true history of their small nation and the reason for the tribe’s unusual name. Although Charlevoix places the Dogribs on the edges of the Danoise [Churchill] and the Seal,1?6 two trib¬ utary rivers ot Hudson Bay, these Indians have moved the theatre of their legend to the steppes stretching north of Great Slave Lake. I have this traditional legend from several Indians who all agree in the way they tell it, whether they were Chipewyans, Dogribs, Yellowknives, or Hareskins. Here is the substance of the stories I have compared. After the discovery of copper by a Dene woman, another woman of the same tribe lived alone with her two brothers north of the Lake of the Great Breasts.197 She still had not had a husband. One day a stranger arrived in their tent. He was a strong, handsome man whom the two brothers received hospitably. They encouraged him to spend a few days with them and finally suggested that he marry their sister, to which he consented. The marriage was made on the spot. But during the wedding night, the young bride awoke and did not find her husband beside her, while she heard some¬ thing like a dog gnawing bones in the cold ashes of the fire. At that time the Dene did not yet have dogs.198 The woman and the two brothers got up immediately. They stirred the embers and relit the fire in the tent, but they did not see any dog. When day broke, the stranger (edouni) reappeared, as if he had come back from visiting the hare snares. The following night the same thing happened. “Where then can this strange dog come from who lurks in our lodge at night?” exclaimed the two brothers who were awakened by the noise of crunching bones. “We have no dog with us.” When the

196 Histoire de la Nouvelle France. 197 Great Slave Lake. 198 Franklin says as much in 1820.

177

i78

Around Great Slave Lake

noise was heard a third time, they threw a stone axe into the corner where the deaf animal continued to gnaw bones. A piercing cry was heard in the shadows. They got up quickly, relit the fire, and what did they see, swimming in his blood? A large black dog that had been killed by the axe. As for the handsome stranger, he was never seen again. “Ah! So it was this stranger who, while a man like us during the day, became a dog during the night and did not know anything about human behaviour, said the brothers. “That was a Dog-Man, a magician, an Eyounne'99 who had married our sister. Now she herself must die.” Immediately, without pity, they chased her from their tent and their country so that she would end her miserable life in the woods, because she had slept with the dog. So the Yellowknife woman went far away from the land of her tribe, alone, abandoned, and carrying in her womb the offspring of the dog that had deceived her. She went to the barrens of the Coppermine River and lived on the dry lands where there were no trees and no trails at all. She set her snares for big Arctic hares, and fished with hooks made from salmon trout bones, and did not die. However, she came to the end of her pregnancy and gave birth to a litter of little dogs as black as their father. Ashamed of the fruit of her womb but full of love for her offspring, the poor woman hid her little ones in a naltchiesh100 and fed them with her milk. When the little dogs were able to run by themselves, the Dene woman noticed, after checking for white hares, the imprint of children’s feet in the ashes of the hearth. “Where can these children’s footprints come from?” asked the poor mother. The next day she returned to her snares and the same phenomenon was seen again. “Surely it’s my little ones who are doing this,” the Dene woman said to herself. “During the day and without my knowledge, they leave the darkness of the sack to play, and imme¬ diately become humans. But at my approach, they re-enter the darkness, and again immediately change into dogs. Such was their father, such are they. I know just what I’m going to do.” The next day the dogs’ mother fixed a long string to the mouth of the sled bag. She opened it, moved away and, holding the cord, said loudly: “Be good, children. Mommy will be away a long time today; she has very many snares to visit.” But it was a trick. She hid herself a short distance downwind, holding the string in her hands, and impatiently lay in wait for her little dogs. When they no longer heard their moth¬ er’s footsteps, one after the other they put their noses out, sniffing all around as dogs do. At the same time they said to themselves: “Mommy is far away now, let’s get out and play.” Then one little dog boldly jumped out of the sack and became a handsome little boy the moment he put his feet on the ground. Another little dog followed him

199 A Dene name for the Kollouches. Literally, courtiers, fools, or phantoms. 200 Long sack made from the caribou’s leg skin. Often used as a sled by attaching straps to it.

Legend of the Dogrib Nation

179

and became a pretty little girl. A third, then a fourth did the same, and there they all were, naked little boys and girls playing and frisking around the hearth. They were delightfully beautiful and innocent. The poor Dene woman quivered with emotion. “If I could only keep them from reentering the shadows, she said to herself, “they would be humans forever!” Saying this, she pulled firmly on the cord that closed the naltchiesh. But, despite her quick¬ ness, she could not prevent three of the children from jumping in before it was shut. They became dogs and dogs they remained.201 The others did all they could to dive back into the dark. But their mother ran towards them, seized them, and covered them with kisses. There were four: two little boys and two little girls who had stayed m the light and retained their human form from then on. The Dene woman raised them as humans. As for those who had preferred to remain dogs, she thought that their fate was fixed and she abandoned them without pity so that they lived as beasts. The two brothers became skilful hunters. Their mother taught them to shoot with a bow, to trap caribou and hare, and to use the spear against the beaver and muskrat. From their father, the Dog Man, they inherited the power to perform magic and became outstanding and famous conjurors. By virtue of this, they succeeded in everything, nothing was impossible to them, and their tent was always full of the finest meat. Then their Dene uncles did not reject them any more, as they had done their mother, because they had become warriors and good hunters. When they reached maturity, they married their sisters and had many children. And we are the descendants of these dog children, we people (Doune). This is why we are called in derision Klin-tchonpeh (Dogribs). The other Dene scorn us, but we are worth more than them and we do not fear them at all. That is the end.202 Following their national legend, the Dogribs, Dog Sides or Dog Flanks or Dog Spare Ribs, or whatever you would name them, ladies, always had chiefs who car¬ ried the sacred and patronymic name of L’in-ya-betpa, One Whose Father Was a Little Dog; literally, “dog-little-his-father.” This was the name of the grand chief with whom Peter Pond traded in 1778. This is still the name of the chief from Great Bear Lake, who was one of my best converts. The Dene Etcha-Ottine or Slaveys, or the Dounie Espa-tpa-Ottine or Sheep People, and the Eta-Gottine or Mountain People, who all claim the same origin, stress this love of the dog even more. Not only did their women nurse little dogs as if they were

201 According to a Kollouche legend cited by Misters Von Wrangel, Alph. Pinard, and H.W. Dali, as soon as humans saw sunlight, the day that star was created, they all tried to return to the shadows, becoming birds, fish, or quadrupeds according to whether they sought the night in the air, in the waters, or in the depths of the forest. So, in this Dogrib legend we have a Kollouche souvenir. 202 See all the variations of this fable of the Dog People among the Danites in my Traditions indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest (Paris, 1886), 56,170, 204, 239, 311, and 431.

Around Great Slave Lake

i8o

their sons, but also, until marriage, adolescents take the name of father

... of the

dog that they had adopted and raised. While waiting for some Darwinist to go into the Dogrib Barren Lands in order to study this interesting variety of two-legged humans on the spot, we are permitted, we humble sheep of Panurge,203 who do not agree with Darwin’s progressive ideas but follow the correct course of the world, to explain this ludicrous legend. First, it can be explained by the “antiphysical” corruption in which this population stagnated before it knew the Gospel. Second, by the Chaldean dualism, which became Manichaeism, which has been found among nearly all the Redskins of North America. This is a dual¬ ism that recognizes the antagonism between the products of good and bad principles. Third, and finally, by the union of some Kollouche warriors with Dene women that they had taken captive, as is proven by the name Eyounne that these Indians gave to the Dog-Man, which is also the name of the Kollouche in their own language. Kollouche shamans have a great reputation for sorcery and wickedness. They are cannibals and even dig up corpses to eat and to inspire terror in others. These ghouls are at the same time dung eaters. They pretend to devour dog excrement to show their superiority over their fellows and their invulnerability to all that is thought to be poison by Indians. It is noteworthy, moreover, that one of the names of the Kollouches, Thlin-khet, which signifies “people” in their language, means dogs, dog’s feet or dog’s phallus in Dene-Dindjie. The Loucheux call their neighbours, the Kollouches, Ttsekpoe, or women. In their traditions they call them Zhcenan, or public women, to use a genteel term.204 Hence the contempt and hatred that the other Dane and Dene already have for the miserable Dogribs against whom they make war. Charlevoix is the first author to mention the Dogribs. He speaks of them in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France, assigning to them the barren lands that border the western coast of Hudson Bay, along the rivers Danoise and Marine Wolves. The first of these rivers has since been called English River or Churchill. This historian then recounts how, in his time, the Dogribs were at war with the Savanois,205 their near¬ est neighbours to the south. The Chipewyans said as much by including Slaveys, Hareskins, and Dogribs in a common origin. It was the Swampy Crees who had driv¬ en the Doune and Dounie to the north of Great Slave Lake, from where in their turn they had been driven by the Chipewyan Dene and the Dane Beaver who then settled on the shores of the Danoise or Churchill River. The Dogrib tribe has then moved progressively north for two centuries, because Franklin, Dease, and Simpson found them to the east and northeast of Great Bear

203 [The reference to Panurge’s sheep is from a Proven9a] legend and refers to people who blindly follow another’s example.] 204 In Dindjie this word has much cruder meanings: “scrotum,” “harlots,” “prostitutes,” and “procurers.” 205 Savanais, Swampy [Crees] of the English or present-day Machkegons.

Legend of the Dogrib Nation

181

Lake between 1819 and 1836. Today they have returned a little further south so that Great Slave Lake is their most southerly limit. The whole Dogrib nation numbers no more than twelve hundred souls, and is made up of four tribes or bands: first, the klin-tchonpeh proper from Great Slave Lake; second, the Tson-tpie-pottine or People of Excrement Lake or Lac la Martre; third, the Tra-Kfwele-pottine or People of the Water’s Beginning; fourth and finally, the Ttse-pottine or People of the Canoes. These last belong to Great Bear Lake. I all, well built, tanned or the colour of light brick, dry and nervous of tempera¬ ment, bowlegged, having small and well-shaped feet and hands, large and rounded chests, black eyes and hair, heavy eyelids, sad and squinty appearance: these are the traits that are more or less found among the other Danites. The Dogribs add to this a very distinctly Arab or Egyptian look. This struck me first when I yet knew nothing about the traditions of these people. Do you want to know what their women are like? Go see the portraits ofthe Egyptian dancing girls that are on display in one of the galleries in the Musee d’Anthropologie of the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris. It is the same burning and passionate eye, but empty of ideas; the same traits, the same little parallel lines tattooed on the chin, the same little crow’s feet at the corner of the eye and the corners of the mouth, the same dirty brown hue as the fellaheen. The forehead is high and round but narrow; their nose rounded and a little snub, a true sphinx’s nose. Finally, their large and bloodred mouths, with prominent lips, are curled up disdainfully. Among the men the mouth is decorated with a little black moustache, sometimes bushy. Many even have a little beard. The Dogribs are not circumcised. In the photographs of the Apiaca Caribes, Bororos and Araguaya of the Caraja, Chavante and Akua tribes, that the learned Dr. Paul Ehrenreich206 of Berlin, ex¬ plorer in Brazil, has kindly sent to me, I have noted striking resemblances between some of these types—who certainly offer nothing of Aramean or Hindu, and were rather Malaysian, but above all are quite South American—and several Danites of the tribes with whom I have had contact. Evidently, there was a mixing and union of the peoples of the two Americas at some unknown time and their common origin is shown by the resemblance that is found in both although they are now far apart from one another. As for dress, I have nothing to add to what I said about the Slavey Danites in my first volume.207 They have the same clothes of faded tanned leather coloured canary-yellow from exposure to rotted birchwood smoke, only here they are of caribou instead of moosehide. Their styles are the same and their decoration identical. I have brought

206 [Paul Max Alexander Ehrenreich (1855-1914), author of Beitrdge zur Volkerkunde Brasiliens (Berlin, 1891).] 207 En route pour la mer glaciate (Paris, 1888), 374.

Around Great Slave Lake

182

back from my excursions several pieces of Dogrib and Yellowknife costumes that I still have with me, such as knife sheaths, smoking pipes, sashes, and headbands. I have already commented on the analogy that certain Dogrib names present to known Egyptian names. I do not know if they mean the same among the two peoples. Likewise, one must note that the name of the east wind, the khamasan or khambatsan, of the Dogribs resembles very much the khamsin of the ancient Egyptians, for whom the name means “poison,” and to the kharbas of the Phoenicians, in whose language it signifies “cultivated land.”208 It was also the name of the east wind. In Dogrib, in Slavey, and in Hareskin, khamasan means partridge droppings. What connection does that have with the name of any wind, and who cannot see that the word has lost its original meaning by distortion? Interestingly, in the Yucatan the south wind is called kwemason which means fire. Let whoever explain this euphonic correlation of sounds with such divergent mean¬ ings for four words applied to the wind: poison, cultivated land, fire, and partridge droppings! In 1877-78, at forts Good Hope and Norman I made a quite extensive study of an¬ other curious legend of the Dog People that I cannot include in this present work be¬ cause of its length. I had notified the Count de Charencey whose curiosity had been piqued by my Dene legends, and who proposed—according to what he wrote me—to research the origin of this strange tradition. The noble Count had the graciousness to wait several years before publishing the fruit of his researches, and it was only when I begged him not to defer its publication any longer that he published the results that his learned investigations had brought to light. It is contained in the booklet entitled Hommes-Chiens.209 In the first pages of this pamphlet, Mr. de Charencey summarizes my work on the Dog People.210 Next, he researched the same belief throughout the world, a method that I have always used for similar studies. The noble author found dog legends among the Ainu of Japan, the Kurilians, the Pegus, the natives of Java, the Khirgis, the Kaotche or the Chinese Turks, and the Assena Tartars. From Asia passing to Africa, Mr. de Charencey reported the belief in the existence of the Dog People as I had, but agreed with another author, the venerable Mr. d'Abbadie, that they were only in the country of Adel.211 In Asia Minor among the Druses, he found the Kelbieh or Dog worshippers, even as he had noted the existence of a similar cult among the Huancas of Peru. One could, he says, add to these nations those who acknowledge a wolf origin, such

208 Eothen. London. 209 Comte de Charencey, Les Hommes-Chiens (Paris: 92, rue de Cherche-Midi, 1892). 210 Emile Petitot, Monographie des D&ne-Dindjie (Paris: Ernest Leroux, in-12,1875). 211 [Arnauld d’Abbadie (1815-98), an explorer who spent twelve years in Ethiopia as recorded in his Douze ans de sejour dans la haute-Ethiopie (Vatican City: Vatican Apostolic Library, 1999). Adel, from Arabic Add, “justice,” refers figuratively to any Muslim country.]

Legend of the Dogrib Nation

183

as the Bouretes for whom the name signifies Wolves, the ancient Sabines, the Hirpins, the Romans and the look-away of Texas. I myself add the Mohicans or Mahiganiak (Algonquin Wolves), the Kollouches lagwan, Flat Head Wolves, and the Hareskins, who also venerate the wolf. As my own researches have furnished me with other data than those of Mr. de Charencey, I list them here briefly only as notes, not wanting to go deeper into the question in these pages. In America, tribes other than the Doune Dogribs claim a dog origin. I will soon give them, but it is the Innoi't [Inuit] or Eskimos who have kept the clearest memory of it. Not because, like their brothers from Kodiak Island, they claim to descend from the dog, but because they acknowledge that Dog People exist in the interior of their country, a conviction that they could only have learned from the Kollouches or Dog Dene. I am speaking in fact about the Eskimos of Greenland, a country whose interior is entirely uninhabited and uninhabitable, and whose shore dwellers im¬ migrated in the thirteenth century from Arctic America with all their baggage of traditions and legends. One of their legends says a woman was married to a dog and had ten children who, when they were big, were ordered by their mother to kill their father. After that deed, she divided them into two groups and sent them from the house so that henceforth they would look after themselves. Five of them became Erkileit.212 As for the other five, she gave them one of her old slippers that she put on the sea, where it grew rapidly and became a great boat which they boarded and left for no one knows where. The legend adds that these Greenlanders see in these five brothers the root of the Kablounet or Europeans.213 Dr. Rink, who reports this fable and the next, remarks that it agrees with the ori¬ gin that the Japanese attribute to the Ainu and the Kourilians. As the Eskimos have come from the west and present a great similarity of customs, usages, and manners with these Asian peoples, it could be accepted that these two traditions are identical if one did not have another possible origin in America itself, at a distance very much closer to the Greenlanders. In another Greenlander legend there is a mention of a man named Innouaroutligak, son of Malerk, whose nomadic family travelled continuously from the south to the north, spending the winter underground and starting off again in early spring. In one of these migrations, the family met a tribe of people whose upper bodies were human while from the waist down they were shaped like dogs. These creatures, armed with bows and arrows, could catch the smell of humans just like dogs and other animals, even upwind.214 This fable coincides with what the Arctic Danites, Hareskin, and Loucheux say about their Dog People or inhabitants of the Shadows,

212 Name for Redskins in the language of all Eskimo tribes. 113 Dr. H. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimos (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1875), 47a. 214 Tales and Traditions, 400.

184

Around Great Slave Lake

Beonixon-Gottine. The Eskimos cannot have borrowed this legend from them. They may have had the legend first and passed it on to the Danites. The Danites place their Dog People in the north-northwest, and the Greenland Eskimos speak in the same tale of a narrows or canal, ikeratsak, on the shore of which they congregate and where they await the freeze-up so that they can cross to reach the mainland at a spot called Nousak. I he great mountains in that place were with¬ out glaciers.215 One can, if one wishes, apply all of this data to Greenland, but in my opinion, in these legends it is much simpler and more rational to find an account of Eskimo hordes migrating from Asia to America. We still find in America, in the way of Dog People, the Chichimetzin or Chichimec216 from Anahuac. According to Mexican tradition, they were originally fish that Tetzcatlipoca217 changed into dogs. Their name means nothing other than the dogs.218 According to Schoolcraft,219 the American Snakes or Shoshone who live in the mountains of Utah and New Mexico, as well as on the shores of the Columbia River, claim to be descended from the dog.220 Mr. W.H. Dali says the same thing about the Eskimos of Kodiak Island.221 In another study, Mr. de Charencey himself has written that people in Mexico wor¬ shipped a dog-headed god called Chantico; and in Peru the priests took the very pious and respectable title of dogs (allco), in connection with their cult of a dog-god,222 and one can, therefore, compare them to the Japanese Amida, the Egyptian Anepou, the Slavey Pol-can or Vol-can, the Hindi Soura, the Canaanite Baal-tsephon or sundog, the Tyrian and Carthaginian Bel-sephon, and finally to Hantou-Peniada'in of the Mantras of Malacca,223 all of them being both sun and dog gods. We must not forget the Kollouches or Thlin-khet whom their Dene neighbours call the dogs and in whom they acknowledge the ability to transform themselves into this animal, but above all there is the famous Dene-Dindjie belief in Dog People. In Polynesia the Kanakas of the Tuamotu Islands state that people who become vicious and turn into dogs, perish by water and fire.224 Let us consider Asia. In English Burma we find a dog nation in the Chamieh or

215 Tales and Traditions, 402. 216 [Pre-Aztec people of the Valley of Mexico.] 217 [Quetzalcoatl (flying serpent), pre-Columbian Aztec creator god.] 218 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisees du Mexique, vol. 1. Legende nahuatlaque. 219 [Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793-1864), geologist and ethnologist who made pioneer studies of North American Indians.] 220 H.H. Bancroft, Indian Tribes of the Pacific Coast, vol. IV, 224. 221 H.W. Dali, Alaska and Its Resources. The Orarians. 222 H. de Charencey, Des animaux symboliques chez les Americains, 3, 5. 223 M. de Castelnau. 224 Rev. Fr. Montithon, Marist. Report in Missions Catholiques (Paris, 1874).

Legend of the Dogrib Nation

185

Karnieh of Arracan. They go entirely naked and have abominable customs. Their name means dogs. I compare Kamieh to the Eskimo Kayttiik which also means dog. According to the Jesuit Scott,'-1 Rubruquis226 and other French Dominican mission¬ aries of the thirteenth century who went to evangelize the great Tartar horde re¬ ported that among these people the men of a certain tribe had a canine shape, while their women are similar to other women.227 This confirms what has already been said by Mr. de Charencey, that the Turks gloried in the title of Son of a Dog which the Chinese had given them to describe them as insolent dogs, Thiou-Kioue.12& The traveller Marco Polo, as trusting as Rubriquis, found Dog People still else¬ where. He recounts that he heard from the Tartars of Zardan that there existed in the Far East a kingdom of Lambri whose inhabitants have the head of a dog. They also have a dogs tail a palm in length. He places them in the mountainous islands of Angamanain.229 I am inclined to believe that it is a question of the Andaman is¬ lands and the Alfourous or Endamene negroes who are characteristically prognathic. These very mountainous islands are situated in the Gulf of Bengal, opposite Pegu and south of the mouths of the Irrawady. Finally, it must not be forgotten that the Phoenicians and the Carians of Crete themselves received from the nations of their day the surname of dogs (Molossi) because of their unnatural behaviour.230 Still today, says Mr. E.A. Spoil,231 in the lowlands of Lebanon, more than 60,000 Arabs rejoice in the name of Beni-Kelb or Sons-of-a-Dog. These are the Ansarieh who must not be confused with the Assassins, natives of Assara in Mesopotamia. The Ansarieh are both Kel-bieh, that is to say dogworshippers, and Chamsieh or sun worshippers.232 Thus, they are the heirs of the ancient Chananeens. Let us go down to Africa. According to the historian Elien,233 a nation of Dog People was settled only seven days’ walk south of Egypt along the Nile.234 And Mr. Mansfield Parkins, an English traveller in Abyssinia, found belief in a people who were half

225 [Probably John Lee Scott, author of Narrative of a Recent Imprisonment in China after the Wreck of the Kite (London: W.H. Dalton, 1841), xi, 131.] 226 [Rubruquis (c.

1220-C.1270),

(Willem van Ruybroeck), a Belgian-born Dominican, left a record of his

“Voyage in the Mongol Empire” where he had been sent as an envoy of Saint Louis IX, king of France.] 227 De Mirville, Des Esprits, vol. Ill, 343. 228 H. De Charencey, Chronologie des ages du soleil, 15. 229 Marco Polo, Voyages (Paris: Ch. Delagrave, 15, r. Soufflot, 1888), 306. 230 Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarii in Sacr.-Script. 231 [Edouard-Auguste Spoil (b.1833), a prolific political author and translator of nineteenth-century France.] 232 E.A. Spoil, Tour du monde (1861), 11. 233 [Aelianus the Tactician, second-century Roman writer.] 234 De Mirville, Des Esprits, vol. X, ch. 24 and ch. 1 of vol. XV.

i86

Around Great Slave Lake

dog universal in Ethiopia, Nubia, and Kordofan, the regions watered by the White Nile, the Darfour, the Fertit, and the Egypt. He says that it is spread even throughout Arabia, where he thinks it arose.235 This traveller is probably alluding here to the Ansarieh. I must also note, with another author, that the Berber or Nubian popula¬ tions, that is to say the people of Ham,236 are everywhere mixtures of Arab or Semitic races in the above-mentioned lands. Such are, among others, Kababieh, Kameah, Ab Haouas, Abourof, Khasanieh, and Beni Fezzarah Arabs. It is not surprising then that the two peoples share the same traditions. If we return to Europe from Africa we find a beautiful specimen of the Dog People species in the Huns-Koutrigours or Ougors-Dogs,237 as depicted by Sidonius Apollinaris in the fifth century of our era.238 It is not until we reach Denmark that we find a similar tradition. Popular belief places a nation of people with a dog s head, feet, and tail in Finland, on the shores of the Baltic.239 It is difficult not to be aware of the Canaanite and Semitic (chamieh) root of these dog-headed people no matter under what sky they are found. Throughout the world they have unnatural customs. They worship or venerate the dog. They often pass themselves off as snakes, and flat¬ ten their heads artificially. Descendants of Cheveus, the Canaanite Serpent, of Mes-ra or Bes-ra, or of Kouch, they have tried to hide the infamy of their cradle, to ennoble their miserable ancestor, and to equate him with the sun. They have tried to lose themselves in the crowd, among the descendants of those whom they formerly op¬ pressed, the Danites, their neighbours and companions in exile. If their own legend does not always sufficiently reveal Ham, the inheritor of Cain’s perverse doctrines,240 the name alone of Dog People always betrays them so that we can recognize them as the sons of Canaan.241

235 Mansfield-Parkins, Life in Abyssinia. 236 [The cursed son of Noah, ancestor to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.] 237 Ch. de Ujfalvy, Revue de Philologie et d'Ethnologie (Paris, 1875). 238 [Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 432-c. 480), bishop of Clermont, statesman and author, “the last representa¬ tive of classical culture.”] 239 Norman MacLeod, Good Words (London, 1872). Danish legend of dog-headed people, with illustration. 240 De Mirville, Des Esprits. 241 For the fullest details see my work entitled Accord des mythologies dans la cosmogonie des Danites arctiques (Paris: Emile Bouillon, 57, r. de Richelieu, 1890), 337-424.

hi. The Slaveys

CHAPTER XV Among the Etcha-Ottine of Willow Lake New

Remedy for

Haemoptysis—Kkpayipa

River—Indian

Cruelty

towards

the Wolverine—Excellent Reception at Mink Lake—Requests for Dreams and Charms

Fishing Dogs—A Great Chief in Trouble—Visit from Three Wolves—/

Nearly Drown under the Ice—Dog for Dinner—a Windikouk or Cannibal

Between the years 1864 and 1879 I again crossed Great Slave Lake five times. In 1871 I vaccinated 865, that is to say, all the Indians who were on my route between Fort Simpson and Portage La Loche. One of my colleagues, Mr. Seguin, for whom I pro¬ cured a syringe and some vaccine I had received from France, vaccinated 860 be¬ tween Fort Good Hope and the mouths of the Mackenzie, for a total of 1,725. The credit for this good work belongs to a citizen of Marseilles, a devoted friend of the Redskins and a friend I greatly miss, the late Mr. Marcel Isnard. In 1873 I left to go to Paris to publish my Dene-Dindjie and Eskimo dictionaries and grammars. My return in 1876 caused me to make two other crossings of the same lake. Finally, in 1879, I left the Far North to go to the Upper Saskatchewan, which required another and final crossing of Great Slave Lake. I spent eight months at Providence, from September 1878 to April 1879. These eight months were completely employed at the mission of the Etcha-Ottine or Slaveys, my first flock in 1862. For the first time since this mission was established, I went to visit the savages in their homes in the interior of the country, as much to the northeast as to the southwest of The Rapid. I was always alone in doing so. These voyages naturally led me to make new geographical discoveries which enriched my map of 1875. It is with these interesting excursions that I will briefly entertain my readers. During my stay in France in 1874-75,1 had broken a small capillary vessel in my left bronchial tube which left me voiceless and frequently spitting blood. Later I contract¬ ed bronchitis in the same part of my body. Finally, in 1877, this double infirmity was complicated by a violent blow to my left clavicle which nearly broke and resulted in an interior abscess. The only treatment that I followed for the chronic blood spitting

187

188

Around Great Slave Lake

that resulted, and against the pain in the left bronchial tube, was brisk walks in the outdoors during the extreme winter cold. In October 1878, I was again seized with spitting copious blood along with loss of voice and weakness. I immediately ceased all serious study, harnessed my dogs, put on my snowshoes, and left for Kkpayipa or Willow River [Horn River], the first east¬ ern tributary of the Mackenzie. During the first day of the trip the spitting continued. Beginning on the second day, it lessened markedly. On the third day, it stopped, and my health was stronger than ever, my voice strong and loud, and my appetite wolfish. Thanks to the fresh air and to the cold. Consumptives take note. Lacking an Indian, I was accompanied by a young, newly arrived colleague, Mr. Ladet,242 who did not know the Indian languages yet. We camped on beautiful Lake Kkpay-a-tpa-tche, Tail of the Water amid Little Willows,243 the remains of an ancient channel of the Mackenzie blocked off for many years and partially transformed into prairie. The next day we surveyed up the Willow River, Kkpayipa, which we followed with the dogs for two days. Willow River is a beautiful and broad watercourse. It is bordered by high and well-wooded shores and its waters harbour a quantity of bluefish or Back’s cod. Unfortunately, this river is closed to navigation by the ledges of rock that cross it from place to place like the Marne, forming waterfalls and fast-flowing, wide, flat expanses. No explorer had visited it before I had; no author has spoken of it. This layout and speed of the Kkpayipa prevents it from freezing early. Autumn voyages are therefore dangerous. The ice long remains in a thin crust suspended over the chasms, without sticking to the water. Unlucky the one under whose feet this deceptively solid-looking ground starts to collapse. He is thrown into a hole from which he would not know how to pull himself out because it is impossible to reach a hand to the archway of ice. Here and there one saw in the new ice the natural holes through which water comes up to the surface. The warm water came out in white and thick swirls of mist. Wolves, bears, and foxes gathered around these openings to fish and drink there. The snow is covered with their tracks. Willow River exits from Lake Goutton, which means “It has been found,” at a short day’s travel southwest from Lac la Martre. From this place it runs towards Horn Mountain, which it passes at the southern extremity, later to form or to cross four beautiful lakes, those of Willow, Fawn, Birch, and Mink. Its mouth is at the eastern angle of the little lake of the Big Rock, the first widening of the Mackenzie River after its exit from Great Slave Lake. The second day we camped on the right bank in a thick coppice of large firs. At night, we were joined there by two natives who bivouacked with us, L’anonhon-ya

242 [Victor Ladet (1845-1932) was ordained in 1870 and spent his entire missionary career in the North until 1899 when he retired to Saint Albert.] 243 Literally: Willows-little-water-tail.

Among the Etcha-Ottine of Willow Lake

189

and Ya-koti, Little Loon and Live Louse. In a trap that they had set on the ice the two young men found a wolverine caught by his foot. They seized the poor beast, tied it to a tree and subjected it, alive, to the operation that Apollo himself carried out on the satyr Marsyas.244 They chased it stripped of its skin through the snow with a whip. All the arguments that I put forward to get these wretches to kill the animal without making it suffer were useless. “The wolverine has a well considered and reasoned malice,” replied L’anonhon-ya. “He is the younger brother of the Devil. He deliberately strives to harm us. We must make an example of him.” By virtue of this conviction, a savage or a Metis never captures a wolverine without killing it by torture. Can one say that this was a lesson to others? In 1871 we encountered a live one in a marten trap. My men killed it on the spot, but with a whip. According to the evidence of Mr. Hue, missionary and explorer in the wilds of Tartary and Tibet, the Mongols do the same thing to wolves. After capturing a wolf by throwing a lasso around its neck, a Tartar on horseback “sets off at a gallop, drag¬ ging the animal behind him as far as the tent of the nearest neighbour. There they tie it firmly by his muzzle, in order to be able to torture it in safety. To finish the drama, they skin it alive, then they let it go free. During the summer, it will live this way for several days, but in winter, exposed to the rigours of the season without its fur, it soon dies frozen by the cold.”245 These cruelties are revolting. Nevertheless, let us not be too scandalized by them. In the Middle Ages, we treated cats the same way at the time of Saint John’s fire.246 In those days, Saint Louis the king amused himself by roasting tomcats. And would it have pleased God had these tortures been reserved only for animals! That would have made it only half evil. The third day, we reached the village of the Slaveys of Willow River, the KkpayipaGottine. It is at the outlet of Mink Lake. There, I found seven little wooden houses of rather well squared timbers and fourteen skin tents lined up under some fir trees whose trunks were straight and slender like those of a palm tree. It is a particular variety of white fir tree that is only seen along certain waterways. It is very rare. The same number of trestles supported thousands of bluefish, suspended by their tails on wooden spits. This is the little tribe’s daily bread during the autumn. In front of the village the river had been blocked by a fishing dam (he). It was a strong palisade of wattle and daub supported by piles sunk in the water, which raised the river level

244 [The satyr Marsyas challenged Apollo to a flute competition, and when Marsyas lost, Apollo tied him to a tree and flayed him.) 245 Hue, Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet (Paris: Gaume freres, i860), vol. 1, 123.: [Evariste Regis Hue (1813-60), French Roman Catholic missionary and traveller who described his visits to Macao, China, and Tibet in two volumes published first in 1850.] 246 [St. John’s fire, bonfire centrepiece of popular celebrations on the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist, 24 June.]

190

Around Great Slave Lake

by holding back the waters. The water escaped by two chutes placed on each side of the causeway. Two Indian sentinels holding a landing net caught the fish as they slid down and threw them on the ice. It is no more complicated than that, and it is profitable fishing. Scarcely had the small bells and sleigh bells of my dogs been heard than the Dene population poured out pell-mell in front of us. From the hullabaloo they made, from the cries and bursts of laughter that were raised, from the transports of joy that greeted our unexpected visit, I understood that I was among an enthusiastic and warm¬ hearted people, very different from the cold and morose Chipewyans. After shaking hands with everyone, I was taken to the chief’s lodge and settled there. The chief was called Young Hunter, although he was more than sixty years old. He and his sons were away for the moment, so I found only the women there. That same evening, I began the exercises of a mission that I continued for eight days. My Hareskin speech was at first a cause for hilarity. The Slaveys pride them¬ selves on speaking well, although they are far from equalling the Chipewyans. But, as they understood Dogrib and Hareskin very well, I soon convinced myself that I was appreciated even by the women and children, which is saying something. For my part, I had no difficulty in understanding them. The next day I baptized those children who had not yet been baptized, and heard the confessions of the adults. The whole camp was there. I was happy and consoled by the great sincerity and simplicity of these good people. With very few exceptions, they were all baptized. To my astonishment I found among them several Dogribs whom I had instructed and baptized in 1864 in the barrens around Lac la Martre. After fourteen years of separation, I remembered them immediately, but, strangely, not one of them remem¬ bered me, except for one twenty-two-year-old woman whom I had baptized at the age of eight! Among them was Sa-kli, Sunbeam, whom I had seen at Fish Lake. This man said to me one day: “Father, as soon as you shook hands with me the day you arrived here, I had to run to my traps, convinced that your coming would bring me a good catch. I wasn’t mistaken. I found in one of my snares a beautiful silver fox worth four pelts.247 It’s my first catch of the winter. So, now I beg you to continue to dream for me, so that the World Creator, Nioltsi, may send me other foxes.” With difficulty I managed to persuade this ex-conjuror that dreams have no more influence on foxes than on their Creator, and that, if he thought more about praying than dreaming, God would be more favourable to him. Another, Tsa-he-tpa, Father of the Beaver Dam,248 was even more naive. He came to me to ask me to give him medicine against migraine. I immediately gave him powdered camphor. He accepted it but he said to me with an air of disappointment: “This is not exactly what I wanted.

247 Ten francs [or four caribou skins). 248 Literally: Beaver-dam-father.

Among the Etcha-Ottine of Willow Lake

191

I do not doubt the effectiveness of your white powder, but I wanted to see you write some prayer against the migraine, on a paper that I could put in the bottom of my hat. That is what 1 consider more effective. I would always have been protected against headaches.” All people are thus alike. Their spirit, their ideas, even their sentiments are iden¬ tical everywhere. One sees here the origin of the keri-keri [demonism], charms, bezoars,249 the Lambs of God, and medals of all kinds. It is not at all necessary to blame a conjuror’s duplicity, a dervish’s self-interested greed, still less a Christian priest’s spectacular poverty to account for all these superstitious childishnesses. It is the people themselves that have created them; it is the people who prefer them to true religion. And if the priest, in good faith, does not react severely against a tendency towards trifles, religion would degenerate very quickly into puerilities unworthy of our God. I was only a day and a half walk from Big Birch Lake and three from Fort Rae; this represents about thirty-five leagues. I asked the natives to take us there at the comple¬ tion of the mission, but they did not give in to my wish. I never saw Fort Rae again. I was astonished at the intelligent ways that the Slavey dogs fed themselves. When the fishermen left the chutes and quit fishing, the dogs took their places. They sta¬ tioned themselves at each chute in turn, their front paws in the running water and their eyes rivetted on the thin crystal sheet of ice that glided between their paws. When a school of summerlings or a swarm of little pike were passing, the muzzle was quickly plunged into the water and the poor fry were swallowed up. While one dog fished, the others contented themselves with the passive role of spectators, waiting patiently until their companion was sated before taking his place. This scene enter¬ tained me very much. I complimented the Slaveys on the skill and intelligence of their sled dogs, of which they were very proud. A little before nightfall on the second day, the chief arrived with a band of natives who had accompanied him to Fort Providence where they had gone to do some trad¬ ing. There is no nabob or rajah who takes on such airs as does the old Young Hunter when entering into his skin residence. The whole village immediately formed a circle around him to hear fall from his authoritative mouth the minute description of his trip, his stately reception by His Majesty the factor of Fort Providence, all that he had said to him, all that the other had answered, all that he himself had replied, all that he had received there, and even all that had been denied to him. Not one detail was omitted. This speech occupied the Indians the better part of the night. One piece of news that delighted the assembly most was that immediately after the priests crossed the Kkpayipa, the caribou had made its appearance there and that they saw the tracks of these animals a short distance from the camp. It was the first

249 [A stone with magical properties found in the stomach of a goat.]

Around Great Slave Lake

192

caribou of the winter. When it was their turn, the Indians immediately told the old sachem how one of the first things that I had made them do on my arrival was pray to God so He would send them caribou as fast as possible. They were all happy that their prayer had so soon been answered. “That should not astonish you at all,” I said to them. “I made my children pray only once and God sent them food. The caribou were so plentiful a few days later that one killed it even in the fort and in the midst of our dwellings. Everybody at Fort Good Hope knows these facts. They are a sure proof of the effectiveness of confidently made prayer.” That was the truth. They listened to me in a silence all the more reli¬ gious since it concerned their stomach, a first-rate argument for savages. One day the theme of my discourse being the fourth commandment, I said to the tribe that they owed respect, obedience, and deference to the chief they had given themselves because his authority came by divine right, all legitimately established and recognized authority drawing its strength from God whose place it takes and represents. I said to them: Without this obedience to the established authority, no social order is possible. The world falls into anarchy and disorder, that is to say into an earthly and early hell. What constitutes the authority of natural right, such as that of the father, magis¬ trate and head of a nation? It is the superiority of reason over weakness and imbecil¬ ity, of genius over mediocrity, of intelligence over brute force. Now, God is supreme Reason, the Genius creator of all beings, the uncreated and sovereign Intelligence. So, all human authority comes from God and relies on God in order to receive approval. Father of a family, magistrate, priest, head of state, all hold their man¬ date from God and must fulfill it in His name. Remove God, banish Him from the family, the law court, the palaces and government assemblies, and the principle of authority disappears. There only remains the contempt of man for man. One man is worth as much as another. Get out of the way so that I can put myself there; etc. Neither authority nor sovereignty belongs to the people. It is a lie to say it does, treason to make others believe it, a crime to exert it. If the people were master, who would they obey? They would destroy themselves after throwing over their former masters. The people is not the master, it must be guided and ruled, but it has the right to choose its masters and chiefs, as it has always been to choose its bishops by election or acclamation. Without clique or intrigue, the lot having fallen on some¬ one, the choice having been made, the one elected by the people truly possesses the authority of divine right. It is chance or election that confers it on him. It is thus that all people have always understood it, and that the Church, in particular, has always acknowledged it. A Dene chief is, in every way, comparable to a village mayor, just as the so-called Dene savages are just like peasants, but Christian peasants who are submissive, prac¬ tising Christians and not at all rebellious. Young Hunter was pleased with my speech. Without knowing it, I had put my finger on a wound bothering these little people, as is the case in so many infinitely larger nations: the chief enjoys but very little respect

Among the Etcha-Ottine of Willow Lake

193

and consideration. People openly scorned his orders, they called his authority into doubt, and even his own sons were not at all free from insubordination. Do you want to know the reason? This man wanted to impose his wishes instead of having them accepted because ot his benevolence. As a father he would have been obeyed. As a tyrant he offered a pretext for insubordination. All savages are like that. Also, during the meal, I witnessed a scene that I had scarcely expected from people branded with the name of Slaves. Encouraged by my speech, the chief began a ha¬ rangue in which he indicated to his people that he was ready to step down from his post if he was not better obeyed. Tie ended his tirade by dismissing one of his sons who had accused him of gambling on his work and his hunts. I was going to support the chief with all of my authority when one of his peers or leudes,250 old Sabourin, stood up and spoke for the village. He spoke wisely and in a very calm tone: “For a long time,” he said to him, “the French priests have taught us, se ghen, my brotherin-law, that we ought to let our children be masters of their own heart and wishes concerning marriage, so that we no longer force them or make them unhappy by arranging unions in which we well know they will be unfaithful. But you are con¬ tinuing the unjust errors of our pagan ancestors. You want to control the inclinations of the young people, forbidding such and such a one to marry according to his own tastes, forcing such and such a woman to join a husband of your choice although she doesn’t love him. By acting this way, you’re causing much evil among us and making our children forget the law that they received with baptism. Stick to your civil func¬ tions, we say to you. Don’t interfere by trying to indoctrinate us. Let our children follow their heart’s inclination, and all will go well.” Thus spoke Sabourin. An indescribable pandemonium broke out at that moment in Young Hunter’s lodge. Twenty young women, twenty married women, rose up at the same time against the poor chief, to reproach him to his face with the same fault. Seeing himself condemned by the people, he was speechless, for everybody then fell silent, waiting for me to respond in the name of the assembly by summing up the conclusions of each one. I did so prudently, in a way so as not to harm either the chief’s authority nor God’s law, which His little people wanted to follow. I agreed with the malcontents in defining sharply the limits where the right of parents and guardians stop, relative to marriage. I pointed out to them that the mutual rights of the contracting partners are inalienable, except for cruel ill-treatment which gave to the weakest the right to decide on a separation from cohabitation which, nonetheless, could never be a di¬ vorce. But I had to indicate to the chief that he had absolutely no business interfering with his subjects regarding marriage and even less in the matter of divorce. This instruction was like a new firebrand thrown into a honeybee hive. From the vehemence of the women’s outbursts against Young Hunter, I was convinced that

250 [Freemen under the Merovingian kings.]

194

Around Great Slave Lake

the chief had for a long time been imposing these things, acting as their master appointed by God, but above all by Fort Providence’s English business agent who,

1 knew, was secretly thwarting us. He remained stunned under this rolling fire of reproaches, and I saw with regret that I could not support him any longer, for his wrongdoing was obvious. There is no magistrate on earth who dares to marry or separate citizens against their will. Several young couples immediately got up and publicly informed me that they wished to marry and until now had not been able to because of the unwarranted opposition of their chief. As they were justified and within their rights, I married them on the spot or the next day, to the great jubila¬ tion of the whole tribe. On the other hand, I had to protect a young woman against the obsession of L’anonhon-ya. She had become a mother thanks to him, quite against her wishes, and he wanted to make her his wife by all means because such was the good pleasure of the chief. All Young Hunter’s pleadings did not keep me from declaring in public to this poor child that she was free and that I would marry her when she wished to the man of her choice. The chief fell back on an old custom honoured among the Danites, that demands “that every young man who had seduced a young woman who was still a virgin, is strictly required to marry her, under pain of dishonour in the eyes of his tribe.” This was exactly what Exodus said in Hebrew times.251 It is a just law and one that does honour to the Dene. But I had to point out to this new Pharisee that this law was intended to save the honour of the deceived woman and that it was consequently for her benefit, and not to the benefit of the unjust pas¬ sions of the seducer as the chief was interpreting it. Otherwise, a young man had only to commit an outrage in order to acquire a right over the person he had dishonoured which would be highly unjust and absurd. In other words, he was making this law, one for the protection of innocence and weakness, into a hateful propagator of rape and depravity. “Stay with us and be our father,” the Indians then called out. “We will be happy with you. It has been eighteen years we have known French priests. Not one of them has been able to put down roots at The Rapid. We remember with pleasure Father Grouard and others, too. But they scarcely lived with us any length of time before they were sent elsewhere. We are ships without a pilot. We have no more heart for religion, because no priest loves us, so we cannot get attached to any one in particular.” This sentence depicts the savages well. They are great children who must be stroked and pampered to get them to work, but the smallest thing satisfies their disposition and their heart. A kind word, a smile, some attention, interest, or respect ties them to you for ever. Not everyone knows the secret way into their hearts. But anyone who

25136:16. [Actually Exodus 22:16.]

Among the Etcha-OttinL of Willow Lake

195

loves them discovers the secret very quickly because one’s heart provides the key just as one s heart provides zeal. When we left the camp all these good Danites broke out in protestations and regrets. They invented excuses to hold on to us longer. They brought us presents of food in order to force us to stay longer. I was very aware of these filial demonstrations. They can touch me deeply. The chief himself, although very badly treated by his followers, understood that I was not hostile towards him. He did not hold a grudge against me for showing him the error of his ways. Nevertheless, when leaving it was necessary to promise to come back soon. At our first campsite, I came close to having my throat ripped out during the night. Although the only bed that one enjoys while camping is made of fir branches laid on the bare and frozen earth, I have the ability, as I have said, to sleep like a dormouse, and I can assure you there is no other bed more comfortable or health¬ ier, on which you can have beautiful dreams, than on the breast of the earth, our common mother. That night, however, I was roughly awakened from a deep and peaceful sleep induced by a long day on the trail on snowshoes, by a low and hatefilled growling, which could be heard at the head of my bed, at the edge of the camp. To these angry sounds other voices answered that were humble, timid, whimpering, and seemingly frightened. I thought that my four dogs, getting ready to come into the tent to sleep at our feet as was their habit when the fire has gone out, had started quarrelling among themselves about precedence. This happens so often among well-bred people! So I raised my voice in a menacing tone, but without disturbing myself: “Voyons! Voyons! [Hey! See here!]” I shouted. The short-tempered voices from some, the whimpers of pain or pity from the others did not stop immediately, so I raised my head out of my half-wool and half-fur sleeping-bag, which served as my bed during winter voyages, and I repeated the same threat: “Voyons! Voyons! [Hey! See here!] Lie down!” The animals quarrelling at the head of my bed got down from the logs that formed the enclosure of the camp, and everything returned to silence after a mutual exchange of spiteful growling. Next morning when I woke up, I was astonished to see enormous wolf tracks cov¬ ering the snow around the bivouac and even up to my head! ... Afraid that these mon¬ sters might be lying nearby, I armed myself with my axe and a police revolver, and started out on the trail of the wolves. They were three and very large wolves, to judge by the size and distance of their prints. They had followed our trail during the night and had tried to attack us. It was certainly their hateful voices full of unappeased desires that I had heard growling or snarling near my ear. But my shouts and also no doubt the big aspen fire that burned all night had kept them from carrying out their depraved plan. I had had a narrow escape. The wolves followed the Kkpayipa for more than a league, but we did not see them again. Another episode will again serve to illustrate my return. Towards the lower end of the river, the ice broke twice under my steps. The first time I only went in up to my

196

Around Great Slave Lake

knees, thanks to another sheet of ice on which the water had risen. But a little further on 1 was swallowed up to my armpits and would have entirely disappeared under the water, carried by the swift current, if, as quick as a sea lion, I had not thrown myself headlong on my stomach on the ice. I crawled immediately towards land and reached the shore of a little island, without a dry thread on me. I had to undress completely in front of a good fire to dry my clothes. That took us a lot of time. On our return to Providence, the Sisters of Charity kindly arranged a surprise for us. The cook served us a platter of the tastiest beefsteaks along with a marvellous savoury black pudding. We did honour to the dinner, my young colleague and I, and we effusively thanked the good housekeeper for her charity. “I knew quite well that you would like it,” she replied, laughing somewhat loudly. Then she added: “Oh! There is still some left, go to it. It is not all gone, for this meat roams all around the mission.” I was a little surprised by the outburst of laughter from the saintly young woman, because there was nothing very hilarious in the ravenous appetite of people who had just spent fifteen days in the outdoors. The Superior gave us the key to the mystery: “Have you eaten well?”he said to us in the same mocking tone as the cook. “Certainly. But what do you two see that is so extraordinary in that?” “Did you find the meat good?” “Excellent. First rate veal. Oh, wait, the caribou visited you, according to what the sister cook told us, since it came roaming right up to the mission?” “So, it’s caribou is it?” he shouted, laughing so hard he cried tears. “Well, you’ve eaten dog. But since you found it to your taste, we’ll have some more. We killed three and their meat is in the storehouse.” I had eaten dog the first winter of my stay at The Rapid. Then I tasted it again the winter of my departure from the Mackenzie. During the following days we ate dog prepared every which way. In my opinion, nothing tastes better. On 27 November I performed the burial rites for a singular person whom I had prepared as best I could for the dread trip to eternity. It was an old Etcha-Ottine whom I had seen at Fort Simpson in 1866 where he was known as Jacob Klo-be-tpa, Father of Grass;252 but even better known under the nicknames of Windikouk and Old Man-eater, which are synonyms. He was a cannibal who was then up to his sev¬ enth victim. He stopped there, thank God. I had seen the ravine on the edge of the Mackenzie some hundred metres downstream from Fort Simpson where this ghoul had the ghastly nerve to dig up the body of his wife, dead from hunger several days before, in order to feast on her. Such conjugal love! That was his first crime. The seven others, accompanied by murder, followed this first step. This miserable new

252 Not to be confused with Jacob Klo-az£, Little Grass, from Fort Resolution, who is mentioned above.

Among the Etcha-Ottine of Willow Lake

197

Saturn killed and ate all of his children with the exception of the youngest, whom he kept to support him in his old age, or as a last mouthful in case of need. Sadly, can¬ nibals always plan ahead. Arriving at a trading post, the first visit of this hyena in human form was to the cemetery. Thanks to the intense cold of the Arctic ground, which permits the corpses to be preserved intact, red and odourless for many years, he found in the graves plentiful and ever fresh food. One can scarcely believe that such monsters can be found on earth, and that their compatriots let them live. The Cree nearly always kill cannibals or Windikouk. As recently as 1884 they battered an old woman guilty of the crime to death with hatchet blows. But since these Indians actually live under English law, these vigilantes were taken in turn and hanged in Winnipeg. No miti¬ gating circumstances for our neighbours, the English. As for the Dene, they are so humane and so fearful, they regard cannibalism with such horror that they content themselves with avoiding man-eaters as one does a mad wolf, but without killing them. They do not practice the law of an eye for an eye. The shedding of human blood frightens them. So, in November 1878, while going to cut firewood in the forest after my dinner, I met a young twenty-year-old Slavey who was pulling a heavily loaded but shapeless sled by himself. “You’ve just had a successful hunt, my son,” I said to him. “The English chief at Fort Providence will be pleased with you.” “I think, on the contrary, he will scarcely think so, Father,” he replied to me, “It’s neither fresh nor smoked meat that I bring to him. It is my old and dying father that I have pulled as far as your place, so that he can receive the last rites. I am going only to beg the white chief to give him a hut where I can put him into a warm bed.” I congratulated this young man on his filial piety and his faith. “And who is your father?” I asked him. “Klo-be-tpa, Father of Grass, also called Old Man-eater.” Fiere is another one who is going to sneak into paradise, I said to myself under my breath. Then I added aloud: “Well, get on with it, my son, and may God reward your filial piety!” Mr. Read, factor at the new fort that the Company had hastened to build at the site of Providence mission, assigned an empty hut to the cannibal who then asked for a priest. I was asked to take care of the man, and I went to visit him. The fellow wanted medicine strong enough to restore him. But he was dying of old age. For this illness there is no cure. I told him this discreetly and prepared him for what was going to happen. Klo-be-tpa behaved like a resigned Christian. FFe put his matters of con¬ science in order and received the last rites with piety and feelings of remorse. Meanwhile, I was again obliged to be away for eight days, to help some other sick people at Mink Lake. On returning to Windikouk, I found him in his final throes,

198

Around Great Slave Lake

which were mild and painless. His faculties faded one after the other, gradually and without a wrench. It was the death of a patriarch! He scarcely recognized me and was delirious; nevertheless, in my presence he raised himself to a sitting position and, in a voice interrupted and weakened by agony, said to me: “Ah! My grandson, these evil Whites, they do not want me to get better. You would soon see me get new strength if I could put my teeth into a little human flesh. But the misers do not want to give me any!” Such is the influence that the force of habit exercises on the imagination. Klo-be-tpa died 26 November, begging in a feeble voice that they give him something to eat... some human flesh!

CHAPTER XVI A Voyage of Discoveries Project for an Expedition to the Etcha-Ottine of the West—Unusual Placement of a Low Mountain—Lake De Charencey—Beaver River and Its Rapids—White Wolves—Great Lake Vatimesmil and Mount Ndakka—John Hope—Great Lake Petitot—Pleasing Appearance of the Etcha-Ottine—Harangues—Simplicity and Immorality—Preposterous Questions—A Trader’s Greed and the Dane’s Heroic Honesty—Their Opinion of Me—A Twenty-five-hour Day

For sixteen years after the mission of Providence was established, the Dane EtchaOttine from west of Great Slave Lake and from the upper Mackenzie could not be vis¬ ited or evangelized. At rare intervals some of these Indians came to the fort to trade their meat or their furs, then they quickly went back to their distant land. These Indians were much better known under the name of the natives of Trout Lake. This lake, which no White had ever visited, was said to occupy the centre of a triangle in which forts Providence, Simpson, and Liard would have formed the points. During my 1878 stay at Providence, I profited from an excellent opportunity that presented itself to satisfy my love for the well-being of these natives at the same time as my curiosity as an explorer. Nevertheless, my octant253 had remained at Lac La Biche, and my book of weather calculations was at Good Hope. On 30 November, Mr. Read had sent a Swampy Cree Indian named John Hope with some young Slaveys from Fort Providence to Big Belly Lake (Bes-tchonhi) to open up a trail for the sleds halfway to that lake. Lor their part, the Bes-tchonhi-Gottine tribe had promised to make the rest of it. The workers were to meet on Beaver River, at a cabin occupied by two trappers from Ontario. This John Hope was the same Hudson’s Bay Company employee, a former teacher at the Swampy Cree school, who had reconstructed Fort Norman-Franklin in 1864. I left four days after John Hope, with the same young colleague they wanted to initiate into the life of a missionary. Crossing the Mackenzie to its outlet from Great Slave Lake in the direction west-southwest, we started by meeting a great white wolf who, during the night, had attacked a mission servant who was busy squaring build¬ ing timbers. We climbed the hill The-chesh [Trout Mountain] which is of horizon¬ tally stratified limestone and which showed cracks so wide that we needed tree trunk

253 [An instrument in the form of a graduated eighth of a circle, used in astronomy and navigation.] 199

200

Around Great Slave Lake

beams to cross them. This hill is made up of five separate super-imposed natural ter¬ race plateaus. Each terrace is wooded with beautifully developed red pines, aligned in tight rows as if they had been planted by man. One might say a gigantic nursery. As many sandy hogbacks, covered with heather, separate the lines of trees. I have never seen anything so arranged nor so remarkably beautiful at the same time. One could not believe that nature alone was the author of this beautiful orderliness. If we had been in Provence, one would have attributed the order to Marius or Caesar. Look here, sir, one would say, an ancient Roman camp. The second day, at two o’clock in the afternoon, after having crossed forests, steppes, muskegs, and hills, I discovered a beautiful lake six miles wide and thirty miles long, which extends from the north-northwest to the south-southeast, bordered on the north only by limestone cliffs, identical to those that we had already climbed. Their altitude above the lake was not more than six hundred feet. The lake, which the Slaveys call Kha-Khieze-tpoue, Black Hares Lake [Kakisa], I gave the name Count Hyacinth de Charencey, for the learned secretary of the Philological Society [of Paris]. The rays of a glorious sun reflected on its brilliant surface as on a vast silver plat¬ ter. In the depths of its bluish horizons, only a range of distant mountains stood out against the blue of the sky. I was spellbound by the beauty of this lake. We crossed it immediately, but it was six-thirty in the evening when we finally were able to reach the southwest shore at the mouth of the Tsa-deze or Beaver River [Kakisa River], which immediately empties into Great Slave Lake behind Big Island. The Desmarest Islands were originally formed by it. As much as our bivouac of the night before had been elegant, safe, and comfort¬ able behind low walls of fir trees with which we had surrounded ourselves for fear of wolves, in contrast, the bivouac of the second day was sad and gloomy. It was a flat shelterless shore exposed to every wind and had been trampled by innumerable wolves the very day of our arrival. Moreover, firewood was scarce. But it was not cold, only minus 140 Celsius, almost a summer temperature. We spent a very peaceful and mild night there. Beaver River, which we ascended on the third day, was likewise a true discovery since no White had ever been there. It is wider than the Rhone, its course interrupted by rapids and beautiful islands bristling with tall firs. The major rapid is formed by fossilized and perforated coral limestone ramparts which belong to secondary ter¬ rains like those of the lower Mackenzie. These rocks have been worn by erosion in the same way as ice in the springtime. Their appearance is the same. They form a series of channels and a labyrinth which must be picturesque in summer. However, the largest waterfall is no more than three metres high. The river was open in many places on this rapid which obliged us—not without danger—to make a tiring por¬ tage over the rocks. We camped after having passed all the bad spots. The fourth day, I again discovered a lake even larger than Charencey. Its name is Tpa-tla-inlinhe, Lake That Has A River Coming In At Its End [Tathlina Lake],

A Voyage of Discoveries

201

What a lot of things those four words say: “Water far end that flows in.” The Indians are superior to us. With their well juxtaposed monosyllables they do without all our inflexions and all our prepositions. I named this beautiful lake for Mrs. de Vatimesnil. Its general direction is east to west. Beaver River, which crosses it at three-quarters of its length, forms at its outlet several often heavily wooded islands. In the west it is bordered by a low mountain with a very long and hardly noticeable slope, but which is not less than 800 to 1,200 feet higher than the lake: Ndakka-yidhe or White Eyes Mountain [Cameron Hills Mountain], to which I gave the name of Count Rene de Semalle,254 my noble and learned friend. This is the watershed. Beyond this summit the waters flow towards the Liard River, a large tributary of the Mackenzie, which flows in the opposite direction to Beaver River, that is, from south to north. Beautiful Lake de Vatimesnil is twelve miles wide but some fifty miles long. We crossed it with our dogs in twelve hours, which amounts to at least twenty-five miles. We had four meals on it: dinner, supper, breakfast, and dinner the next day. It was only at ten o’clock in the morning that we reached the end of that big natural fresh¬ water basin. We had started near the middle of its length. Then we again entered the Beaver River valley where set traps and beaten paths indicated the proximity of other people. Two hours later, we arrived at the cabin of the two Lrench-Canadian trappers who were away. But not far from their house were some Slavey lodges in which we found frozen fish for sale. These people have absolutely no knowledge of religion nor any desire to know it. We went on. All around their camp I saw great coffins made of tree trunks, raised six feet above the earth. There were others in the woods and at dif¬ ferent points along the shore. One climbed up to them on ladders crudely cut with an axe. I thought they were ancient tombs. But I found them empty or filled with frozen fish. These are granaries for provisions, caches for meat and fish, tssa. As we left Beaver River to enter the Ndakka Mountain steppes, we found ourselves nose to nose with two large white wolves who had come down from the mountain using the Indian trail. They took to their heels when they saw us and fled as fast as they could. All ferocious beasts are afraid of humans and run away when they see one. It is only hunger or rage that causes them to attack. I have been told that the same is true for lions and elephants. During our seventh day, we passed the summit of the mountain which is made up of three wooded hillocks resembling breasts, and we surprised the Swampy Cree John Hope and his three Slaveys at their eleventh campsite. They were preparing breakfast. Hope seemed a little mystified at our unexpected arrival, but in spite of this bad luck he welcomed us politely. This Swampy Cree, as tanned as a Brazilian and as ugly as a baboon, nevertheless did credit to the Methodist Protestants who

254 [Rene de Semalle (?), author of Les Indiens des Etats-Unis (Paris, 1869).]

202

Around Great Slave Lake

had educated him. He was educated, spoke good English, understood French, and had all the manners of a man of good company. He had come to the Mackenzie as a schoolmaster. He soon got sick of this poorly paid job among the Indians and took service with the Hudson’s Bay Company, which employed him as postmaster. John repeated to me that he was quite happy to see me because we were old ac¬ quaintances from Great Bear Lake. He begged me to act as an interpreter with the Etcha-Ottine, assuring me that he would in turn come to my aid, which I had not asked for at all. Finally, while being very polite, he behaved like a gentleman and a protector, although I never asked him for either help or protection. In spite of his fine words, he broke camp very quickly and put all in motion to leave us well behind, and to arrive among the Dane before we did. I said that on the western slope of Ndakka or de Semalle Mountain the waters flow to the Liard River. We crossed thirty-one lakes on its slopes. On several of them we saw caribou and, unfortunately, wolves and wolverines, too. A little river, Tonkkeze delin, One That Flows on its Mother, led us to Kounhete nadelin or Roast Fish River, on which we travelled until night time. At six o’clock we rejoined John just as he was preparing camp. We could have passed him, but we bivouacked with him. As he was short of provisions, I was happy to treat him to some of ours, which put him in good humour. Of the three Slaveys who accompanied Hope, two were fathers and carried the name of their first-born as is the Arab custom. The third, a boy of seventeen years, had taken the name of his dog, Running Wind, Ninttsi-nako. So he was called Ninttsi-nako entpa, Father of Running Wind. That is a Slavey custom. The eighth day we arrived at an immense and beautiful lake surrounded by hills and bearing the name Bes-tchonhi or Big Belly [Trout], It was not less than sixty miles long and eight wide.255 Right in front of us, to the west-southwest, Tpa-ouwichi Mountain [Bootis Hill] bordered the shore of the lake for two-fifths of its length. Behind us, but a little to the left, stood Kounhete-nayidhe. To the right, in the west, Thi-chi or Head Mountain, all white with icy mist, marked the end of the lake which our eyes could not see. This beautiful great lake to which I gave my name, empties into the Liard River via the Bes-tchonhi elinda, which the French Canadians call Black River [Muskeg], Its confluence is between Fort Liard and the Saint Raphael mission. That is all that we knew then. A four days’walk separated us from this junction. The Slavey population of the lake was camped on the shores of Black River in a for¬ est of large well-developed evergreens. The people came to meet us with cries of joy, greetings, and bursts of laughter which fully expressed the satisfaction they felt at our unexpected visit. I was struck by the whiteness of these natives as well as the grace and beauty of many of them. Perhaps they had cleaned themselves up in expectation

255 64 km. 140 m. by 8 km. 552 m.

A Voyage of Discoveries

203

of John’s visit. They were clean and very decently dressed. Other Den£ tribes had not shown me such a charming appearance. As representative of the factor at Fort Providence, John Hope lodged with the chief, Atpouna-entpa or "Father of Atpouna.” I took accommodation with my young nov¬ ice companion in the tent of Nadi, younger brother of the aforementioned. Scarcely had we settled down when a crowd of natives who first had gone to the chief’s tent, discovering that there was only an Indian with a face more grotesque and blacker than their own, surged back towards the lodge that we were occupying and com¬ pletely filled it. I must note that, with the exception of the men and young people capable of going to the three forts of Liard, Simpson, and Big Island, none of these Indians had yet seen any Whites, much less any priests. The little children themselves left their kouzozi, long light sticks that with great skill they make fly across the snow,256 to hurry to join the crowd. Here as elsewhere, the fair sex were not the least curious and took their regular places. Nadi, realizing that he had become an important personage since he had been given the right to shel¬ ter such important and well-clothed men as we, began a long harangue in a chanting and smacking way that finished each phrase harmoniously like a song. I cannot be sure that I understood every word of his improvised talk; nevertheless, I understood him so well that I could give as good as I got by replying to him as soon as he had finished. This dramatic production is a prerequisite among these people, who have preserved intact—like all those who are outside the communication highways—the ancient Danite customs. I ended my talk by offering a little gift to Nadi. Then an old bald man with Chinese features stood up. He held between his knees a white, healthy little boy, but with oval and heavily slanted eyes like those of his father. This was Athe-etlin-entpa, Father of the First Dancer, elder brother to the chief and Nadi. He spoke in his turn on all sorts of subjects: religion, commerce, travels, priests and Protestant ministers, meat and fish, abundance and famine, snow and beautiful weather. Briefly, it was a real potpourri in which the poor old man became bogged down and repeated himself more than once. Nevertheless, everyone kept quiet, even the children. It is the rule. It would be quite impolite for anyone to interrupt the droning and doddering grandfather before he said, “I have finished.” But little by little his voice took on a less forceful tone. He began to speak in a faint voice and addressed himself to his two immediate neigh¬ bours. His pretentious harangue had degenerated into a simple conversation, and finally it died in a smug smile aimed at me, with a sidelong glance from his little eyes. The epilogue was hardly worthy of the power of the prologue. I rather prefer the Dindjie method of orating which begins with a low voice, mounting little by

256 [Snow snakes.]

204

Around Great Slave Lake

little, increasing in tone and energy, becoming shouts, clamours, and yells, to finish in complete vocal silence.

1 dispensed with replying to Athe-etlin. It had been too difficult for me to make out the premises, the conclusions, and the purpose of the oration. I even thought that his only purpose had been to make himself heard. My silence was the signal for every tongue to loose at once. It was a brouhaha, a cacophony without equal. Among these Etcha-Ottine, the tone of the harangue is formal and little different from that of the Hareskins. But the tone of the conversation is very much softer and more el¬ egant, especially from the women and children. One would think of birds chirping or squirrels chattering. They speak reluctantly, quietly, delicately, and stressing the words, separating the sentences and even the syllables, in the most peculiar manner. I have heard Chinese conversing among themselves. Well, the language of the EtchaOttine resembles Chinese, just like their slanting oval eyes. These Indians appeared to me a pretty example of the Dene type although there was a large enough mixture of facial appearances among them. Some have large beautiful limpid eyes, an aquiline or straight nose, a mouth well-shaped or a lip curled up like a Kalmuck. Their forehead is high, although narrow. Such was Nadi. The others, on the contrary, are real Chinese with little, slanty, winking eyes, with a very short pug nose, prominent cheekbones, the face ending in a fox’s muzzle, with a tanned hue. These have the reputation among their compatriots as finer and more spiritual than the wide-eyed Slaveys. But really! Can I permit myself this distinction and offer it as racially typical when the Chinese themselves offer types so distinctive and so diametrically different, when in the same Slavey family one sees straight eyes and slanty eyes! They are all Metis, or mixed blood. None of these Slaveys are circumcised, and they carry the friendly nickname, in no way shameful, of dogs. But to say whether the circumcised have straight or slanted eyes is impossible for me to say, not having studied them enough. It is probable that the circumcised are found among the whiter-hued Indians. There are few old people among them. In contrast, there are very many children. Families of eight or nine are not rare. Few households have fewer than five. This is a sign of morality. But how to connect this matrimonial chastity to the dissolute behaviour of the young people, and the lewdness of the women who imitate and rival Sappho? How difficult it is for unbelievers, even the gentlest, those closest to evangelical civilization, to equal or even come close to the chastity that so many Christians practise naturally! Before a few days had passed, I had noted among the young people blameworthy excesses, the guilt of which they did not seem to suspect. At the end of two days, I learned with sadness that my host, Nadi, had married his mother-in-law after his first wife’s death. Probably she was the first and only mother-in-law who had ever been loved by her son-in-law. Well, this revolting incest seemed quite natural to those people. Moreover, the last children of this man were the uncles of their older broth¬ ers, sons of their grandmother, and brothers-in-law of their own father! This is how

A Voyage of Discoveries

205

you turn the order of nature upside down by violating its laws. When the husbands were gone, the wives and the girls had no scruples in proffering praises concerning our beauty. What a happy man! It was my good fortune on the road of life always to meet people who took me for an Antinous.257 Nadi asked me it our theory about God resembled that of the Protestant minister at Fort Simpson. To answer you, it’s necessary to know the doctrine of this preacher.” Heie is the doctrine that he taught us, he said. "In the beginning there were two bi others, both strong and huge, both of them gods. Nevertheless, the older one had less intelligence than the younger one; the latter revolted against his authority and overthrew him and took his place. So he became the one and only God. The older one, seeing himself deprived of his rights, saw himself forced to become a man and to make a wooden cross with the aid of which he dethroned his young brother to retake the place that had been so unjustly usurped.” I well know that every kind of assorted doctrine can come from the lips of a Protestant pastor. America offers us more than two hundred kinds of religion, all saying they are Christian. One has preserved the trunk, another the leg, and another an arm of Christ. This one has a head without a body; this other, a body without a head. To one there remains no more than a foot, whereas the other has barely the tip of the nose. Those people have dismembered Christ and destroyed His Church. But Americans, sensible people, are not fooled by all those money makers. Nowhere but in the United States is the ancient and Catholic Church—the old mother-church_in as much favour and with as many devoted followers. However, I could scarcely be¬ lieve that a preacher was a Manichean to the point of making the Devil into the brother and equal of God. I concluded from this story and told Nadi that he had not understood the minister at all, or else his memory was inaccurate. The old Chinaman then posed an unusual question: “What weather does God prefer: dear weather or cloudy weather?” You have to be a Redskin to ask such a question. "That depends,” I said to him, “on what you mean by that, for what does the weather matter to God, He who lives in eternity?” My man was so confused by my answer that he even forgot to explain to me the reason for his enigmatic and hilarious question. Then it was Nadi’s turn to attack. “Who is the master, the wife or the husband?” he said to me. “What’s the point of such a question?” I replied. “Even if you had not understood the gist of my teachings yesterday on the submission of wives to their husbands and

257 [A young Bithynian slave of extraordinary beauty, loved by the Emperor Adrian who, after the slave’s death, had a large number of statues made in the slave’s likeness.]

206

Around Great Slave Lake

children to their parents, does not nature tell you that the man is the master in his household?” “Enh! enh! yes! yes!” he said. “It is exactly what we all think. But then what would you do with a man who would allow himself to be ruled by his wife?’ “What would I do? I would dress him in her skirts and I would give her his trousers.” I will not try to describe the explosion of crazy laughter that greeted my answer. One person rolled around, another jostled his neighbours, because the Indian is so childish and so quick to show joy. “Oh! That’s it! That is exactly right!” added Nadi, when he could stop laughing. “You see, we have a chief who lets himself be led and ruled by his wife. We want to go one way and he is of our opinion, but the lady is of an opposite opinion; she does not want to listen to reason, and he gives in to her. I would go there,’ he says to us, ‘but my wife doesn’t want to. What do you want me to do? ’With that good excuse he dismisses us. What do you say about that? Is he a chief?” “Assuredly, it is not worthy of a man of spirit. Still, he can have excellent reasons for complying with his wife’s wishes. Moreover, I see, Nadi, that you have prepared a trap for me. If I had known that you were going to talk to me about your chief, I would have been more careful to give a more respectful answer. Above all, show respect for authority.” “That’s all very well for you,” Nadi observed with a mocking air, addressing the assembly, “but in the meantime, the truth has come to light. You never spoke a truer word, Father. Yes, that’s it. My brother must give his pants to his wife or show her who’s boss if he wants to continue to be our chief.” Less than two years later a letter from Providence informed me that Atpouna-entpa had been deposed, and that Nadi had been elected grand chief in his place. The Etcha-Ottine made fun of Swampy Cree John Hope in front of me because he had come a long distance with great difficulty to get the dried provisions and furs that these Indians themselves usually carried to the Hudson’s Bay Company forts. On the present occasion, John had arrived empty-handed and had made his way through the forests at great effort and toil. Thus, they scorned Mr. Read’s supposed power and said harsh things to him, with me as the translator. John Hope asked me to give his reply, which I translated into Slavey. Naturally, he promised everything under the sun to all the Slaveys who would deliver their furs and food supplies. “I am going,” he said to them, “to build a large coffer from tree trunks; you put your wealth in it and in a few days, I will come to get it, with payment in my hands.” Those people owed absolutely nothing to Fort Providence. They were much closer to Fort Liard. Several even went to Fort Vermilion on the Peace River. John asked the Indians to help him make this meat container which would be, as in biblical times, a new Mound of Witness, a monument to the verbal alliance be¬ tween them and the Hudson’s Bay Company. The meeting was stormy.

A Voyage of Discoveries

207

“You are tricking us with empty promises,” the Indians said to him. “You want us to give you what we have. I hen when you have them, you’ll go away and not come back, and you 11 force us to make a seven-day journey from here in search of the payment for our goods. And what kind of payment? Instead of beautiful clothes and warm blankets that you promise us, we ll only have, as in the past, gunpowder and shot for hunting. Oh! We know you well enough.” John Hope was humiliated by these snubs in my presence. And the natives, to the contrary, took advantage of the occasion that my presence gave them to humiliate the Hudsons Bay Company traders. It was our presence that inspired this courage in them which they would never have had if we had not been there. John pressed me to leave too, because he said he also wanted to leave the camp the next day. “I didn’t come to trade,” I said to him, “but to teach these people. We came alone and we’re counting on returning alone.” But John, seeing that he was getting nowhere, dug in his heels. Eight days later he was still in camp, urging and pestering the savages not only to deliver their goods to him, but also to accompany him to the fort. Finally, he turned nasty. “We are masters of our own property. Pay us and you can have it, or else go away.” That is what they boldly said to him. We, French, we would have left without an argument. Our loyalty and our respect for individual freedom would have made it a duty, a law. John refrained from behaving that way. He knew that savages could not resist for long, that with tenacity and pestering one gets what one wants from them. Without our presence he would have behaved violently. He would have snatched the property of these big children as if it all legally belonged to the Company. Such were the Indians of Mexico at the time of Cortez, such the Peruvians with Pizarro, such are they still with the English in the North and the Far West. John ignored the protests, mutterings, and jibes. He stayed and turned a deaf ear to all the complaints and snubs; he set himself up as the master and treated the EtchaOttine as slaves. They submitted. “This man,” murmured a young native, sharpening his axe as if he were going to attack the Swampy Cree schoolmaster, “this man is neither English nor French. He is blacker and uglier than we are. He is an Enna [male enemy] of former times, and yet he behaves here as if he were the boss. He wants me to go to work for him. Well, no, I won’t go. That’s too demeaning, by my guts! Etthi, se ttsiye tta!” And having said this, this weak-willed Indian went to John to offer himself for work at the meat locker. They not only helped him, they did all the work; and Black John, his arms crossed on his large chest and with a pipe between his thick Salteaux lips, watched them do it. Oh! Those amazing Dene! I was present at the storing of this pile of furs and provisions accumulated during the whole winter by the entire tribe. I counted 120 moose bladders transformed into enormous loaves of melted fat, more than 240 sides of these same animals, 2,400 sides of caribou, enormous bun¬ dles of beaver tails, and caribou tongues.

208

Around Great Slave Lake

A young Indian called Etamon-tpa, from the name of his little dog Etamon, had already received from me payment for a dozen miserable sides of caribou destined for our return trip. He hesitated to give them to me. The prestige that the Hudson’s Bay Company has been able to acquire among these Indians led Etamon-tpa to reproach himself for having wronged lohn by selling me a little meat. The imbecile went to say as much to this new type of tax collector. “No matter! No matter!” John exclaimed with the air of a bulldog fixing his big eyes on him. “Everything, absolutely everything, must be given to me. These are the strict orders of the English chief.” “Slow down, John,” I said to him, placing my hand on his arm. “I have not come here to snatch property from the poor natives. This meat was sold to me willingly by a man who is in no way indebted to the Company. What I bought from him is mine and I am taking it.” And I took my property from the hands of the Indian. “Oh! Yes! Surely, all right, sir. I didn’t understand. Take it, sir, take it. And even,” he added with a smile that enlarged his grin by ten centimetres, “here’s a loaf of fat which I beg you to add to it in compensation for the eminent service that you have given by interpreting for me.” The crafty one again found a way to play the role of gentleman and protector. Oh! The English are excellent masters in the colonial business When the coffer was filled, when one had emptied the sparse caches in the woods, when John had duly counted and recounted the pelts, meat, fat, and tongues, he covered it with large pieces of wood, and withdrew taller by five cubits, without bothering himself further about these riches and quite convinced, through his knowledge of the honest Dene, that no hand would be so bold as to violate this coffer that no bars, chains, locks, or bolts protected. This can seem fantastic. It humbles us, we who are Christians of old, who note eve¬ ry day by the hundreds the most varied unworthy events. Well! It is the truth. These circumcised ignoramuses, these lowly forest dwellers whom we so disdainfully call savages, show themselves superior to us in honesty, and they do not even know it. No, they do not know it. When the Etcha-Ottine see themselves stripped of all that they have so painfully gathered, stripped without receiving anything in exchange except promises, and obliged to go themselves to look for their payment at Fort Providence, they burst out in comments, in complaints, and in whining in front of us, but never in front of John. “What’s the good of your complaining?” I said to them. “Why are you so sad, since everything is still in your power? John is alone, all alone here, and you are two or three hundred. Are you discontented with his conduct? Let him go, and then take your own things back. There is no law on earth that can stop you doing this since you have received nothing in return and you have not made a contract with him.” But my speech surprised them. It even scandalized them, so great is their honesty:

A Voyage of Discoveries

209

"All is said, all is finished,” they replied to me. “Our word has been given. We will never go back on it. What we have given is ours no more. We keep our word.” I had tears in my eyes. I wanted to leap on their necks to exclaim: “So, who taught you this sublime honesty? What religion did they teach you? What God do you fear, to show up those who come here to preach God to you?” This sublime behaviour, nevertheless, had its funny side. That evening at the gath¬ ering in Nadi’s lodge, the same theme came up. “We have been robbed, tricked, hustled, treated like slaves. Ah! If I had been chief, I would have said this to John, I would have said that to him. 1 would have thrown him out. But our chief is a woman. Let’s give him skirts. So, there!” Nadi imitated his brother. He imitated the slattern who was his brother’s wife, hold¬ ing both of them up to ridicule. He mimicked, pantomimed, aped, simpered, and ended with such high spirited comedy that the whole lodge’s despair turned into loud and booming laughs. The unhappy ones consoled themselves with a scapegoat, the chief. When this topic was worn out, because we had to leave the next morning, they asked me all sorts of questions about the different tribes I had evangelized: Chipewyans, Yellowknives, Dogribs, Hareskins, Loucheux, and Eskimos; and about those that I had visited: Sioux, Iroquois, Algonquins, Crees, Maskegon or Swampies, and Saulteaux. I sang them songs of healing, games, or war in the languages of several of these tribes. I furnished them with details of customs that interested them as much as they had interested people in Canada, Paris, Autun, and Marseilles in 1874-75. They kept me up a good part of the night. They were insatiable for learning, hun¬ gry for speeches and instruction. However, the general effect of my words was un¬ fortunate. They left, saying outside the tent, “Yedadiye! He is powerful!” But they added, “So, he’s wicked. If he stayed with us, he’d only do evil to us. Since he has no fear of the Eskimos nor of the Sioux, we would never inspire any fear in him. Better he should go away.” This distrustful language saddened me. I gently complained about it to Nadi: “Do you hear what they are saying? If I had known! ... If I had known!” “This should not trouble or astonish you,” he said to me. “It’s what we say all the time. So and so is not afraid of bears. So and so does not mind wolves. Ey! Ey! So, they are worse and craftier than the bear or wolf. It is a saying common among us. It is a compliment; do not take offence.” So, in the eyes of this little tribe, not knowing fear is a sure sign of nastiness. A ferocious man is the lion-tamer, because he is more ferocious than the lions them¬ selves. A man of courage, the one who defies the bloodthirsty savage, only does so because he must be more bloodthirsty and more violent than he. Is that sophisticated enough? This is how fearful people, people who are afraid of their own shadow, mask as virtue their own cowardice and change a strength of character into a vice. But enough is enough; let us not blame them too much. It is exactly the same thing that happens to the reputation of some people in our own lands. He who is not afraid of

210

Around Great Slave Lake

anyone strikes fear in us. He is labelled a sorcerer. In the past he would have been burned alive. Today one avoids him and discredits him as Yedadiye! After John had left, on 19 December we left by ourselves, with a sled well loaded with food. By the 25th of the same month we had returned to Providence, which I had to leave very soon and forever! Our last day on the snowshoe trail was terrible. We travelled all through Christmas Eve and Christmas night after a happy midnight Mass in the forest, then again all the morning of the following day without resting! Twenty-five hours on our feet, ladies. That is why I say that, since the heroic age when Joshua stopped the sun over Gibeon and the moon over Aijalon, the world has never seen a more memorable and valor¬ ous day. From Black River we jogged for fifty-four hours on a short cut to Providence. Ekoutta. The end.

NOTE ON TRIBAL NAMES Name of the Danite tribes, from the Arctic Ocean to southern Saskatchewan, natu1 ally classified by oblique and roughly parallel sections running north-northwest to south-southeast. 1.

dane, People, commonly Ingaliks. In Alaska, between the Bering Sea and Koyoukouk: 1.

Koyoukouk-Kouttanoe, People of the Koyoukouk River.

Between Koyoukouk and Noukloukayet: 2. Ounhann-Kouttanoe, Distant People. 3. Youkponi-Kouttanoe, People of the Yukon River. Between the Yukon and the Takaisky Mountains, left bank: 4- Kkpayou-Kouttanoe, People of the Willows or the Birches. (W.H. Dali.) 2. dindjie, People, commonly Loucheux. These are Mackenzie’s Quarrellers and Richardson’s Kuttchin. Between Noukloukayet and the confluence of the two upper branches of the Yukon: 1.

Tpa-nanoe-Kouttchin, Hill People.

Ibidem right bank: 2. Tpe-ttchie-dhidie-Kouttchin, People of the Back Country, People Who Live Far From Water. Around Fort Yukon. 3. Kouscha-Kouttchm, Giant People, or of the Yukon; also called Na-kotchpotschig-Kouttchin, People of the River With the Giant Banks. At the confluence with the Black River; 4. Tpion-Kouttchin, Water People, or Tpendjidheyttset-Kouttchin, People of the Middle Place. The length of the Porcupine River, lower: 5. Rhanoe-Kouttchin, People of the Swift Current River. Ibidem, higher; 6. Vanoe-ta-Kouttchin, Lake People, or Zjen-ta-Kouttchin, Muskrat People. In the Rocky Mountains: 7. Tdha-Kouttchin, Mountain People, or Nattsoe-Kouttchin, Marmot People, or Klo-ven-Kouttchin, People from the Edge of the Prairies, or Dakkadhoe, the Squinters. The length of the Plucked or Peel River: 8. Tpe-tliet-Kouttchin, People from the End of the Water. The length of the lower Mackenzie: 9- Na-kotchpo-ondjig-Kouttchin, People from the River with Giant Shores. 211

Note on Tribal Names

212

Between the Mackenzie and the Lower Henderson: 10. Kwitcha-Kouttchin, People of the Steppes, or Kodhell-ven-Kouttchin, People of the Edge of the Barren Eskimo Lands. 3.

douni£,

1.

People, commonly Montagnais. In the Rocky Mountains below the 66 N:

Ehta-Gottine, People in the Air, Mountain People.

Ibidem, at Fort Norman, left bank: 2. Klo-kke-Gottine, People of the Prairies. Ibidem, right bank: 3. Kkpay-lon-Gottine, People of Willow Lake. 4.

People. In the Rocky Mountains, towards the rock that dips in the water:

dane,

4. Nahan-’ne, People of the West, Nahnnes. Small part of a considerable tribe that lives west of the central range. In the Rocky Mountains, the length of the Liard River: 5. Espa-tpa-Ottine, People of the Bighorns, Bad People. Ibidem, towards the source of the Liard and Peace rivers: 6. The-kka-ne, People of the Mountain, Sekani. Part of a larger western tribe. The length of the Peace River: 7. Tsa-‘ttine, People among the Beavers, Beaver. In the Rocky Mountains, towards the source of the Bow River (Alberta): 8. Tso-Ottine, People among the Beavers, Sarcees, Prairie Beaver; the Sa-arcix, Bad Folk, or what the Blackfoot call Bad People. I omit here all the Danite tribes of the West, with whom I have not been in contact, such as the Carriers, Babines, Atnans, Shuswaps, Hualpai and others. 5.

dene,

People; commonly Hareskins, Hare Indians in English.

From the Eskimo shores to Lake Simpson, the length of the Anderson River: 1. Nne-la-Gottine, People of the End of the World, or Tpa-pa-Gottine, People of the Sea, Old Ones of the Sea, Bastard-Loucheux. Among the large interior lakes, east of the Mackenzie: 2. Kha-tcho-Gottine, People among the Hares, People of the Wilds, or Natle-tpaGottine, People among the Little Caribou. The length of the lower Mackenzie, to the north of Good Hope; 3. Tchin-tpa-gottine, Wood People, or Kha-tpa-gottine, Fur People, People among the Rabbits. Ibidem, to the south of Good Hope: 4. Kfwe-tpa-Gottine, Mountain People. To the north of Great Bear Lake. 5. Eta-tcho-Gottine, People of the Great Cape or Big Point, Fur People. The length of the outlet of Bear Lake; 6. Nni-Gottine, Moss People.

Note on Tribal Names

6. dene,

213

People; commonly Slaveys, Slaves in English.

The length of the upper Mackenzie. 1.

Des-nedhe-yape-l’Ottine, People of the Lower Big River, or Tpi-kha-Gottine, People on the Water.

At the junction with Liard River: 2. El’e-idlin-GottinN People of the Fork. The length of the Liard River, and in the interior: 3. Ettcheri-die-Gottine, People of the Strong Current. Between the Liard River and the shared land, the length of the rivers Black, Beaver, Willow and Mackenzie: 4. Etcha-Ottine, People of the Shelter. 7.

DOUNE,

People; commonly Dogribs, also called Dogflanks, Dogsides, Dogribs in

English. Around the southern shores of Great Bear Lake: 1. Ttse-pottine, People of the Bark Canoes, Lake People. To the southeast of Great Bear Lake, and the source of the Coppermine River: 2. Tpa-Kfwele-pottine, People of the Water’s Beginning, Back Country People. Around Lac la Martre and the river of the same name: 3. Tsan-tpie-pottine, People of Lake Excrement. The length of the North Arm of Great Slave Lake: 4. Klin-tchanpe, Dogflanks, properly called Dogribs. 8. dene,

People; commonly Chipewyans.

On the northern coast and in the eastern bays of Great Slave Lake: 1. Tpa-’ltsan-Ottine, People of the Scum of the Water, Yellowknives, the Copper Indians or Coppers, and the Red Knives of the English. The length of Buffalo River: 2. Edjiere-tpou-kke-nade, Ox People. The length of Slavey River: 3. Des-nedhe-kke-nade, People of the Great River, Chipewyans. On the south shore of Lake Athabasca: 4. Yeta-Ottine, People from Above, or Kkpay-tpele-Ottine, People of the Willow Floor, Chipewyans. Between Lake Athabasca and Caribou Lake, as well as between these two large lakes and Hudson Bay: 5. Ethen-elteli, Eaters of Caribou, or The-ye-Ottine, People of the Stone Fort. From La Loche Portage to the North Saskatchewan: 6. Thi-lan-Ottine, People of the Top of the Head, understood to be the Giant Arctic glacier. At the Congress of Americanists of Paris, held in the month of October 1890,1 was not mildly astonished to note several striking resemblances between several Danite

214

Note on Tribal Names

Indians, belonging to one or other of the tribes listed above, and of the photographs of Brazilian Redskins, such as Bororos from Matto Grosso, Chavante, Caraja, Cayapo, Apiaca, Araguaya, by Dr. Paul Ehrenreich of Berlin who had communicated to us re¬ garding these resemblances. However, these similarities are only found between Indians with a rounded profile and trim shapes, and not with those Danites who have an Aramaic or a Buddhic profile, that is to say the noble type of the nation. As a matter of fact, I have already made this observation long before that the Danites are apparently of two bloods: the one Canaanite and the other Semitic. It is to the former that the Brazilian Redskins belong.

EXPLORATION DE LA REGION DO

GRAND LAC DES OCRS (Fin des Quinze ans sous le Cercle Polaire) PAR

Emile P E TIT 0 T ANCIEN MISSIONNAIRE ARCTIQUE, LAURfiAT DES SOC1ETKS DE GltOGRAPHIE DE LONDRES ET DE PARIS, MEMBRE DE LA SOCIETY DE GtiOGRAPHIE DE MARSEILLE ET DE PLUSIEURS AOTRES SOCI^TKS SAVANTES.

Ouvrage accompagn§ de gravures et de deux cartes dessinfos par l’auteur

«

In fines orbis terra; verba eorum. « (Psalm. XVIII.)

PARIS Tl^QUI,

33,

L1BRAIRE-EDITEUR

RUE DU CHER CHE-MIDI,

33

1893 TOUS DROITS RESERVES.

Title page of Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves

Exploration of THE

Great Bear Lake Region (End of Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire)

BY Emile Petitot Former Arctic Missionary Award-winner of the Geographic Societies of London and Paris, Member of the Geographic Society of Marseilles and of Several Other Learned Societies

A work accompanied by sketches and two maps drawn by the author

In fines orbis terrae verba eorum.

(Psalm xvm)

PARIS TEQUI, bookseller and publisher 33, RUE DU CHERCHE-MIDI, 33 1893 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Hareskin River and Eagle Rock

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction

223 chapter

1: Exploration of the Hareskin River

Reconstruction of Fort Franklin—Departure for Great Bear Lake—Eagle Rock— Hareskin River and Its Dangers—The Seat of Life—Capture of a Black Bear—The Bear Dance—The Melting Glacier and Ti-della Mountain—Camp of Chief Le Brule—Jewish Custom—Crossing Renewed Water Lake—My First Feat as a Pathfinder—Caribou Hunt—Big Wind Lake, Source of the Hareskin River—Arrival at Great Bear Lake 227

chapter

11: Great Bear Lake

Smith Arm—An Army of Caribou—Suspended Bow River and Great Point—Fort Norman—Topography of Great Bear Lake—A Monstrous Trout—Freshwater Herring—Steppes—Massacre

of

the

Tpoune—Episode

of

Mackenzie

Big

Neck—Franklins Expedition of 1825-27—Dease’s and F. Simpson’s Expedition— Richardson’s and Rae’s Expedition—Lieutenant Hooper at Great Bear Lake 245

chapter hi:

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

History of a Starving Family—The Living Buried with the Dead—Arrival of the Tpakfwele-pottine—A Nasty Trick—The Seer Nni-denichie—Vexations—Springtime at Great Bear Lake—Eleven People Massacred for One Beauty—Establishment of the First French Mission—Punishment—An Infant Buried Alive—Example of Cruel Indifference—Soul Food 265 chapter

iv: Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

Great Rapid Steppe—Appearance of the Great Bear Lake Steppes—Great Abundance of Caribou—Attacked by Caribou—Danite Easter—The Dene Moon Goddess— Hunting from One’s Doorstep—New Hunt—Warble Fly—Different Names of the Caribou—Travel in the Last Steppe—River of Black Waters—Fwa-Kfwe—Show of Affection by the Indians—Gentleness and Over-excitability of the Slaveys—An

Indian's Hardness of Heart—Another Child Buried Alive

A Dance

Dangerous

Crossing of Keith Arm 283

chapter

v: Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

Departure for McVicar Arm—Nni’nkon—Shot Point—Weyie-zatla Cave and the Big Worm that Swims—Bear Mountain and McVicar Arm—A Divorce among the Wolves—Meeting Two Dogrib Lodges—Mosquito Mountain—Horde of the Fur People—A Great Black Bear—Much Ado about Nothing—The Horde on the March—I Am Elected Chief—Snowshoe Taboo—Difficulties in Obtaining My Return—I Return Alone—Nni’nkon’s Docility—Sufferings of a Traveller in the Spring—Ice Boulders—Beautiful Light Phenomena

305 chapter

vi: Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

The Telini-Die or Franklin River—An Accident—An Indian Grave—Kha-nda, the Cannibal—Sad Death of Two Dene—The Great Rapid—Descent of the Great Rapid in a Birchbark Canoe— Stopped by Ice—Crossing a Torrent—Tsa-djiye al¬ most Drowns—Saved by a Gravel Bank—Climbing The Rapid's Mountain—Valley of the Telini—A Storm and the Torrent’s Sudden Flood—The Barges from Great Bear Lake Appear—Saved

32 7 chapter vii:

Summer at Great Bear Lake

Ascending the Mackenzie in a Birchbark Canoe—The Tow-rope—Great Bear Lake’s Outflow Frozen over in July—The Steppes in Summer—New Cases of Reincarnation—A Young Catechumen’s Pious Ruse—A Forty-day Summer— Return to Good Hope

343 chapter viii:

Across the Devil’s Land

Homeland of the Pigs—Indians’ Superstitious Terrors—Crossing a Burned Forest— Rat’ou Mountain and Lake—Dangerous Crossing of Kfwe-tcho-detelle—Devil’s Lake’s Overrated Reputation—Great Hay Lake and a Mountain Pass—Lakes of the Giant Wolverines and Beavers—The Hydra of the Hareskins is like the Lerna Hydra—I Follow Franklin’s Journey—Lake of the Mountains-—Economical Hygiene 353

chapter

ix: Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

Sadness and Desertion—Departure for Lake Colville—An Ingenious Family—A Child Killed Accidentally—Departure for Lake Petitot—Crossing Lakes Colville and

Petitot—Race

to

the

Moon—Camp

of the

Kha-tchd-Gottine—Child

Metamorphosed into a Caribou—The Fire of Souls and the Fire of Martyrs— Sabbath Labour Providentially Punished 365

chapter

x: Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

A Ruse Causes Distrust—Inconveniences of a Badly-made Yurt—Where Are the Savages?—Ella’s

Dream

and

Conversion—Superstitious

Fears—More

Than

Naive—A Conjuror’s Advice—Hindu Way of Hunting—A Moving Encounter— Tadipale—On Great Lake Petitot—A Narrow Escape—Arrival at Nonceni Bay— Raging Wolves—An Indian’s Exploits 385

chapter

xi: Through the Danite Camps: Continuation of the Voyage

Yellow Marmot’s Inhospitality—Assassination of Three French Metis—Crossing the Khadier Plateau—Sources of the Anderson River—Hareskin Pusillanimity—The Dene-djiere or Summer Ghosts—A Young Woman’s Heroism—Departure for Great Bear Lake—Way to Kill a Fox—Ti-depay—Smith Arm—The Soldier’s House—A Corpse Is Resuscitated—Departure for Kfwe-kpa-tlane Beach 405

chapter xii:

Stories of the Conjurors: End of the Voyage

Metempsychosis—A Conjuror’s Horrible End—Klinch-an-eye and His Revelations— I Go to the Great Steppes around Keith Arm—Dangerous Return on Smith Arm— Return to Our Lady of Good Hope—My Last Mission at Fort Norman—I Go to the Far West 423

To my friend The Reverend xavier brive, Priest of the parish of Saint Francis of Assisi, in Marseilles, this volume is respectfully dedicated by the grateful author

222

INTRODUCTION I have the honour to offer to the public, which so favourably received my four previ¬ ous volumes of travels, discoveries, missions and adventures in America’s far North, this fifth work finishing my series Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire1 including my winter and summer expeditions Chez les grands Esquimaux2 to the mouths of the Anderson and Mackenzie rivers, as well as my attempt to explore the Alaska [River] in 1870. In the present volume, I have condensed the accounts of eight voyages and as many stays of three to six months each that I made to Great Bear Lake between the years 1866 and 1879. I had the honour of being the first Frenchman and the first mission¬ ary who visited, travelled, explored, and lived in this Arctic Caspian Sea, as well as the desolate region that surrounds it. I claimed by right the discovery of all the great lakes, waterways, steppes, and mountains that I was the first to visit and which I marked on my map with the help of some landmarks scientifically gathered by the Arctic expedition of 1825-27 directed by the immortal Sir John Franklin of the English navy. Whether the delineation of the shores of Great Bear Lake has been altered and modified after forty years by the corrosive action of the water and by excessive cold, by rifts in the land, by the alternating freezing and thawing, and above all by the erosion caused by floating ice; whether the tracing of these things had been carried out too superficially by officers accustomed to the grand scale of the marine charts of that period, the topography of the region surrounding this vast freshwater basin had been a blank, and the hydrography of the lake itself left much to be desired regarding the shapes and details of its immense bays. But I have very often observed elsewhere noteworthy and numerous changes in the bed of waterways, the shape of shorelines, the delta of rivers, the filling in of narrows and channels formerly navigable, the forming or the disappearance of gravel or silt islands, so that I hasten to blame natu¬ ral changes for most of the errors that I noted on the English map of Great Bear Lake drawn by Kendall, the ship’s lieutenant, in 1825-26.3 One understands that, however thorough the explorations were or knowledge¬ able Kendall and his companion, Dr. John Richardson,4 may have been, it was

1 (Paris: E. Dentu, 3, Valois Place, 1889), 3 fr. 50. 2 (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 10, rue Garanciere, 1887), 4 fr. 3 [Edward Nicolas Kendall (1800-45) was surveyor on Arctic exploratory expeditions in 1824, in 1825 under Sir John Franklin, and in 1826 under Dr. John Richardson.) 3 [Sir John Richardson (1787-1865) accompanied Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expeditions in 1819-22 and 1825-27, and contributed natural history notes and accounts of his discoveries for Franklin’s Narratives of his first and second expeditions. He commanded the expedition in search of Franklin in 1848.] 223

224

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

impossible to discover or map everything in a single season. This explains why the map that I drew up in the course of eight successive trips places rocky islands, elevated promontories, large waterways, and even mountains on parts of the map where Franklin’s officers put only blanks. 1 travelled in every direction on Smith and Keith Arms, the central portion of Dease Arm, and the western extremity of McVicar Arm. As for east of Great Bear Lake, I was not able to visit it, but as Kendall’s map leaves the eastern part of the great Arctic basin blank, to complete the map I have filled the gaps by means of outlines furnished to me by Indians born in these parts who hunt there each summer. The Dene are very well up on the geography of their country. So that serious readers can keep track of all of the new information that my travels and my prolonged stays at Great Bear Lake have added to geographic knowledge, I have added to my own map a miniature copy of the map made by the 1825 English expedition. To prove my statement, a comparison of these two documents will be more eloquent than long parallel passages. Moreover, I must add that, since the pub¬ lication of my map by the Geographic Society of Paris in 1875, several geographers have hastened to adopt it and enrich their atlases with it, among them Messrs. Justus Perthes, Vivien de Saint-Martin, Colonel Niox, Ottawa’s cartographers. If I had limited myself to talking about geography, I do not think my book would have interested French readers much, whatever the infatuation that prevails for this science. That is why I applied myselt above all to describe incidents capable of depicting the customs and character of the inhabitants of Great Bear Lake without ever descending to the level of a dry monograph. The scenes of Indian camps, receptions, hunts, ethnic ceremonies, games, dances and funerals, the customs and superstitions that I recount here were real events that I witnessed; they were not imaginary incidents. What one will not find in these pages is a continuous succession of dramatic and ter¬ rible episodes, such as travel writers try to pass off as truth to the public. It has been said that I have gathered in this volume enough touching facts, scenes of atrocious infanticides, of desertion and of cannibalism for five books along the lines of those written by Gustave Aymard’’ and other such fiction writers who specialize in savagery if I had wanted to write such. But the critics who made these remarks have forgotten that I am a missionary trav¬ eller who is repoi ting events and not a manufacturer of fiction using my imagination. An enemy of fiction by taste and by nature, I have always preferred history. As for the more malevolent insinuations that try to deprive me of my works, my travels, and even

would you believe it?—my identity, I can only answer them with the most

5 (Also spelled Aimard; Parisian novelist (1818-1883) who travelled to North America, Spain, Turkey, and the Caucasus. As an officer in 1848, he visited Mexico and then returned permanently to Paris. He distinguished himself in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. Most of his novels, while popular, were repetitive descriptions of adventures among the natives of North America and Mexico.]

Introduction

225

absolute scorn. I have in my possession sufficient documentation to reply to these envious persons, and my accounts withstand all investigation. I myselt made from nature the previously unpublished drawings that accompany this work as well others, or rather 1 supplied authentic sketches for them. My work may be imperfect, I have not the conceit to pretend to perfection; but at least it is never inspired by someone else’s words or writings. On the contrary, about fifty times, I have had the opportunity to acknowledge the good offices, the brotherly affection or friendship of my superiors of that time, of my confreres in the apostolate, of the offic¬ ers of the Honourable Company of Furtraders of Hudson’s Bay, by the gift of a pencil, of a painting or a map, that I always accepted with as much joy and indulgence as they were given with gratitude and pleasure. Now, I wish that this volume which ends my work as a traveller and a missionary at the Arctic Circle may have as much success as those that preceded it. If it ever reaches the shores of Great Bear Lake, 1 have the firm assurance that it will not be contradicted. From the presbytery of Mareuil-les-Meaux (S.-et-M.), 9 June 1893. Emile

petitot,

priest and pastor, former Arctic missionary

CHAPTER I Exploration of the Hareskin River

Reconstruction of Fort Franklin—Departure for Great Bear Lake—Eagle Rock— Hareskin River and Its Dangers—The Seat of Life—Capture of a Black Bear—The Bear Dance—The Melting Glacier and Ti-della Mountain—Camp of Chief Le Brule—Jewish Custom—Crossing Renewed Water Lake—My First Feat as a Pathfinder—Caribou Hunt—Big Wind Lake, Source of the Hareskin River—Arrival at Great Bear Lake

From Fort Good Hope or Bonne-Esperance where I lived in 1866, one generally counts 330 English miles or 531 kilometres to the old Northwest Company fort. The famous navigator Franklin rebuilt it on the shores of Great Bear Lake in 1825 to spend the winter at the time of his second land expedition in search of the famous Northwest Passage. That makes nearly 133 French leagues. To safeguard against any errors, in view of the fact this is not the result of an astronomical calculation but a simple approximate estimate, I would accept just 110, and I do not believe that is less than the true figure.6 Since Sir John Franklin’s expedition left Bear Lake in 1827, the fort had been aban¬ doned, then burned piece by piece by the Indians and by the herring fishermen that the Hudson’s Bay Company sent there each autumn. It was in one of these fishermen’s cabins that the Pullen expedition’s Lieutenant Hooper spent the winter of 1849-50.7 In 1863, at the request of a small core of Dogribs and Hareskins whose hunting territory

6 The English mile equals 1,609 metres, while the nautical or geographical mile measures 1,852. In mak¬ ing my calculation on the beautiful map by Brue [Etienne-Hubert Brue (1786-1832), Parisian geographer, especially noted for his copper maps and atlases) I find, as the crow flies, five degrees of longitude in the East, between Good Hope and Smith Arm on Great Bear Lake and one and a half degrees in the South, from Smith Arm to Keith Arm where Fort Franklin was: which gives in all 210 geographic miles or 389 kilometres, or 97 French leagues. By adding 13 leagues for the curves in the path, 1 am certainly under¬ estimating the real distance. 7 [William John Samuel Pullen (1813-87) served in the 1848-51 expedition in search of Franklin and spent the first year exploring the Arctic coast from the Bering Strait to the mouth of the Mackenzie. He was given command of the expedition in 1850 and continued the search eastward as far as Cape Bathurst, returning to Fort Simpson and Big Island for the second winter. After returning to England in 1852 he spent the winters of 1852-53 and 1853-54 at Beechey Island commanding the supply ship for other expedi¬ tions searching for Franklin. DCB, XL718-19. William Hulme Hooper, Pullen’s second in command, later wrote Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski.. . (London, 1853) about their experiences in the Arctic.]

22 7

228

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

was situated on the shores of Great Bear Lake, the Hudson’s Bay Company delegated a Christian and civilized Swampy Cree named John Hope to rebuild Fort Franklin again, under the name Fort Norman, because it had been decided by the Company’s governors that this trading post, which until then had been situated at different points on the Mackenzie River, would be transferred to Great Bear Lake. As early as the following year its usual postmaster, Mr. Nichol Taylor, went there to establish his fickle household gods. Having myself arrived at Fort Good Hope during the autumn of that same year, 1864, I planned to visit the Indians who were to provision this new trading post and, at the same time, to explore the areas around Great Bear Lake. To this end, I would have to go up as far as the source of the Hareskin River [Hare Indian River] which the Indians said was close to the Great Lake. I would need guides, a sled, work dogs, and provisions for a fortnight’s march. This was a real Arctic expedition. Several more pressing and attractive trips that I undertook to the Dindjie, Bastard-Loucheux, and the Eskimos8 forced me to put it off until the spring of 1866. At that time, the abandonment of Fort Anderson made me direct my steps towards another point on the compass, allowing me to head for Great Bear Lake, which no Frenchman nor missionary of any denomination had seen or visited. I returned there in 1867, ’68, ’69, ’71, ’72, ’77 and ’78. I even made two trips there in 1867. I usually left on foot and with snowshoes at the beginning of March, carry¬ ing the mail for the North which had been entrusted to me by the officer in charge of Fort Good Hope. I would not return home to Fort Good Hope until mid-June by bark canoe on the Mackenzie River, which by then was reopened to navigation. In 1869 I arrived at Great Bear Lake in December and stayed there six months alone with a Hareskin servant. But in 1866, at Fort Good Hope there were no guides yet capable of leading me across this distant and, to me, new region. The Hareskins who frequented Good Hope never crossed the height which divides the Mackenzie’s tributary waters from Great Bear Lake. They knew only that the shortest way to reach this freshwater sea was to ascend the Hareskin River to the end of which no White person had ever penetrated. To believe Sir John Richardson, this waterway even came from Great Bear Lake, as did the Anderson River, the river of Lac la Martre and the discharge from Great Bear Lake into the Mackenzie, making four outlets from this freshwater sea. This theory .was too absurd to be true. My travels would completely refute it by showing that this great lake had only one outlet, which is much more in conformity with the laws of hydrostatics. But I had learned from the Hudson’s Bay Company officers that the Fur

s See my two volumes entitled Quinze ans sous le cerclepolaire (Paris: E. Dentu, 3 Place Valois, 1889) and Chez les grands Esquimaux (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, io, rue Garanctere, 1887).

Exploration of the Hareskin River

229

People or Hareskins of Bear Lake had opened a new trail between Smith Arm, which I might reach by the Hareskin River, and Keith Arm, on the shores of which the new Fort Norman was located. On this information, a bit vague, really, I did not hesitate to start ott with two Indians, both younger and more inexperienced than I. Neither the one nor the other having seen these regions, I counted much more on my com¬ pass than on their knowledge. I was then twenty-six years old. My first servant, Hyacinth Dzan-You, Dirty Clothes, was married and had been working for the missision for the last two years. He served as guide, in the sense that he walked or ran ahead of the dogs to show them the trail. I immediately followed him, shod like him with travel snowshoes. He had never been to Great Bear Lake. My second servant, Arsene Beh-foule, Empty Sled, was a Kha-tcho-Gottine from the in¬ terior, employed by Fort Good Hope, which had loaned him to me for three months in return for twenty-five francs a month, board and lodging not included. He was a good sort of man, mild, reliable, cordial, and fundamentally moral and honest. But he knew no more about Bear Lake than his companion. Reaching Fort Norman, I had to send Hyacinth to Good Hope with my dogsled, and keep Arsene with me until the month of June. We left on 4 March, crossed lakes Pike, Bluefish, Long, and Meat-Cache, at the same time skirting Muskox Plateau, Yakkpay-die, at whose base we spent the first night. The snow was very thick and, as there had been no wind for a long time, the trees were heavy with it, but my servants knew this part of the route. On 5 March, I embarked on the Hareskin River, a little higher than its junction with Bluefish River, Ttae-niline, where I had twice gone reconnoitring during the summer of 1865. Because of the elevation of its banks, the Hareskin River is always covered with a dense and soft snow except when water covers the ice or when violent winds have packed the surface with it. We ascended the river between banks edged by clusters of fir. The river’s breadth does not exceed that of the Seine downstream from SaintGermain-en-Laye, but it is deep, less winding, and much flatter. Moreover, I must hasten to say that this waterway is not even navigable in a skiff because of the boul¬ ders that are scattered in the thalweg [fastest running sections] and shallows and waterfalls frequently interrupt it. The Hareskins, who go to Fort Good Hope this way each spring, find it much safer and more comfortable to descend its current on rafts which they abandon on reaching the Mackenzie. At its mouth, Hareskin River is not less than 700 metres wide. Its general direction is from east to west. The second night we camped on the right bank. The temperature was minus 320 Celsius. Until now my two servants were entirely in familiar country and completely at home, having guided and conducted me thus far with assurance and without hesitation. The 6th, we had breakfast on a small island situated at the foot of Eagle Rock, a red ochre limestone cliff 150 to 500 feet high whose face falls vertically into the river, on the right bank, two miles upstream from the outlet of

230

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

beautiful Loche Lake or Jacques’ Lake. This wild and picturesque rock is the western spur of a series of cliffs that confine the Hareskin against a chain of equally reddish mountains from the south, the Kfwe-tcho-detelle or Great Red Rocks.9 Eagle Rock, Fwae-Kfwe, is the extreme limit of the longest hunting trip that the voyageurs of Fort Good Flope undertake in this direction. Beyond this landmark, which is visible from afar above the forest of conifers, my two companions found themselves in a new and unknown land, as did I. The only advantage that they could have over me from here on consisted then of that native instinct which comes from living in the woods, from the solitude and the frequent treks in unknown country. Indeed, I acquired this instinct but I did not yet have it then. From Fort Good Hope to Hareskin River, I headed northeast. In ascending this watercourse, I swung east-southeast, then again northeast, but the general direction of our travel was invariably eastward. Having no way to measure distance, I kept track of how far we went each day by the difference in real time that the sun gave me from the average time indicated by my watch. I knew that the difference of one me¬ ridian to another is 3'7" forward when going east and behind when going towards the setting sun. I also knew that the degree of longitude which, at the equator, is equal to one degree of latitude, sixty geographic miles, or in kilometres 120 metres, or twenty nautical leagues, at the Arctic Circle is not more than twenty-one geographic miles, or 38 kilometres 892 metres, or seven nautical leagues, which makes nine and a quarter kilometric leagues. Then, it is all the easier to judge the longitude from any point whatever, as one travels closer to the poles. 1 hus one can keep track of the longitude wherever one is, at the latitude of Good Hope, by comparing the hour that the sun rises in that place with what that star showed at the point of departure. Even without keeping track of the difference in time, one can judge the time needed to travel a geographic league, and to establish as a result a proportional average for the rest of the day’s walk. But, for this, one must know the latitude and the longitude of the point of departure. These calculations were furnished by Franklin’s map of 1825 and by Arrowsmith’s much more recent one: 66° 20' north latitude, 130° 51' longitude west of Paris. Since we were approaching the spring equinox, I regulated my watch to the rising sun, and, starting off east, as soon as I observed a difference of three minutes and seven seconds between sunrise and the hour indicated by my watch, I judged that I had covered one geographic degree, which is thirty-eight kilometres 892 metres. I was told at Paris, in 1875, that my method was unscientific. One cannot deny, however, that it is correct and exact, considering the very great ease I had, at such a latitude, to cover at least one geographic degree in a single day; it consisted of no

9 [Possibly Jacques Range.]

Exploration of the Hareskin River

231

more than seven nautical leagues. As for the time difference between Paris and Fort Good Hope, Fort Good Hope is behind by four hours and nine minutes. Eagle Rock is the southern extremity of the High Land Mountain or Ti-gotcho. The Hareskin River current is so rapid there that it only freezes in the most rigor¬ ous of winters. We would soon experience that at our cost. It reaches a speed of twelve to fifteen knots. The noise that the gravel at the bottom of the water makes, rolling under the pressure of the waves, is so strong that it sounds like the rolling boil of a pot. I had already noted this noise in the Mackenzie, at the fort called Bolting Beaver.10 After breakfast we resumed our march when, having covered less than two kil¬ ometres from Eagle Rock, the ice with its thick coat of snow suddenly gave way under Dzan-You’s feet, and plunged the young man into the river. Luckily one of his snowshoes remained stuck in a part of the ice that had not given way, so that, instead of falling straight down, the Indian fell forward, broke through the ice with the weight of his body and was immersed only up to his armpits. I was about to rush forward to help my poor servant when he called to me not to do anything, for fear that the two of us would be drowned. Then, with lightness and remarkable self-control, he spread out his arms as far as he could, stretched the leg that had remained suspended, and planted it on the stable ice. He gently placed the other there, dripping wet, rolled himself like a barrel, covering as much surface as he could, and then began to crawl towards the shore, which he reached safe and sound. Behfoule and I had already got there and I hastened to unlace my sled to get blankets that I wrapped around Hyacinth, while Beh-foule hurried to light a great fire, laugh¬ ing loudly all the time at his companion’s mishap. If it were not for the promptness that we took in these saving measures, the guide could have frozen to death if the temperature, which had been very cold at our departure, had not risen slightly by noon. This accident, which could so easily have been a terrible misfortune, forced us to bivouac on the spot. On 7 March, we began to distinguish in the distance the dry and angular range of the red or bare Great Rocks on the left bank. Their precipitous ridges, their terrify¬ ing barrenness, and the brightness of the snow that covered them presented the very picture of desolation. However, this range, which connects the Rocky Mountains of the Sans-Sault Rapid to the Ti-della Mountains [Lands in a line] that we would soon have to cross, rises above a high, well-wooded plateau that fire has spared so far and which is so rich in deer, caribou, and moose, as well as fur-bearing animals, that the Hareskins have rightly named it Ekodi-Etae, the Seat of Life. In 1869 hunters from Fort Good Hope, not finding caribou near the post, pushed on all the way into the

10 [Bolting or Scampering Beaver, previous site of Fort Norman on the left bank of the Mackenzie.]

232

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

thick and varied forest of this region. I used their trail and, instead of following the meanderings of the Hareskin River, I crossed the Seat of Life as far as the place where the range of Red Rocks joins the Ti-della on the edges of the Hareskin waterway. The bed of the Hareskin River is confined by these neighbouring mountains. It is a wide and dry ravine, a canyon whose depth varies between 150 and 400 feet, with abrupt slopes, often almost vertical and always laid out in takokrale or natural ter¬ races that show such a regularity you would believe they are the work of a popula¬ tion of giants. These granite layers are almost barren. Two other waterways, just as deep, empty into the Hareskin River: the Ekodi-Etae-niline on the left bank and the Nne-ye-inline or Underground River on the right bank. This latter waterway has its source in the north. It gushes out of a layer of rocks, but for twelve or fifteen leagues it winds underground for it is formed by the overflow from Lake Siphon, Nne-yeinline-troue, that plunges and swirls under Bedzi-ajyoue Mountain [Small Reindeer Mountain], and only reappears in the place I have been talking about. All this land that I covered in 1869 and 1872 is rich in underground rivers, as well as dried-up lakes of which one sees the pits where their waters drained. I camped at the junction with the Underground River. My young people discov¬ ered the lair of a black bear in a rocky thicket there. They opened and cleared it with axe blows and killed the inhabitant who was numb and still dozing even though the cold did not exceed minus 20° Celsius. We thus had more fresh meat than my dogs could pull on already fully loaded sleds. In the morning, we picked out of the river the remains of a fat caribou that feasting wolves had left there and regaled our dogs at the bivouac. The bear furnished a copious if not a dainty meal because, to be good, this very fat and naturally tough meat needs to cook a long time which we could not do in a temporary camp. My companions wanted to put on a show for me of the Bear Dance, a supersti¬ tious ceremony that these Arctic Danites perform, it seems, every time they kill one of these plantigrades without the help of Europeans. They took care to inform me that, for the present occasion, they were not moved by the same feeling but only by the desire to be nice to me by instructing me about a custom of their ancestors. To do so, they placed a flat stone on our fire’s burning coals and on that stone one of the bear s kneecaps. Then they began to dance around the fire while striking their right buttock with one of the paws of the animal. They yelled at the same time, “Meni nayetri? Meni n’ayetri? Ehiyanhe ehiyanhe! Who pulled you from your lair? Tra la la la!” I hen the kneecap, heated and beginning to fry and toughen, whistled, started to groan, then to move with a to-and-fro motion, like a pot placed on a red-hot stove and under which some drops of water had flowed. This was the natural result of the evaporation of the fat or of the periosteum which had melted, or of the contraction of the moist tendons. But my companions, put into a good humour by this natural

Exploration of the Hareskin River

233

phenomenon which they did not understand and which they attributed to the bear’s power, cried out with exhilaration, Look, Father, do you see how angry the bear is? It is annoyed by this song which puts him off the track of his killers.” And they continued their dance even faster, striking their behinds with the bear’s paw. They could not explain to me if this slapping of the backside is a sign of mourn¬ ing or of joy. The Fupis in Brazil and the Abenakis in New France also had a dance in which the men slapped their right buttock, and 1 believe it was a funeral dance. My dear readers know that I have spoken elsewhere about the striking of the thigh or the buttock among the Eskimos, the Kanaki of New Caledonia and in Australia, and the Negroes ot Londas.11 \\ hat is certain is that it is a sign of mourning and of suffering as well as of astonishment and admiration among the Flebrews. Witness this passage from Jeremiah: “After you converted me, I did penance, and ... I struck my thigh, in my shame and my contusion.”12 It appears to me then that my Hareskins believed, through this funeral ceremony, to give the slip to the bear’s spirit, sas, sah, so that he could not revenge himself on his murderers or even succeed in recognizing them later. It is so difficult to separate even the better converts immediately and completely from these childish and unreasonable practices. I incurred the ill humour and sar¬ casms of my young servants on this occasion by trying to explain to them how the kneecap moves on the burning stone. They wanted me to believe in the prestige of their conjurors, even as they believed, they said, in the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament. “What!” they said. “You think that we are not capable of doing the same as the Whites and just as marvellous? Ekou sou! Enough of that!” It is strange to see the Ostiaks, a Finnish people, perform the same bear dance and in almost the same way as the Dene Hareskins. Here is what the geographer MalteBrun13 reports. After having skinned the animal, they cut off its head, which they hang with the skin on a tree. Then they circle around it ceremoniously, simulating a great sadness and offering excuses to the bear by singing, “Who has taken away your life? A Russian. What cut off your head? A Russian axe. What opened your belly? A Russian knife. We ask your forgiveness for him.” An extravagant practice, contin¬ ues the celebrated geographer, and entirely founded on a servile fear of the animal’s spirit. This is not perhaps the only connection that the Arctic Danites have with the peo¬ ple of the Finnish race. My dear readers have already been able to notice this by the similarities in vocabulary that I have placed before them in my previous volumes.

11 D. et Ch. Livingstone, Exploration dans I’Afrique australe (Paris: L. Hachette et Cie, 1869), 144. 12 Jeremiah 31:9. [19, not 9 as Petitot states.) 13 [Conrad Malte-Brun (1775-1826), Danish-French geographer, author of Precis de geographic universelle and Traite elementaire de geographie.]

234

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

But there exists between these different peoples other connections of a purely ethnic character. Thus, with both of them, women do not have the right to eat bear meat. They both lived under the domination of a people who enslaved them: the Ostiaks under the yoke of the Tartars, the Danites under that of the nation of Women, of Dog People, and of Bald Heads, whoever these legendary peoples were. The two groups compare the flow of great streams of water to the fingers of the hand and give rocky mountains the name Stones. In Ostiak, this word is kew and keri. It is the name of the Urals.14 In Hareskin Danite, it is: kfwe and it is that of the Rocky Mountains. Finally, both are upright, honest, little given to libertinism, and hate nudity. From time to time, they all eat raw meat, live by hunting and fishing, and use sled dogs. Above the confluence of the Underground River and on the right bank of the Hareskin, I crossed a broad lichen-covered steppe called Ttsele-ttsoghe or Brushwood Steppe. There we encountered a herd of grazing caribou, which Dzan-You chased but without success. In any case, it was pointless for us to lose time pursuing them since we could not carry any of the meat that my young men might have gotten. We camped on the left bank, facing the mouth of the river Kounkfwe-kotsate, Where One Turns North. There, we found a variety of fir very rare in this country. They are very elongated, straight as arrows, and have a smooth trunk, stripped of branches except at a height of twelve feet. The next day, the sixth day of our journey, we left the Hareskin River which, from this point on, makes a sharp curve towards the south, and we started through woods towards the Ti-della Mountains, the cause of this de¬ tour, so as to get over it. My two Indians had heard speak of this portage by the Khatcho-Gottine of Great Bear Lake. Furthermore, we happily found a trail already well established which, from the Kounkfwe-kotsate River turns towards the mountain while crossing four or five small lakes. After three hours of painful walking in heavy snow, the trail led us to an abrupt notch, made by nature in a horizontal layer of limestone rock, which soon changed into a narrow and extremely dry canyon, where the ground was a sheet of ice, bloated and echoing. It doubtless formed a vault over a deep abyss. All three of us hesitated to venture into this glen, which could suddenly collapse under our steps and throw us into a bottomless pit. Because our dogs did not hesitate to go on, we followed them carefully and soon entered onto a vast, frozen, and uneven surface at least 300 metres wide, and which had too sharp a slope to be a river. Furthermore, this sheet, which had no edges, ended completely at the pit that we had just crossed and whose waters must reach the Hareskin by a subterranean route. Going up this steep incline, we saw only ice everywhere. The forest was imprisoned by it; the fir trees were buried to the middle of their trunks as in a flood. As we approached the foot of the mountain, the sheet broadened and ended up 700 to 800 metres wide. Its surface was not smooth.

14 Revue dephilologie et d'ethnographie (Paris, 1875), 114-18.

Exploration of the Hareskin River

235

It was humped, covered with lumps like cauliflower or the large and formless orna¬ mented stalagmites more yellow than white. By these signs, all three of us recognized the description people had given us of the Melting Glacier, Naecine-Kkweni. I would have been interested in climbing the glacier right to its source, right to the very foot of the mountain from which it emerged, but we soon saw on the left edge ot the ice sheet the blessed trail that had guided our steps, although somewhat faint, and we had to follow it to avoid getting lost. Still, Beh-foule assured me that his peo¬ ple attributed the glacier’s formation to subterranean infiltrations from a great lake situated at the foot of the eastern slope of the Ti-della Mountains which we would soon have to cross. As a matter of fact, this great sheet of frozen water has no more a known source than the big lake has an apparent outlet. Nevertheless, they say the waters of this basin experience alternating high and low tides so that the Indians of Great Bear Lake call it Trou-nagotlini-troue, Lake of the Everlastingly Reborn Water. Since my frequent journeys in this land, it is much better known by the name of Dick’s Lake, which I gave it. It is the name of an Indian chief whom I once met and who often stayed there. I'he cold was so severe, minus 490 Celsius at nine o’clock in the morning when we began to climb the wooded Ti-della slopes, that we had to stop and light a fire and warm ourselves with a cup of boiling tea. Meanwhile, we saw a herd of caribou coming down from the high mountain terraces to get, no doubt, to their favourite pasture of Ttsele-ttsoghe.15 My people, forgetting the cold and my warnings, imme¬ diately started off in pursuit, but they had no more success than the day before. After midday we suddenly arrived in the midst of a camp or temporary village of Kha-tchd-Gottine that the woods had hidden from us. The grand chief, Le Brule, whom the English traders had called Captain Black, was in command there, having under his control some Bastard-Loucheux from the Anderson River. He was a thirtysix-year-old man with the blackish-brown hue of a Tamil, and whose six-foot figure and muscular strength were contradicted and badly served by a soft face and childish voice. This man, who had replaced the late Echo as supreme chief of the Hareskins of Fort Good Hope, did not possess much authority. People defied him to his face, and the young people, whom he did not dare order about and whom he called too familiarly se tchilekhe, “my younger brothers,” openly despised him. If I except the Old People of the Sea, whom I had baptized the previous year and with whom I had travelled when returning from Fort Anderson, the Indians of this village did not receive me with the usual demonstrations of joy. Although they lived in the midst of a great herd of wild caribou, and their lodges were crammed with

15 Ttsoghe, genitive of ttso, lichen, can be applied also by extension to any steppe of lichen. Compare this word with Bastard-Loucheux so, Vote so, Tuski so, Estonian soo, Livonian sud, Finnish suo, sou, say, Chuvash sou, suw, Mordvinian sey, and Turkish sou. (This last word signifies however lake). And now tell me that there are no close linguistic connections between the Dene and the Finnish-Ugaritic dialects!

236

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

fresh and smoked provisions, they did not freely offer me any food. They even made me pay for the small amount they spontaneously gave me to eat, and I was astonished at such coldness until an old man told me that my two servants were the cause of it. As soon as they entered the village, had they not said to these good people that I had reluctantly turned aside from my path to come to them? That I considered them ungodly and hardened? That 1 preferred the Indians of Great Bear Lake or even the Eskimos? Well, the truth was that I had only ordered my travel companions to be ready to leave when I gave them the signal. To which one of them replied: “What does it matter to you if we stay a long time in this camp since you are the master of your own time and you only undertook this trip for the purpose of evangelizing the savages?” This was a lesson to me, but it had turned into a roadblock, for I had not said that I would not stay with these Dene but I would as long as my ministry required my pres¬ ence there. Ah! I knew well that once one makes camp, it is difficult to convince the natives to leave, at least not without getting a little angry, which is always disagree¬ able for a pastor of souls. The difficulty is not in reaching Indians but in trying to leave them afterwards. This was exactly what had happened to me. They would enter the camp, they said, just to warm themselves and shake hands with their country¬ men, but I soon saw my two lads, enthused by the reception given them and by the meat they saw hanging in all the smokers, unharness my dogs, unload my sled, and carry my baggage into the chiefs lodge. I had to camp there, hiding my discontent under the appearance of a feigned joy, to my servants’ great jubilation. To relax from my tiredness, I spent the whole next night hearing the tribe’s confessions. But how can I complain of this work when this was my purpose in life? The same night a young man of seventeen years, orphaned since an early age and raised by his grandparents, asked me as a favour to let him leave with me for Great Bear Lake. I gladly agreed, but the next day his grandfather absolutely opposed his departure although the young man, Jean-Marie, reproached them for treating him like a slave and a little dog. Once under way and quite far from the camp, my servants then explained to me the reason for the old couple’s resistance. They were this young convert’s guardians and had opposed his entering into my service because they had forced him, against his will, to marry the widow of his older brother who had died of scarlet fever the previous year even though the woman was nearly forty years old. These simple and naive old people said it was

in order that the young man would

raise children for his brother who had died without progeny.” Up until then, this was in fact one of their national customs. But this truly Jewish motive, excusable and even praiseworthy among these circumcised people since I regarded them to be the descendants of Israel or Abraham, was no longer valid from the moment they embraced Christianity, which forbids matrimonial affinities as in¬ cestuous. Such unions contracted by torce or by fear are wrong and invalid, and

Exploration of the Hareskin River

237

secret marriages are illicit. I regretted then very much not having enlightened the religion of these good people regarding this, but I must add that the two old folk had acted in all good faith and according to the usages of their people. Although the Ti-della Mountains rise nearly a thousand feet above the Hareskin River, they are not more than 650 above the Lake of Reborn Water, which explains the formation of the Melting Glacier. This height is not, however, a continuous pad nor a high or wide plateau. It is a simple alignment of the tips of dry, granite rocks that pierce the immense, black forest cover from place to place. An insufficient and incomplete underground upheaval can alone explain this mountainous arrange¬ ment, as well as the multitude of underground watercourses that cross this unusual 1 ange. Ti-della means aligned lands. I his alignment of dismal bald humps, enclosed by a bristling ruff of green fir trees, nevertheless constitutes the watershed of the wildernesses I crossed. It begins with the mountain Ra-warazj, at the intersection of the Lockhart River with the Anderson River, at 68° north latitude and 1290 longi¬ tude west. It continues in the ranges Bedzi-cho and Ti-della, bifurcates south of the Hareskin River into the two ranges Kfwe-tcho-detelle and Tchane-ttsou-chiw [Old Man’s Mountain], to end finally at the riverside range of the Mackenzie, which sepa¬ rates that river basin from Great Bear Lake as well as from the Anderson River. From the Ti-della Mountains’ elevated point to the east can be seen the whole surface of Lake Dick which extends motionless and pale to the middle of the black ocean of the forest. To the west, it follows in the same sombre plane a deep furrow of 200 to 300 feet which marks, by a long zigzag of light and shadow, the course of the Hareskin River or Ra-inttsa-niline, the Grey Geese Wing River. This is its former name, attesting to the fact that this wild watercourse is the periodic meeting-place of the aquatic tribe. To the south and to the north, the range stretches across the forest, but Great Bear Lake is not visible. It is at too great a distance over the horizon. The eastern descent of the Ti-della was rapid. Since no vegetation obstructed our progress on this slope softly covered with snow, we sat on our snowshoes like the Norwegians and let ourselves slide in stages to the foot of the rock. Beh-foule, who was driving my sled, let himself be pulled through the snow with his snowshoes on his feet acting as brakes to reduce the speed of our descent. Dick Lake measures three leagues from west to east, and two from north to south. A long, low, and wooded point extends from the south towards the middle of the lake, giving it a closed-in ap¬ pearance. We found the snow hardened and packed by the east wind. We could thus run without snowshoes, which was a great relief to us. At six o’clock in the evening, we bivouacked on the tongue of land mentioned above. From the Hareskin River, we followed the old hunting trail of Le Brule’s band. It had been visible thus far, but from this point, the wind and the powder snow had erased it so much and beaten it down to the level of the lake that we walked aimlessly as far as the eastern shore. We still hoped that the trail would become visible again beneath the wind, in the shelter of the land, or that we would find there some traces

238

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

of the presence of the Great Bear Lake Indians. We were deeply disappointed for we did not notice the slightest trace of the passing of people. At Le Brule’s place we had been told that, from Dick Lake to Smith Arm on Great Bear Lake, there was a trail in the forest, thanks to trail-blazing, and so often used by the Kha-tcho-Gottine Indians that we could not miss it. They said this portage’s beginning was marked by a small squared and pruned fir tree. The important thing was to discover the maypole. To this end, we set out to follow the eastern shoreline. Unfortunately, during the winter, the wind had piled up a bank of hard snow four feet high along the full length of this shore. It resembled those sandbars formed by flood residue at the entrance to a river. It hid the land’s edges completely from us. How could such a mass of snow have formed between the latest passing of the Indians and our arrival? I could scarcely believe the possibility of this phenomenon. However, my servants maintained that such was the case and they did not think for an instant of jumping over the bank to regain the portage beyond. They made me lose over an hour and a quarter uselessly tacking back and forth in front of this thick wall, always looking at the lake’s surface for what they could not find there, and mak¬ ing gratuitous conjectures about the disappearance of the road. Not without some annoyance, I was contemplating the need of having to open a new trail in an unknown land, guided only by a compass, when I hit upon the tracks of a wolverine who, coming resolutely from the wilds, had headed straight towards the shore by passing over the bank. This track was too direct to be anything but one created by man because the trail of an animal is always winding and indecisive. This wolverine could not have got through these places without a predetermined pattern. This plantigrade’s habit is to follow the hunters’ and trappers’ tracks because it lives off the product of the hunt. It pillages caches of meat; it steals some bait from the traps; it tears to pieces some little fur-bearing animals that it finds caught there. The wolverine is essentially a highway robber. I was thinking these thoughts while at a good distance from the shore and follow¬ ing the wolverine’s round steps. Then I hailed my servants to tell them of the find I had just made and enjoined them to come on the run. But they would not. “We already saw that trail,” they called to me. “The snow is not any harder there than elsewhere. It is a false trail. Better you should follow our tracks.” And they headed south. But I continued to follow the tracks of the wolverine, our master in perspicacity, and by it I came to the shore. As the wolverine had climbed the bank and left its claw marks, I also climbed over and immediately rediscovered the road on the eastern side. It was a sunken trail, well beaten, and hardly powdered by the last snow. The big bank had served as a screen and a dyke for it. Just as I had thought, this bank preceded the opening of the road and this is what had misled my men. Thus I was be¬ coming a bit of a pathfinder; the native’s instinct was awakening in me and I rejoiced in it. Happy with my discovery, I climbed on the bank of snow and called a second

Exploration of the Hareskin River

239

time to the two Indians to come. But I heard Hyacinth say with humour to Arsene, Ah! He speaks falsely. How can a Frenchman have enough intelligence to discover what we, Men (Dene), cannot find?” And with this sophism spoken from sensitive self-esteem, my two Dene continued their useless search. As for me, placing my snowshoes on the trail so that they would put them on the sled, I set about surveying the road, letting my converts search at their leisure on the lake. More than an hour passed without me hearing them come, and 1 was asking myselt it I would not be wise to camp and wait for them, when at last they ran up, out ot breath.

Yaze, yaze! Etin! Yedarineye. Dene honn$ ttsenyedarineye.

A little! Hardly! No! Nothing like it! You are powerful. You are more powerful than Men (Dene).” They had, however, just proven to themselves that it was not doing me a great honour to compare me to them. Dzan-You, whom I had found in flagrante delicto of spite and ill-will, was quite sheepish. He kept quiet by chewing his lips to keep from laughing. In the end, however, he burst out, “Erin, douye! Etin, douye! Assou ink-rouhe nenli on? Nothing like it; it is remarkable! Nothing if not remarkable! Are you a sorcerer?” That day, however, we had to do without dinner, the fault again of these two block¬ heads. Scarcely had we travelled a second hour together when we encountered a lovely herd of caribou that were grazing on a little lake surrounded by lichen. These gentle animals had already made many a hole in the thick layer of these mosses to take their meals there. Immediately, without listening to my protest, Hyacinth seized my doublebarrelled gun and my powder horn, and rushed at the caribou, followed by his com¬ panion, leaving me alone in the forest to struggle with my four dogs. These animals, like their driver, were deaf to my voice and let out frightful howls and behaved like devils in holy water to have me release them to run after the spoils. 1 had a lot of trouble in controlling their warlike mood, and it was only after a long quarter-hour, when caribou and hunters had moved far away, that the hotheadedness of my cours¬ ers was calmed a bit and they returned to more reasonable feelings. Then the cold seized me, for it was still minus 40° Celsius, and it obliged me to exercise strenuously to re-establish the circulation of my blood. I was also very hungry and was worried about the chances of waiting long for my supper. Meanwhile, a large white wolf appeared on the opposite side from the one where my men had disappeared. He had followed our trail at the call of my dogs. A wolf is so common in this beautiful country that the presence of this one did not affect me any more than if it had been the scrawniest mongrel. I seized my axe, rushed at the beast, and immediately put him to flight. But then I knew it would be wise to make a fire and I chose a likely place for a bivouac. There I hollowed out the snow with the help of my snowshoes, I spread out fir branches, I felled a number of dead trees that I piled in a stack, and I lit a great fire. These chores took me at least a couple of hours. For some time I no longer heard my men yelling, and I feared that they were lost. So,

240

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

I went back to my sled to bring it to the campsite because night was closing in. To my great displeasure, Brutus, my lead dog, faithful to the maxims of his namesake from the Roman republic, had broken his traces by chewing his harness. It was one of his cute tricks when he was impatient. However, the good beast was contented with this feat, and took no further advantage of his liberty. A howl which then echoed through the shadows a few steps from my dogs also told me that it was the intimidating prox¬ imity of Mister Wolf that no doubt led Brutus to free himself in this manner. After having reattached the dog’s traces, I led my team towards the fire where I spread out the baggage for the night. But I took care to tie up my dogs next to the campsite for fear they might follow the wolf or some caribou. As for the monster, seeing that I was protected by stronger things than he, that I had a big fire, and was armed with three good English axes as sharp as razors, he gave me two or three mournful cries by way of farewell and went elsewhere to examine other cynegetic [dog-like] beasts or other animals. My employees only came back at nine o’clock at night, sufficiently shamefaced, al¬ though they had killed a fat caribou. I concluded that they really got lost in the dark and that they realized they had acted frivolously in thus leaving me all alone for five long hours. Furthermore, Dzan-You had lost my powder horn, a beautiful Cape nick¬ el-mounted ox horn. So I did not receive them with enthusiasm, for I was annoyed at their escapade. It was a day lost. After arguing among themselves about which of the two would go to look for the dead caribou, Beh-foule left, using my dogsled, and Dzan-You cut a supply of dry wood for the night and the next morning. Beh-foule returned with the meat an hour before midnight, and it was, at the very least, an hour later before we could eat. The meat was fat and succulent, but we had walked no more than four hours that day, and I had had only one meal during the whole day. Because the previous day and the day before that were alike, I felt obliged to let my men know that I was tired of their dawdling, that I intended henceforth to make some good days’ march. They remained unmoved, for they did not intend anything less than to remain in the bivouac all the next day, gorging themselves with fresh meat, promising me with a mysterious air and making happy hints to indicate that we would soon make up the lost time. For the moment they did not bother to explain how this would be done. I did not want to agree to lose another day, but since we went to bed at two o’clock in the morning, it was at least nine o clock when we woke the next day and the day was also foreshortened. An hour after our departure, we found a great road through the woods, beaten and pressed down by an entire horde travelling on snowshoes, and 1 understood my men’s happiness the night before. This road, which we naturally atti lbuted to the Great Bear Lake Kha-tcho-Gottine Fur People, or People from the Big Point, ought to lead us directly to the edge of Bear Lake and then to Fort Norman, we thought. Hard and well packed, we could run on it without snowshoes and get

Exploration of the Hareskin River

241

the stiffness out of our legs whose nerves were injured and sore from this heavy and cumbersome equipment. The road went virtually in a straight line east through a large very old and sparse spruce torest. At a considerable distance and below the plateau we were crossing, we very soon spotted the shining surface of Smith Arm from which the black forest mass still separated us. Until one o clock in the afternoon, we happily strode this blessed road but, at the moment when we reached the crest of the watershed line where there were remnants ot a large abandoned camp, the road headed sharply north. This showed us that it was the route followed by chief Le Brule’s tribe, the Hareskins from the steppes, trom their usual hunting territory to the Ti-della Mountains. It was on their tracks that we had walked, and their road could no longer help us because from this point on it went away from Great Bear Lake beginning at this crest. It was a great mystery for my employees and a new cause of worry for me. So, we had to put on our snowshoes after our meal and break a new path in the great snows as far as Smith Arm. Nevertheless, we reached it the next day after descending a suc¬ cession of bald humps resembling dunes. One can see nothing more desolate than the beaches of Great Bear Lake in Smith Arm unless it is those in Keith Arm. The shores ot the first of these gulfs are flat, wide, composed of layers of limestone cov¬ ered with a thick coating of white lichen or Icelandic moss. In some places the forest stops two kilometres from the shore, but most often it is a league away except on the north coast. Here and there only small trembling spruce twist on the rocks, poor dwarfs that have become the target of all the caribou of the lake that come to rub and endlessly scratch themselves there to get rid of their heavy and huge ivory antlers. These special tree trunks or antler trees, ete-khene,16 as the Indians call them, are so whipped by the wind and rooted in stony soil that their wood is spiralled like a twisted column. They no longer resemble spruce but a thorny thicket. They even grow real spines. Their double-pointed branches come down towards the earth and twist desperately since they cannot grow in their natural direction. Dead before completely developed, from the midst of their branches grow long spikes of hard wood resembling a narwhal horn. In my sketches from nature, the extravagant shapes of these conifers would not be acknowledged by any botanist, even less by any artist. I never went to Great Bear Lake twice by the same route. Each year I varied my itin¬ erary, and if I were to mark all these journeys on my map in red, it would be colourful.

16 A

strange thing enters into the composition of this word, formed by juxtaposition. It is a term that

belongs to the Dana of Alaska. The word tekhen comes from the genitive-possessive tekhene, wood, tree. The eastern Danites say detchen, detchin, and the Dindjie, doetchran. By what chance have these Indians preferred to use a western term, instead of saying ete-detchene or ete-tchene7. These problems relating to the diffusion of the language will probably always be insoluble.

242

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

The following year, absolutely wanting to clear up the mystery surrounding the true source of the Hareskin River which Richardson said came from Bear Lake, instead of passing Ti-della Mountains by way of the Melting Glacier, I continued to follow the river’s meanderings right up to a small lake ten to twelve kilometres long and which bears the somewhat lengthy name of Ninttsi-tcho-nawekkwen-aytproue, Lake where you hear a Great Wind Howling. I crossed it at its widest point which is north to south parallel to the western shore of Smith Arm and ended in a swamp of some twenty metres diameter from the middle of which rises the only and true source of Hareskin River. This swamp is situated just two or three kilometres from Bear Lake, from which it is separated by the steppe-beach Kfwe-kkpa-tlane [Flat Rock Beach]. I have, then, the honour of having discovered it—if there is any honour in it—as I later had the honour of situating the true sources of the Anderson River and of many other waterways in the same region. It must be agreed, however, that if Dr. Richardson was mistaken about the source of the Hareskin, its proximity to Smith Arm is such that the Indians who told him about it could have said with fairness that this watercourse comes from Great Bear Lake. But this does not mean that it comes out of it nor that it is the outflow of it, as Richardson claimed. The western shore of Smith Arm is almost parallel to the 1230 meridian west of Greenwich.17 It is ten leagues from north to south, the Arctic Circle passing at its northern extremity, where there are two small islands formed by the mouth of the Kkpa-tse-ye-die [Katseyedie] or Dry Willows River. Looking eastward one can see for only five leagues, at which point it is blocked by a narrowing of the banks. This kind of narrows is formed by the meeting of two mountainous limestone promonto¬ ries: to the north, Non-tpyen-kfwe or Steppe Mountain and to the south, Kfwe-ttsenkfwe or the Mountain that rejoins the Mountain [Flintstone Range]. A small flat island, Ndou-newetti or the Island that Spreads [Ikanyo Island], occupies the middle of the narrows but is invisible from the shore.18 I searched in vain for the big island that Lieutenant Kendall’s map places to the west of Smith Arm. It does not exist. His supposed Accanyo [Ikanyo] Island is noth¬ ing more than Cape Kfwe-ttsen-Kfwe since its connection to the mainland is very flat, but it is not an island.19 Moreover, this same map omits another peninsula even closer to a spectator on the western shore: Ede-yan-ettoy or the Suckling Fawn.20 It is equally rocky and very elevated above the gulf’s surface.

17 [The western shore is actually west of 1250, but Petitot’s text concerns the mouth of the Katseyedie River, almost precisely on the Arctic Circle and some 100 kilometres east of the western shore.] ,8 [Possibly Crosswise Island, some seventy-five kilometres west of the mouth of the river.] 19 [Ikanyo Island is in fact north of Scented Grass Hills peninsula, which further confuses Petitot’s inac¬ curate description.]

20

[Possibly Goodfellow Point.]

Exploration of the Hareskin River

243

The extent of the lake from west to east, from the bottom of Smith Arm to the extremity ot Dease Arm, is not less than eighty-four geographic miles, or 155 kilometies 568 metres, which makes it thirty-eight and a half French leagues or twentyeight nautical miles.-1 From Smith Arm to McTavish Arm is even further.

21

[Petitot’s distances seem to be quite inaccurate.]

Smith Arm

244

CHAPTER II Great Bear Lake Smith Arm Norman

An Army of Caribou—Suspended Bow River and Great Point—Fort Topography of Great Bear Lake—A Monstrous Trout—Freshwater

Herring—Steppes—Massacre of the Tpoune—Episode of Mackenzie Big Neck_ Franklins

Expedition

of 1825-2/—Dease’s

and

F.

Simpsons

Expedition—

Richardson’s and Rae’s Expedition—Lieutenant Hooper at Great Bear Lake

Sa-tcho ti tpoue! Great Bear Lake!

exclaimed my two Danite companions enthusi¬

astically when we arrived on Smith Arm’s lakeside steppe. Coming out of the shad¬ owy depths of the sempiternal spruce forest where we had trekked for two days from Dick Lake, emerging from the Hareskin River’s narrow rocky canyon which had so long walled us in, we experienced the same sensation of freedom and well-being on arriving at the immense expanse of the gigantic lake as if at the shore of a great sea. What pride to have been able to find by ourselves, at the price of long days of march¬ ing and severe fatigue, this beautiful frozen sheet! What rapture in surveying the view of these vast horizonless spaces where the blue sky forms the only limit to the east and south! What joy to be able to run at an athletic pace on this water converted into a marble surface and whose black depths revealed its chasms! Still, this vast surface is only a single bay, or more correctly, a gulf, Smith Arm, with a very ordinary shore, Flat-rocks Beach. What can one think about the rest and how can it be described? During 126 geographic miles from Fort Good Hope we had always kept a course for the rising sun as far as Bear Lake. But as soon as we arrived on this lake we turned at a right angle south-southeast to reach Fort Norman,22 sixtysix nautical miles from there. We could not reach the southern edge of Smith Arm that same day. We had to camp on our right, on Point Eyounne-netchouy, opposite Suckling Fawn Peninsula, but I swear to you that we had fun along the way, and here is how. I have not once crossed the surface of Smith Arm—which I did during seven win¬ ters—without seeing the surface covered by caribou tracks. On the present occasion, it was literally trampled and furrowed, flattened by thousands of these gentle ani¬ mals. Scarcely had we dashed onto the ice when the little bells of my dogs attracted

22

[Present-day Fort Norman is on the Mackenzie at the mouth of Great Bear River; the modern Fort

Franklin, recently renamed Deline, is near the site of the earlier Fort Norman northeast of the head of Great Bear River which empties from the Keith Arm of Great Bear Lake.]

245

246

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

an army of caribou from the steppes where they were browsing on their lichen. They made such a noise that their little hooves sounded like a hailstorm falling on the asphalt of our roads. My Indians, quite beside themselves, exclaimed that in their whole lives they had not seen such a collection of these cud-chewers. They were like the stars in a beautiful Arctic night. Emboldened by their numbers, curious to acquaint themselves with these strange beings that they were seeing perhaps for the first time, the gracious animals swooped down on us in great battalions, pressing together their ranks like sheep, tangling and knocking their broad antlers against each other and considering us with interest and an innocent, unwitting, naive, and childlike look in their great limpid eyes. Heedless of the danger to which they were exposing themselves, the caribou let themselves be charmed by the tinkling of the small silver sleigh bells, disdainful of our persons, and they forgot that the dogs of this country have fangs almost as fear¬ ful as those of wolves. Their step is so smooth and their swift legs so nimble. Their tiny hooves are so elegant, punching a mark on the hard snow like so many little crescents, their beautiful heads so intelligent-looking, in spite of a stupidity that the Danite hunters easily profit from, their look so soft and melancholic, and the bearing of their ivory crowns so noble and majestic that I understand how the Indians are moved by the sight of them. Their minds, still in swaddling clothes, call forth the memory of people who are no more, and whose souls might have taken on animal forms that are so gentle, so beautiful, and so sympathetic. Without admitting metempsychosis, I immediately thought it was a pity to be forced to destroy this innocence, to cause alarm in these peaceful ranks, and to carry iron and fire into the midst of these noble animals. I am no longer astonished that, until the time of the flood, the Creator forbade people to spill the blood of cud-chewers and to make food of them. “Poor pretty beasts, we must not hurt them, do you hear?” a member of the Institute, a wise professor of the Museum of Natural History, said to me in 1875. But the Indian hears nothing of this hardly practical feeling when his stomach cries hunger. And, even when he is not hungry, it is difficult for him to control himself in the presence of such easy prey. So, my companions burned with impatience, “their feet hurried them for the death,” their hands had already stripped me of my weapons and I had to get angry with them to dissuade them from firing into this living, moving mass. “But, look, Father, it is impossible to miss them. A five-year-old child could kill them. The same bullet can pass through three at a time.” That was true, but to what purpose, since we had enough supplies for the journey and could not carry any more? To kill for the pleasure of killing, is that not a use¬ less cruelty, an abuse of the gifts of God, an injustice and a theft practised on poor beasts whose life is their only property? This would have been the time to put into practice the advice of the good professor, “And above all, do not harm them!” if he had already given it to me. But, even without the advice, I can affirm that I was

Great Bear Lake

247

di iven by the same feelings and I had the lives of these charming animals spared. Let us admit, however, that my young men needed real virtue to resist such a temptation. If they did not fire into the crowd, however, that did not keep them from the sport of throwing everything they could get their hands on at the caribou’s legs: axes, whips, wooden clubs, solely for the pleasure of seeing them cram together and crush like sheep attacked by a wolf, then flee in every direction like a whirlwind of leaves caught up by the wind.

1 he next morning, an hour after leaving our bivouac, we reached the end of Smith Arm where I had been told a large river [Whitefish River] emptied from the south. Neither Richardson, nor Kendall, nor Dease had noticed it. We had to make use of this river and follow it upstream until we found the beginning of a portage on the right bank. The Indians had assured me that when we had found the path, we would not lose it again because it had been well made and the person that had opened it, detta-netel, called the Soldier, had taken the trouble to blaze a multitude of firs and cut some maypoles on the edge of every lake the trail crossed. It appeared to me to be easier to find the outlet of this river, which is called Intpin-tafwetpon-niline, or Hanging Bow River. To do this all one needed would be to go straight south. Well, in this case again, Dzan-You twice took the wrong way by wanting to do things his way. Pathetically, he repeated his Reborn Water Lake feat by leaving me on the lake and taking off alone towards the right and entering the steppes. Beh-foule had the good sense this time to stay with me, and I continued to walk alone in front of the dogs. Thus, without hesitation, we entered the truly very flat riverbed and we only stopped at the end of an hour to give the dogs a rest. Dzan-You rejoined us then, and he did not have enough sense to accept the lesson with grace. He was angry that I had not followed his wanderings and had the unshaken nerve to claim that his position as pathfinder gave him the right to go wherever he liked. Such reasoning, good enough for a new recruit in the army or for a schoolboy, put me as well as Arsene in such a fine mood that the poor boy remained quite crestfallen and dumbfounded. The first portage was very short. We followed the Bow River until noon, leaving it completely to enter the woods at the western extremity of Currant Bush Mountain, Tarwo-djiye-nene, on the shadowy flanks of which we crossed seventeen ponds or marshes while following the Indians’ road. The interior of the great point that separates Smith Arm from Keith Arm is depressing, but it is mountainous only on its edges. The middle of it is low and almost boggy. Steppes, sparse forests made up of larches, muskeg spruce, and Siberian weeping birch, numerous burned-over areas and brackish ponds that lie in a lichen basin like an immense sponge: that is all that one can see there. A description of it is quickly finished. I counted forty-two of these marshes on my route, but the country is entirely covered with them. They are the result of the melting snows, in a land that snow covers for nine months of winter with scarcely two months of good weather. Here and there, forests burned by Dene carelessness have been transformed as always

248

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

into an army of blackened and scorched long poles. 1 his dead nature is made more lugubrious again by the violent contrast with the snows that nevertheless hide the saddest wreckage. I ought to acknowledge, however, that we had a good trail, well beaten, carved out of the forests intelligently and conscientiously. All the trees on the way were blazed by axes, and the entrances and exits from the portages were well-marked at the edges of lakes and swamps. Chief Dick’s band had passed this way a month or forty days earlier so that the snow had not had time to fill in the trail. 1 he second day, we again arrived at the Bow River’s junction with the Bigfish, Lcoue-tcha-niline, which comes from the east. We followed it until it joins the Hares, Kha-die, which starts from a broad lake of the same name, Kha-tpoue. This lake occupies the heights and is joined to seven other respectably large basins by the same small river. This one takes its source at the foot of a hillock, 65° 25' north latitude and 1250 longitude west of Paris. The entire course of Hanging Bow River is forty-two geographic miles, or twenty kilometric leagues in round figures. Some lichen steppes of a monotonous appear¬ ance alternate with the lakes, but the latter, like the waterways, are always edged by spruce and larch. The eleventh day after my departure from Fort Good Hope, thanks to the weather which let me reach the road to the peninsula, I reached Grey Geese Lake by a rapid 150-foot slope. This lake is a natural port, sheltered, and well protected from the vast Keith Arm or gulf. This little lake, which has the name Ttatteh-tpoue, measures two kilometres 413 metres and is only separated from the bay by a simple narrows. It receives a river of the same name. At this narrows, on a bare beach, and surrounded by boggy low ground that the water from the melting snows floods each spring, the new Fort Norman was be¬ ing built, if it is permissible to use an expression so exaggerated to describe four low structures of squared spruce trunks, covered with bark and smeared with daub which rendered their simple and modest ground floor most unwarlike on this flat and denuded shore. Less prominent is the difference of level between Great Bear Lake and the shore at this location so that Fort Norman seems to be built on the ice itself. To the south extends Keith Arm. To the west are the immense steppes and the outlet of the said lake. To the north the wooded heights, from which I had descended, would protect the fort if it were closer to them. Finally, to the east can be found lit¬ tle Grey Geese Lake and the location of old Fort Franklin. This last is a sandy shore twenty-five feet high above a marsh that extends the length of the narrows, and in which can be seen some sparse stunted spruce. Only the empty spaces there indicate the ruins of the celebrated navigator’s wintering place for no traces of even the ruins remain. All has been reused or burned. As I had not yet a base at Great Bear Lake in 1866,1 called on the hospitality of Fort Norman’s commander, to whom a letter of introduction from Mr. W.L. Hardisty, head of Mackenzie District, warmly recommended me. I was received with open

Great Bear Lake

249

arms by the head of the post, Mr. Nichol Taylor, a good old Orkney man of about sixty years, who had entered the country with the expeditions to discover the Northwest Passage and who stayed afterwards with the job of fisherman. He had almost always lived at Great Bear Lake to supply Fort Simpson, the headquarters of the district. Then at last his intelligence and his services earned him the promotion to postmaster, and the Hudson’s Bay Company had entrusted him with little Fort Norman after Mr. Brisebois, the clerk, had left. Mr. Taylor had changed the location of the Fort five or six times, thanks to the freedom and independence that the heads of factories in the Northwest enjoyed. He had dragged it to every shore and to every island on the Mackenzie between Bolting Beaver and the mouth of Great Bear River. Finally, he washed up on this remote and wild lake beach. But Fort Norman did not stay there long tor, in 1869, the little gentleman transported it once more to the head of the river where it is still today. Father, exclaimed the little Orkney man, while shaking my hand and drooling his eternal tobacco quid juice, “you are at home here. No fanciness, with me. I am an old Company fisherman. I was their man [employee], so I’m straight, and I like to have people treat me the same way.” His Metis-Canadian French was very tolerable and perfectly understandable. His childlike good nature and entirely gallic manner of putting people at ease pleased me greatly. He had a way of looking at you with a mocking air and a wink of the eye that was very funny. This good man also shared his house with me. This little house, actually tiny and proportional to the person who lived in it, only had three rooms with a little kitchen in the back. The room in the middle, which was only an ante¬ chamber, a sort of corridor, he made his reception room for the natives. He kept one room facing west and gave me the one that looked east, which had a separate entrance. It received daylight from the south and the east through two windows each eighty centimetres square, and there was one of those big American fireplaces that can take an armful of firewood on condition that one places the logs upright, not on their sides, because American fireplaces are too narrow and without depth. Mr. Taylor himself brought me an excellent bed [a duvet] made by sewing a moosehide together and filling it with feathers and also brought two pillows, a table, a small easy chair with a wooden seat, a wash basin, and a wrought iron candlestick. He had a good fire lit for me and placed at my disposal all his firewood. I had not been bet¬ ter treated by the kindly gentleman of Fort Eskimo, Mr. Roderick MacFarlane,23 the previous winter. That is what one truly calls Scottish hospitality which one finds only very rarely in France. “It is more than thirty years,” the old explorer said to me while chewing his execrable quid, “that I knew of this here place. You can see, Father, below there, that white

23 [SeeDCB, IX:6, X:276; and Among the Chiglit Eskimos.}

250

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

patch at the bottom of the hill and on the edge of Grey Geese Lake? Well, that is the site of the cabin that I built in my younger years, when I was their man24 and fished for the late Master Dease. In 1848, I spent the winter with Lieutenant Hooper, who made me a present of this.” And the little old man showed me a large naval spyglass which enabled him to explore the lake surface. “When I was their man” was an expression that recurred frequently in the stories more or less embroidered and knowingly amplified by Mr. Taylor, the wag among his group of colleagues, who, like several other employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company, loved to talk about his humble beginnings as a sailor, fisherman, or labourer, during his life as a self-made man. I declare this to be a very honourable and very glorious title when one finds it applied to an honest man. This funny little oldster could have hung a sign-board at his fort: “At the three Francois.” He was, in effect, surrounded by three French Catholic Metis who gloried in the name: Francois Gendron, Francois Richard, and Francois Nadaud, all three barge steersmen and working also as fisher¬ men, voyageurs, pit sawyers, and builders. The Protestant Swampy Cree John Hope, of whom I have already spoken in my second volume,25 was the fort interpreter but only pro forma and for the emoluments because he did not know a word of Dene, spoke only the Slavey jargon, and had a man as boss who understood his native cli¬ ents perfectly well. Four bachelor Presbyterian Scots completed the personnel of this little supply post. Mr. Taylor was not alone. He had with him his daughter, Jenny, whom he had had by his first wife, a Slavey from the Mackenzie. He also had Laura Collins, daughter of his second wife, an American whom he lost the previous December after one year of marriage. The poor woman died in giving birth to a little boy that the old gentleman raised on a feeding bottle, thanks to the care of his stepdaughter, Laura, who took the place of a mother for him. Such was the family with whom I had to live and take my meals. Now, some words about Great Bear Lake will not be misplaced. Sir John Franklin, who passed the winter of 1825 and part of 1826 at Great Bear Lake during his second expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, gave as the position of the wintering fort that he had Mr. Dease and his French Canadians build five minutes from the present Fort Norman, 65° 11' 56" north latitude and 1230 12' 44" longitude west of Greenwich, compass variation 390 9' east.26 This is the same as the geographical position for the Fort Norman where I was now. As for Great Bear Lake, it extends from 64° 45' to 67° 58' north latitude and from 1190 to 1250 30' longitude

24 [In French, originally, un homme: a man.] A French-Canadian expression signifying: a servant, an employee. 25 Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves (Paris, 1891). 26 Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1828), 85.

Great Bear Lake

251

west from Paris. So, it measures sixty-nine and a half kilometric leagues northeast to southwest,27 and fitty-five and a half leagues west-northwest to east-southeast.28 These are the two directions in which lie the five gulfs or deep bays that cut up this American Caspian Sea like a star: Smith Arm to the northwest, Dease Arm to the noi theast, McTavish Arm to the southeast, Keith Arm to the southwest, and McVicar Arm to the south. The waters of this immense freshwater reservoir, lying in a granite excavation on which are superimposed, to the west, layers of limestone and not being crossed by any sedimentary river, preserve the greatest clarity and are so deep that Richardson could not reach the bottom ot McTavish Arm with forty-five fathoms of line. The one which bears the name of Chief Factor James Keith, then chief of the Athabasca District and master of the celebrated Mr. Campbell,29 Keith Arm is the shallowest of the five, at least at its most western extremity, which gives birth to the TeliniDie [Great Bear River], the only outflow from Great Bear Lake, no matter what Dr. Richardson’s views are about it. Dease Arm owes its name to an agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company Franklin took on at Great Slave Lake. That was Mr. Dease who built Fort Franklin where he remained in charge of the stock and who later built Fort Confidence (1836) at the eastern end of the bay that bears his name. He was the brother or the cousin of Mr. Charles Dease, factor at Fort Good Hope, when Franklin visited in 1825. The post then occupied the left bank of the Mackenzie at the place called Yekfwee or Fox, 67° 28 41 north latitude and 130° 51 38" longitude west of Greenwich, variation 470 28' 41" east. It was, at that time, the most isolated trading post in North America and was devoted solely to the Loucheux Indians or Dindjie. The French Canadians employed m the service of the fort never ventured beyond Treaty River which has since carried the name of Working French Canadian, Rallougou-tschig in Loucheux. Trade with the Eskimos was carried on only by the intermediary of these Indians at the mouth of the Tsi-kka-tschig or White Earth River, which Franklin called, I do not know why, the [Arctic] Red River; a name that stuck.30 That was the agreed boundary that the Inuit and Dindjie must not cross. In 179531 Mr. Livingstone of

27 277 kilometres, 800 metres. 28 222 km., 240 m. 9 [Probably Colin Campbell (c. 1787—1853), former Northwest Company employee in the Peace River District, appointed clerk and trader in the Athabasca District by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. Regarding his assistance to Franklin in 1825, see R.C. Davis, ed., Sir John Franklin’s Journals and Cornespondence. The Second Arctic Land Expedition 1825—1827 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1998), 73-5-1 30 [Now renamed Tsiigehtchic.] 31 This is two years after the official discovery of the Mackenzie River by the Scottish knight, Sir Alexander Mackenzie.

252

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

the Northwest Company ventured as far as this place situated at the exit from the Ramparts of the Narrows32 to trade directly with the Eskimos. He was massacred without pity along with all his men. As for McVicar Arm, Franklin gave it the name of the factor who was in charge of Fort Resolution in 1825.1 his new trading post had just replaced the old forts Moose-deer and Providence, seen by Franklin in 1819. This was the same Robert McVicar who, along with Mr. Dease, reconciled the Dogribs of Great Slave Lake with their neighbours the Yellowknives after the celebrated naviga¬ tor’s departure. Each of the five gulfs that make up Great Bear Lake is separated from its neigh¬ bour by a peninsula or land forming a promontory by its elevated shape and its mountainous nature. Ehta- tchin-la, or Wooded Cape, separates Dease Arm from McTavish Arm. Between it and McVicar Arm or Lake is a mountainous peninsula called Kokkwin-tcho or Great Steppe [Leith Peninsula]. In its turn, McVicar Arm is separated from Keith Arm by the Great Bear Mountains, Sa-tcho-jyoue [Grizzly Bear Mountains] which form a peninsula; while between Keith Arm and Smith Arm extends Great Point, Ehta-tcho, with its three mountains of Klo-tsen-ewa, Sagebrush Mountain (also called Little Steppe), Kokkera-ghe or Trail Heights, and Loue-ajyoue or Little Fish Mountain. Smith Arm and Dease Arm are a single body of water and no cape separates them; however between them lies the Sinuous Land, Ti-dapori or Ti-depay, which conceals the sources of the MacFarlane and Anderson rivers. This immense lake receives no less than thirty-six watercourses of which four are more important than the others: the rivers Kkpa-tse-ye-die [Dry Willows River] and Intpinta wetpon [Whitefish River] into Smith Arm; Tpa-tche-we-tcho, Big Tail of Water or Dease River, at the end of the gulf of that name; Minkpa-al’a-die or Sought After River [Calder River] at the bottom of McTavish Arm; and finally Tpie-niline or River of Lakes [Johnny Hoe River], which empties the waters of a string of large natu¬ ral basins north of Lac la Martre into McVicar Arm. Dease River alone is marked on Sir John Franklin’s map. As for the vast Keith Arm, it receives no large watercourse for the very reason that it gives birth to the only outlet of this Arctic basin, TeliniDie, Outlet River [Great Bear River]. We have already seen that it is a tributary of the Mackenzie. The crystalline waters of this inland sea nourish salmon-trout (Salmo fario), the largest and most renowned in the Northwest. They reach, on average, from thirty to thirty-five English pounds, but even heavier ones are found, as the following conver¬ sation that I had with Mr. Taylor the same day that I arrived at Fort Norman proves. “When I was their man,” the little Orkney man said to me at table, “I caught a trout that weighed fifty pounds if it weighed one. That is true, that, Father.”

32 [The second narrows and ramparts, closer to the delta, rather than the first series on the upper Mackenzie just above Fort Good Hope.]

Great Bear Lake

253

“Oh, I do not doubt it, Master Nick,” I replied to the old fisherman. But at the time of my visit in 1867, Mr. Taylor, forgetting the figure that he had offered me the previous year, said to me again, “You would not believe it, Father, but when I was a Company man, I took a trout here that weighed sixty pounds if it weighed one. That is nothing but the real truth.” “Well,” I said to myself, “that trout has grown by ten pounds since last year; but that could be." And I did not make any untoward remarks. But in 1868, little Master Nichol came back to the subject with his paradoxi¬ cal trout which reminded me of Marseilles5 Captain Pamphile’s famous sardine.33 “When I was their man on Bear Lake,” he began again with his ususal aplomb, “I caught a trout that weighed sixty-five pounds, Father, if it weighed onel Oh! You can ask Gendron about it.” “Ah! As for that, Mister Nick,” I answered him, “I believe you have treated me in the Nicolet fashion: everything is always bigger and bigger.” But he did not under¬ stand the reference nor the aptness of my answer, because he had never heard tell of Nicolet’s tricks.34 The broken-nosed coregone or whitefish (Coregonus lucidus sen albus), that I have named C. globulosns, and the pike are also found in Great Bear Lake although they are less numerous than the trout. But the fish that most abounds there is an ocean fish, our common herring (Clupea harengus), the Lcoue-a of the Slavey Dene. In March and April and with only five lines forty-five fathoms long, daily fishing caught at least nine hundred to a thousand of this fish. It has exquisite flesh and I much prefer it to trout. This little fish ordinarily takes three years to reach its full develop¬ ment. In 1866 they were not more than fifteen centimetres long, and the following year I found them twenty centimetres long. It was only in the third year that I saw they measured twenty-five to twenty-eight centimetres. Then the length fell again to fifteen centimetres. I know that this phenomenon is explained by the growth of the young generation, but why are the body sizes not mixed? What becomes of the big fish in the fourth year? And how do they return to the Arctic Ocean—if that is where they migrate to—because one does not catch any herring from the Mackenzie? Who can explain this anomoly? During the summer the herring is active, wriggling; it frequently jumps above the water while playing in the hot rays of the sun. In winter, on the contrary, and once imprisoned in its shadowy cold prison under ice nine to twelve feet thick, the her¬ ring becomes as stiff and slow as a slug. I sometimes got a beneficial break by fishing

33 [Capitaine Pamphile (Paris, 1839), “the most amusing and the most silly” of Alexandre Dumas’ novels, recounts “in an outburst of laughter” stories about the doings of a menagerie of animal heros.] 34 [Jean-Baptiste Nicolet (c. 1710-96) operated the Gaite theatre in Paris where he produced variety shows featuring wire-walking, acrobatics, marionettes and musical entr’actes.]

254

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Indian-style in the company of my servant. In the morning he would dig a hole in the ice a league from the shore, and after breakfast we would take up stations there, each of us armed with a pole ending in a trident formed of two pointed bones and a sharp¬ ened point placed between them, lcoue-okolc. In less than an hour we each took from thirty to forty herring. The fish would cross the black hole slowly and as if chilled by the cold and sleep. It shines there like a little ingot of silver. A downwards thrust and it is impaled on the points of the trident. It would not even wriggle when it dies. This spear fishing for fun and profit was one of the Scots’ pastimes at Fort Norman. At Bear Lake one finds neither moose (Alces americanus) nor caribou [Rangifer caribou), the large deer of the woods, because these two cervides prefer impassable forests, low plains cut by creeks and copses, abundant in willow, alder, birch, and other similar water-loving trees; all these things are lacking on the high plateaus of Great Bear Lake. Its altitude above the Mackenzie is from one thousand to twelve hundred feet, the lake itself is two hundred [feet above the Mackenzie]. On the con¬ trary, the wilderness deer (Cervus tarandus, or Rangifer groenlandicus) abounds on the limitless steppes. The Indians there call it ekfwen, flesh, etie, nourishment, life, understood to be human life. Considered as a whole, they call them nonteli, the nomads, the migrants. But this is a collective noun that does not apply to caribou individually or considered in isolation, kon-ya. This deer abounds on the shores of Great Bear Lake, like the herring in its waters, and these two animals make it a land of abundance and a blessing for the poor Dene. I found among the Lake’s Indians the same false belief as among the Hareskins of Good Hope that there exists a secret antipathy between fish and caribou such that the first disappears and hides whenever the latter makes an appearance on the lake and vice versa. On my arrival at Great Bear Lake, 20 March 1866, there already were more than ten thousand kilograms of smoked and dried caribou sides in the Fort Norman supply shed which consequently meant ten thousand caribou killed. But how many others had been devoured right up to the flanks, the only part of the animal which, with its tongue and hide, is an article of trade! As for the fresh meat that I saw collected and strung up all frozen in the shed, Mr. Taylor could give me only an approximate number. He did not weigh the meat. But he said to me that there was four hundred kilos of melted fat shaped in pats and two thousand smoked tongues that he had not yet touched. We ate only fresh tongues, and I can assure you that in the fort there was an incredible daily consumption of them because all the servants received them as wages and at every meal. Before my departure from the fort in June 1887 [1867], Mr. Taylor himself made me a present of a bag that contained eighty of these caribou tongues that he had salted down expressly for my trip to the Arctic Ocean. Excellent man! It seems that formerly the fruit-eating black bear with the flesh-coloured muzzle and the big yellow bear of the steppes were also very common around the lake that can les their name. 1 hey reached an enormous size, but many of these plantigrades

Great Bear Lake

255

had already been killed. It did not seem to me that they were as common there as on the Mackenzie even though their size had not diminished in any way. As for the beaver (Fiber canadensis), it is almost as abundant there as the Greenland deer and is the natives’ daily bread from the time spring arrives. All the high lands, all the low mountains that surround this freshwater sea are dotted with lakes and ponds where the beaver teem. Considering the extreme cold that rules Great Bear Lake, its prox¬ imity to the Arctic Ocean, and the immense bare steppes that surround it, the region is hardly favourable to animals with valuable furs. The cold there is much more acute than at Fort Good Hope, and the East wind or khamasan displays exceptional fury there. Thus, one sees very few martens, foxes, or musquash, also called muskrats. However, one does find wolverines, also called carcajou, white and grey wolves, and American mink or mink weasels, which are large and very beautiful there. In the entire Mackenzie district, the steppes around Great Bear Lake have acquired a well-merited reputation of horror, desolation, and melancholy. The steppes’ white lichen, rare on the northern side which is wooded and mountainous, as well as on the eastern shores, which are granitic and devastated but covered with briars, clubmosses, and ferns, creep up to the sandy beaches and flats of the south and west over an immense expanse whose only limit is the Rocky Mountains fringing the right bank of the Mackenzie. These lichen steppes occupy a large portion of the lake which dried up from some unknown cause, or perhaps they are the prolongation of the western prairies which, as far as Great Slave Lake, are covered with grasses and cypresses. I lean towards this second hypothesis. This longitudinal wilderness zone carries the characteristic name of Die-po-ellon-tpiele, Floor (or steppe) and extends from each side of the Great Rapid, that is to say, from the outlet of Bear Lake. Although death seems to have adopted this frightful region as its preferred resting place which man naturally ought to avoid hastily and without regret, it is nonethe¬ less Divine Providence’s wonderful bounty. Every year, from time immemorial, it is pasture land par excellence and inexhaustible for immense caribou herds. It is the slaughterhouse where caribou are killed in senseless numbers. It is the Indians’ promised land where milk and honey do not really flow like brooks but where the fat meat, lard, and caribou tongues are piled in heaps. So, these savages spend most of their lives in these horrible wastelands in endlessly renewed abundance and the pleasures of the hunt. Before Fort Franklin’s reconstruction in 1863, these Danites, although they win¬ tered on their richest steppes, found themselves obliged to go and trade their furs and their dried meat at the forts on the Mackenzie or at Fort Rae north of Great Slave Lake. These considerable travels took much time and were a hindrance to the success of their hunts, at a time when it would have been necessary for them to stay in those places. But, ever since the establishment of the new trading post, the Indians have stayed around Great Bear Lake and hunt so close to Fort Norman that we heard their shooting and could see the smoke from their camp. However, the whole Redskin

256

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

population of this region served by Fort Norman-Franklin did not then exceed 250 souls, and I doubt that it has increased much since. I made an exact census in 1866. This handful of Indians belonged to four small tribes or “peoples.” The Fur people or Ehta-tcho-Gottine, who had the white wolf, Pele, as their ellonhe or totem, lived on the large peninsula as well as to the north and east of Smith Arm. The Canoe people or Ttse-Ottine, who revered klin or the dog, had their hunting territory south and east of Great Bear Lake. The People of Willows’ End, Kkpa-lon-Gottine, whose chosen manitou was the wolverine, ettson, liked the banks of the Telini-Die and the land east of the Mackenzie. Finally, the people of the Rocky Mountains, Eta-Ottine, who respected tche, the lynx, hunted in the valleys of the great western Cordillera. According to the tradition of the Fur people, none of these tiny tribes originated at Great Bear Lake, and I have no trouble believing it. But long before the coming of the Whites, there lived a people there that today’s people designate by the epithet Tpou-ne or People of the Lake, People of the Water. I think that this must refer to the Eskimos at the mouth of Elearne’s Coppermine River. The Hareskins describe them as simple and timid. They never left the shores and always lived without distrust because they knew or believed that they were the only inhabitants of Great Bear Lake and perhaps even of the whole world. When the Danite tribes arrived on the banks of Bear Lake, the tradition goes on, it was from the northwest and from the great height that separates Smith Arm and Keith Arm that they approached it. The Dene camped within sight of the lake on the mountain summit, getting ready to come down next morning into the steppes where they had seen the dwellings and smoke, but above all the herds of caribou wandering at random. The Ipoune, not at all astounded by these unusual fires, stupidly took them for new stars. They pointed them out to each other, but did not lose any sleep over it, full of a sense of security, ignorant as they were of the danger threatening them. At dawn they were all massacred by the Hareskins or Fur people. Not content with their easy victory, the Hareskins mocked the poor Eskimos by ironically putting these words in their mouths to depict the Tpoune’s extreme credulity, “Kokkeraghe kke, tafwen netcha jya kke tahay? On the height of the trail, what are these great stars that shine in the firmament?” Since this heroic epoch, the central promontory of Great Point bears the name of Kokkeraghe, the Height of the Trail. I could learn neither from the Franklin expedition’s narrative nor from Dr. Richardson’s writings, nor from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s traditions, the name of the explorer to whom belonged the honour of discovering Great Bear Lake. But since I know that Sir Alexander Mackenzie ascended the mountain Kfwe-tewe, which he named Clarke Rock in 1789,-15 and I also know that, from this last point, the end of the

« [Mount Clarke, 1,462 metres, on the east side of the Mackenzie opposite the Redstone River on the west bank and near the Saline River on the east, about one hundred kilometres upsteam from Norman Wells.]

Great Bear Lake

257

right-hand range of the Mackenzie, the view extends to the middle of Keith Arm, it is almost certain that the explorer saw Great Bear Lake from this elevated pedestal. In consequence, he was the first European who officially discovered it.36 The oldest doc¬ ument that I possess on this matter came to me from the old French Metis Beaulieu, who was the Chipewyan interpreter and official hunter for Sir John Franklin at Great Bear Lake, where he left some natural children who still carry his family name. He gave me the information at Great Slave Lake where I wrote it at his dictation in June 1863.1 cite it textually in translating it from Athabasca Dene, his mother tongue: In the spring of 1799, ten years after the discovery of the Mackenzie River, an¬ other Mackenzie who also belonged to the French-Scottish Northwest Company and whom the French Canadians called Big Neck, in order to distinguish him from Sir Alexander Mackenzie the knight-explorer, came to build the first trading post on Keith Arm’s northern shore, at the edge of a small lake and in the woods of Hares Point, Kha-tcho-eta [Big Hares Point]. Mr. Big Neck Mackenzie, who was the factor, had under his command a FrenchCanadian clerk called Mr. Leblanc. He had also brought with him some FrenchCanadian employees who cordially hated him because of his haughtiness and hard¬ ness. At that period, the bourgeois of the Northwest Company wore the clothing of gentlemen: the tricorn, the plain big dress coat with wide tails and clown-sized buttons, a long waistcoat, short trousers, a pigtailed wig, and a sword at their side. It was a costume that seemed extraordinarily ridiculous to us, bepan soutii. Mr. Big Neck Mackenzie overwhelmed his servants with work, and for food gave them only six herrings per day while he crammed himself with fresh caribou meat, tongues, cakes, and whisky. So, before long, discontent burst out. One day when Mackenzie came to inspect the construction site, he found his men seated on a quartering block and smoking their pipes instead of working. I was then a pure sav¬ age of about fifteen years of age, and I found myself with them, my uncle being the fort interpreter. The bourgeois at once reprimanded his servants in an angry tone. “Let’s go! Let’s go to work, you bunch of do-nothings!” he shouted. “Sir, one is not a do-nothing just because we take a breather for a few minutes while smoking one’s pipe,” one of the French Canadians named Desmarest, who was busy making a door, replied to him without any insolence. “Especially,” he added, “when one has no other food than boiled herring and fresh water.” “Shut your mouth and go to work!” shouted Mackenzie, red with rage, “Or if you don’t shut up ...!” And awkwardly drawing his sword without finishing his sentence, he threatened the worker. “Ah, you rogue,” exclaimed the French Canadian, losing all control of himself and all respect for his boss, “you threaten me? Do you think you can treat us like slaves because we are your servants? You eat meat four times a day, but you make us

36 [peter p0nd discovered it earlier.]

258

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

work to the limit without giving us any food except boiled fish. Put your sabre in its sheath, otherwise I will get my axe.” But Desmarest had not finished speaking when he received a large wound in his thigh from Mr. Mackenzie. The blood gushed out in a flood and the French Canadian fell screaming: “Oh! Rogue, you’ve killed me!”

Francois Beaulieu continued, I am only a Metis, and a Metis born and raised in the woods as a pure savage, without baptism, without religion, as an Epicurean and sultan of the wilderness, but I knew I was a son of France and that gave me a great longing to avenge an in¬ jury done to a compatriot. I loaded my gun and I aimed at the bourgeois. If he had made one more move, 1 would have killed him on the spot. But the Scot wiped his bloody sword on his boot; he put it back in its sheath, and turning his heels to us in a scarcely glorious way, he went to shut himself up under lock and key.

This detail proves that he already had some buildings finished at this new trading post, but I do not know its name. However, Desmarest’s wound was not mortal, and in a country as cold and as healthy as the great North, it likely soon healed. Four men carried Desmarest to the fort on a blanket, and Mr. Leblanc band¬ aged him at once. But this event upset all the French Canadians who immediately packed their belongings with the intention of leaving the service of the Northwest Company and going to live in the woods with the Dogribs. Mr. Leblanc, although sympathizing with his indignant workers, calmed their excitment by putting him¬ self between them and Mr. Big Neck Mackenzie. Then he drew fresh meat, caribou tongues, flour, tea, and sugar from the supply shed and gave them to the hired men, saying to them: “There, my good friends, eat and enjoy yourselves. See what Mr. Mackenzie sends you to prove his sorrow at what he did in a moment of thoughtless anger. Please forget what happened.” With these northern delicacies, the bourgeois then adroitly shut the mouths of the malcontents and persuaded them to carry on with their work.

It is quite probable that this NorthWest Company post still existed when Sir John Franklin had Mr. Dease build his wintering fort at Great Bear Lake, a half league from there, twenty-six years later, in July 1825. So, I cannot understand how the fa¬ mous Arctic explorer could write that the site Mr. Dease chose was that of the fort of the NorthWest Company abandoned several years before.37 There is a mistake in his narrative, because Mr. Taylor took me himself to the place that the old NorthWest Company fort occupied. It is on the opposite side of the little Grey Geese Lake and on the edge of another small lake, by the shelter of the forest. And the Indians of Bear Lake told me that their ancestors had frequently been wit¬ nesses, forty years earlier, to armed brawls that took place not only between French

37 Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Polar Sea, 51.

Great Bear Lake

259

Canadians and English naval soldiers but even between their respective leaders, who chased each other with pistols in their hands and alcohol filling their stomachs. This obviously shows the commercial rivalries in those days between the employees of the two fur-trading companies, the Northwest and the Hudson’s Bay. Be that as it may, when Franklin arrived at Great Bear Lake the old fort no longer existed while his own wintering post was already built and ready for occupation. “We found on our arrival,” he says, “all the buildings in a habitable state.” This post even received the name of Franklin before the arrival of the captain who was going to call it Fort Reliance. He spent the two winters of 1825 and 1826 there. Including himself, there were fifty people in all of whom three were officers of the English navy, Messrs. Back, Kendall, and Richardson. There were Mr. Dease, nine French Canadians, nineteen sailors or naval soldiers and the interpreter Beaulieu, plus four Chipewyan hunters, two Eskimos, three women, six children, and a young Dogrib. We know that the search for a passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific through the Arctic Polar sea occupied the attention of the English Admiralty for a long time, but quite fruitlessly. After Sir John Franklin lost his life in the Regent Strait’s ice in his unhappy 1845-51 expedition, the captain of the next vessel was able to certify from his own experience that this passage, of which he had discovered one of the entries, would be of no practical use for English commerce because of the physical impossibility of such a long voyage across a sea only open one year in three and only for three months every three years! In 1819-20, Franklin had discovered and defined the coasts of the Arctic Ocean from Cape Turnagain to the mouth of the Coppermine River. In 1825-27 he under¬ took to finish his coastal survey by completing a trip around the American conti¬ nent via the Northwest. The vessel’s two lieutenants, Sir George Back and Kendall, the ship’s surgeon Dr. Richardson, and the naturalist Drummond,38 with four marines made up the entire crew of this second land expedition, which left England 16 February 1825 and arrived 15 July the same year at Lake Athabasca, by way of New York, the Red River, and Portage La Loche. On 1 August, the travellers landed at Fort Simpson, the main town of the Mackenzie, and on the 8th of the same month they arrived at the outlet of Great Bear Lake. In 1862, in spite of the railways and the steamboats, I could go no faster. Franklin did not proceed immediately to Great Bear Lake. Keeping Lieutenant Kendall of the English Admiralty with him, he sent Messrs. Back and Richardson there, while he continued his trip to the Arctic Ocean, which he reached on 14 August, after getting an interpreter from Mr. Charles Dease, the bourgeois of Fort Good Hope. This was Yehkfwe, the French Metis, also called Baptiste Boucher, whom I

38 [Thomas Drummond (c. 1780-1835), botanist and assistant-naturalist on Franklins second expedi¬ tion. See R.C. Davis, ed., Sir John Franklin’s Journals and Correspondence: The Second Land Expedition 1825-182/ (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1998), xxiv etpassim.]

260

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

knew and dealt with at Fort McPherson. Franklin made such speed that after hav¬ ing discovered Garry Island,39 he returned to Bear Lake’s outlet where he arrived on t September. I swear that, even for a man of the North, this activity is prodigious. I, myself, who know these same distances, who have travelled them so often, I ask myself how they had been covered so quickly on foot and by towage especially when going upstream on the Mackenzie. It must have been that Franklin’s voyageurs trav¬ elled day and night, in all weather and by continuous relays. Whatever the case, on 5 September 1825, Sir John Franklin arrived at the winter¬ ing fort that he had Mr. Dease build in preparation for his arrival, but not without having shattered his boat, The Lion, when it yawed in the middle of the reefs of the great Telini-Die’s rapids. This accident forced the brave explorer to admit that north¬ west river navigation presents dangers of which not even old sea wolves know. Fort Franklin was composed of three buildings: a house forty-four feet by twenty-four for the officers, another thirty-six feet by twenty-three divided into three sections for the servants and, finally, a supply shed and a little meteorological observatory. I searched in vain for the ruins of the fort made famous by the distinguished guests it housed. I was unable to find any other remains than the chimney places and the hollows of former cellars. Wooden structures leave no traces of themselves. The beams and joists are used to build other structures, and the rest is burned by the Indians. I counted eleven chimneys in those ruins of which eight were in the officers’ house alone. It is obvious that these brave and valorous English did not suffer much from the cold since they were well heated, but what good does it do to deprive youself of fire in a country where the forests abound, where wood costs nothing, and when one has nothing better to do than keep warm? Moreover, Franklin’s journal indicates that he had wisely arranged to have his house well heated. January 1826 began with a cold of minus 490 Celsius. The warm¬ est degree that the thermometer recorded that winter was 8.8° below zero, which I consider as an exceptionally mild temperature for the country. The average was minus 29.70. But the winter of 1827 was much more rigorous than the preceding one. Franklin registered there successively minus temperatures of 490, 52.20, 58.4°, 57.50, and 52 Fahrenheit. Fie noted that during the shortest days the sun remained on the horizon at Great Bear Lake for two hours and thirty-eight minutes, which is correct. Fie established that the soil froze to a depth of twenty-one inches, a remark that astonishes me because at Good Elope the earth froze to a depth of more than two metres, and even in spring you could not dig a trench without first lighting a big file on the spot that was to be dug. But what is, for example, completely incorrect is that the famous sailor adds that during the winter, all the animals of Great Bear Lake migrate south, except the wolf and the fox.” This is untrue and Franklin was

39 [At the northwest end of the Mackenzie delta.]

Great Bear Lake

261

misinformed. I spent eight winters at Great Bear Lake, and I have always noted that caribou, beaver, wolverine, bear, mink, otter, raven, and Canada jay do not migrate at all, but that they spend the whole winter, like the wolf and the fox, some in their lairs, the others wandering in the open according to its species. On 24 June 1826, Franklin returned to the Arctic Ocean with his entire party. The captain, with Lieutenant Kendall, the Eskimo Augustus Totanouk, and six sailors ex¬ plored the polar sea’s western shores, which he only mapped, however, to 1520 2 lon¬ gitude west of Paris. By 21st September he had returned to Fort Franklin. Lieutenant Sir George Back, with Dr. Richardson, the Eskimo Oglibouk, and seven sailors ex¬ plored the ocean’s eastern shores and returned to Great Bear Lake byway of Flearne’s Coppermine River and Dease River, tributary of the Great Lake. Thanks to Mr. Dease, who went to get them by boat, they returned to Fort Franklin on 1 September. The exploration of the seacoast finished, Franklin had nothing more to do at Great Bear Lake. As early as September Beaulieu had left for Great Slave Lake, with sev¬ enteen Dogribs, by way of Lac la Martre. The famous navigator himself left on 20 February 1827 by the inland route which he opened on this occasion as far as Fort Simpson. Ffe estimated this trip at only 250 nautical miles or n6Vi French leagues. It must be that Franklin exaggerated the distance. I know what I am saying, because I was the first European to walk in the footsteps of the great man on the same route, on foot and with snowshoes or by sled. But I will come back to this later. From the month of December 1826, Richardson had left the country by way of the Mackenzie. Independently of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, Great Bear Lake became the gathering place and the point of departure later for two other Arctic expeditions: that of Dease and Thomas Simpson in 1836, and that of Drs. Richardson and Rae in 1847. The purpose of the first was to explore the rest of the coast and to discover and reconnoitre between the Coppermine River, visited in 1826 by Sir George Back, and Point Turnagain, discovered in 1830 by Sir James Clark Ross. For this purpose Simpson and Dease built Fort Confidence, of which the Dogrib chief, Sa-na-indi, Shining Sun, was made provisioned40 at the mouth of the Tpa-tchewetcho River, renamed Dease River. The geographical position of this relief post was 66° 53' 36" north latitude, under the Arctic Circle, and 1210 8' 45" longitude west of Paris; variation 48° 30' east. Mr. Nick Taylor of Fort Norman was part of this expedition as its fisherman, and I knew a goodly number of Indians both at Great Bear Lake and at Fort Good Hope who had been born near Fort Confidence while their families hunted for these two Scottish explorers. After having discovered the coasts of Victoria Land [Victoria Island] and pushed on right to Dolphin and Union Strait,41 the expedition returned to Fort Confidence,

40 See my volume Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves (Paris, 1891), [ch. IX and X]. 41 [Between Amundsen Gulf and Coronation Gulf.]

262

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

and Thomas Simpson went back to the Red River in Manitoba so puffed up with pride and so infatuated with himself that he took all the credit for this Arctic ex¬ ploration. But the unhappy man did not profit long from his glory. He committed suicide on the Dakota prairies while escaping from St. Paul, Minnesota, after he had assassinated his guide, a French Metis whose wife he coveted. At Great Slave Lake I knew a daughter of Mr. Dease, the widow Mrs. Suzanne Sauvie, an excellent Catholic, mother of a numerous and charming family. This expedition, as well as the following one, was made thanks to the initiative of the honourable Hudson’s Bay Company. Doctors Richardson and Rae’s expedition in 1847 was intended to search for Franklin and his unfortunate companions whose fate was unknown. On 15 September, the two explorers wintered at Fort Confidence under the guidance of the French Metis Baptiste Brousse, whom I had the opportunity of seeing in 1862 at La Loche Portage. This expedition was fruitless. Finally, in 1849-50, Lieutenant W.H. Hooper from Commander Pullen’s expedition wintered at Great Bear Lake in the fisherman Nick Taylor’s cabin before returning to England by way of the Mackenzie and [Lake] Manitoba. He was the last naval officer to see Great Bear Lake. On 18 March 1866,1 went to visit the site of Fort Franklin. It is separated from Fort Norman only by a river branch, simply a narrows with a current connecting the little Grey Geese Lake to Keith Arm, by way of a small lichen marsh. This site is a natu¬ ral sandy, dry terrace twenty-five feet high, exposed to the southwest and backing against a welcome spruce forest which in turn is protected by the foothills of Little Fish Mountain or Hill. One can enjoy the view there of the far end of Keith Arm, six miles wide and deep in front of the fort, and of Clarke Rock, the high point of the Enna-tch6-Kfwe [Great Enemies Mountains] range which stands on the right bank of the Mackenzie. I was surprised that Mr. Taylor had not chosen the same site for the new Fort Norman and that he had not given this post the name of the immortal Franklin, but examining these places, now deserted, made me understand the reason for his indifference: the famous explorer’s wintering place had become a poor Indian cemetery. Oh, the ironic nothingness of terrestrial things! Whereas the wise and zealous sailor, carried far from his native land and from the most loving of wives by love for the glory of discovery, left his mortal remains at the bottom of polar seas, in a frozen nook of Regent Strait, the humble Indian, ignorant and unknown, sleeps his long rest peaceably under the arms of the cross in the earth trod by the valorous English 1825 expedition! All that remains of Fort Franklin is a spruce stump, sawn horizontally at water level in three feet of soil, on which the great explorer placed his naval compass. At this tree trunk he came to make his astronomical calculations. A circle remains drawn on the wood. I myself sat on this binnacle support to draw the vast but melancholic panorama of Keith Arm, of which I have the honour to offer to my readers a very exact reproduction, and to meditate on the disillusionments of earthly things.

Keith Arm (west side) with Fort Norman and Petitot’s Mission

264

CHAPTER III The Indians of Great Bear Lake History of a Starving Family—The Living Buried with the Dead—Arrival of the Tpakfwele-pottine—A Nasty Trick—The Seer Nni-denichie Vexations—Springtime at Great Bear Lake—Eleven People Massacred for One Beauty—Establishment of the First French Mission Punishment—An Infant Buried Alive—Example of Cruel Indifference—Soul Food —

—

From the time of my 1866 trip, the mail for the North, which ordinarily went directly from Fort Good Hope to Fort Simpson, travelled by way of Great Bear Lake from where it rejoined the Mackenzie by crossing Clarke’s Rock. This rock, a double vol¬ canic cone in the form of an open melon, measures 2,000 feet in height. It is about 362 miles between Fort Simpson and Fort Norman-Franklin on a route that the mail took a month, coming and going, to cover. On 25 May 1866, a certain number of Dogrib and Slavey Indians, whose camp was situated on the southern shore of Keith Arm on the steppe Tpa-ta-ttsoghe [Steppe at the Edge of the Water], came to visit me and were present for the Palm Sunday services. They showed much joy at seeing me and asked me to visit them in their camp. In the afternoon of the same day, everyone’s attention was drawn to a black patch that moved slowly on the lake in the direction of the road that the mail from Fort Simpson had followed. With the naked eye, I could not make it out. The eagle eye of the Indians saw caribou or wolves there. Since no one was waiting for anyone from this direction, no one thought of their compatriots. Little Mr. Taylor armed himself with Lieutenant Hooper’s spyglass, which showed us an Indian woman and two children approaching at a slow and exhausted pace. An hour and a half went by before the little group reached Fort Norman. It was composed of the woman Elisa Kotew, Gimlet, sister-in-law of Mr. Taylor and aunt of his daughter Jenny, and her two children, Taetpi, Wave, and Zaa, Crumbs. One might have said they were three walking skeletons. We were all filled with compassion at their condition. Black, smoky, skinny, tattered, and haggard-eyed, they looked hypnotized as if they had contemplated death at first hand for a long time and had just come from a cruel and supreme struggle for life. Their whole story showed in their appearance. When questioned, Kotew could not find words to answer me. Her wandering mind still seemed in a daze and filled with dismay. She crossed herself with devotion, fee¬ bly murmured, “Tanks!” and broke into sobs. She cried a long time without being

265

266

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

able to speak a word. Mr. Taylor took her to his house with the two skeleton children, and made them take some broth and some light nourishment in small amounts. Only then could poor Elisa speak and tell us what she had suffered. Her story was incredible. In October 1865, Elisa Kotew with her husband Ttseedettou-oulle, Man without Tobacco, and their four children, all baptized and Catholics, were in the Rocky Mountains on the left bank with some Indians from Willow Lake or Kkpaylon-Ottine, when the measles epidemic raged and decimated the Mackenzie. Nobody brought it. The famous microbe had sped towards them across space. Until then, the Indians had not known anything of this skin ailment. While these Danites were sick, they stayed in their tents. As soon as they felt bet¬ ter, they broke camp and retraced their steps towards the caribou steppes on the right bank of the Mackenzie. Sadly, Man without Tobacco fell sick when his conva¬ lescent neighbours were fleeing. He begged them to wait a few days. They would not do so. Even Elisa’s two brothers, Yamontchile and Beya, were deaf to their sister’s and their brother-in-law’s pleas. They advised the poor woman to leave her hus¬ band to the inescapable end that awaited him and to save the lives of the children by leaving with them. Her Christian conscience refused to do this unnatural act, and her brothers abandoned her in the middle of the Peaks range without any means of subsistence. Then the courageous Slavey did a heroic thing. She undertook, without dogs or sled, to take her sick husband to Fort Norman on Great Bear Lake in the fertile steppes where animal life abounds and assures the Indians subsistence. To this end, she sewed together the leg skins of caribou with their fur intact. The leather is strong, the fur smooth, short, and dense. From these skins, she made a long saddlebag that could be laced up with a thong. At one end she solidly attached other thongs as traces. She put her husband in the bag on the skins and clothes, well wrapped in his covers. She herself took on her back a heavy package of utensils and dry provisions. She loaded her youngest child astride on top, hitched herself to the sack-sled, and started off, dragging the sick man behind, followed by her other children, of whom the oldest, Joseph the Wave, carried the third, who was too small to walk long distances. The little caravan did not go quickly, as one might presume. It pulled just so-so, and long days passed before she could cross the parallel ranges of the Rockies and reach the Mackenzie River, which happily was already frozen. Each night Elisa set traps for white Arctic hares and hazel grouse which are a second Providence for hun¬ gry Dene. Every morning, Wave and Crumbs went to detach the joggles and gather up the snares. This is how they lived. But this precarious means of survival and the lack of care, of warmth, of comfort, and of medicine could not cure Tseedettou-oulle. The happy man—happy to be so much and so well loved!—died in the arms of his excellent wife and of his little children on the left bank of the river. Before closing his eyes, the poor Indian’s last words were advice for those he loved: “Hurry towards

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

267

Bear Lake,” he said to Gimlet, “and if you see that you cannot feed my four sons, at least save the lives of the two eldest. You will meet the mail on Saline River. Station yourself on his route.” He could say no more; he lifted his eyes to heaven in resignation, invoked the holy name of God, then, gazing one last time at his children, he died. When Kotew ful¬ filled her last duties to her husband, she crossed the river and camped at the mouth of Saline River, Teway-Die, a salty watercourse that wells up at the foot of Clarke Rock. The snow was so abundant, the hares so rare, and she had been grieving so long, that the poor women did not have the strength to go farther. She felt she would get lost if she tried to pass through the last mountain range. So, she built a hut of branches that she covered with a bit of skin-tent, and all five crouched there waiting for the mail to go by. This was their only and last hope after God. If he changed his route, it meant death for them, death by starvation. One can understand the anguish and anxieties of the poor mother. Reduced to scouting this section of the courier’s route around this hut for weeks, perhaps months, and in a necessarily restricted circumference, she watched her means of existence shrink each day, without being able to leave the place where she could watch the approaches to the Mackenzie and those of the Salt River so she would not miss the courier whichever way he might have chosen. But Kotew found herself forced to deprive the two youngest children of food, so that she could save the two oldest. What a martyrdom for a mother! What desolation for the poor little creatures, necessarily sacrificed by the one who had given them life! The two innocents died of hunger to save their older siblings. I did not dare ask the poor mother what she did with the two corpses! Then, moosehide and goatskin, parchments, traces, old shoes, all were eaten: the eternal refrain repeated at every famine in the far North. From time to time, in spite of his weakness, Wave managed to kill a magpie, a squirrel, more rarely a grouse or a ptarmigan. These meagre, puny prey were devoured with delight, making only three mouthfuls, one for each, suf¬ ficient to prevent immediate death. As always happens in such circumstances, the unhappy starvelings were overcome with fever and became prey to strange hallu¬ cinations. They never stopped hearing travellers coming, dogs barking, the crack of whips, misleading noises that their burning desire to be saved suggested to their sickly imaginations. Perhaps they should have moved a bit, to try to make the trip to Great Bear Lake, but they no longer had the strength. To change camps, clear another site, build a new hut, and above all to make a path in the heavy snow involved work they were no longer able to do. Their one and only resource should have been the arrival of the mail from Fort Norman. The mail meant life to them. He would give them fresh meat and fish, perhaps he would lend them a dog, and they would profit from his trail, from his numerous bivouacs, from his cut firewood, from the caches of provi¬ sions prepared for his return trip. They would get a bit of tea, some matches, who

268

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

knows, even some tobacco! He was everything to them. So, they must not lose this last contact that they still had with life. They would have to be careful not to leave their hut. But what a long lime it had been since they had left the mountains! Five long months had already passed, and this one, the month of March, was it too going to pass without them seeing the arrival of that blessed mail? One day Joseph hurried to the lodge faster than he ever had before: “Mother,” he said feebly, “there are White men. I just heard them shout: ‘Mush! Mush!’” “Oh,” she said, “you have heard them so often already! Another illusion. 1 do not believe your ears or mine. Some raven is making fun of you.” “Not so,” replied the child, his eyes sparkling with joy. “Listen, Mother, they are coming. The noise is getting closer, we are saved!” Then she summoned up her strength. Electrified, she bounded out of her hut, per¬ plexed, fearing that the still invisible travellers that she heard coming might take another direction. She ran onto the river, stumbling and frightened. She cried out, she called with all her strength, her two children joining their feeble voices to that of their mother. Two men’s voices responded to their call, and a few moments later the Swampy Cree John Hope and the Scot MacDougall arrived at the hut. They were carrying the northern mail packet to Fort Simpson. The appearance of the three unfortunates brought tears of pity from these rough but good men. Honest John immediately gave fresh meat to Elisa, and he recom¬ mended that she make use of it with great moderation. Then he advised her to hurry towards Fort Norman, before the snow filled up his tracks across the steppes and mountains. Ah! They still had to cross the range on the right bank, and the wide steppes bordering the river, and the immensity that is Keith Arm. Great Bear Lake was not the land of this Slavey family. She had never gone there. She did not even know the way. The poor Indian woman was even then not at the end of her worries. If the trail was going to fill with snow, if a snowstorm was going to swallow them up on the treeless steppes, if they got lost in these vast uninhabited spaces! ... No European can ever imagine what it is to suffer in the Arctic lands when one travels into the unknown without roads, signposts, or any dwellings whatsoever. At the summit of Clarke Rock, at two thousand feet altitude, they found a provisions cache from which they had permission to take all they would need. From then on they were safe from the immediate danger of losing their lives. The rest was only a question of time and patience. The unhappy widow for a long time afterwards showed fear in her face and a fright¬ fully vacant look that extreme suffering, the ravages of hunger, and the anguish of long agony had printed on her good face. For his part, Mr. Taylor told me of the death the previous autumn of a young wom¬ an who had recently given birth and who was buried Indian style, on the ground, sheltered by a small roof formed of stakes driven obliquely into the earth and then covered with wide slabs of spruce bark. The next day when the old Orkney man was

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

269

passing beside the tomb, only two hundred steps from Fort Norman, he heard a wailing coming tiom it. Struck with horror, he lifted the bark slabs, pulled up some of the stakes and looked in through the narrow opening. On the empty and frozen breast of the Indian woman, writhing in the pangs of hunger and agony, was the poor little child of the deceased woman now looking at him with the cold indifference of her dead eyes. The factor tried to save the life of the unhappy nursing infant, but he was too late. The child died a few moments later. The first of April held an agreeable surprise for me that was no April Fool’s Day trick. A dozen Dogribs, Tpa-kfwele-pottine, whom I had visited and evangelized in their wild country in 1864, suddenly appeared at Fort Norman with sleds loaded with supplies. At their head was the same Olivier Sa-kcle or Bear Grease who had taken me away with him two years earlier.42 He informed me of the death of his son-in-law, Shining Sun, also called Confidence, who had been carried of by the scarlet fever epidemic. A host of other Dogribs of my acquaintance and some entire families had been cut down, among others, that of the unfortunate contortionist Ti-mon-tsate.

Ah! When one thinks that, in one fell swoop, so many had been carried off succes¬ sively by galloping consumption, typhoid fever, strangles,43 whooping cough, mea¬ sles, influenza, and syphilis, a horrible parade of sickness that the Europeans drag in everywhere they go, and which the American Danites did not know before the Europeans’ arrival here, one can easily forgive those Indians who call us Ewie-daettini, Those Who Drag Death Behind Them. Because of these disasters, Olivier entreated me, as he did the first time, to follow him into the Dogrib territory since I had promised in 1864 to complete the spiritual regeneration of his whole tribe. I gave in to his request willingly and with joy, my mind made up this time not to leave a single soul among these good people un¬ baptized. I immediately prepared to leave, but I was betrayed by my servant who, not knowing the mildness of the Dogribs, was afraid to follow me so far from the Hareskins’ lands. Immediately forewarned, Mr. Taylor used a shabby trick to keep me at Fort Norman and to frustrate the Dogribs in their legitimate hopes. Without advising me of it, he had my dogs harnessed and sent them with two of his men to the other side of Keith Arm to his own savage customers. Moreover, he had very badly received Olivier and his followers because they were Fort Rae’s provisioners. He did not need their assistance to provision his own trading post.

When I saw the dirty trick that little Nick had played on me, it was too late to prevent it or repair it. My dogs were already out of sight. And the old Orkney man, winking his eye and dribbling his eternal quid, said to me with a sly smirk and a falsely good-natured air, “Ah! Wal! Father, It’s best like that, you see. I would not be

42 See Antour du Grand Lac des Esclaves, [ch. IX].

43

[A streptococcal infection.]

270

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

happy to see you leave. You are good, right here. 1 here’s lots of savages, lots of fresh meat, lots of good fish. Don’t go looking for trouble down there. Stay with us and everybody will be pleased with you.” For these friendly words I would gladly have hugged him but, in view of the ironic smirk with which the little old man accompanied them, I would still more gladly have wrung his neck if that had been Christian and lawful. I was thus obliged to let the good Dogribs who wanted to take me with them leave without me. They left with tears in their eyes and with a strong show of respect and affection. But two of them promised to come back soon to be baptized with their whole family: they were Cyprian Nonteli and Bernard Yaneya, and they kept their word. With them gone I devoted all of my time to the Bear Lake Indians who came to visit me in groups every two days. Sundays were the days for general visiting, be¬ cause that day they did not go hunting. But, because these good people had more than four English miles to cross on foot and as much again to return home, I per¬ suaded them to come camp behind the fort, close to and in the shelter of the woods, which they did with pleasure even though it was not their custom at this season. I would have had them always at the fort if it had not been for the immodest at¬ tacks of the Scottish sailors or Orkney men who were in Mr. Taylor’s service. These young fools never let any Indian girl pass without permitting themselves to make such hateful assaults that I found myself obliged to fill the functions of a policeman at the door of my dwelling, at the time of religious offices, until the last woman had come in. The people of my new flock were so good and so respectful, so desirous of em¬ bracing Catholicism, no matter the immoral designs of Fort Norman’s young sailors, but there were only three or four who had been baptized by the late Mr. Grollier, at Fort Norman on the Mackenzie, in 1863. All the others, without being what one calls pagans, were still catechumens. Among these four neophytes was a Slavey who had thrown himself into the mysticism of a religion of his own invention, a religion entirely of dreams, of fake revelations and ridiculous visions, that his vanity or his idiocy imagined. His name was Eleazar Ni-denichye, Fertile Earth, but the fort’s servants knew him only under the less flattering nickname of “Good for Nothing.” “Ah! My brother-in-law,” this poor maniac said to me one day in a plaintive and sincere voice, “we preach in vain, you and I. In vain we entreat these people to con¬ vert, to abandon their fetishes, to address their prayers to the only Creator of the World, Nioltsi. They laugh at us, they do not listen to us. They will never obey us. You believe they are good, but they deceive you. In the woods, they laugh at everything, except at their evil conjuring. It is deplorable!” He continued in this tone for a long time, playing the priest marvellously although he was only an irremediably rough-hewn conjuror. I could have reprimanded him severely for his conduct, reproached him for his hypocrisy, excommunicated him, and shown him the door, as other missionaries have done with other conjurors or

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

271

Inkponhe (Shadows) who had made themselves Dene priests. I did nothing of the sort, and let him sermonize at his ease. Moreover, he anticipated the blows with humility! “Do not bully me,” he said to me in a cajoling tone. “I am not opposed to you. I do not raise myself up against you. I am, on the contrary, quite in favour of you. I speak always like you and in your favour. I make my relatives pray, I recite the rosary, I sing canticles to them, I speak to them about heaven, and I give them my blessing. Tell me, am I doing anything wrong, and does it not seem that people slander me by saying I am playing the sorcerer?” I recalled the saying of the divine Master: “He who is not against you is for you,” and I let the poor fool go with some fatherly advice: “All that you say to me is perfect and praiseworthy. I can accept even your blessings. The benediction of a good man and a Christian can only bring happiness to pagans. But I beg you to leave aside your dreams, the supposed visions with which you glorify yourself, the revelations that you say you receive from God himself, the trances, the simulated resurrections and the angelic apparitions, because in those things you are either hallucinating or sick, and then we must cure you; or you are lying, you are tricking your compatriots and are an imposter. That is what you must not do, because it is irreligious and a fraud.” He promised me this and withdrew, satisfied with some religious objects that I gave him as gifts. Fertile Earth’s relatives were grateful that I had not humiliated or rejected their “priest,” which they had been afraid I might do. In their case, it was purely vanity and self-love, but they supported Nidenichye because he lived like a Christian with his wife, and apart from his visions, he was an exemplary man. They were proud to be able to boast that, even among them, there could be vocations to the priesthood. Knowing that the unhappy madman would quite quickly be rejected and forgotten by his kin, I had acted with prudence without making a fuss. If I had gone against Eleazar, he would have rebelled and all his relatives would have caused a schism even before becoming Christians. One lovely day in the winter of 1867, Nidenichye came alone to Fort Norman with a loaded sled, his camp being only a days’ journey to the west. He traded his smoked venison and his furs to Mr. Taylor, came to shake hands with me and pray in my chapel. Then he continued on his way, returning alone to his dwelling, squatting on his empty sled. When the dogs arrived at camp, Good-for-Nothing was stretched out full-length on his sled, but he did not stir from it. They called him. They shook him. Nothing. He was dead—dead no doubt from a cerebral congestion caused by the cold which was extreme that day. At the end of April 1866, Fort Norman-Franklin was stuffed with meat, and all the natives were themselves amply supplied with provisions. I advised them not to kill any more caribou. Hunting for the pleasure of destroying these animals or for the small advantage of taking the tongue and the two sides was to misuse the gifts of

272

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

God and to mock his Providence. Having nothing to do except to pray and to amuse themselves, the Indians did not fail to do so, scorning the sarcasms from the young fools whom Mr. Taylor did not have enough influence to control. For quite a while things were tolerable. 1 played policeman on my doorstep at the times for religious exercises, and my presence was sufficient to quell these over-jolly little English chaps whose coarse broad humour had become grossly sadistic. But, besides the fact that this faction was always incompatible with my personal dignity, the little Scotsmen were emboldened to await the lovelier sex at the end of Mass, or rather after my in¬ struction classes, all respectability being excluded from their actions. The Dene would not put up with any more of it: “Goodbye,” they said to me. “We are going. We do not want to stay any longer with the Stone People.44 Really, they do us no harm. They do not hit us. They do not get angry. They are gentle and like to laugh but, with them, virtue is impossible with our wives and our daughters. They are satyrs. We are far from imitating them, from resembling them, even in the woods! Come with us, for we are all leaving this place.” They were right, and I complained to Mr. Taylor, but in vain. He had laughed at the antics of his young countrymen and at what he called their jokes. There was nothing wrong in that, he said, since it was only in jest. Seeing that I got nowhere with the old boy, who was as frivolous and smutty as his workers, I agreed with the three Metis of the fort, and we went to work building a small house of prayer some 300 feet from Fort Norman. It was only a loghouse twenty feet square and was intended to serve me as a chapel and a residence, but it was the only way to keep the Indians around me, getting them away from the fort, where every day public morality was ostensibly outraged. From 10 May I could celebrate services in the chapel, and on the 23rd 1 moved in completely, to Mr. Taylor’s great sadness. However, in order not to make an enemy of this poor old man who had always treated me as a gentleman, I continued to go to take my meals at his house every Sunday after high Mass. Unfortunately, in June when the snow had melted, I saw a little late that the soil on which I had settled formed a small island entirely surrounded by water and that this deserted and rocky isle, a kind of beach of packed pebbles that arose in the middle of a mossy steppe, was a cemetery from last autumn. I was surrounded by the dead on three sides. I resolved then to begin a more spacious residence not far from the forest, a kilometre from the fort; but I never had the means to bring this enterprise to a good end, although I had all the timbers cut and squared the following summer. That year we had an early spring, if I compare it with that of 1826 for which Franklin recorded the data. On 30 April we saw the first grey goose. Franklin did not begin to see them until 7 May. On 10 May my servant killed ducks, and winged game was more numer¬ ous everywhere there was open water along the shores. In Franklin’s time game did

44 Kfwe-Gottine, Hareskin Dene name for the English and the Scots.

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

273

not begin to appear until 16 May. On 14 May the ice of Little Grey Geese Lake broke up and the current carved a groove in Bear Lake’s strong ice. That did not happen until 20 May in 1826. On 27 May 1866, Little Grey Geese Lake was entirely free of ice, and numerous streams of clear water running into the Great Lake were noted. Some flights of curlews, lapwings, rails, teals, turnstones, plovers, and francolins45 splashed or played on the warm beaches. At last I could leave Great Bear Lake with the Fort Norman boats on 1 June 1866, while forty years earlier Franklin could not do that before the 15th of the same month. In this first year, I did fifty-five baptisms and blessed three marriages and two burials. However, when I left my little mission, which I dedicated to Ste Therese, patron saint of my dear mother, it still had neither door nor windows nor floor. But the Catholic Metis gave it the finishing touches during the summer, and I completed it in 1867 so as to make it habitable and comfortable. My little house-chapel, lovingly painted with whitewash, decorated with red flannel hangings with pink valances, an altar I painted in oils in the style of Fort Good Hope, and two paintings representing the Crowning of the Virgin by Velasquez and Mary the Atoner, had such a charming appearance that already everyone from the fort came to attend the services, even the Protestants. I must admit, however, that during the winter of 1867 and in spite of a large spruce fire that I kept going the whole day, my house, being open to the four winds from the lake, was never warm enough to push the thermometer above 6° Celsius, which is not enough to ensure perfect health and to prevent the body from suffering. Also, the ink froze on my pen when I wrote beside the fire. My barrel of fresh water was always covered with a thick layer of ice that I had to break with an axe every morning. My Mass wine itself was not immune to freezing. During the eight winters that I lived at Great Bear Lake, I never had the luxury of a bed. I slept either on the floor or in the attic on a bearskin, and I slept with all my clothes on, in a sleeping bag of part wool and part caribou skin, with the fur outside. The love that I professed for my children of the woods and steppes did not stop me from keeping up my linguistic and ethnographic studies. Quite the contrary, they cooperated in this and with their lessons in language and things, and my great dic¬ tionary46 continued to expand. There were also several shamans there who more than once put my patience to the test by their obstinacy in hanging on to their ancient superstitions. They were the last to give in; among others, an old man, the oldest at Great Bear Lake, who had seven names, one for each day of the week. I also

45 [A medium-sized partridge of the genus Francolinus.) 46 [Part of his linguistic research was later published as Dictionnaire de la langue dene-dindjie: dialectes montagnais ou chippewayan, peauxde lievre et loucheux,... (Paris: E. Leroux; San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft Co., 1876), used for this translation.]

274

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

saw, among the Dogribs, an old woman named Ninttsi-ratcho, Month of the Big Wind (January), who, in Franklin’s time, had been the cause of the murder of eleven of her countrymen by three French Metis workers in the service of the Northwest Company. One of these madmen was so smitten with Big Wind that he wanted desparately to have her for his wife. She took refuge with her people in the forests which stretch to the north of Smith Arm, where the three wretches followed her, surprised the unfortunate Indians while they were sleeping or resting, and assassinated eleven of them to get hold of this girl, whom they carried off to Fort Franklin against her will. The principal instigator of this abominable massacre was drawn surreptitiously to Fort Simpson by the Company, put in chains, and sent to Montreal where he was hanged high and quickly, as he deserved. The Dogribs of Great Bear Lake, however, were renowned for their hardheartedness and their penchant for murder. Sir John Franklin counted thirty-one assassinations that had been committed between 1799 and 1826 among these Indians, seventeen during his stay, which is enormous. But I must painfully record that several murders were also perpetrated since my first visit to the great lake, although in my absence, and by pagans given to shamanism or conjuring. Several of these occurrences were all the more grievous because they were attacks on feeble creatures. A small child was devoured by dogs almost under his family’s eyes. He had been exposed as bait. Another child was snatched from the breast of his birth mother with the object of saving her life, a frequent enough occurrence, they tell me. Lastly, a third child was buried alive by its brother-in-law, under the gaze of its own sister and of the whole tribe, during a trek. This last victim was a poor infant named Paul Tekwiti, aged five years and an or¬ phan since 1863. He had been received by his elder sister, Kha-khie-monne, Fringe of Hare Skin, wife of the Slavey conjuror Nitajye, a man basically hostile to the Christian religion. Little Paul was sick from birth; he had a navel hernia. I had baptized and treated him in 1866. After I left, the ailment became worse and his health continued poor. Nitajye decided the child would never be strong nor in a condition to make himself useful and he resolved to get rid of him. If at least this cruel young man had sent the child to the Metis of Fort Norman, they would have adopted him or even have sent him by boat to the hospice at Providence where the Sisters of Charity would have taken him into their orphanage. But this Indian, systematically giving himself over to witchcraft, was too proud and at the same time too envious of the Whites and their priests to give them this child to raise, thus revealing the insensitivity of his vile soul. He preferred to take the life of his little brother-in-law rather than have recourse to a priest or to Whites. So, fanaticism can be found amongst those in error and among liars, too. Nitajye began by driving away little Paul like a dangerous animal, by forbidding him to come into his tent, the home of his own sister. How could the lamb under¬ stand such behaviour? Would it not cause the child to despair? He went away sadly

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

275

and uttering loud cries, gleaning some mouthfuls of food from one side and the other, and wandering halt-naked from lodge to lodge. Then he would instinctively come back to his sister's home. She took him in and hid him during the absence of her barbarous husband. But Nitajye made endless scenes with his wife because of her brother, whom he wanted no more of at any price and whom he could not, however, prevent from returning to his home. Therefore, he killed him as one kills a vicious and incurable little dog. The wretch! If he had at least smashed his skull with a gun¬ shot, or pierced his heart with a dagger! But why reserve for this innocent one the anguish and pangs of agony that even scoundrels are spared? One morning when the tribe was moving their campsite, the conjuror publicly an¬ nounced his plan to the other savages. Some timidly tried to dissuade him from this murder. The priest, they told him, condemns such actions as criminal and monstrous. The priest! He did not care about him, he didn’t. How can he be punished by him? Meat is not scarce in the camp, they added. There are plenty of caribou. How can this little orphan mouth starve his brother-in-law? The murderer remained deaf and got angry. Faced with his anger, every heart quailed. He was a sorcerer. What if he wanted to take his revenge for their opposition? And not one compassionate soul offered to take the orphan in, not one! “Gentes sine affectu!” [People without feelings!] Then Nitajye closed little Paul in an old caribou-skin sled bag; he laced him in securely de¬ spite his cries; he dug a trench in the snow. He buried him alive, covering the bag with snow and felled a big spruce tree on the pile. And not a word more was said. May the innocent little martyr receive from the just Judge the pardon and the conversion of his executioner! What adds to the infamy of this horrible murder is what was told to me on my return to Bear Lake in 1867 by an eyewitness, a gentle man, polite, civilized, and an eager catechumen. “My pleas on behalf of the orphan were for nought,” he said to me smiling. “I could do nothing to prevent his death. That Nitajye is so evil.” “But why weren’t you able to prevent it?” 1 said to him with tears in my eyes. “Nitajye is nothing but a young man, a beardless youth twenty-two years old, and you are more than thirty. Could you not just throw yourself on him then in holy anger, knock him to the ground and take away from him his means of carrying out his plan? Could you not at least take the child away from him, pretend to adopt him, and keep him for me? I would have raised him myself.” And Yettanetel, quite shamefaced, smiled placidly without answering. At last, feel¬ ing that he ought to apologize, “Oh!” says he, “I averted my eyes. I would not have wanted to, I would have been unable to stand such a sight. I averted my eyes. But as for saving the child, yaze kke-naendi ille, I simply did not think of that; I did not know it was necessary.” I was astonished. This lack of caring, of conscience! ... This supreme indifference, this smile! ... I was going to call him a triple brute and put him out the door with a kick in the backside, when I remembered the pagan code, the same among every ancient people and the same even among modern ones who are no longer savages:

276

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

the right to life and to death that parents claim for themselves and the exposure or the systematic destruction of girls and malformed children. I recalled that, even at Bear Lake and after an instruction on parents’ duties towards their children, all the women present glanced at each other, vowing out loud without disgrace or shame and even with disgusting hilarity, that they all had killed one or more of their babies! Yes, each and every one of them: “Beautiful little kittens, my word, that one should pity their sort! Ah! They are much happier in the land of souls!” I recalled these things and I fell silent, crying. But what an upheaval must be done in all these atrophied forest-dwelling brains! What sentiments must be created, born, and then developed in these pagan hearts, despite their gentleness! How can they be rid as soon as possible of the old and foul cast-off conjurors’ clothing, their dread of sorcerers, the servile fear of clashing with one another, and the too-easy and conven¬ ient forest code? I hasten to say, however, that all the Dene are not as cruel as Nitajye, or as cowardly and fearful as Yettanetel; or, at least, many of them are not like that today. But in these painful beginnings, it is necessary to shape the spirit and heart of the Indians. It is quite a resurrection to be worked, a whole creation to accomplish, and it was done, through the grace of God and by God. One other example of insensitivity was given me by a sort of Dogrib subchief, named Ta-tsie-zele, One Who Shouts at the Top of His Voice, a man with a black, brutal, and sly face. In my absence, he had married his sister-in-law the day right after his wife’s death. Is that cynical enough for you? An animal would not have done that. But Ta-tsie-zele had killed almost sixty caribou in a single hunting expe¬ dition. What could not be forgiven such a Nimrod, capable single-handedly of pro¬ viding sustenance for an entire Indian camp! These various examples, sufficiently like the actions of the dregs of our civilized society, show how much the Doune of Great Bear Lake needed the benefits of religion. Their moral sense was obliterated to the point where young people allowed themselves to do in public reprehensible acts at which they did not even blush. They did not seem to have any conscience in spite of a truly touching gentleness of character. For the most part, their intelli¬ gence for good was null, and their heart insensitive to everything except to pleasure and self-interest. Concerning these nomads, however, one cannot use the words “degradation” and “decline,” since degeneracy applies only to people who have lost any sense of honour and virtue. These never possessed it nor had any idea of it. How can we give it to them? The grace of God must then create in them the sense and develop the faculties which were there only as seeds. Who rushed these unfortunates towards God and his holy religion? Who transformed them in a few weeks if not an interior divine voice that can change and transform the greatest scoundrel into a chosen vessel? It was the grace of God, that is to say, the greatest of miracles and the only one that no one can call into question. Unfortunate those who have never heard this voice, the call from God! But even more unfortunate those who, having heard, have despised it and have

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

277

closed their heart against it! Such are not the Dene. Do them this justice quickly. Like Abi aham, they believed God and in God, and their faith was immediately reputed as a title of justification. Abraham credidit Deo, et reputatum est ei ad justitiam.47 What a consolation! In the spring of 1869, I was a witness at Bear Lake to a little family scene that proved to me once more the radical transformation that these Indians underwent without their knowing it, thanks to the effect of Christianity. A dying native called me to his home, and I ran there with my servant, Dzan-You. His camp was only a day’s trip by sled from my residence. I administered the last rites to him, gave his wife the remnants of a medicine, the efficacy of which I did not very much count on, and got ready to return home that same night when something happened. Dzan-You s mother, who had abandoned this young man to the wolves when he was scarcely two years old and even though he was very handsome, well-built, and perfectly healthy, was in the dying man’s camp and blocked our departure. She did not long contemplate her oldest son—then twenty years old, married and the father of two children, a good hunter, an excellent traveller, and a man adroit in many things—before she took to moaning and begging Dzan-You to come and live with her, to support her, because, she said, her second husband had died and left her bur¬ dened with three other children, and she could not feed them. The poor mother cried, begged; she redoubled her prayers; but nothing seemed to move my servant. He scarcely looked at the old, decrepit, and hideous woman. Then she dragged her¬ self to his feet, begging her son to forgive her crime. Her sobs ripped into my soul. She begged forgiveness for not knowing more of the Christian religion, and for the custom so general in that day of exposing infants, for all the mothers believed that infanticide was permitted and that it was not unlawful. “See,” she said to him in the most wheedling of voices, “I carried you like this in my arms when going to expose you. I pressed you to my heart, I kissed your little eyes, your little hands, your little mouth. I found you so beautiful! I cried a lot at the thought of abandoning you, but what could I do when your father wanted it so? I was forced to obey him.” 1 felt tears overcoming me and I pressed Hyacinth to at least console his old mother, to assure her of his forgiveness, to give her some promises for the future. He was as deaf to my voice as to his mother’s prayers. He showed us a stony face and, by an energetic clenching of his jaws, he displayed his resolve to finish with the business as soon as possible and to send her away without forgiveness. He did not let one sigh escape, he did not speak one word to her, but turning towards the young people of his own age, he proclaimed with joy, “What a lot of caribou we saw on the steppes! Really, there were as many as the trees of the forest around here.” Then, as we were all ready to leave, he shook hands with all the Indians around us,

47 [Vulgate, Genesis 15:6, “So Abram put his faith in God, and it was reckoned virtue in him.”]

278

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

except his mother and his brothers, and whipped my dogs without so much as a look at the poor old woman, more a stranger to his blood than any enemy. Because of this I was shocked for his Christian character, and behind his back I promised the old ttseankwi that I would bring her son to a better feeling. On the road I took the first opportunity to express to my young servant the deep pain that his insensitive conduct towards his mother had caused me. I knew this man to be good, caring, and faithfully attached to my person. What demon had pushed him to show himself suddenly so cruel and barbarous? “You call that woman my mother?” he said to me with sarcasm. “Call her rather my stepmother. Do you think she is moaning because she loves me, because her heart suffers when she is far from me, because she wants to make amends for her infanti¬ cide by surrounding me with maternal care? Ah! You still do not know us very well. If she had had any tenderness for me, why did she not take me back when my father, Michel Tcho, who was the hunter for Fort Good Hope, had died, instead of leaving me in the hands of strangers who had saved my life and welcomed my childhood? Why did she not do that? My father! She slanders him. He never ordered her to kill his children, least of all the boys. I have been told as much. She ought to confess that she was always crazy, lewd, and wanton, that she loathed the trouble of raising brats. And now that she finds herself old, faded, decrepit, and ugly enough to frighten the Devil himself, she very much wants to load my shoulders with her young children. She again tries to deceive me by badgering me with her complaints, and her jealousy pushes her to ask me to abandon my adoptive mother, Big Sow, to fly to help her! Well, let her look after herself. As for me, I am wary of the services and even the hospitality of those who tried to take my life. I do not trust her. Let her look after herself.” And he kept a gloomy silence the whole night as if this admission that my fatherly affection had torn from him had also torn away his life’s last illusion. Ah! It is be¬ cause this unhappy person had never tasted the sweetness nor the softness of a moth¬ erly caress. The one to whom he had given the name of mother was a stranger, and he saw in the one who had given him life only a vile slave of dissolute passions and of self-interest, a stepmother right to the end and shedding crocodile tears on her own son. He rightly feared the bad faith of a tribe who had become hostile towards him by sacrificing his life and banishing him unjustly from their midst. Quippe domum timet ambiguam Tyriosque bilinguisA8 And my heart, again coming back to the orphan that I had already judged so severely, brought me to say to myself: Poor child, he knows his parents better than I do. He is right to doubt the intentions of those who had abandoned him before. For one to put trust and joy in the heart of another, so that on this naturally very shaky

48 [“In truth, she fears the uncertain house and double-tongued Tyrians.” Virgil, Aeneid, Book I, line 661.]

The Indians of Great Bear Lake

279

basis, one s tired heart could be at ease, it would require a superhuman love to come down trom heaven and reveal itself to all the earth to transform feelings to the point that the word humanity becomes from then on a synonym for charity and love of one s neighbour as if one naturally knew this love and had not received it from the Word ot God incarnate. And it is the same feeling, scarcely natural to natural man, which was revealed to the most barbarous of savages and suddenly resonated in them fibres ot their being that, up until then, had slept. This love awakened unknown feel¬ ings in their heai t; faith was kindled there; hope was renewed. They were assured of peace and changed into Christians, into saints. It is so sweet to love, so consoling to know oneself to be loved! Later, Dzan-You’s fine behaviour towards his mother proved this fully, for when the love of God had touched his heart and when he had forgiven his mother, he came to find her at Great Bear Lake with her three children, kept her with him, and cared tor her until her death, returning her good for evil and assuring through baptism her soul s salvation. That is what only a Christian could do. That was what was never done by the best of Dene Indians, circumcised or not. In our big cities, where individuality is absorbed by a society in which it is just one ot the tiniest of constituent elements, the benefits of the Christian religion are little appreciated if not in pious works. God’s work on the soul escapes the multitude because this work is secret and is known only to the soul that is the object of these favours. In a way, it is replaced by Providence in its control, its influence, and its judgements on the nations themselves. But in the wilderness, where all of society is reduced to a few individuals scattered over immense spaces in some miserable groupings deprived of all social ties other than those of the family, where aside from this all is left to individual liberty, it is there that the divinity of the religion of Jesus Christ becomes obvious and tangible. It is there that we see it produce radical chang¬ es, transforming brutes into lambs and miserable people into chosen vessels. These changes are of such a nature that they are obvious to all and the most prejudiced eyes cannot refuse to acknowledge the miraculous effects of grace. On 10 May 1866, on the site of the old Fort Franklin, there took place an Indian ceremony that one would have believed revived the Greeks or Romans: the festival of the dead and the dinner of ghosts. The death of a poor girl, Netson-kfwo, whom I was going to accompany to her last resting place, was the occasion for these Danite funeral rites. The temperature was steady, the sky of an entirely Provencal purity, the sun bright and hot, almost burning, the snow three-quarters melted, and the grass scattered in the yellow-coloured sand perfectly dry. After the religious ceremony, the Dene population gathered around the tombs of those who had died in the previous year. The relatives tore up the lumps of sod, took apart the pieces of wood that enclosed the rough sarcophagi, and all eagerly began to contemplate the remains, otherwise very little putrefied, of those who had been a son, a daughter, a wife, or a husband. Out of respect for the sadness of my native

280

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

flock, I withdrew to Fort Franklin’s ruins from where 1 could observe this scene of mourning. Moreover, it is scarcely explicable unless its purpose is to cause the living to reflect seriously on the fragility of human things. This feverish curiosity being satisfied, there broke out strange shouts mixed with songs, which constitute lamentation among the Redskins. I have never been able to hear these people cry without my whole being shivering. It is a funereal lament, inter¬ spersed with convulsive sobs that resemble the yelping of the coyote in the dismal groves, a pagan sorrow without solace. These are not the tears of Christians, gentle, silent, filled with hope and faith. It is a rending done for effect which, spontaneous or artificial, wants to be heard and makes itself heard; it is a savage sorrow whose rhyth¬ mic screechings rise and fall like wolves’ cries, differently among men and women. Seated on the ground with their heads on their knees, their black and thick hair veil¬ ing their faces, these Dene reminded me of Israel in mourning, weeping on the banks of the rivers of Babylon. Formerly, or even still in our own time but among other peoples, such as the Cree, the bones of the dead would have been withdrawn from their cold dwelling, cleaned, washed, wrapped in new skins, and carried in procession into each lodge to be sol¬ emnly exposed, then replaced with the same ceremony in a common grave. But the Dene no longer or never did have enough courage or veneration for their ancestors’ ashes to dare to descend to these horrible particulars. Far from trying to save the relics of their dead relatives at home, they consider, like the Hebrews, that contact with a corpse is a pollution that they carefully avoid. I cannot even explain what I saw at Great Bear Lake except that it was related to the little contact these Indians had with Whites, for I never saw this funereal festival repeated in later years. Then, when this tribute of tears had been paid to the dead of the past year, my Hareskins sadly began the feast of souls at the edge of the open graves. Each drew from his gamebag the meat he had brought, and all began to eat in silence, feasting their eyes in contemplation of their dear departed. Then the pieces of wood were again placed on the sarcophagi, the graves were once more covered with logs, stones, and pieces of turf, and each person, after having comforted his heart with the tribute of tears and regained his courage with the food taken in communion with the dead, returned home. Would there not be in this Tartar custom, usual in America, a remembrance of Chinese ancestor worship? Little flags, streamers of gaudy cloth, are hung over each grave with the intention of entertaining the childlike ghosts of the dead and to keep them near their bones for fear they will remember the living and come back to trouble their rest.49

49 In Arabia, says a modern traveller, near Arab sepulchres there is raised a little maypole all covered with multicoloured cloths, funeral offerings from women to their dear departed. Alexandre Dumas, L'Arabie heureuse, vol. 3, 99.

Great steppe Die-tcho-ellon-tpiele with parhelion

282

CHAPTER IV Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

Great Rapid Steppe—Appearance of the Great Bear Lake Steppes— Great Abundance of Caribou—Attacked by Caribou—Danite Easter—The Dene Moon GoddessHunting from Ones Doorstep—New Hunt—Warble Fly—Different Names of the Caribou—Travel in the Last Steppe—River of Black Waters—Fwa-Kfwe—Show °f Affection by the Indians—Gentleness and Over-excitability of the Slaveys—An Indian’s Hardness of Heart—Another Child Buried Alive—A Dance—Dangerous Crossing of Keith Arm

Beginning in 1867, I was no longer satisfied to come each year on foot from Fort Good Hope to Great Bear Lake and to live from three to five months at my little Fort Norman mission of Ste Therese. I went directly to the Indians wherever they were to be found, as much to explore around the great lake as to teach my flock better by staying with them. They ordinarily dwelt on the edge of the steppes. I have already said that these wil¬ dernesses of Great Bear Lake are found west and south of the lake, where they stretch out twenty-five leagues deep and forty to fifty wide. The Indians have given differ¬ ent names to this long zone of white lichen, sprinkled here and there with twisted dwarf spruce, no bigger than your arm when fully grown. The great steppe Die-tchoellon-tpiele, or the Edges of the Great Rapid, was the first that I travelled through and lived in. It lies directly between the west of the lake and the riverside range of the Mackenzie. Its southern extremity carries the name Ekke-ttsoghe or the Last Steppe. The riverside portion of Keith Arm, which stretches right to the Mosquito Mountains, takes the name Tpa-ta-ttsoghe, Steppe at the Edge of the Water. It is the most desolate and barren of all. And finally, the part lying to the northwest of the lake is called Fwa-tiele, Sandy Floor. In the Great Rapid Steppe, which is a little more sheltered from the wind than the others, one often meets little clusters of muskeg spruce that are sickly, twisted, knotty, bent by hurricanes and taking on impossible forms, but provided with a globular head that gives them the Dogrib name of ta-kfwi-raye, Round Heads in the Air. Here and there you also see ponds formed by the accumulation and the melting of snow in the terrain’s depressions which winter mixes and levels to the surrounding earth. The horizon of these plains, robbed of water by some cause that I do not know, has no other limits to the north, to the south, and to the east than the blue sky. But to the

283

284

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

west, the pale crest of the Enna-tcho-kfwe Mountains [Great Enemies Mountains] stands out lightly like a crimped band of cloth in the misty distance. In this snow desert as in the Sahara every trail, every trace of a passing caravan disappears in a matter of minutes because of the wind or snow. The roads fill up. The tracks are swept away. The snow packs down, piles up in drifts, and stratifies in layers that look like travelling dunes. These dunes look like a slope on the side where the wind blows, and a sheer ridge and overhanging bank on the opposite side. These features easily show the Indian from where the wind blew in the last snowstorm, but not which direction the last caravan followed. They see to it by cutting the trees they encounter on their way at a metre above the ground and placing the cut part ob¬ liquely on what remains of the skinny and slender trunk. I his arrangement creates the beacons that serve as poles and signposts for the next travellers or for the same caravan when it returns by the same route. When the weather is clear and calm, one can easily spot these markers and one travels according to the direction of the cut tree, even when the trail has completely disappeared. But as soon as the wind whips up the congealed snow as a fine powder, this powdery snowstorm obscures the view to such a point that all signposts disap¬ pear and become invisible at four paces. It is then very difficult to find your way on the steppes. This dry and dismal plain is, however, the great slaughterhouse of the Mackenzie. During the whole year an incalculable number of caribou find abundant pastures of white lichen, of the genus Cenomice and Cetraria,5° that tempt them there. From Lac la Martre to the Arctic Ocean, these immense wildernesses are like the great butcher shops where the Dene, Dindjie, and Eskimo come to get provisions of free food and to live in Homeric abundance. I was the happy witness of this strange spectacle unheard of by Europeans in tem¬ perate climates. It had delighted me during my crossing of Smith Arm, but here it took on fabulous proportions: a steppe full of roaming caribou, friendly, not at all wild, and easy to capture with palisaded enclosures. There were caribou scattered on every side like stars in the firmament. There were caribou grazing in small groups of three to ten head like so many constellations. There were caribou gathered in herds of a hundred head or more coming to defy the hunter with their horn-crowned fore¬ head. There were caribou gathered in armies of one or two thousand individuals, not at all frightened by our approach, going straight ahead as if assured they would command respect and acquire impunity in their legions, strong and emboldened by their great number, a sort of immense and moving Milky Way rolling across the steppe like lava and, by mutual and repeated rubbing, they would have unleashed fireworks of electric sparks if it had been nighttime. Caribou in front, caribou be¬ hind, caribou to the right, caribou to the left, resting and chewing their lichen, or

50 Drummond. [See in this volume above, ch. 2, n. 17.]

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

285

standing and drowsing; caribou digging the steppe with their cloven hooves like little Breton cows or grazing on the snow-covered grass. On seeing us they lift their heads in an inquisitive way and stop browsing. Motionless, they sniff the air in our direction, then they peaceably return to their grazing like gentle sheep. Others, full and wanting only to satisfy their curiosity, walk aimlessly or move towards us to examine us at closer range. They travel or trot in a long Indian file, the oldest at the head, calm and dignified with a venerable beard and white breast, while the young fawns leap on their hind feet and hop like infants around their mothers. It is a free show to delight the traveller yet unique to the Great Bear Lake steppes; a spectacle that carries his thoughts back to those archaic and happy times about which Virgil sang under milder skies: Pascitur itque pecus longa in deserta sine ullis Hospitiis: tantum campi jacet ...51

What keeps the Dene from making themselves masters of these innumerable herds and becoming if they wish happy shepherds, rich and idle? Nothing, except super¬ stition and the rut of an unchangeable routine. On this point, so reasonable and advantageous in every aspect, I am humiliated to have to admit that I have always found it impossible to make these nomads listen to reason. You would not believe it but it is, nevertheless, the unvarnished truth. Reindeer are domesticated in Iceland, in Lapland, in Finland, in all of northern Asia as far as the Choukchis of the Bering Strait. Cross the Strait, it is finished. There are no domesticated caribou. Eskimo, Ingalik, Dindjie, Dene, Greenlander, Labradorian, all seem to have agreed to go wrong on this vital question, to the answer of which the future of these weak little people is closely tied. Do not talk to them about it. They answer you only with nonsense: We have never heard tell that caribou could be domesticated like a dog and even replace him. Our ancestors killed caribou to feed themselves, and we copy them. We do not believe we ought to be more prudent or wiser than our fathers. They lived well that way, so why should we not do likewise? Chase living caribou and keep them like dogs in a kennel! Lead them from pasture to pasture! Drink caribou milk, make butter and cheese from it, and occasionally become butchers! Who has ever heard talk of such ridiculous and absurd things? Whites and, above all, their priests reason like children devoid of any common sense. If they tried it, we would see how silly it is. However, it may be that this tactic could succeed for them, they are so power¬ ful! But as for us, oh, certainly not. The caribou—former people—would leave our hunting lands. They would take offence at being treated like slaves instead of like en¬ emies. The insult and provocation to their vexed self-respect would alone be enough

51 [“Often, day and night, and a whole month through, the flocks feed and roam into the desert stretches, with no shelters: so vast a plain lies outstretched.” Virgil, Georgies, Book III, lines 342-43.]

286

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

to cause their extinction. No, no, do not talk to us any more about such projects. We have too much sense to take up such senseless plans. Dene will never believe you nor take up your ideas on this subject. This is the one and only answer that all Dene, without exception, gave me every¬ where. It does not give an exalted idea of their intelligence, whatever may be their conformity in imitating the Whites in all things. It will take many years before we see these age-old prejudices fall away, and they will disappear only through the good work of the missionaries or the Hudson’s Bay Company. But the Dindjie are not any better, and neither are the Eskimo. Although there are white caribou deer and others that are striped or spotted in Asia, I have never seen a single one in the Canadian Northwest. The rare furs of white caribou that I could get from the Eskimo came to them from the Nounatagmeout (the Ice Cape Eskimos) who had traded with the Asian Eskimoides (the Choukchis and the Tuskis). For an atike [jacket] in white caribou fur, in 1868 I had to give a flintlock musket worth twelve francs fifty centimes. Another jacket in variegated skin of white and brown was given to me only in exchange for a Sudanese chief’s handsome burnous in red wool, striped with gold threads. Despite these sacrifices, I did not have the consolation of taking back to France these superb luxury garments. Besides, they would have become moth-eaten like all the furs that I sent in 1866, or that I brought there myself in 1874. I return to my steppes. Having left in the early morning, Monday of Holy Week 1867, for the Fur People’s camp where two sick people were asking for me, I had to cross the whole width of the big steppe, Fwa-tpiele-tawetpon. At noon, I found the heat so overwhelming that it drained me of the strength to walk and I was forced to stop at a takfwiraye oasis to take some food. It was at this place that the infamous Nitajye had buried his young brother-in-law alive. Behfoule, my servant, was alone with me, but at the Indian camp I would find all the Fort Norman employees who had gone to look for fresh meat there. When I reached the other side of the steppe, the sun was setting. Again I crossed some woods, encountering caribou everywhere in my path. Finally, I arrived at the Fur People’s camp on the third day of my journey, a little before nightfall. I was re¬ ceived there by chief Sa-kpa-netpa-tpa, Father of the Bear Hunter, and all his people with an enthusiasm and with demonstrations of affection and pleasure to which the Hareskins had accustomed me but which each time rejoiced my heart and paid me back for all my troubles. It is so sweet to be loved by children, even wild and adopted ones! Would to God that our flocks in France resembled them in this as well as in other things, even if only a little!

1 his Indian camp resembled a slaughterhouse and every lodge a butcher’s stall. Piles of frozen caribou meat were spread on scaffolds or hung in the rear of the tents. The dogs, being full, did not touch it, and even the ravens respected the piles. Caribou were so abundant all around the camp that Etie-ri-tcho, Great Monster, alone killed

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

287

as many as forty a day. His wife and his children could not prepare and carry all of it. I he place was swimming in fat. This was a repetition of those who travelled on the vast steppe Die-tcho-ellon-tpiele where we had seen Ta-tsie-zHe’s hunting prowess worthy of Gaston Phoebus and Nimrod.52 In one of the lodges of this big camp I found, as I had expected, all Mr. Taylor's servants: Metis, Scottish, and Swampy Cree. They were in no hurry to leave because they were feasting. They were gathering good and tasty morsels for their families or for themselves. I was content that they held back a little from the rush and warm reception that the Indians gave me. Rather, they shortened the formalities, because their attention was naturally attracted to their own small material and financial interests, what is called, in the world, “serious business.” So that a missionary can fully enjoy the confidence and the affection of his flock, so that the savages, pagans, can be perfectly at ease with their pastor and receive all the spiritual good that he wants to impart to them—the full sum of instruction that he ought to inculcate in them—it is important that he be alone with them. The missionary must be alone, absolutely alone, without weapons, without a colleague, without a witness, without a bodyguard, above all, without a European or Metis companion and especially without the worried, envious, or distrustful look of a fur trader, whoever he may be, even if he is the missionary’s best friend. My declaration in this matter may appear arbitrary and absolute. 1 insist that it is based on long and profound experience with forest people. Every time I appeared among the savages accompanied by a colleague, even though he was my junior—which only happened to me three times in twenty-one years—I noticed that these friendly Indians’ cour¬ tesy and discretion were put to a severe test. They felt incapable of satisfying both colleagues for fear of displeasing the one by speaking to the other. So, their desire to pray was paralyzed and they abstained from all religious duties. Like a donkey placed between two bundles of hay, they preferred to fast. On the other hand, every time I was accompanied by a White, a European or a French Canadian, which happened four times in my missionary life, I experienced another psychological phenomenon that, whether I spoke or whether I laughed with my companion, in English or in French, in the presence of the Indians, they always imagined themselves to be the object of our sarcasms and the subject of our hilar¬ ity and, as courtesy prevented me from ignoring the White in order to busy myself only with the Indians, there followed between them and myself an uneasiness and discomfort that made us both suffer equally. But if, happily talking to my forest chil¬ dren, I left the White to one side, he sulked and took offence as well. But if we go to the savages with merchants or even with their employees, oh! Then there is nothing more for the apostle to do. Without fail, mercantile interests win

52 [Gaston Phoebus III, Count of Foix (1331-91), author of Livre de la chasse and Phebus, des deduiz de la chasse des bestes sauvaiges et des oyseaux deproye.}

288

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

out over religion, with them as everywhere else. It is a painful fact to admit and one that has shown me that, if the Arctic Danites were placed in the same milieu and the same living conditions as we, they would not long remain as they are, and perhaps would be no better than other civilized Christians. Nevertheless, I saw with satisfac¬ tion that my catechumens and converts were devoid of fear of another’s opinion. They prayed publicly and seriously while they ate or rested, not worrying about the presence of Protestants and of some libertines at the fort, just as if they were alone. That is what I admired in these people. One could wish the same from many civilized chicken-hearted people when a smile or a jibe unsettles, making them renounce God and their baptism. I said that there were two sick people in the camp. They were dying of galloping consumption and were the first to receive my spiritual and medical care. Then I took the road again for Fort Norman in company with Mr. Taylor’s employees, whose sleds were overloaded with meat. After coming out of the coniferous forest and before entering the steppes, we had to cross a small muskeg or lichen swamp which we found blocked by caribou. There were certainly more than a thousand of them. Their ranks were so dense and their heads so pressed together that at our approach, the poor beasts could not give way in front of us to make a passage for us. At the sight my companions were no more masters of themselves than their dogs. Ah, if they had had guns, what beautiful shots they could have made in the midst of these animals massed like sheep in a sheepfold! Lacking weapons, they grabbed whatever came to hand to try to hit some of these poor beasts. I then saw something that I would never have suspected from such naturally fear¬ ful and timid animals. Reassured by their great numbers, the caribou did not give an inch. The old males advanced at the front of the herd, heads lowered like angry billy goats with the clear intention of driving us from the little realm which they had already claimed as theirs. A burst of laughter greeted these gentle animals’ bravado. And at the same moment axes, whips, gnarled sticks, and sled shafts flew at the legs of the bellicose caribou, reaching the boldest, but not a single one of them fell. Faced with this show of force, however, they opened their ranks and, dividing themselves into two thick masses, they moved to right and left with the impetuosity of sheep surprised by a wolf. However, they did not go into the woods. They did not think of fleeing. One might have said that they saw we were weaponless. I believe this, for they contented themselves with milling on the spot in the muskeg itself, so that they always faced us with their antlered foreheads. We could not succeed in chasing them from this fallow land and we had to swallow the insult of being flouted and defied by these inoffensive and very gentle animals. When we had left, they peacefully re¬ turned to their places and went back to grazing on their lichen. This incident was the topic of conversation for the rest of the day. It was the first time that the Metis saw themselves defied by caribou. Some Hareskins who were with us assured me that at the season we were in, March-April, the caribou suffers

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

289

from snow blindness more acutely than people because its sight is sharper and its eye bigger; and the intense suffering that it feels from this has no small role in inspiring a sort of exasperation and bravado which only serves to hasten its death because it can do nothing against firearms. I do not know on what evidence this assertion is founded, but I have myself observed that rabbits, pheasants, and hazel grouse are subject to this snow blindness caused by the causticity of the steam that rises from the snow, as well as by the refraction of the sun’s rays on its surface. One can then kill them very easily with any kind of hand projectile. After Easter, I paid another visit with my hired man to my sick people. At the camp I witnessed a lunar festival that resembles the Neomenos of the Greeks and the Pe^ach or Phaseh of the Jews. Among the Dene this ceremony has a funereal and lugubrious character that did not spare me at all. So one could compare it to the moon festival that the Greeks celebrated on the first day of the month of Anthesterion which cor¬ responded to the eighth day of our month of March. We know, in fact, that among those people the first day of each month was consecrated to the infernal cult of the triple Hecate.53 For the Dene, it was the month of Etsen-gounsa or the Moon of Stinking Meat, the month of caribou rut, which corresponds to March-April. Moreover, there had been a magnificent total eclipse of the moon that the Indians seemed to me to have fore¬ seen or guessed, I do not know how exactly. Perhaps—which is more likely—they had been forewarned of it by the people at Fort Norman, who could have known about it ahead of time from their calendar or from the newspapers. Whatever the ex¬ planation, before the eclipse in each lodge, the Danite women started to mince some frozen caribou meat. Young people dug holes in the ground, threw in a quantity of rocks heated white-hot in the hearths, and on these heated rocks placed pillow-like sausages made from caribou bellies stuffed with minced meat mixed with bits of fat. They added to this a little of the slightly sour dung slime contained in the caribou’s belly which had not yet been entirely digested. Then they covered all this and left it to cook by steaming. The Dene call this food epie-edhtte or wild pudding. The cooked meat was placed in as many gamebags as there were puddings. The adults able to hunt caribou loaded them on their backs. In this particular ceremony, I think the minced meat is a symbol of caribou abundance that the Dene ask from their moon god. It is the symbol of proliferation. This done, each one girded his loins, took up a stick, and gathered in the chief’s tent where they placed themselves around a central fire in the posture of people wearied by a long walk. As for the women and children, they stayed in their own tents. As soon as the eclipse of the moon began, the Indians got up one after the other. Leaning on a stick, looking at the moon through the top opening in the lodge, the wind hole, they began to sing in turn: “Enekhew!

53 [Hecate, ancient fertility goddess, queen of Hades and protectoress of witches.]

290

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

How heavy it is! Klo-da-tsole (Shrew), nne-kla t eh, across the entrails of the earth, nas’inkhin! You carried me! Ttsou-chuiw Wooded Mountain, yenghd! Come!” Having said this, they left in procession from the assembly lodge, bent over double as if they were collapsing under the weight of their burden. They snaked their way from tent to tent, stopping at intervals to offer in turn the same refrain regarding the moon, which was going into eclipse. While the eclipse lasted, the lugubrious procession continued its winding march, entering all of the lodges. They sat down and put down their gamebags, and people quickly ate the contents, as if hiding from an invisible enemy. Then, the epie-edhtte was replaced on their backs and they con¬ tinued their funereal march from tent to tent, singing to the moon. That is why the Hareskins call this unusual ceremony Tpa-na-eceli-tsateli, Funeral March between the Lodges While Shaking Rattles. Today, however, the Dene do not make or shake rattles in their ceremonies any more, and I even doubt that the new moon ceremony that I described here is celebrated elsewhere than on the desolate steppes of Great Bear Lake. But in 1867 this ceremony was still in such widespread use among the various Danite tribes that, having looked into this, I discovered no less than seven versions of the moon song. The Dogribs, who are only half Dene and do not practice Judaic circumcision like the Slaveys, the Mountain People, and the Dindjie, nor the Mohammedan circum¬ cision like the Kha-tcho-Gottine, have assured me that they do not know the Danite Pegach or Feast of Passover. But, when they live with the Dene who are more cor¬ rectly called the Dane, they conform to it seriously and without joking. The Slaveys or Etcha-Ottine celebrate it privately and without a procession, perhaps out of fear of ridicule from the Whites, but they cry out nonetheless while looking at the evening star that enters into conjunction with the earth: “Eda-tsole, shrew, nne-kla tpeh across the entrails of the earth, nakodefwiwe! We have fled across! (Or rather, we have come out!)” Ettsen ninttsi, Whirlwind, better known under the name Wind from Behind, a Hareskin who was at Fort Norman that same spring and who accompanied me to the Indian camp, told me that the invocation of the lunar shrew varies from tribe to tribe. His parents, people from Great Bear Lake attached to Fort Good Hope, sang, he said: “Eda-tsole, Shrew, nne kid tpeh, across the land, nas’ettinhe! You have brought me back! Ttsou-chiw, Wooded Mountain, yenghe, come, ni-na-ttchire-dinzeg! Tear us from the ground with a hook!” This is an allusion to the beaver that the hunter pulls out of his den with the help of a wooden hook called a sa-kozeg. But I have been told the Nne-la-Gottine or People at the End of the World, at the sources of the Anderson River, shout: “Nedatsole, shrew, nne-kla tpeh, through the depths of the earth, hellegounli, there is a footpath, a passage, yanhe! lanla! Ouh-seye! I will go through! Ttsou-chi, Wooded Mountain, yenghe, come, ta-ttchire-dinzeh! Up there, tear us out with a hook!” Later, back at Good Hope and fishing with our old servant Jacques Tatekoye (in 1870), I told him about this curious ceremony. He confirmed for me all the details,

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

291

although with a superstitious fear, and informed me that on such occasions his coun¬ trymen, the Mackenzie Hareskins, sang what follows: “Oufsedha! Pass! Klo-da-tsole, Shrew, el’ekke-tpeh, over and crosswise, nonda-tpaU, jump or cross quickly over the earth! Ttsou-chie! Wooded Mountain, yeen! Come!” But he added that other Dene varied this invocation as follows: aKld-da-tsole, Shrew, ehtpeh, over, nni-na-dintVa! Come up to the earth! (Jump over the earth); khou se-ya! Still a little time!” Or: “Now, come on, little fawn!” Or even: “I will pass!” for these last words can be taken in three ways. Two year later, I learned from the Dindjie or Loucheux of the lower Mackenzie and the Anderson, that they celebrate the same festival at the time of the new moon, in spring, and that they sang the following address in honour of the Little Man in the Moon: "Klag-da-tha, Shrew, nan kkcetpaw, above the earth, nite-anashoekpay! Pass promptly by jumping crosswise! Aecouha\ Alleluia!” I had often interrogated the Hareskins and the Slaveys to get them to teach me the origin and meaning of this bizarre ceremony. They did not know any more than I, any more than the southern French or Italian people know the origin of Mardi Gras or of mid-Lent. All that they could tell me was that, in this way, they obeyed the ancient regulations that had been given to them by Eboe-Ekon, Belly Shield, the solitary inhabitant of the moon, and that this mystical and intriguing ceremony serves the purpose of obtaining from the moon god the destruction of their enemies and the abundance of caribou in their country. Some lengthy research would be useful in discovering this festival’s real origins. Our dear readers will gladly relieve me of doing it in these pages which do not involve such scientific digressions, but we do know that this ceremony is celebrated, at least as far as the nighttime uproar, in the Orient, in all of Asia, in Africa, and among sev¬ eral peoples of America. Moreover, it was even known and practised by the Romans. Witness these verses from the poet Juvenal when speaking of a babbling woman: ...: jam nemo tubas, nemo cerafatiget; Una taboranti poterit succurrere lunce.54

During all of spring 1867, the caribou was superabundant to such a point that, at Great Bear Lake, I collected enough food provisions without much effort; for all of the following summer, as well as for my residence at Fort Good Hope. I counted up to eighteen caribou in my food storehouse, more than fifty loaves of melted fat, and eighty smoked tongues. It was a lot for a single man. Every day, without leaving my residence, I witnessed the most inspiring and the most touching scenes that a disci¬ ple of Nimrod would care to contemplate. Twenty times a day, Keith Arm, or rather

54 Satire VI.242. [Petitot’s reference is incorrect and should read VI.442-43. “Henceforth let no one trou¬ ble trumpets or brazen vessels; she will be able singly to relieve the moon when suffering an eclipse.”] For more details see my work entitled Accord des mythologies (Paris: Emile Bouillon, edit. 67, rue de Richelieu, t89o), “Dieu lunaire.”

292

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

the Kha-tcho-eta steppe on which I had built the mission, was covered with caribou who scorned the bullets from the Fort Norman employees and the fangs of their work dogs. Often these gentle antlered animals came to gambol next to my little house as if reproaching the Whites’ incredible indifference to domesticating animals that are so docile, so friendly to humans. There is no land, no locality that lends itself better than the steppes of Bear Lake to the capture and domestication of the caribou. Lichen abounds there. There is no lack of wood. One only has to build one of those vast hunting parks that the Dene know how to make, and drive the animals there, but instead of placing gut rope snares in the enclosure where the poor caribou become entangled and strangled, we would leave them there to wander and graze in total safety. Next, one would place tents there. One would banish the dogs. One would accustom the caribou to the presence of humans and thus we would succeed in no time in making them as docile as sheep. Truly, I have difficulty in understanding why the Hudson’s Bay Company has never tried to give this advantage to their red-skinned customers. It alone can put an end to the Dene’s prejudice and direct this enterprise to a good conclusion. I strongly advise it. Sometimes the frequency of caribou around our cabins produced grotesque scenes. One day when it was snowing frightfully thanks to a very violent east wind, I noticed from my window a herd of caribou of only twenty head going by twenty-five paces from my dwelling. They were wandering slowly here and there, noses to the wind, unconscious of any danger. I immediately warned Beh-foule, who seized his flintlock punt gun and his powder horn, and went to take up a position behind my little sup¬ ply hangar where only fifteen paces separated him from the noble animals. It was impossible for my man to miss his shot. I saw him first take aim at the leader of the line, a large bearded and antlered caribou, then the next instant lower his weapon. Again, he targeted another caribou, again he drew back his gun. Until the last animal passed, this boy kept up this robot-like game. “Will he ever fire?” I said to myself, impatient with his hesitations and regretting that I had left him this job. Beh-foule actually fired but behind the tail of the last caribou. Only the priming flashed and the shot did not go off. But, at the sound that the flint made when hitting the pan, the caribou turned their heads, saw the clumsy hunter, tui ned up their noses at him, and dashed off into the swirling powder of the snowstorm, which hid them from my eyes. “Tin ntne-kke! What on earth!” said the confused and disappointed Indian. “How could you have missed such a good chance?” I said to him, annoyed. “Well, I tried to choose the fattest,” he said with a confused air. “To have the best I could not even kill the worst.” In 1868 the steppes of Great Bear Lake offered the same scenes as the previous years. I crossed the great Ipa-ta-ttsoghe steppe, a length of seventeen leagues southwards,

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

293

and saw caribou there swarming like the sparrows under Luxembourg’s diamond¬ shaped roof tiles and with the same familiarity. Also, I wanted to get over my dream of a real hunt, and I left on 26 March for the whole day in company with Hyacinth Dzan-You, my servant that year. Nothing is so rustic and so pastoral as the sight that the steppe offered us with the rising sun. The caribou were resting there by the hundreds, singly or in groups of ten to twenty. Some were chewing the lichen that they had dug and grazed on during the night. By lying down on it, others were warming up and thawing out what they would soon eat, but most were still asleep on the shimmering, hardened snow, enjoy¬ ing the warm rays of a glorious sun. All presented the calm and majestic appearance horned beasts have when resting and chewing their cud. At our approach, the alarm spread in a wink of an eye, and the caribou were standing up. They stared at us for an instant, to know what kind of enemies they had to deal with, and scattered at once, heading in every direction, leaving us the embarrassing choice of which direction to take. We saw that they had already been hunted earlier and that they had become careful and timid. Hyacinth left me the honour of the first shot. I missed my beast, a whole caribou. Dzan-You took the same target and hit it full in the breast. Kef! went the bullet. “Hit! ” the young man shouted. “When the ball does not hit, it goes zin!” Not a peep of an explosion. One might have said that we were firing into a void. It was minus 350 Celsius that day. The caribou hit by the young man stopped, looked at his murderer, pulled back its lips while grinding his teeth, and fell in a heap, nose in the snow. He had been struck in the heart. “He has cursed me,” said Hyacinth sadly. “Douye, eyi. That is painful, that is.” His superstitious thinking did not at all keep him from rushing to the beast and rapidly slitting its throat with one stroke of his hunting knife for fear that the belly of the caribou might empty back into its gullet, which would make the taste disgust¬ ing because of the impossibility, during the winter and the hunt, of getting water to wash the head, a part reserved for the hunter. Moreover it is the Danite custom. Every quadruped shot has its throat cut. Every bird is bled. They do not eat anything but kosher meats. Then I fired four other shots in succession at the caribou. Only one struck and broke the left hip of a big buck. He did not run any slower on three legs, as if the Devil were chasing him, and he disappeared so promptly into the forest that I could not reach him and even lost him completely from sight. When I came back all bathed in perspiration, red as a peony, and breathing jets of white steam from my mouth and nose as rapidly and noisily as a steam locomotive, all the caribou had decamped and Dzan-You with them. The steam surrounding my face fogged my glasses so much that I could not carry on. So, I left my companion, endowed with better eyes and sturdier lungs than I, to follow the caribou at leisure, and bravely taking leave of the

294

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

caribou rout, I went back to the first caribou killed and made myself useful by setting up the dinner-time bivouac beside it. After getting a spark from a flint, following the rather old example of the faithful Achates,55 I caught it on the birch tinder, surrounded it with a handful of dry twigs, and shook it very energetically, and immediately a flame crackled. I put it in the hol¬ low made by a caribou during his night’s rest. I put on top of it some dry, stunted little spruce that the steppe provided and which 1 tore up by shaking them, and I was now the possessor of a great fire. Then Dzan-You reappeared. He had killed three other caribou. He was dragging the flesh of the largest with the help of his sash and the skin of the animal itself which he knew how to make into a useful means of trans¬ port. I went in search of the third caribou the same way. As for the fourth, mortally wounded in the side, Hyacinth brought it to me still alive, so that I could have the pleasure of killing it, he said. The poor animal could hardly walk, and the Indian drove it from behind with the butt of his gun, as he would have done with an exhausted horse, to cries of yu!, and dja! Under these conditions the poor beast’s death was no more than an act of barba¬ rism. The role of executioner did not please me, so I asked my servant to finish off the animal immediately without making it suffer. This was done. Then he cut it up the same way as the first caribou killed. The skin was taken off as easily as it would have been done by a skilful butcher. With an astonishing dexterity and a knowledge of caribou anatomy that is the glory of the Dene, Dzan-You’s knife, as skilful as the scal¬ pel of trained surgeon, separated the joints and deboned the steaming parts, without tearing the entrails, without soiling the meat or hacking it. Because we lacked the tools to prepare a European-style stew, we had to be satis¬ fied with the rustic preparations of Indian cooking although this did not sharpen my appetite. Dzan-You emptied the belly of one caribou, filled it with snow, and hung it like a bag over the flames. In a few seconds it was full of drinkable water that was neither burned nor smoked, while one of the sides of the animal all skewered on dry willow sticks was changed by the fire into a simple and succulent roast. Then, seated on branches, legs crossed like scissors, we gave ourselves over to the hardly refined joy of our wilderness feast as in the times of Aeneas. Because this hunting party had not satisfied my own vainglory, my ego demanded a return, and I went back to the steppe with my faithful servant in tow. This time at least, I got two caribou and wounded several of them which, however, I could not catch afterwards. In spring, the caribou family has its back covered with large white larvae that are between the hide and the flesh.56 By size, shape, and appearance, they resemble closely the cockchafer worms which our northern peasants call mulots [field mice].

55

[Faithful friend and companion of Aeneas.]

56 [Warble flies or blowflies.]

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

295

These worms, which live off the dorsal fat or skin of the caribou and must cause it intense itching, attract the Dene to rival the Malagasies and the Chinese worthily. They suck them with loathsome delight while they are skinning a caribou. Nothing is so disgusting as to see them bite into these larvae swollen with fat and still wriggling. However, it is a real feast for them. At the end of spring, with the help of the sun’s heat, these larvae pierce the animal’s skin to leave their subcutaneous shelter and emerge, complete insects, in the form of large voracious, grey flies that are as attracted to people as to the ruminants. Their beak is armed not with a probe, or a sucker, or hollow stiletto, but with two tweezers, veritable pincers that make a smarting bite that draws blood. I have named the cari¬ bou gadfly (Oestrus tarandi), which the Dene call klize and nadeti, and the English, bull dogs. The holes that the larvae of the fly make in the hide of the caribou in order to get out carry the same name as the larvae themselves. They are called Ekou, enekou, the worm par excellence or the edible worm. Other worms are named quite simply gou, the one that twists, and those that are due to putrefaction, maggots, are called inay, which means life. What is even stranger about the caribou worm is that it also lives as a parasite around the tongue of the animal as well as in its nasal passages. Would not these be the worms in question in the popular saying: “To pull the worms from one’s nose [to worm secrets out]?” The Danites have a great number of terms to designate the caribou, by defining their varieties, sex, or condition. Naturally, these words vary from one tribe to the next, and they are even more numerous among people who depend on the caribou for subsistence. Here is the nomenclature for the varieties of caribou that I found in use by the Kha-tcho-Gottine of Great Bear Lake: Tchin-tpa-etie, woodland caribou. It is caribou or the great lone caribou that lives in the forests or on the mountains. Bedzi-tcho, great luminous caribou. This is a reference to the electric sparks that their fur discharges when brushed. Etie, food, nourishment, understood to be for humans. Natle, the runner, the swift one.57 Nonteli, the emigrants, the vagabonds, the nomads. Yarikay, little white. A little caribou with whitish fur. Bedzi,58 the luminous. Female caribou. Detso, the staff. Male caribou.

57 Compare with natli, caribou, in Dindjie; natlag, caribou, in Yokoulat; tankli, caribou, in Chipewyan. 58 Compare with medzi and mezi, caribou, in Slavey; minzi and wodzi, caribou, in Sekani; mindzek and mindzik, caribou, in Ingalik; wedzi, caribou, in Dogrib: mazat, stag, in Nahuatlak; mazatl, stag, in Aztec. These words have the same root as that of “moon,” which also signifies “the luminous;” eldzi, adzie, and adze in Dene; meztli in Mexican; muedzi in African of the Upper Nile. Do not forget that it is to the moon that the Den£ pray for an abundance of caribou.

296

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Tte-tseghe, whole fat. Fat male caribou. Tsie, bawler. Caribou fawn. Tsie-defwoe, yellow bawler. Fawn that does not yet have long hairs and which one can compare to a little duck coming out of the egg. Ranakfwi, and Rayanakfwi, makes its head. Female caribou without antlers. Bedzi-tchd-halleli, large luminous caribou who runs. Male caribou growing new antlers. Tadeya, little buttons. Female whose antlers grow anew. Edeyan, that begets its little one. Pregnant female. Tchon-kota, pregnant. Female full and fat. Tchon-tsetpe, pregnant. Female full but thin. Etin-napay, who walks without. Female without a little one. Beya-rettie, who has a little one. Female accompanied by a fawn. Kkocla-ettsie, scraped pilgrim. Female whose neck is peeled by male rut. The vocabulary of the Danite hunters is no less rich in hunting terms than that used by the renowned hunters of Europe. I cannot transcribe them here. I only call attention to this one detail, that the vocabulary is understood by everybody, even by little children, while with us everything is technical, is no longer part of the public domain, and is no longer understood by anyone except writers, people in the busi¬ ness, and learned people. In the month of May in that same year, I was no longer content to pace the wa¬ terside Keith Arm steppe. I left on an expedition for the Last Steppe, Elkke[Ekke]ttsoghe, the furthest to the south, which extends as far as 64° 30' north latitude. I crossed Tpa-ta-ttsoghe obliquely from northeast to southwest and reached a long, formerly wooded hill which had been devastated by a fire and converted into a forest of dead trees whitened by the hand of time, cl’arikke. I discovered a beautiful lake five leagues long by one wide, whose direction is from northwest to southeast. The Dogribs call it Hazel Grouse Lake, Kkapa-tsele-tpie [Grouse Lake], It empties its clear waters into the river Ya-inlin, which flows from north to south in the opposite direction to the Mackenzie, to which it is, however, parallel. Neither this watercourse nor the lake already mentioned being marked on Franklin’s map, I concluded that on his return voyage in February 1827 via the interior route, the famous explorer passed to the east of this region. The Last Steppe stretches south of Hazel Grouse Lake between this basin and that of Blackwater, Tpou-kkeze-tpie. Its southern extremity is twenty-four leagues from my mission. On this journey I crossed another lake that measures four leagues long by one wide, the Bekke-inlin [Water Lily Lake]. It also sends its waters into the river Ya-inlin which crosses Blackwater Lake for three quarters of its length, which is not less than sixty-eight kilometres; then it leaves the lake, forming a right angle with its course and with the lake itself, and, flowing from then on from east to west, it empties into the Mackenzie at the notable bend called the second right angle of

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

297

the river. The Slaveys call it Kokkae-die, or Starling River; the English, Blackwater River. My itinerary did not take me to the beautiful, large Blackwater Lake. I crossed the river where it enters the lake, and I travelled the length of the western shore which is made up of a steppe covered with small trees burned long ago. The right-hand range of the Mackenzie—the Enna, tcho-kfwe or Great Enemies Mountains—runs the length of the Kokkae-die and stretches south. But a little range, named Kodlenchiw or Burnt Mountain, appears to the east of the lake and runs from west to east as far as the Ewi mountain range which, on the south, borders McVicar Arm. I crossed it in 1871, but I do not want to get ahead of myself. In 1868 I stopped at Fwa-Kfwe, a long sandy hill covered with pines mostly ravaged by fire, bordering the Ya-inlin and Blackwater Lake to the west. From the height of this dividing line, although only slightly elevated, one looks over the whole region as far as the mountains west and south, which permits the Slavey Indians who frequent this region to look for caribou movements and to spy out their presence. By explor¬ ing the furthest horizons of this dismal countryside their eagle eyes discover sure signs of these ruminants’ presence. These signs are: a light vapour formed by the breath and warmth of these animals lying over the places where the caribou is or has passed the night; the croaking of the ravens who ceaselessly follow them and like to perch on their backs, no doubt to help them get rid of vermin; the joyous howling of the wolves when they are hunting or when they sight the quarry; the direction of the wind, etc. The Slaveys and the Dogribs of Great Bear Lake were camped that year on this sandy pad. They went on their hunting excursions between the three mountains: Mosquito, Burnt, and Great Enemies. A beaten trail led from their camp to Lake Intaa-tpie [Cassino Lake] in the southeast, on the edges of which were then the Fort Rae Dogribs; while another similarly beaten-down trail led to Arm Lake, Tpou-konetpoue, where I was assured the Fort Simpson Slaveys were assembled. The presence of caribou in this zone explained the large gatherings of Danite Indians so close to one another. I was received by my flock with the usual cordial warmth and effervescence. On this occasion the men were all at the hunt except for two or three, and it was the feminine portion of the camp that received me and did me the honours. I am a little ashamed to say that I was picked up and carried off in the midst of an indescrib¬ able brouhaha. Some women shook my hands and almost tore my arms off. Others hugged me as if they wanted to wrestle with me, and the oldest were not the last to lavish on me naive and even a bit wild but nonetheless unequivocal evidences of genuine affection. This noisy friendliness was accompanied point-blank by the same overstated compliments to which others had already accustomed me: “Always younger and younger, our Father, always fresher and fresher. Always handsome, al¬ ways spry! Legs like a caribou! He will never get older, that one!” Some authoritatively

298

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

decided that there was not the slightest doubt I was the bravest, the wisest, and the most loving of all the missionaries of the Mackenzie. There is not the least doubt in my mind that this outrageous praise was the result of a noisy but truly laughable enthusiasm that was, however, dictated by excellent dispositions, good hearts, and honest affection, feelings we know have the natural effect of making one blind and partial in favour of the popular or domestic idol. Moreover, it is a Dene weakness to be too exclusive and absolute. They accept, love, admire, and exalt none but their own shepherd. Compared to him, all other priests are only trash. The Dene resemble somewhat those residents of the Marseilles parish of the Great Carmelites who, during the French Revolution, went to massacre the priests of the city and pillage their churches, for the sole purpose of enriching their own pastor and parish. I have observed the same spirit of jealousy and chauvinism everywhere I have gone. A missionary can then be sure of being loved among the Dene from the moment that he declares himself to be their pastor and lives with them. I know some Frenchmen who need to learn from these good people not, in truth, to scorn and belittle neighbouring pastors but to learn to respect and to value a little more the one Providence has given them as their father. I took up lodging with a Christian Slavey named Zouze-tcho, Big Joseph, a very gentle man, loving and as simple as a child, which did not keep him from being an excellent hunter, even though he had lost an eye in a hunt during his youth. This is very frequently the case with the woodsmen. His wife was as good as he, and both had some Kirghiz features.59 It was the fourth day of my journey. I was tired by the race on the steppes and was not upset that I did not have to preach or catechize the same evening. I spent it feasting and in conversation with my hosts, reviewing the outstanding events that had happened since my last visit. Only the next day, after Mass and instruction given in Hareskin, I visited the sick in camp and heard confessions. That day, people brought me a great quantity of food: fresh meat, smoked caribou ribs, skins, loaves of melted fat, soft fat, raw marrow and bones with marrow, bags of ground meat, hides, and thongs. I paid for these gifts as best I could so as to owe nothing to anyone, like St. Paul, and not to incur any reproach for going only to visit the Indians so as to get their provisions. As a matter of fact, it was in that camp that I learned that little Mr. Taylor, who so far had been so good to me, had let the demon of jealousy bite his heart. He could no longer suffer to see my flock heap gifts of food on me even though his own sheds were bursting at the seams with so many supplies, that he did not know what to do with them or where to put them. But this excellent gentleman would have insisted on continuing the protection and help he had always given me with such generosity, and he consid-

59

(Nomadic Sunni Muslim Mongol people living between the Volga and Irtysh rivers.]

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

299

ered it a kind ot injustice 1 now relied only on my converts. This emancipation made him jealous. So far nothing bad had come of it. But it appeared that he and his Protestant serv¬ ants had spread some slander to alienate the minds and hearts of the Indians from me. He had said that my baptizing made them die, that the Catholic religion drove the caribou from their country and was the cause of the sicknesses both secret and seen that had broken out in the country, and other insanities unworthy of an honest man or even a man of good sense. Zouze-tcho, who reported these tales to me, added: But the falsity of these speeches is so obvious that they cannot succeed in disturb¬ ing us. They are filled with vice, whereas we see well that you love us, that you busy yourself only with our good and think only of our salvation. You have long since proven it to us by the long journeys that you take to visit us and help us, by the patience with which you endure us, by the pleasure that you share in living amongst us. Neither Tele (Mr. Taylor) nor his little Englishmen would do these things. They work only to make pagans of us. They come here to debauch our wives and daugh¬ ters, upset our lodges, and take whatever they please. Since you visited us four winters ago, they sent two Protestant ministers and two schoolmasters,60 the latter to make our children Protestants. Well, what have we done, we whom they call Slaves? By our indifference and disdain we forced them to leave. You weren’t there; they had a wide-open field. Well, they were not able to get around a single one of us. They took three children from us by force. Your present servant, Klele, was one of them; they had claimed him because he is the natural son of one of their bourgeois, Mr. Brisebois. So, ask him a bit how it went in their Protestant school? Instead of profiting from it, they became naughty. They learned things that we are unaware of in the woods. The children left them, and today all is finished in their camp while you have won over everybody simply by being here. The moment we learned of your coming, our heart sang and danced. We vie with one another to receive you and keep you in our house. You see, there is not the least danger that the Protestants would ever turn our heads. This harangue did me good. It was a great consolation for me because it showed me how efficacious God’s grace had been on these souls formerly so abandoned. It was for me a necessary and legitimate compensation for the fatigues, the sufferings, and the isolation that the evangelization of this handful of so-called savages had cost me. I thanked God for it from the bottom of my heart, begging him not to let me be inadequate for the task with which he had deigned to honour me. At the end of this Last Steppe, the Slaveys lived amidst an abundance of dry wood and fresh water from the lakes, close to the caribou and the sun’s warm rays.

60 [See T.C.B. Boon, The Anglican Church from the Bay to the Rockies (Toronto: Ryerson, 1962), 204-9.]

300

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Nothing worried them; nothing could disturb their peace. Two young people com¬ ing from Lake Tpou-kone, who showed up on my second day in camp, informed them that the caribou were massing south and that they were probably leaving us, for not a single herd seemed to be moving back north. So they came to invite this camp to join them. But my converts did nothing, and the two Etcha-Ottine returned the way they had come. However, it would have taken very little to upset the tranquillity of these honest people who had no enemies and no reason to reproach themselves. One day, I had visible proof of this when I saw my host enter his home with a scared look, crying in that apathetic, plaintive, and sluggish tone that characterizes the Slaveys: “Se dejyekhe! By my ancestors! how bad children are becoming in our day! Who has ever seen gentle and good children playing at war games with wooden knives, pretending to cut caribou throats, shooting guns made from poles, imitating the wounded and the dead? Who ever saw that among us? Well, that is what I just saw with my own eyes. My heart is beating with emotion; I’m appalled. I am covered with goosebumps. What demon has inspired our children with such criminal games? What great misfortune does this foretell for our nation in the near future? When a child plays with death, does he not call it down on his own head? It is possible among the Whites that the children play among themselves this way, but I call to witness my whole family that never, but never have we seen children defy death and invite it by such games. May Ettsoun61 not have seen or heard them! May he, if he did hear them, not give in to their ignorant wishes!” After this tirade, Zouze-tcho sat down, or rather sank down, giving signs of the greatest nervous overexcitement. I had to counter this prediction that the poor man had seen in a children’s game by doing my best to excuse the little ones. But I was very careful not to say to him that the favourite games of civilized children are to pretend hunt, war, or cops and robbers, tor I would have finished him off by having him believe that Whites are wretches and that their children are depraved from birth. Ah! So, what could one expect from such people? What subjects of childish scandal would the poor Dene encounter in our homes? Some ot the Indians ot this camp asked me what they could think of a new nation of white-skinned men that Tele asserted were in possession of Alaska and who might soon, he said, invade the Mackenzie to massacre all of the Dene. The picture that the young Fort Norman Orkney men had given them of the Yankees or People of the Long Knives, Bie-tcho-Gottine, was more than exaggerated: with three-inch long beaver teeth, the jaw of a tiger, a beard like a male caribou, and big round eyes on the top of theii heads. I he poor Indians added in a low voice with an air of mystery and concern that made me break out laughing, that the previous autumn large boxes full

61 Angel or genie of the dead.

It is sometimes taken for death itself.

Travels and Hunts in the Steppes

301

ot long knives, revolvers, and Bowie knives had arrived for these monster-men who intended to perpetrate their work of extermination soon.62 If these incredible stories were little Mr. Nick’s trick to tie the Bear Lake Danites even more to his own person by exploiting their childlike simple-mindedness through terror and by inspiring a great fear for the new rivals of the Hudson’s Bay Company, it must be said that he had little common sense for sooner or later the lies would be discovered and the injustices paid back. I thought then that it could only have been a joke by his workers. Needless to assure my readers that I undeceived the poor Slaveys by assuring them that they would never see the Americans in the Mackenzie as long as the Honourable Company stayed there, and that even if they did become the masters some day, it was not very probable that the Dene would lose by it, that in any case, we French priests would never abandon them, and that we knew well how to advise and protect them. However, nobody should believe that all Dene were as free of malice as Zouze-tcho and the taint-hearted ones I had just reassured. That same day, after my meal, I visit¬ ed another Slavey named Betso-bie-kkpa-enli, surnamed by the Whites Carillon-tpa or Father Carillon, who put my patience and my moderation to a hard test. This man had been suddenly struck by epilepsy the previous summer and no one could identify its cause. Since that time, he had had so many seizures and was so affected by it that people were afraid he had lost his reason. I did my best to console him, forgave his sins, and gave him the medicine I had, although I could not count on its effectiveness, when my attention was drawn to moans that came from the walls of the sick man’s lodge. I raised my head and what did I see? A poor child of six to eight months stuffed entirely nude and without any thought about cleanliness into a skin sack filled with caribou fur and hung from the tent poles. I found out, and people told me, that the unhappy baby, fruit of an illegitimate affair between the Dogrib Tatsiezele and Carillon-tpa s sister, had just lost his mother a few days before my arrival and that his barbarous father had disowned him. The infant was doomed to death by neglect. Someone had hung from his neck a piece of caribou fat attached to a thread, and the little one sucked day and night on this bit of lard to stave off his hunger. The people there had sufficient hardness of heart to watch without pity the painful contractions of its little face, aged with hunger, lined, wrinkled by the cruel and slow agony that was depriving him bit by bit of all his flesh. This little moving skeleton presented something appalling to see. The frightening expression of despair that one could read in the haggard and burn¬ ing eyes of this little motherless and unloved infant pierced my heart. It revealed to me one of the sombre and terrible sides of savagery: the indifference towards the

62 [For an account of the impact of the American purchase of Alaska on the fur trade of the Mackenzie Basin, see Petitot’s 1870 trip up the Peel River, across the watershed and down the upper portions of the Yukon River, Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire, ch. xi—13.]

302

Exploration of the Great Bear Region

misfortunes of others, the self-centredness regarding unfortunates, orphans, and the dying. Ah! How necessary is more religion to change even the gentlest of infidels into Christians! But Carillon-tpa was no longer an unbeliever. He was a Christian. I begged him to send the infant with a wet nurse to my place, assuring him that I would have him taken to the orphanage at Providence where he would be raised free of charge.'13 I even promised him payment if he would do this. He answered me that, if I wanted to take the child myself on my back and feed it as far as Fort Norman, he would will¬ ingly agree because the child was condemned to death, but no one would ever want to carry it so far since a little child was not worth the trouble. Deprived of his mother, disowned by his father, it would be better for him to die. He finished by asking me for a piece of meat for the poor orphan who was getting no care and, moreover, was incapable of eating meat. This cruel answer from that gutless beggar, whose tent was stuffed with supplies and who on his two knees had asked God to cure him while he left his own sister’s child to die of starvation, filled me with such indignation that, afraid of exceeding the boundaries of moderation, I brusquely left his place without saying another word to him. The miserable man had just asserted there was no law obliging him to feed his nephew, not even to prevent him from dying of hunger! I then called the whole camp together and revealing publicly what had just happened in the lodge of the epileptic, I called on mothers with families to agree among themselves to take turns breast-feeding this poor infant in order to save his life. Further, I made it a matter of conscience for them to bring him to me, after which I could send him to the Sisters of Charity. They promised all this, but on my return I waited vainly for the arrival of the child. A little while later I learned with sorrow that the unfortunate little martyr had in the end been buried alive by his own father, the man who killed sixty caribou a day! Such crimes upset a priest. They shake his courage. They make him doubt the good faith of his newly converted flock. I know well that more than half of the Indians of this camp were still infidel, that the child’s father was still a shaman and an incurable free thinker, that another Dogrib lived ostentatiously and under my nose with three women, always dismissing the oldest and replacing her with one younger than the other two. But the Christian men and women! Why do they not show the same courage that makes them face up to Tele and his Protestant employ¬ ees? In any case, infanticides carried out with such barbarity and cruelty explain the rapid and continuous extinction of the American Indian. When parents are sufficiently perverted to assassinate the fruit of their loins coldly, they lose the right to murmur against the Ford. He gives their life over to the angel of death. That is

63 [This orphanage had been opened in 1867 by the Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns).]

A Tenderfoot Trip

303

what Zouze tcho ought to have deplored, instead of being shocked by an innocent children’s game. The next evening, the savages told me that they wanted to honour my visit with a great dance and a public feast. They begged me to say whether I would accept the one and the other and to preside at their entertainments. Knowing that the Danite dances do not offer any danger to good morals, when people do not give themselves over to excess and a lack of restraint, I acceded paternally to their wish, and the dance began on Sunday night after dinner, around a great outdoor fire, in 350 Celsius below zero. You have to be brave to dance in that temperature, admit it, but you have to believe it was more folly than bravery that got their legs in motion. After singing all their tunes and dancing to them in the same rhythm, which consists of only a single formation, a circular procession, my Slaveys performed all the Dogrib tunes, then all those of the Hareskins, and even those of the Loucheux. It is this that makes their dances boring in the extreme, because they are always the same among all the tribes of the Danite race since they imitate everything by everyone. However, for the first time I saw the bird dance. They endlessly repeat the follow¬ ing words: “Ey! ey! ey! ayitili! ayitili!Ey! ey! ey!sekke koyin! sekke koyin!” It resembled much more a bourree64 danced by bears than the hopping of birds, but no matter, take it for what it is. One person who did not want to hear tell of it was Yettanetel, the man who had let Nitajye kill his little brother-in-law. As a serious catechumen, he came to me to whisper devoutly in my ear with the air of a man who was scandalized because this bird song and dance had a very evil magic character that belonged in the repertoire of the shamans. He begged me then to make them stop at once. It is so true the imagi¬ nation can change into evil the least offensive and most inconsequential of actions. I laughed in Yettanetel’s face and answered that I saw nothing worse in this simple tune than all that had been bawled into my ears since the beginning of the festival. I hoped that after having hopped in a circle for a couple of hours, threshing their grain in the air—an exercise that would be very much appreciated and very enter¬ taining at Bicetre or Charenton65—my converts would have had enough of this vir¬ tuous and heroic amusement and that they would be eager to go to bed. But nothing of the kind. I saw that at the end of the Last Steppe of Great Bear Lake, as at the Paris Opera, it is easier to get the dancers in action than to stop their legs when they have begun. However monotonous and macabre the musical tunes that they screeched at me in unison, however supremely boring their monotone quavers seemed to me, my

64 [A lively French dance.) 65 [Bicetre and Charenton-le-Pont, now suburbs southeast of Paris, where grain was probably threshed by trampling it underfoot, hence Petitot’s comparison of those threshers to the shuffle of this Indian dance.]

304

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

dear Danite Slaveys got such great artistic delight from it that I did not have the heart to interrupt an amusement so innocent and one so well designed to extinguish the fires of lust forever. It was a sorry sight—I dare not say it was laughable—this spectacle of a small pro¬ cession of human folly, of the old people, of grandmothers with their heads pouring with sweat, their grey hairs turned white with hoarfrost and ice, stiffened by the cold, fluttering foolishly as they threw to the echos of the wilderness the almost endless and repetitive vocalizations of their naive musical score. I soon had enough of the ball given in my honour and of the fusillades the youths fired over my head. I went to bed, lulled by the complaint, “sekke koyin! sekke koyin! the fog is on me! the fog is on me!”

1 spent ten whole days in this camp where my servant, the French-Dogrib Metis Paul Klele Brisebois, had his maternal uncle, Yakkpay, or Muskox. Returning home accompanied by this young man who had been raised in the woods as a real savage, I was again obliged to run in front of my sled dogs until we reached Keith Arm because my guide would lose his way. However unlikely this assertion may seem, repeated so often in my stories, I guarantee its authenticity. A multitude of similar occurrences have convinced me that a European’s head is better than a savage’s, even in the set¬ ting where the latter was born and grew up. Without my presence of mind and my intervention in the present situation, Klele would have been well and truly wander¬ ing on Great Bear Lake, his own country, in any average windy snowstorm from the East, and no doubt have met his death less than two leagues from my little house!

CHAPTER V Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

Departure for McVicar Arm—Nni’nkon—Shot Point—Weyie-zatla Cave and the Big Worm that Swims

Bear Mountain and McVicar Arm—A Divorce among

the Wolves—Meeting Two Dogrib Lodges—Mosquito Mountain—Horde of the Fur People—A Great Black Bear—Much Ado about Nothing—The Horde on the March

I Am Elected Chief-—Snowshoe Taboo—Difficulties in Obtaining My

Return—I Return Alone—Nni’nkons Docility—Sufferings of a Traveller in the Spring—Ice Boulders—Beautiful Light Phenomena

Before I left them, the Indians I was visiting at Sandy Shore advised me that when spring approached, they would move to the eastern shore—towards McVicar Arm— which I had not yet visited. 1 hey begged me to go to see them in that region, which I promised I would. Having released Klele until the summer, in April I had taken into my service a nineteen-year-old Slavey called Nni’nkon, Dry Moss, who had made a condition of his employment that I would go with him to his parents who were hunt¬ ing around McVicar Arm and that I should stay with him until the thaw to allow him an opportunity to hunt beaver and black bear to get pelts.66 This wish so nicely served my evangelical projects and my curiosity to explore an unknown country that I could not keep myself from profiting immediately by agreeing. We left my residence at Ste Therese on 5 April 1868 after midnight in calm weather, the moon red-gold and a very moderate cold, minus 250 Celsius. A few days earlier, a large band of Indians who were hunting on Great Bear mountain-peninsula had arrived at Fort Norman with a long caravan of loaded sleds. So, they had prepared a magnificent trail where we could run at our ease without snowshoes and without having to guide our sled dogs. Once on this track, they followed it enthusiastically and we, Nni’nkon and I, had nought to do but to follow the sled on foot while occa¬ sionally taking turns to rest on it. I had only enough supplies for four days. From Big Hare Point, where my house and Fort Norman were built, Great Bear Mountain [Grizzly Bear Mountain] and Mosquito Mountain [Mosquito Berry Hill] are below the visual horizon, even though these high points have an altitude of from

66

Faire du pelu or to make pelts is a French-Canadian expression from the Northwest that means to

work at getting furs, to work, and also to earn money, the pelu or adult beaver pelt being the monetary unit of the country.

305

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

306

800 to 1,000 English feet above the lake.67 Only a mirage makes them sometimes visible, showing their shapes in outline. Moreover, the name of mountains given in the region is quite incorrect. They are elevated lands, vast plateaus covered with forests and lakes, and from the Great Bear Lake side, they show a section like that of a precipitous cliff but which would be perfectly arable in other latitudes and under a more forgiving sky. At the beginning of spring, the snow is so hardened by the daily thaw and the nightly freezing that one can travel on it as if it were one of our departmental roads. Your foot leaves hardly a trace. With my sled gliding rapidly on this crusted and reflecting snow as if it were ice, I quickly reached open country where I encoun¬ tered glare ice, that is to say, ice without any snow cover. At nine in the morning we touched land on the southern shore of Keith Arm at a place called Kfwe-wae-ehta or Shot Point because of the large quantity of small lead shot used there each springtime in the waterfowl hunt. The hunt takes place there, because thawing affects that area much earlier than elsewhere around the great lake. I had breakfast on the point. In winter I would have bivouacked here because nine hours on the trail at that season makes a good day’s travel. In spring, it was only a half-day trip and we started off again, heading for the eastern point of Mosquito Mountain. A little while after we took to the lake again, a long fissure formed on our route. It began at the shore and went snaking towards the open area. We crossed it this time without difficulty, but it would not be the same on our return trip. I measured the ice of the bay there. It was nine feet thick, and Nni’nkon assured me that when it got very cold it reached twelve feet. It is a fact that the waters of Great Bear Lake are so cold it is impossible to bathe there, even in summer, except in certain little shallow sandy creeks that are exposed to the sun all day. At four o’clock in the evening, after fifteen hours of running at a gymnastic pace, which makes at least twenty leagues, I arrived at the base of Mosquito Mountain or Kkwi-tchi. Franklin’s map puts this point at only forty-five miles or sixty-five kilometres from Fort Norman, which makes only sixteen French leagues, and I have kept to this official distance. But it is impossible that we had made no more than a league an hour when we were running, in spite of our detour towards Kfwe-wae-ehta.68 Mosquito Mountain, to judge by the cliff that it presents to the lake on its western

67 [Mosquito Berry Hill is more than three hundred metres high and Grizzly Bear Mountain is seven hundred metres at its highest point, respectively 80 and 130 kilometres distant in a straight line east from Fort Norman.]

68

Ehta, promontory, cape, point ofland, called esta in old Chipewyan, and sta in Sanskrit, from the

root sta which marks the stations. From this the Latin has stare and its derivatives. In Dene too, ehta, cape, is the root for the verb to sit, reside; present esta, past shita, future wasta. Compare ehta, cape, with ita, elevated land, mountain, in Tupi [Brazilian tribe]; kata, in Quiche [Guatemala tribe]; taq, in Akkadian (Assyrian); tas, in Koi'bale (Siberia); tass, in Yakut; tash, in Turkish; ta'is, in Korassian.

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

307

shores, has a limestone base formed of great, thick stratified layers on which lies a bed ot earth rich in humus. It ends one hundred metres from the lake in a promon¬ tory onto which there opens a shallow cave whose wide entrance has an imposing appearance, cluttered with blocks detached from the vault and now forming a myste1 ious labyi inth. This hollow is only fifty feet deep. It could be very easily transformed into a habitable dwelling. Below and above the rocks, some green spruce give a rustic and charming appearance to this wild cranny. At the entrance to this crevice in the rock, I saw a quantity of strange objects that were placed or hung as votive offerings to the genie or manitou of the place. Indian superstition had placed tobacco, cloths, old ribbons, broken tobacco pipes, damaged gewgaws, and unserviceable arrows there. If the actions were inspired by fear, still, they were hardly generous. While they wanted to win the divinity’s favour, there was also the intention to do it on the cheap. Nni’nkon assured me, however, that the Dene are convinced that any of them who passes by this cave and does not leave an offering is sure to die within a year. But I did not see him make any gift to the genie of this place. Could not one explain by a similar practice the similar findings that have been made in Europe in some caverns that are supposed to have served as dwellings or graveyards in prehistoric times? Is it certain that these objects prove without a doubt that the people to whom they belonged were cave dwellers? Could they not have the same votive and superstitious purpose? The soil of Mount Kkwi-tchi’s cave, as well as the beach there that goes down in a gentle slope towards the lake, are formed of a quartz sand so fine and so pure that one can conclude that this den was washed by the lake’s waters perhaps in a not-toodistant epoch. Although the sun was still high in the sky, I decided to take advantage of the beauty of this site and to camp there. I went into the cave and announced to my guide that it was my intention to set up my bivouac there for the night. The Indian did not want to agree, informing me that none of his people had ever had enough courage or even enough boldness to defy the manitou who haunts the cavern by spending a night there and, as for him, he would not sleep there because he still valued his life. So as not to upset him I went to bivouac in the midst of the fir trees surrounding the promontory base. Nni’nkon did not fail to point out that one could not find there any trace of an Indian encampment and, without my company, he would certainly not spend the night in such a fearsome neighbourhood. My holy influence would assuredly preserve him from all mischief. To camp in this place, he added, was a feat for which he would not fail to gain glory among his family. Well, the poor boy went on to die that same year of galloping consumption, contracted in the difficult work on the barges of the Hudson’s Bay Company; and this death served only to convince the timid Dene of Bear Lake of the hostile and deadly power of the Weyie-zatla cave. Nni’nkon had passed by it without leaving an offering. He had defied the genie of the cavern by sleeping in his domain. Was it such a surprise that this spirit took its

308

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

revenge and had taken his life? And it is thus that chance circumstances too often confirm the sophisms of superstition. Weyie-zatla means: His Inside Is Gone. “And what became of this one who came out of the grotto? ” I asked Nni nkon. He turned towards the lake, and showing me a limestone rock sticking out of the lake about two gunshots distant from the den, he told me: “ There! It is the Great Swimming Worm. Gou-tcho-taembe.” I noted then that this islet had the shape of a slug that was moving with its antennae sticking out. Nature could not better play on the credulity of the Indians. On the 6th at midnight, we rejoined our broad trail before breakfasting. Then, leaving to our right Kfwe-tpon-dintti, the Harbour That Stretches Between the Mountains, as well as Reindeer Noose Point, Ekfwen-mi-ehta, we headed towards Bear Mountain, Sa-tcho-jyoue [Grizzly Bear Mountain], where a very short portage would lead me to the end of McVicar Arm, so my guide told me. At ten o’clock in the morning, after ten hours’ walking, I arrived on the edge of the bay after crossing the isthmus that separates it from the great lake between the points Yellow Moss, Nni-rehfwo, and Bear Meat, Sa-tcho-kfwen. At once we went on shore to eat. Our stomachs badly needed it. Great Bear Mountain, limestone like the other heights of Keith and Smith Arms, is composed of a succession of superimposed layers that conceal many small lakes stocked with beavers. It is well wooded and forms a large peninsula thirty-one kilo¬ metres long by ten at its widest. Its shape rather resembles Corsica. This peninsula separates Keith Arm from McVicar Arm, but in such a way as to cut off and enclose the latter bay so well that it is only joined to the great lake by a short narrows. The Indians also consider McVicar Arm as a different lake from Great Bear Lake, and they call it Tpou-ttsen-neha-tpoue, Lake that Goes Towards the Lake. Nonetheless, it is really the same lake. Great Bear Mountain gives rise to three little rivers, of which two are tributaries of Keith Arm and one of McVicar Arm.69 While crossing the isthmus I obtained a beautiful view of the two Arms. While the first, like the sea, un¬ rolled immense horizons that the eye could not fathom, the second only offered me a breadth of three to five leagues which proved to be a narrowing neck strewn with islets even to the place where the portage goes down to the lake. When Franklin wintered at Great Bear Lake, he set up a fishery in McVicar Arm on the south shore next to little Bluefish Lake, Tsettine tpoue, Back’s little cod. We reached this lake just before nightfall without seeing any traces of a camp nor even of the recent passing of the Indians. But the thaw, very early in these regions sheltered by mountains, had been able to wipe out their trail, and this was what we learned

69 [Modern topographical maps show three streams emptying into Keith Arm, four emptying into McVicar Arm, and one, a small one, flowing northeast into the main body of Great Bear Lake. The meas¬ urements of the peninsula itself are approximately seventy kilometres by forty.)

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

309

afteiwards. So, we retraced our steps as far as the portage across the isthmus where I established my second encampment in order to be ready to leave again early on the third day to make up for lost time. McVicar Arm receives three streams on its south shore:?0 first, Tpoue-tchile-die, at its eastern extremity, comes out of a lake71 of the same name which is situated beyond Ewi Mountain (it appears on Richardson s map);72 second, Wedzi-mmi or Reindeer River, towards its western end; and finally third, Tpoue-niline or River of Lakes [Johnny Hoe River], at the very bottom of the Arm in the west. It is this watercourse that Franklin mentioned on his map of 1825, drawn by Mr. Kendall, although he gave no bearings for it and added the following note: “It is said that a little river which falls into McVicar Arm at this spot connects by a chain of small lakes with Lac la Martre and Great Slave Lake.”7? This watercourse is as paradoxical as Richardson’s Hareskin River because it has two exits; and I well recognize it in this learned doctor’s work, for he was the only one who went to McVicar Arm and who could have reported such eccentric information. Well, Richardson did not understand the Indians. No doubt they had said to him that one can reach Lac la Martre and Great Slave Lake by way of the Tpoue-niline or River of Lakes, which is true. But that it connects these three lakes one to the other is entirely false. The fact is that Tpoue-niline is very short and comes from the large lake Kotchatpoue [Shelter Lake or Lac Ste Therese] of which I will speak later. It crosses this lake which receives its waters from a still longer lake named Nounkfwe-djighe-tpoue or Anglerfish, and which I named for Baron Mackau.74 This lake, therefore, is the source, and it is separated from Lac la Martre7? or rather Excrement Lake, Tsan-tpie tributary waters by the Chiw-kolla chain of mountains or hills [Barrier Mountain range]. There is no communication at all between these waters which flow in opposite directions, the one towards Great Bear Lake and the other towards Great Slave Lake passing through Lac la Martre. But I repeat that these two arteries are nevertheless an excellent communication route for travellers between these two great lakes, and they are not marked on maps made before my voyages. They have since been added. As for Tpoue-tchile-die, the only southern watercourse marked on the old maps of these lands, Richardson is the only geographer who

70 [Modern maps show twelve rivers of varying sizes emptying into McVicar Arm along its south shore.] 71 [This may be Ortona Lake which lies at an altitude of six hundred metres.] 72 Arctic Searching Expedition (London, 1850).

73 Narrative of a Second Expedition

to the Polar Sea (London, 1828).

74 [Ange-Rene Armand, Baron de Mackau (1788-1855), educational reformer concerned with the condi¬ tion of slave and free Blacks in the French colonies.] 75 [Perhaps originally “marde,” a variant French-Canadian pronunciation of “merde.”]

3io

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

has placed it in its true location. But he is in error when he puts Lac la Martre on the same meridian as this watercourse. This lake is situated much more to. the west and transversely from west to east. Our geographer Brue/6 has copied Richardson, but Arrowsmith is at fault in placing this tributary of McVicar Arm right at Richardson’s fishery. Having cleared up this point of geography, I now return to the narration of the voyage. On 7 April I came back to Keith Arm where I had the pleasure of contemplat¬ ing the magnificent spectacle provided for me by the rising sun over the horizon of this immense lake. When its fiery disk reflected on the frozen surface of this fresh¬ water Mediterranean, one would have said it was like a polished golden wheel rolling on an immense pathway paved with Paros marble.77 To my right stretched Big Dog Cape and Ehta-raley Point, while the fairylands of a mirage brought us closer to the distant shores of McTavish Arm bathed in the fire of the rising sun. Nni’nkon took us through the Kfwe-tpon-dintti pass which has the shape of a tight arch. An extreme heat prevailed there, caused by the reflection from the rocky Kkwi-tchi cliffs. If all other comparisons between Bear Lake’s wild coastline and the Mediterranean’s smil¬ ing and flowered shores are put aside, the climate of these wooded shores and this sandy and sun-drenched cove reminded me of the Menton coast below Simplon’s high rocks. To underline their difference, the first things we saw on entering this natural pass were two large white wolves on our trail who played out a comedy. The wolf is a cow¬ ard by nature but it is dangerous when it is starving or in rut. I had not brought my gun this time, and Nni’nkon’s gun was with his parents, in the camp we were look¬ ing for. We continued to advance, however, without any fear, hoping that the sight of us alone would force the monsters to flee, which is what almost always happens. No ferocious beast attacks people first in broad daylight unless it is starving or mad. Lor about a hundred paces, the wolves walked side by side without hurrying. Then, as we followed them a little too closely, the male left the trail and moved over to the right, howling to his partner to convince her to follow him. “Ah! That is a bad sign,” Nni’nkon said to me. “When a wolf howls it is because he is hungry and is getting ready to attack.” “Or rather it is because he invites his female to go with him,” I answered. “And I believe that is the case here.” In fact, the she-wolf had angled to the left towards the Bear Mountain portage and stuck to her separate way while Mr. Wolf, moving towards Mosquito Mountain, uttered sounds of distress that would have shredded your soul. Prom time to time

76 [See above in this volume, ch. 1, n. 1.] 77 [Paros Island in the Aegean Cyclades, source of translucent white marble since the sixth century B.C.]

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

311

he stopped, sat down, turned around, and called again to the faithless one who was nimbly escaping without any regret for the charms and the despair of her lover. This divoice ot the wolves put us in a good mood because it showed us that our involun¬ tary inteiterence had settled a household s affairs where, evidently, the parties were not in accord. Until the evening ot this third day we walked through woods following another trail whose fork we had encountered at the edge of the lake. At seven o’clock, we reached beautiful Lake Kotcha-tpoue or Shelter Lake, at whose edge we sawtwo lodges, solitary and silent as the grave. A thin thread of blue smoke was rising, indicating the atmospheric heat as well as the presence of people inside. We entered. There were only women, who received us with hospitality and good grace, but they did not give us anything to eat because they had nothing themselves. Their husbands had been away hunting since the day before. The husbands were two Ttse-ottine Dogribs: their chief, Wetta, called Jim Board, and Yakkpay7® or Muskox, Klele’s uncle. I spent the night in the tent of this latter Indian whom I had baptized the previous year along with his entire family. The two hunters returned very late, worn out and empty-handed. They announced that there was not a single game animal for several leagues around and that they were going to break camp as fast as possible the next morning to go hunt beaver on Bear Mountain. Their stomachs had been empty for two days and they went to bed without eating. The Indian stays up nights or takes pleasure in conversation only when he can enjoy the leisure of the hearth by playing and feasting. Since our hosts had nothing to offer us nor to receive from us, everyone hurried to say their prayers and roll up in their blankets, feet to the fire, in order to fight hunger by sleep. I gave to beautiful Lake Kotcha-tpoue the name of Ste Therese in honour of my dear mother. The whole lake system that the little River of Lakes crosses and drains is not more than twenty-five French leagues in length from south to north, starting from the southernmost end of Loche Lake. As for the little river Wedzi-mmi79 it is only twenty-five kilometres long. Lac Ste Therese measures ten leagues long by three

78 Compare yakkpay, muskox, (literally, “the fat one,” from ekkpa, fat, lard) with the Finnish harkka, ox; the Livonian erga, beef; the Finnish herkke, beef; the Dane beaver, akke, bison; the Vote erkke, beef; Dindjie akki, muskox; the Doune of the Mountains yekki, beef, bison; and finally Hungarian okkur, beef. I borrow several of these comparative themes from the Bulletin de la Societe Philologique, of which I have the honour to be a member.

79 Mmi, rnmie, wide water, stagnant or flowing slowly. This monosyllable, which is Dogrib and Hareskin, is very frequent in other idioms. Compare with the Egyptian mi; Sioux mi; Ingalik mi-oukout; Koyoukou mm-oukout; Hebrew mim; Sioux again mine; Japanese mir and mys; Chukash mik; Kenai'dze mitni. With the vowels a, e, o, ou, the correlatives of this Dene root are again more numerous. I will cite only the following, which all have the same meaning: Mayan ma; Latin mar, extended water; Hebrew maim; Eskimo imar, imer, imor; Gallic mer; Mayan and Siberian me; Egyptian ma; Breton mor; Orochys, Syrian, and Tongan mou; Eskimo mouk; etc.

312

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

wide. Loche Lake, a little less wide, is not less than fifteen or sixteen leagues in length. I regretted that I could not get there. Our savages were completely ignorant of the whereabouts of the great horde ot Indians I was looking for. They denied that they had come into this region this win¬ ter already, but they did tell us that some days earlier two young people that I knew, Ehi-denye and Nni-kpachie, had come to see them and said that the people were camped at the summit of Kkwi-tchi [Mosquito Berry Hill] at that time, just as they had promised me during the winter. Wetta added that he seriously feared that, while we were searching for those Indians at his place at the base of McVicar Arm, they had moved closer to my mission because of the total lack of caribou. They would be ready if necessary to hunt beaver on Little Fish Mountain, on the northern side of Keith Arm. In that case, our trip had been completely useless and we would have to retrace our footsteps, Spanish-style, on an empty stomach. Considering that I still had enough provisions for a half-day’s march, after taking leave of our good hosts, I had Yakkpay put me on the trail of the two young men. The trail was completely wiped out by the thaw. We could not have found it by our¬ selves, but when we put our dogs on it, they did not lose it again. We ran all day on 8 April until four o’clock in the afternoon. Only then did we reach the summit of the Mosquito mountain-plateau where we took our frugal and meagre meal. Afterwards, we walked without sleeping, eating, or resting, until two o’clock in the morning of the 9th, before finding the hard, beaten-down trail and recent tracks of the Indians we were looking for. I was worn out and dying of hunger, but I had nothing left but tea. What to do? The crossing of the whole mountain by forced march from south to north took us eight hours. It could not have been less that eleven or twelve leagues wide. Moreover, it resembled all the other heights that border Great Bear Lake and the Mackenzie, being composed of several natural terraces, well wooded with red pines and larch, with a bit of spruce. These last trees are found more frequently on the plains at the foot of the mountain. Each of these superimposed levels contains a multitude of ponds and bogs where, Nni’nkon told me, the beaver teem. At last, at five o’clock in the morning of the same day, I reached the camp of my Dene, so eagerly and so zeal¬ ously sought. It was exactly in the wooded plain situated at the foot of the mountain on the north side. So, since my departure from Shot Point at five in the morning, I had made a perfect ellipse to arrive there, for that Point was not far from the camp which, consequently, was not more than nine or ten hours march from my place and Fort Norman. The incredible story of our useless trip, our marches and countermarches, our anx¬ iety and our long searches, aroused the pity of these good people who exclaimed once again about the deep affection I had for them. They also hastened to serve me the best they had, and the same for my native guide: dried powdered ground meat and raw but fresh caribou marrow. It is really an excellent meal, as tasty as it is healthy

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

3i3

and appetizing, but on one condition, namely that one has tea to wash it down and help in swallowing, without which the powder alone makes you cough and choke. Immediately after this frugal meal, my servant and I went to bed because we had run day and night for a full twenty-four hours. I had taken a place with the brother-inlaw ot this young man, Ttcha-bedeti, Miracle-worker, natural grandson of the old patriarch Beaulieu whose name he carried among the Whites. He was a young man ot twenty-two, with tanned skin and the very beautiful and strongly prominent fea¬ tures of a Hindu, with a large aquiline nose. At bottom, however, he was a somewhat indifferent Christian, very infatuated with his beauty and his Metis origin. On waking in the evening ot the same day, 9 April, I opened the religious exercises ot a little mission which I continued to preach to my converts on succeeding days until my departure. I perceived that among them they still pushed, even barbarically, the law of isolating sick [menstruating] women, for I saw a cabin of branches outside the camp containing no fewer than five of these poor sick persons, who were absolutely forbidden to cross the threshold to cut wood, or to look for water or food, for fear that they would pollute the roads by their contact and would pass illnesses and above all death onto the men. They displayed deep embarrassment when I was not afraid to visit them in their hut, to shake hands and chat with them, and also no more tearful of their periodic infirmities as I was scornful of the age-old prejudices that their husbands and children still believed. There were only Fur People or Ehta-tcho-Gottine in this camp. The Slaveys and the Dogribs were living on the Last Steppe or in its neighbourhood. They had had no news of them for more than a month. The next day, 10 [April], they debated the question of breaking camp. The chief Sa-kpa-netpa-tpa, Father of the Bear Hunter, not being with these Indians, they did what they wanted like Israel in the time of the Judges, or rather they could not make up their minds to do anything. The women, mistresses of the lodges and automatic rulers of the household as in all the countries of the world, complained that they had already stayed too long in the same place, that they must go too far in search of dead wood and carry it to the camp on their backs, that the nearby snow was too polluted with garbage and kitchen remains to provide decent water for the cooking pot, that the spruce [flooring] of the lodges was swarming with vermin and could not be cleaned any more, that their husbands and the older boys lounged and played hand games all day instead of hunting and work¬ ing. In brief, these ladies, eager for change, did not want to stay there and between them took an energetic resolve to move before it became too warm, for the thaw was making itself more and more felt in the woods. They did not even ask for their husbands’ approval, profiting from my presence to make themselves a little more the mistresses. Unfortunately, this good decision was not at all carried out. Evening came, and Ttcha-bedeti, my host, came back from the hunt with an enormous black bear that he had surprised while it slept in its den and had killed without firing a shot. The

314

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

flesh of the animal furnished us with excellent grilled meat. As the designated guest and spiritual Father of the tribe, I freely received a thick portion of fresh meat, as . well as several kilograms of pemmican made with bear lard. These tasks, the culi¬ nary preparations, the banquets that followed and the stories of the hunter s stories kept us in camp all day on the nth and part of the 12th. These days, I again had my share in meals with my hosts without anyone asking me to pay for it or even wanting to hear of me paying. What no one could give me for free was the bearskin because this was a pelt, that is to say a fur, a trade good. I wanted it to make a bed and I soon got it at the usual price, which is four beaver skins or ten francs’ worth of European goods. I gave it to a good old woman so that she could tan it, and later I brought it to my place. It resembled velour of the most beautiful black, and its dimensions were such, even though the animal’s head was missing—which I much regretted—that I could stretch out full length without reaching its very ends. It was the largest bear I had yet seen in the Northwest. On 13 April, the heat having become so extreme at the foot of the Kkwi-tchi Mountain, it became a contest as to who would first demand an immediate change of campsite. The women were no longer the only ones to protest; their husbands joined in and shouted louder than they. But when it came to breaking camp, every¬ one went deaf, went to his own lodge, and put forward a specious pretext for push¬ ing his neighbour to leave first. The reason was that a trail had to be opened for the tribe by means of snowshoes in melting and clinging snow that stuck and formed little stalagmites of ice on the shoes, making the feet bloody. It was a really thank¬ less job that everyone wanted to see done by someone else. Evening arrived and in each lodge everyone again asked who had left. By all accounts no one had wanted to take the lead so as to spare themselves the trouble and fatigue of making a road for the others. Everyone put the task on their neighbours, and by the next night everything was still waiting to be done. Then I heard murmurs rising from every tent: “So and so has no children. It is up to him to make the road. He should have to leave first.” “That one is young, strong, and still a boy. He really should have done it.” “I am quite annoyed,” answered another. “I have all of my old mother’s baggage to carry, as well as two or three little sisters to cart. You must go first.” “Me, I am too old for such a chore. I did it often enough in my younger days. Everyone has a turn.” “Me, I am lame, everyone knows that. You cannot pick me to leave first.” “And me I am all bent over with chronic pain. You should have pity on my sufferings.” “It is the same with me, my rheumatism slows me down. And then I cannot breathe when I am too hot.” “Me, I get migraine when I walk in cold water. You go first.”

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

3i5

“Me, I have too much meat to carry, I cannot go in front with the sleds so heavily loaded.” And me, I have too many children. If you were to take care of my brood, I would willingly make the path.” All of these comments were shouted from lodge to lodge, people reeling them off loudly, even at the top of their lungs, all at the same time, without even troubling to go outdoors. And nobody budged. Soon, objections and comments became complaints. Complaints became protests. Protests turned to heated discussions. Discussions be¬ came angry mutterings. Mutterings became fiery reproaches. Reproaches became bloody insults and hard words. Then it was a quarrel. A brawl or a battle royal was imminent. But when there was nothing more to do than to have a real set-to, and the whole camp was in an uproar—when the soup had reached the rim of the pot and was ready to boil over—all these good people regained their usual imperturbability. Calm was restored. All was quiet. And this led to a general and contagious snoring from after midnight until the next morning, ft was the 14th. That day the discussions began again even more vigorously, as in our Chamber of Deputies, but with no more success. O amiable Danites that I love with all my heart! Each one wanted to move camp, but no one wanted to work and everyone snubbed their neighbours. So, everyone was stuck. Their hands were tied, and they again sniped at one another. Finally, towards noontime, at the hottest time of the day and the least propitious for starting to travel by breaking a trail through the melting snow, after losing three and a half days in vain talk and useless discussions, "Lioutsetpa, Cheeky and Lanky, stood up. He was a Scottish-Hareskin Metis called Norqway as a patronymic, born in 1836 at Fort Confidence but raised in the bush by his Indian mother, and he had become an excellent Catholic. cLioutsetpa said in a pompous tone, “If we have not yet gone, are-khe, my friends, it is because the priest, our Father, has not set us an example. If our leader, our head, were here, he would walk as the leader; and we, his tail, his following, we would follow the trail that the head would have made. Lacking Sa-kpa-netpa-tpa, let the priest be the leader so that he can show us the trail. How does that seem to you?” And he sat down quite proud of his brilliant idea, which was acclaimed as a very remarkable political invention. That is it, That is it. We had not thought of that. Yes, the priest is the only chief here. There is no other but he. So, let him go ahead of us and we will quickly follow him.” They tried to get to me through my feelings, but they were mistaken. “You do not know what you have just said,” I shouted at them while laughing. “You remind me of a trapped mouse. ‘The more it tries to get out of a mess, the filthier it gets.’ You proclaim me chief. Well, so be it, I am a chief. But a white chief, not a red chief. And the white chiefs walk last in line and order their following to go ahead. So, since I am your chief, I say to Lanky, you will go first, my son. That

316

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

is my command to you. As for me, I will bring up the rear to protect the rear ot the caravan.” The assembly burst out laughing, and the orator, caught in his own net, had to comply. He did so without hesitation because he had just skewered himself and did not want to retract, but he was not without sour looks and sneers that he was far from accepting me as his chief, and that I was greatly mistaken if 1 thought that he was going to obey me. All the same, even while saying this, he obeyed me and I hastened to heap on his self-denial well-merited praise. Instead of putting myself at the cara¬ van’s tail, 1 set out along with Nni’nkon immediately after him. As soon as Lanky had started off, making a loud noise about the value of his self-sacrifices, the whole tribe resembled a population surprised by a fire. There was a genera) starting off. In the twinkle of an eye the tents were thrown on the ground and folded. Our little chickadees, the sled dogs, like old horses, were hitched to the sleds which had all been loaded for three days. The little children were thrown on the backs or necks of their mothers and everyone hurried to raise camp as if they were running from a fire. Then we snaked our way in the coniferous forest like a caterpillar procession, with our heads grilled by a burning sun and our legs numbed by the cold, melting snow: everything necessary to contract a large dose of pleurisy. Everyone was marvelling at the great self-sacrifice of cLioutsetpa when, suddenly, I saw the Metis stop, break two green fir branches, throw them on the snow, and let himself fall down with one of those palatal gasps of suffering common to the Danites and to the Chinese: “cHou! Ekoulla-edin, se e oudenweh! Ouf! Enough of that, I am dead tired!” He had gone about five hundred steps. Everyone knew that Norqway would not go any farther, for he had taken out his pipe and had started to smoke desperately. Then the outcry began again even louder, “The priest, the priest, the one we love, let him break the path for us. We have made him our chief.” “Ah! So, that is the way you think, my friends,” I shouted on my behalf. “By flat¬ tering me you want to make me your humble servant. But I hold my dignity a little higher. I walk second. That is good enough.” And I stayed motionless. Then my servant freed them from embarrassment by of¬ fering himself. Without me asking him, without his relatives begging him, Nni’nkon put his snowshoes on again and threw himself forward to the acclamations of the whole horde: “There! There is a man who loves us! There is a true chief!” I followed the “true chief” and we continued on our way. But I admit that I was disenchanted by so much selfishness. I would never have believed the Dene were so little dedicated to public service, so full of exclusiveness and, at the same time, so stripped of personal pride. Ah, certainly not! 1 would not be their leader for all the world. I noted that the thaw was advancing rapidly. In the shadow, in holes, in the nooks and crannies, the snow was black with little microscopic beetles that I had already seen at Great Slave Lake and that teem under the larch trees, the yakpate. They are the infallible sign of an imminent thaw, but I had never seen them at the Fort Good

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

317

Hope latitude nor farther north. At sunset, thanks to Nni’nkon’s sturdy legs, we had arrived at a sandy hillock called Fwa-Kfwe, like all those features of the steppes and the forest that are sandy by nature, and there we stopped to camp. I had duly oriented myself since our descent from the mountain where I had been able to see Bear Lake again, and 1 had judged that we were not more than two hours’ march from Keith Arm and halfway between Mosquito Mountain and Fort Norman. So as not to be bothered from morning till night by loud conversations, children crying, the hand game songs, and the harangues made on every topic, I wanted to be alone and set up a hut capable of being transformed into a chapel with my man’s help. I stayed there by myself like Moses. Nni’nkon made himself a little private camp be¬ side mine. It is not good for the priest to be too intimate with his flock. It is not good for Christians to be too familiar with their pastor. He loses his dignity and they lose the respect that they ought to have for their mentor and their father. I understood that Nni’nkon acted in the same manner just to maintain with his countrymen the prestige that came to him from his being the companion of the Praying Man, in order to be his Joshua. I stayed at Fwa-Kfwe until 30 April, taking on the religious instruction of my little herd and finding, apart from that, time was quite heavy on my hands where I was for the utter lack of books except for my breviary. But I had my journal with me and I kept it up regularly every day. In this camp, I performed twenty-six baptisms, four marriages, and nineteen first communions. I heard 200 confessions. I had hence¬ forth 212 practising Christians at Great Bear Lake—as many as twenty large villages in the neighbourhood of Paris could barely provide. This was a great consolation for me and I prayed to God that he would allow me to continue doing it for many long years. But I was certainly unworthy of it, for the civilized share that He has allotted to me since then is not worth a twentieth part from the religious point of view. During my stay in the Fwa-Kfwe camp, I would have liked my Slavey to go beaver hunting, either alone or with his parents, as he had asked me and as he seemed so much to want to do two weeks earlier. Or even, in place of hunting, that he zealously prepare himself to receive baptism since he was fundamentally Christian. But such is the sav¬ age that, when he lives with the priest or is in his immediate vicinity, he thinks he no longer had to be religious. Religion is practised when the priest is absent, but when he is present, he becomes the Indian’s religion, his safeguard, his fetish, his manitou, even his God. At least this is the way that I explain why and what led my servant to neglect religion in my presence. Because the priest prayed for him every day, Nni’nkon did not think any more about baptism. He was too afraid, he said, to stain his soul after receiving the sacrament. He would receive it later, when he married, to keep his heart completely pure for God and his wife. The unfortunate man did not know then that he would not see the end of that year; but his intentions were correct and excellent. As for the beaver hunt, Nni’nkon scarcely thought about it any more; was not the camp filled with meat?

318

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

“I have no hunting snowshoes,” he said to me. “How is that, no snowshoes? What about those you had when you came here with_me? “Those are caribou snowshoes. Impossible to hunt beaver with those things there. There is a ban, an anathema, a taboo, that forbids me. Gofwen gouniwen! It is swan snowshoes I need, tazinhe kohae” And he set to work making swan snowshoes, the kind that were used by all the hunters in the camp. The northern Dene use three pairs of snowshoes (ha) in the course of a year. This is still one of their slaveries to fastidious and ridiculous observances. But at least this one is not Hebraic like so many others that we respect and that I have enumerated in the course of my writings. In autumn, from the first wet and sticky snowfall (French snow), the Indian makes big hunting snowshoes, with tight webbing in a hexagonal weave like those of the rattan chairs called “caned” and which are of Hindu origin. In February-March, when the warm breaths rising from the labouring earth or com¬ ing down from the sun have given to the surface snow the consistency of a crust of hard and polished ice and to the snow underneath the shape and texture of coarse kitchen salt, the Dene abandons his first snowshoes and makes others that he calls “real snowshoes,” ha kowa, or even “caribou snowshoes,” ekfwen kohae. Their shape is identical to that of the first. The lacing alone is changed. It is composed of a very strong braid, square and spaced, so that the snow does not stick to the feet and form little ice pellets that hurt while walking. Finally, in April-May, when the snows melt and change into a thick and liquid gruel, the caribou walking gear (ha) are put aside and the hunter makes “swan snowshoes” that are quite small and that he will use until he sights the first flights of trumpeter swans. And do not think that the Dene saves these snowshoes from one year to the next. No. When the season has passed, the snowshoes are broken and their disentangled laces serve other purposes. This is not shortsightedness, but in this way he fulfills the ha gofwen or ritual of the snowshoes. As for hunting the caribou with autumn shoes or hunting beaver with caribou shoes, these are transgressions that would make the Indian a heretic to the customs of his ancestors. The Indian would not make himself guilty of such because he would have broken the whole rule of life in the wilderness, his own life, and consequently have exposed himself to be carried off before the time prescribed by destiny. Without this conformity to the gofwens or taboos, caribou, beaver, swans, and game birds would disappear forever. Such is his conviction and you cannot tear him away from it. Moreover, what good does it do to tease and upset him? You do not change people in one day. I was busy in the camp rounding up for myself three determined young men who would like to accompany me to the fierce Eskimos in the following month of June. Paul Klele, Strike-fire, had already given me his word. I was to meet him at the mouth of the Telini-Die [Great Bear River] on 10 June. Another young man I had just baptized, who was circumcised and a great observer of the forest rites, Edward

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

3i9

Nni-kpachie, Growing Moss, offered himself as the second man. I would very much have liked to have Nni nkon because he was big and strong, brave and hard-working, and above all gentle, obedient, and reasonable. But he had already given his word to Mr. Taylor that he would go to Portage La Loche as a sailor and porter and he could not go back on his promise. There is nothing which the Dene hold more dearly than their freely given word. But I did get this good servant to agree he would go down to the Mackenzie with me to direct and manage my two birchbark canoes. The unlucky man did not know then that his nineteen years could not support the enormous fatigues of such a trip, and that he would never again see his forests nor his steppes. Poor child, dead in the flower of his youth, without having known the sweets of mar¬ riage, even without having received baptismal grace! God’s plans are impenetrable. On 29 April three young men who, unknown to me, had gone to Fort Norman to carry some dry provisions there informed us on their return, with those great marks of astonishment and joy that these woodsmen show each year on contemplating nature’s resurrection after death and freezing during long months, that all the snow had melted on the lake and in the woods. One could no longer use snowshoes, and you would sink to your calves in the water from the melted snow. I was wrong to be alarmed at this news. I thought about my fresh meat, which would be buried under the water and then would rot, of the shortage of provisions that such an accident could plunge me into, about the impossible situation I would be in to try to cut up and smoke this meat if I did not start out as soon as possible, and I resolved to leave camp that night. I told my flock about my resolution. I begged Nni’nkon to get ready and I made up my own pack. But once more I perceived that when one is at the mercy of nomads, one is always far from being able to do things one’s own way without breaking away from them and becoming entirely independent. Otherwise their tyrannical mood as spoiled children takes over and tries to take mastery over you. Now, rightly or wrongly, I have never allowed my equal to put a foot on my neck whenever I could be my own master. So then, when Nni’nkon’s parents informed me that they needed my servant and they could not let me have him again, I resolved to forego his services: “No matter,” I said to them, “Kpoulou-kpoulou! I will leave alone. You know I am not acting like a child. When I do something, it is because I see it is necessary. I will leave a little after midnight because my return has become essential to me. I believe I have looked after you enough for the moment. We will see each other at my place a little later.” My declaration was received with bursts of laughter that put me in a bad mood. “Klo-gofwen adi, ikke la, nacetpa,” cried Etiri-Tcho, Great Monster. “He is a joker, our Father, he likes to joke. It would be impossible for him to find his way to the shore of Great Bear Lake alone, and he talks of going to Fort Norman alone? Ah! In truth he is a joker when he wants to make us laugh!” And he accompanied his tirade with teasing snickering. “Joker or not,” I answered him in a serious and even a bit annoyed way, “you are

320

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

going to see me leave tonight, and I will prove to you that I can make my own way across the woods as well as any one of you.” They did not know about the working of a compass, an instrument that never left me any more than my watch, my barometer, and my thermometer. Moreover, I was perfectly oriented, the position of the sun would be enough to point me the way, for already it was daylight all night long, and finally I had never panicked when lost. Going back to my lodgings I heard Great Monster say to his companions, “There is no need to trouble yourselves at all about what our Father has just stated. You can be sure he’ll find a way not to carry out his project. Can you believe a White feeling ca¬ pable of getting home from here all alone? These people are not People80 like us who can travel through the woods. And did he ask me for one of my three sons to guide him? But no, all alone! Can you believe that?” Lanky, the Hareskin Metis, answered him, “You are greatly mistaken, se guen, my brother-in law, if you think that our Father will back away from this difficulty. He’s not like the little Fort employees who cannot take four steps in the forest without getting lost. And he has a head as hard as iron. What he says he will do, he does. If he has said that he will leave, he will keep his word. The priests are not like us. We talk a lot and do nothing. Them, they do not say much, but whatever they plan they accomplish.” Late in the morning of 30 April, I gave my servant my sled and all of my baggage so he could bring them back to me later when the lake was free of ice. I took with me only a light string gamebag, tpe-mi, into which I slid two smoked ribs, a goblet, and my breviary. I added one of my covers and a small, well-sharpened axe. I put some tinder, some matches, a flint, steel, and birchbark into my smoke-bag, and I left with my compass in my pocket. I had calculated that, in less than two hours’ walk to the east, I had to reach the shore of Great Bear Lake. That was the difficult part. The rest was nothing, and I counted on being asleep that evening in my own house. My leaving threw my flock into a stupefaction that I cannot explain to myself. What is two hours walk in the woods? I ask you. They looked at one another without a word. Finally, Big Monster, hurt no doubt because I had passed over the assistance of his children, cried with a spiteful air, “Are-khe, my friends, I tell you truly our Father has lost his head.” I am going to show you, Great Monster, my beloved son,” I answered him laughingly, “that I have as much of it and more than you. If you doubt that I can get to the edge of the lake alone, then someone can follow me at a distance. You will see very well wheth¬ er you are dealing with an unbalanced or a sensible man.” With that, I left them. I was very quickly convinced that I had undertaken a hard task. Not only did one see nothing but puddles of water everywhere, cold as ice, but again the little snow that had not melted was hanging in the air on the grasses, the thickets, the impas-

80

Dene.

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

321

sible obstructions of this virgin forest, so that when 1 thought I had found in this snow a solid surface, a thick embankment where 1 would not be soaked, it collapsed in a heap and I sank right to my knees in the frigid water pools hidden from me. The snowshoes being now of no use to me and serving only to hamper walking, I had taken them off and carried them under my arm. But the worst was an intense cold that I soon felt in my feet and my legs because I was walking in ice water up to my calves, and I could not hope to warm myself by walking. Still, I did not hesitate a second to complete my trip. Since the Indians could put up with these discomforts and endure this suffering, why should I not be able to do so, myself? I did not want to show them I had less strength of endurance and stoicism in the face of pain. I understood then that the Dene, who knew all about these inconveniences of a springtime journey, had not insisted in order to delay me but because they wanted to give the meltwater time to flow to the lake and for the water that covered the lake to filter through the ice, leaving it solid and watertight. I also understood and only then that I had been stupid to act with haughtiness and conceit. I deplored my pre¬ sumptuousness when I felt in my freezing legs the consequence of that stubbornness of character that had kept me from giving in to the arguments offered by people who had more experience than I. But to turn back on my steps like a coward, to suffer the jibes and sneers of my converts by showing my weakness? Oh! Not on your life. Better to perish in the woods. That would have been to commit a greater folly than the first. That would have ruined my reputation as a sturdy traveller and a man of the North inured to misery. Misfortune is good for some things, I said to myself by way of con¬ solation. When you have tasted a little suffering, my son, you will more easily listen to your friends’ advice. And I continued to walk with great strides towards the east. I was sure, very sure, of the direction to keep and had no anxiety on that score. But I was too well-clothed not to sweat a lot under the extra clothing, and I puffed like an ox, burning with a fever from my head down to my belt, and shaking with cold from my belt down to the soles of my feet. It was just the thing to catch mortal pleurisy! But can anyone catch pleurisy, excess fluids in the chest, or bronchitis, in this extraordinary country and rigorous climate? I had never heard tell of it. So I did not even think of it. After walking three-quarters of an hour, I heard behind me: “Hum! hum! ” I turned around and who did I see? Nni’nkon. The good lad had followed me at a distance, his gun on his shoulder, a gamebag, and a cover, crosswise like mine, and was hurrying to join me. Without saying a word, without showing either joy or bad feelings, he passed me and took the lead. I followed him silently, too, and without asking for an explanation of his behaviour but not without rejoicing inside at seeing a travelling companion. For twenty minutes more he kept the same direction towards the east; then I perceived that he veered too far northward and I called to him, “You are going away from the lake. That will make the route longer.” “I know,” he answered while still walking. “Also is it not a disappointment to go

322

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

back so soon, across a country in such a bad condition because of the thaw when I counted on spending a good month in the beaver hunt with my parents?” “You were free, Nni’nkon,” I said gently. “Was I annoyed with you when I left you in the camp? It really is child’s play, is it not, to get from here to Fort Norman? Cold water is the only problem. Well, I am enduring it. Who can find fault with that? Did you notice that I had strayed from the direction I ought to follow?" He slowed down suddenly, stopped, put down his gun and pack, stuffed his black snakewood pipe, and started vigorously to smoke. Then he looked at me and smiled. “You are a Man,81 nevertheless,” he said to me. “I wanted to see if you were a Man. Well, you are a Man, Ekhoula Dene nenli onettiT “Which is to say? Ta adinti kopon?” “Well, yes, I knew that you would not be slow in realizing the blunder you had committed. Do not apologize. I know that you are suffering and your determination showed us that you do not have any experience in the woods during a thaw, although you are a brave traveller in winter. So I followed you at a distance, saying to myself: ‘Let him do it. If he is courageous, he’ll stick to his route in spite of the obstacles and the killing cold. Then I will go to him and help him.’ Is it not just as you told us how God watches over us? If he is only a weakling, he will retrace his steps, and then we will re¬ ally have fun at his expense. So, I followed you and here I am. Now that I know you are a Man, I am ready to follow you everywhere. Only, there are many beaver close to here. I thought that you would not object to a little hunt, and that is why I veered towards the north. What good is it to make swan snowshoes when I no longer need them?” This candid declaration again made me think even more highly of this good young man. I would gladly have kissed him if that were permitted by Dene protocol. But in the eyes of that people all kissing is a sort of offence. They scarcely kiss their wives, and again that is done in private. They never kiss their children after they have reached the age of five or six. So, I congratulated myself again for not having re¬ traced my steps to undo my big mistake. What is the use of admitting to an error that hurt no one except the one who made it? For someone to value the courage and the greatness of a soul that can make a humiliating confession—which moreover is only possible for a fundamentally Christian soul—they must have a balanced mind and a soul more greatly developed than is common. And Nni’nkon had demonstrated to me that my good converts still belonged to the common people. Let us admit at least that the Dene have two precious qualities: scorn for pain and the constancy to per¬ severe with their plans, no matter what difficulties they encounter when these plans are not blameworthy. These qualities do them great honour. At the end of an hour of painful walking, we arrived at a chain of little lakes dammed by beavers. Some of these lakes had been formed only by a dam that blocked the course

81 A Dene.

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

323

of a little river connecting them and so forcing the water to spread. I was quite aston¬ ished to see the beaver lodges, tsa-khin, with their entrances on these puny artificial lakes some tens of metres in diameter. We stepped onto a sandy, firm shore and re¬ lieved ourselves of our packs. Nni’nkon, shouldering his loaded gun, placed himself like a sentry beside the first breathing hole he saw to wait and shoot a beaver when it came up for air. We waited in silence for half an hour, Nni’nkon up to his calves in the soft snow and quite indifferent to the pain as if he had wooden legs. Me, I stamped my feet on the slope without succeeding in dispelling the numbness in my extremities, suffering from not being able to light a fire which might alarm the beavers. But instead of seeing one of these intelligent animals appear, it was a second hunter that we saw arrive to fire a shot and pull the rug from under poor Nni’nkon’s feet. Naturally, the beaver did not come out of the breathing hole. Alas! Jealousy achieves some things which neither common sense nor the love of hunting could accomplish. The false emulation that this vile feeling creates does not prevent it from disclosing the baseness of its plans or its evil intentions. Scarcely had we left the camp than those who had protested the mere thought of seeing me face the thaw were already afraid that Nni’nkon and I would get all the beaver around. The fact is that Ross, the Dogrib, a sad enough gentleman like all the Dogribs of Great Bear Lake with few exceptions, hurried to attack and demolish the beaver lodge that Nni’nkon had discovered as if it were the only one in the country and as if it be¬ longed to him. He purposefully made so much noise and disturbance that not a single beaver showed itself at the air-hole. My servant understood that the best thing to do was to give way to one stronger than himself, and we continued our route for Bear Lake. As for me, I was not angry about all this. My feet were so cold I could not keep still. Meanwhile, Nni-kpackie’s brother brought my sled along with his own load. I once more took over driving my dogs while Nni’nkon marked out the way for them to fol¬ low. At two in the afternoon, we reached the lake at Shot Point after having lost three hours in a fruitless hunt that only helped interlopers. The sun’s warm rays and a huge seashore fire restored my circulation completely. We dried out moccasins, socks, and trousers, dined on bearfat pemmican and clear water, and then we stretched out in the sun on the dry sand to wait for the nightly freeze. I woke up at eight o’clock in the evening, disturbed by palpitations, shivering, fever, and stiffness in my whole body. This was the natural result of the walk in the icewater, of my meal of fat washed down with cold water, and of the ill-advised rest that I had just taken on the beach sand. Shaking, I relit the fire. I warmed myself, put my very hot handkerchief folded in four onto my chest, placed some branches between my back and the sand, and went to bed again, this time wrapped in my blanket. I slept like a dormouse until after midnight. Then we left the bivouac to make the nine-hour walk that still separated us from my place. The return on the ice, covered with water by the thawing, was more painful for me than a long winter trip. I had not expected that. The continual cold in my feet

324

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

gave me colic and dysentery. The bear-fat pemmican made me faint and gave me an indigestion that would certainly have kept me from continuing my way if I had not had a sled in which I could rest from time to time, and dry meat to chew on to give me strength. Two hours after midnight, we were joined by a large Arctic wolf who followed in our footsteps but without attacking us. He followed us as if he had been a dog in search of some treats or wanting to show his devotion to his master. As we were advancing, more and more I could make out a bluish wall crossing Keith Arm. It mirrored shimmering mother-of-pearl and emerald reflections before our eyes. I thought it was a mirage of the Big Hare steppe on which my residence stood. Nni’nkon enlightened me. It was a long string of ice hummocks, lou-pha, which had formed since our passing by the breakup of the ice, followed later by a violent compression of its edges. As the edges of this immense fissure approached each other they smashed into each other and heaved up in imitation of a mountain. It formed a zigzag crest that took on the appearance in miniature of a mountain range. Steep slopes alternated with perpendicular or even overhanging cliffs which plunged sheer into the bottomless pit of the lake. This regularity was such that when we climbed a ridge, we arrived on the edge of an abyss and were looking into black depths. And if we tried to scale an escarpment, we had to skirt the pit at the risk of our lives without being able to find a way through. Two hours were thus spent in looking for a way, a pass, in these rocky ice ramparts. Our investigations were in vain, and I had already advised Nni’nkon to go along the crevasse as far as the shore so that we could get around it by land, but he did not want to do it. He took his axe, climbed one of the slopes and, reaching the summit, he started to cut steps in the angle of the escarpment that fell directly into the water. I followed his movements with an anxiety easy to understand. I was afraid that the block of ice would overbalance suddenly and drag him under the water. I feared his foot would slip and that he would fall into the pit where he would certainly be drowned because he did not know how to swim. And I, on top of the ice-rock, what would I be able to do to save him? Nothing. But he did it with rare good humour. Such travelling companions are priceless. Sinking his axe into the ice, Nni’nkon held on to it and withdrew it only after ensuring his foothold so that he could replant his tool lower down. This way he reached the other side of the fissure without difficulty and I followed him with more self-assurance than I believed I had, for I swear I fear the ice. Only people who have been accustomed to it since childhood can face it with impunity and conquer it with self-control. Moreover, several Indians from our camp who were eager to profit from our trail a few days later, when going to Fort Norman, were less adroit than we at this same passage. One of them, Ttcha-bedeti called Beaulieu, let himself fall heavily into the pit and owed his rescue entirely to his companions. From this crack to the Ste I herese mission, I witnessed three beautiful celestial phenomena that caught my attention and shortened the journey’s length. The first

Trip to McVicar Arm and to Mosquito Mountain

325

Keith Arm (east side) aurora borealis

was a mirage that showed Fort Norman’s walls and my own little house upside down in the air. The second was a very bright and colourful aurora borealis moving in the air. It had the shape of an immense ribbon superbly iridescent with yellow, green, and violet, which appeared together with the fiery rising sun from which it seemed to acquire a new brightness. This peculiarity demonstrates that the electromagnetic phenomena of the northern lights also occur during the daytime as well as the night, and it is only the splendour of the sunlight that prevents us seeing them. The third display was a ravishing sun dog or parhelion, one of the most beautiful I have seen in the far North. It was twice concentric and twice segmented. The centre of it was filled with a luminous cross, immense and equal in splendour to the bril¬ liance of the real sun which emitted it. This cross was encircled by a double halo of white light and flanked by three false suns: one above and one at each side. It would have had a fourth below if the parhelion had not been sitting on the lake. Each of these suns became the centre of a double halo similar to the central halo, but a little weaker in clarity. This display followed the aurora borealis less than two hours after sunrise. It was produced by a fall of little ice crystals of a hexagonal shape, one would have said a shower of carbuncles.82 The phenomenon lasted two hours. I did not tire of watching it even though I had to turn around to see it.

82 [A bright red cut gem, especially a garnet, with a convex back.]

326

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Finally, I arrived home on the first of May at nine o’clock in the morning to find all the snow melted and my meat swimming in a bath of cold water. I would have been surprised and overjoyed to see winter still ruling this western shore, the snow cover¬ ing the earth as in the month of January without showing any trace of thawing, and the east wind sweeping over Bear Lake’s solid ice with its raw and freezing breath!

CHAPTER VI Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die The Telini-Die or Franklin River—An Accident—An Indian Grave Kha-nda, the Cannibal—Sad Death of Two Dene—The Great Rapid—Descent of the Great Rapid in a Birchbark Canoe—Stopped by Ice—Crossing a Torrent Tsa-djiye al¬ most Drowns—Saved by a Gravel Bank—Climbing The Rapid’s Mountain—Valley of the Telini—A Storm and the Torrent’s Sudden Flood—The Barges from Great Bear Lake Appear—Saved —

—

I have already said elsewhere that the only apparent and known discharge from Great Bear Lake is the river of the same name, a tributary of the Mackenzie River, 65° 50' north latitude and 1270 32' longitude west of Paris. The Indians call it Telini-Die, Discharge River, and I propose to the geographers that they give to this waterway the name of the famed Franklin who ascended it in 1825-26. But since I did not discover it myself, I abstained from changing the name. That explorer assigned ninety-one geographic miles83 in length, that is to say, 168 kilometres 532 metres, or forty-two and one-quarter French leagues, to the discharge from Great Bear Lake. But his companion, Dr. Richardson, gave it only eighty miles. Which of the two is right? One covers this short distance in twelve hours in a boat descending with the current at the average rate of three and a half leagues per hour. In fact, this speed is not constant. Thus the Great Rapid [St. Charles Rapid], which measures fifteen miles, is covered in an hour without the help of oars, while near its junction, the Telini has a fairly calm course. The width of this river varies between 300 and 500 metres. At its mouth it is a thousand. With the exception of a rather narrow and tortuous thalweg, its bed is flat and encumbered with enormous blocks of rock that make navigation dangerous. Its banks are abrupt like those of the Mackenzie and offer steep slopes. The thalweg itself does not always provide enough water for barges to go downriver in safety or to take even a half-load. Several times I have seen it impossible to carry more than a third of their cargo, for example, thirty packs of furs and as many bundles of dry meat each. Never, but never, does the flood of water allow them to take a full load. The Telini-Die comes out of Keith Arm at its western extremity, two and a half kilometric leagues from Fort Norman. Since Great Bear Lake is obstructed by thick

83 The geographic mile measures 1,852 metres [one nautical mile.]

328

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

ice and completely closed to navigation from the first of November to the 15th of July, this distance cannot be covered except by water in the month of June, the time when the Hudson’s Bay Company boats go to La Loche Portage to carry the furs and dry provisions that have been traded during the year. Therefore, at Lort Norman one is obliged to cart the merchandise by sled on the ice to the head of the discharge of the great lake and to drag the boats themselves behind on rollers by harnessing to them all the dogs you can get. If the Indians who provision Port Pranklin ever refused the chief of the post their assistance, he and his employees would inevitably find them¬ selves prisoners until the middle of summer. Transporting the boats across the solid ice is done from 29 to 31 May, and the departure by water takes place the next day. But it happens occasionally that the boats cannot leave Bear Lake before 10 June, as happened in 1868. Refloated, loaded, and shipshape by late morning, they reach the Mackenzie River sometime in the af¬ ternoon and continue without stopping on their upriver route towards Port Simpson, the headquarters of the district. The water of the river from Bear Lake is as pure and clear as the lake it leaves. Its colour is bottle green. The river bed is composed sometimes of natural clay or phonolite and sometimes sand or gravel, strewn with granite blocks. The depth varies from two to eight fathoms. But outside of the narrow channel I spoke of, this beautiful water, far too impetuous, can only carry birchbark canoes. Its navigation is, there¬ fore, very dangerous. It requires a perfect knowledge of its thalweg. Some Indians serve as pilots for the Company boats. They stand up in the front, a long rod in their hands, their eyes rivetted on the bottom of the river, which seems to flee under the bow and hide like a galloping horse. They avoid the hidden rocks and reefs by pushing back the boat they are managing. When they cannot reach the bottom of the water, they make a hand signal to the helmsman to throw the boat to the right or left, which he does immediately with a single motion of the sweep or big sculling paddle. If the crystal clear waters of the Telini make this navigation easy despite its dangers, the reflection of the sun’s rays and the mirror-like effect that results from this can cause serious accidents by making it difficult for the pilot to see the reefs. Sometimes, too, the river’s current is so impetuous and the shores so steep that the crews of the boats need great presence of mind and much quickness in their movements to avert or prevent a disaster. In 1869 we wanted to stop on the left bank to breakfast at nine o’clock in the morning. 1 he pilot, Francois Gendron, had already succeeded in getting on land to tie up beneath a clitf, thanks to the speed with which our crew had jumped ashore to grab the boat and prevent it from being carried away by the furious waters when, all of a sudden, the second boat, skippered by John Hope, arrived on top of us with the speed of a steamboat. A strong shout came from every mouth for fear of an imminent crash. Hope then turned around and, instead of throwing himself on the bow of our boat, he got on board by the beam with the intention of getting his

Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

329

people to hang on there. But in this manoeuvre he did not notice that our oars were lying on the gunwale with their handles stuck under the inside rail, a bad habit of the Indian sailors. In throwing himselt on us, all these oars were like spears across the side where he was embarking, and his boat was thus pierced and firmly fixed. Most fortunately, they pierced the boat above the waterline, or it would have gone down with all its load. The Franklin River receives six waterways, two on the left bank, the Bluefish and the Phonolite Rock rivers, and four on the right, First of the Wood, Wolverine, Mountain Torrent, and Willow Lake [Brackett] rivers.84 At the junction with the Wolverine River (Nonpa-he), in 18671 found the Dene of Willow Lake gathered. They were waiting there for me to bless the grave of Suzanne Sele, wife of the former con¬ juror, Good for Nothing. They buried her according to ancient Danite custom in a coffin raised a metre above the ground between four grouped firs whose trunks formed the supports of this crude coffin. The sides were drawn together and tied in a hammerhead like the walls of a loghouse. After absolution, the poor woman’s body, sewn into a large moose skin, was pulled up into her bier which was then covered with heavy pieces of wood. A twenty-foot pole, finishing in a cross painted red with ochre, was planted at the head of the sarcophagus, and a second pole stuck at the foot held one end of a string hung from one to the other above the chest. The widower suspended streamers of red and white cloth from it. On this shore, I saw an octogenarian who had been baptized in 1861 by Mr. Grollier and named Adam Kha-nda, Eyes of the Hare, who in his youth had devoured, like a new Saturn, eleven members of his family. No doubt they were so nice, he wanted to just eat them up. They were: his two wives (he loved them to excess, he used to say); his brother-in-law (because of his remarkable fraternal affection); his mother-in-law (because of genuine aversion); three of his children (in an act of pure compassion); and four other people (simply because they were tasty). Excellent excuses, but they seemed insufficient to clear the good-hearted man! This very compassionate Slavey who moreover had cured himself of this minor compulsive fault, of being a confirmed serial cannibal, was endowed with very fine physique in spite of his great age. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth. But who was more beautiful than Apollo, and what god on Olympus was a big¬ ger cannibal than that god of seven rays? Kha-nda was all smiles, likeable, and gentle as a little lamb, which proves that one can scarcely judge by appearances. He had remained a widower since no woman wanted anything to do with him, and he lived with a child of twelve years, his last son, whom he kept in reserve against the future. I found him quite indifferent to religious matters, and he must have died in a state of

84 Here are the Indian names for these geographic features: Tsettine-die, Onkkaye-besse-die, Detchin kfwere-mon-welin, Nonpa-he, Kfwe-ta-delin, and Kkpay-lon-die.

330

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

apathy despite his baptism for he had little instruction. One could have and should have waited a bit longer before conferring on him the sacrament of regeneration. Mr. Nichol Taylor immediately told me that, when Fort Norman was still at the spot called Bolting Beaver on the left bank of the Mackenzie, he saw Kha-nda arrive one night in a state of overexcitement, which aroused his suspicions. The Indian said to the postmaster that he and his family were dying of hunger, and that he had first come to beg immediate help and charity. “However,” Mr. Taylor continued, “I had noted that Kha-nda carried on his back a net gamebag that must have contained some meat, for he took care to hang it behind the door of the empty hut I had assigned to him for the night so that the dogs could not get to it. That precaution did not escape my notice. I took advantage of Kha-nda’s momentary absence to go see what he had in his meat bag. I stuck my hand in the dark bag, expecting to pull out a piece of beaver or caribou meat. What was my hor¬ ror to grab the frozen hand of a man, a human hand recently cut off, as well as two or three other pieces that no doubt came from the same victim! This was all that the Windikouk85 still had of the corpse of his brother-in-law, the latest person of his family that he had killed because of his horrible appetite as a cannibal. I hastened to barricade myself in my house and did not close an eye that night even though I had put a loaded gun at the head of my bed. I had constantly before my eyes the horrible contents of the gamebag. The next day I made up a pretext to get rid of Kha-nda as quickly as possible by giving him a gift of dry meat, and I took good care not to tell him of my discovery.” Thus spoke Mr. Taylor. Kha-nda died miserably in the winter of 1871. His tribe was travelling, beating the countryside vainly in search of large game in a temporary period of famine. The octogenarian followed them at a distance, limping because of weakness brought about by old age and horrible hunger. He was not sick. A young man, as weak as he, accompanied him, a certain Michael Kfwi-tewe, Big Head, that I had baptized in 1864 at the age of fourteen. Michael had returned from his first trip to Portage La Loche dying from a chest disease. He was then a convalescent but was so weak, so powerless, so good for nothing that his parents decided to abandon him along with Kha-nda. I know very well that the Indians are too often lacking a feeling of humanity that we call sensitivity. But it must be admitted too that sometimes they face some alter¬ natives so cruel that, if they hesitated to sacrifice one or two useless mouths, the whole tribe would disappear. It is one consideration that missionaries too often fail to grasp because they are people whose natural goodness and the charity that is their profes¬ sion brings them easily to condemn these acts of apparent insensitivity. Such was the case with Kha-nda. There had been, they told me, the greatest possible necessity

85 “Cannibal” in the Cree language.

Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

33i

to find fish or caribou if one wanted to save the women and children who were exhausted from deprivation. And these two sick men could follow the tribe only in very short trips dragging themselves so-so. What was there to do? I make no excuses, 1 simply recount what happened. The tribe made the two under¬ stand the cruel necessity to make haste and, consequently, to leave them behind. One could not drag them along with the healthy people. Even less could one slow down the whole caravan to give them time to follow. So they left them at the last bivouac, free to follow the band if they could or to die at that spot if they could not keep up. They say Kha-nda, who knew himself old and weak, received this news with supreme indifference. But Michael, who was only twenty-one years old and had scarcely tasted the pleasures of life, was devastated. He begged his parents to take him with them. They were deaf to his tears and to his despair. All that they did for him and his companion was to cut for them a good supply of firewood and leave them some fresh water as well as a small piece of dry meat. Nothing more was said and I have never heard tell that anyone found their corpses. Without a doubt, living or dead, the two unfortunates had fallen prey to the wolves. Downstream from Nonpa-he the banks of Great Bear Lake River are cliff-like hills three hundred feet high whose slopes are wooded with black spruce. These are for¬ ested embankments in sedimentary layers in which the waterway has dug a bed in the shape of a groove. Twenty-five miles lower, in a bluish distance, one could dis¬ tinguish from the stream a mountain that seemed to stop the Telini-Die. It is called Mountain of The Rapid and rises at the bottom of the torrent’s dizzying acceleration measuring not less than twenty-four kilometres in length. Scarcely had we entered there than its first billows carried us with the speed of steam. The oars, now useless, were pulled in and put under the gunwales ready for any eventuality. From time to time, we used them to saw right or left, or even on both sides to slow the rapidity of the descent. Enormous granite blocks passed like lightning beside our craft and the waves broke against it with so much force that it vibrated. What would have hap¬ pened if we had been thrown against them as for example the Lion was, the boat that carried Franklin in September 1825, and which was crushed? The bottom of the Great Rapid, where it becomes quieter and smoother, is com¬ posed of an immense rock that fills the width of the river between two riverside mountains and forms a broad sheet and water reservoir. It seemed to slip under our keel, which scraped it from time to time in a disturbing way. Only the strength of the current prevented us from grounding. It pushed us nevertheless; it tossed us and lifted us up, and we continued our furious rush amidst the roaring waterfalls, the short and crashing waves that collide in every direction like a mad sea. Trembling with fright, incapable of even looking at the rushing water, the women in my barge covered their heads with their shawls and recited the Lord’s Prayer with tears and devotion. Surrounded by dangers that made Back and Franklin blanch, an hour passed, but in that single hour we covered six French leagues of a continuous rapid

332

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

without putting a hand to the oars and using only the huge sculling paddle to which the helmsman was tied. It is not a useless precaution. Below the Great Rapid, we passed between two steep headlands. The one on the right plunges straight down into the current. The other is a cliff of phonolite com¬ pletely covered with all sizes of debris from this volcanic rock, which is flat, flaky, and as resonant as a rattle. It is the onkkaye-besse, Magpie Belly, or onkkaye-kfwe, Magpie Stone of the Slavey Dene [Phonolite Rock], so called because it is the colour of the belly of the Canadian bluejay, the only magpie of the far Northwest. This name is also that of the mountain on the left bank which proves to me it is all made up of the same stone. The summit of these riverside cliffs, cut like melon slices by the water’s flow, is covered by a wooded plateau with a very deep circular lake. I crossed it and camped there twice in 1878. The summit of the mountain rises from the middle of the lake like a volcanic cone, and it is quite evident to me that it was a volcano and that the lake surrounding it is only a former crater filled by a spring. The river that this pretty lake feeds is very sizeable and even more rapid than the Telini-Die into which it flows. I followed its course on the ice in 1878. It carries the same name as the lake and the mountain. Having passed through the narrow gorge formed by the proximity of the two mountains of the Great Rapid, we landed on Canada Goose Island, where we made abundant harvest of geese and duck eggs of various species. On leaving this small island, the riverbed of the Telini is so deep and so reliable that no Indian was ap¬ pointed to watch out for the rocky reefs. After its junction with Willowlake River, the riverbed widens again to at least a kilometre at its mouth at the Mackenzie. We arrived at four o’clock in the afternoon, after only twelve hours of navigation. The heat that we felt while passing through the canyon of the Telini-Die and the gigantic valley of the Nakotsya-Kotcho86 is such that it always produces the effect of a hot bath on travellers. Great Bear Lake is nevertheless only 200 feet in altitude above the giant river of the North. Although it leaves the immense steppes and vast solitudes of this freshwater sea immobilized for nine months of the year under a thipk shroud of ice, the Mackenzie appears smiling and delightful. And God knows what are the attractions of these stony shores, these steep cliffs, bristling with skinny spruce and upset by the gusts of the khamasan! But the air is warmer, the foliage is prettier, and the shining colours of the long jagged mountain range of the Rockies recalls to mind the vast prairies of the Southwest where the sun burns and tans the skin even in the month of January. We had hardly disembarked below the ruins of the former Fort Norman No. 3, which was situated at the junction of the Telini, than I made my goodbyes to the sailors and took my place in the birchbark canoe that awaited me on the shore. I went downstream

86 Hareskin name for the Mackenzie River.

Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

333

again to Fort Good Hope accompanied by one or two Indian paddlers, who also usually followed me to the Eskimos’ homes where I was going at once. It was thus that I went down the Telini-Die in the month of June in the years 1866, 1867, 1869, and 1871 and in the month of August 1867. I know for certain that the Indians of these regions, the Dane Kkpay-lon-Gottine, carry the national stigma ot Hebraic circumcision. Several ot them had embraced Protestantism in 1861 and persevered in it until my departure. My successor wrote me recently that they are all converted to the Catholic faith. In the spring of 1868 I was seized with the desire to leave before the boats from Great Bear Lake did and to leave in a birchbark canoe with the three young men that I had hired for this purpose: Nni’nkon, Nni-kpachie, and Tsa-djiye.87 My plan was to arrive at the Mackenzie early enough to take advantage of the boat which, soon after the breakup each spring, goes from Fort Simpson to Fort Good Hope. For me it would have been a great saving of time, a rare thing in this country of ghostly im¬ mobility. Arriving at the Mackenzie, Nni’nkon was to continue towards La Loche Portage with the Hudson’s Bay Company boats, Tsa-djiye was to go to Fort Simpson with Gendron whose servant he was, and Nni-kpachie alone was to go downstream to Fort Good Hope with me and Klele, whom I was to meet again at the Mackenzie. The rigours of a late spring thwarted my project and made me suffer a kind of shipwreck during the journey. However, I do not blame either the Winds or Neptune but only my own petulance and youthful impatience since every prediction was un¬ favourable to me and all my Indians advised me to abandon a project that they called foolhardy and dangerous. “You think you will arrive at the Mackenzie before us,” they said to me. “Well, you will see that you gain nothing and that we will be there before you.” After a satisfactory April, the month of May was exceptionally severe. A lot of snow had fallen. The ice, instead of melting away, had built up. In the north of France, January is a very hard month. Here, at the beginning of June, the ice still had all the appearances of winter, with the exception of a narrow ribbon of open water which did not permit the least movement. It refroze every night just like the beginning of April. Game, confused by the incessant snow flurries and sleet, left and returned, went back south only to come back north again, uncertain of what to do. We saw them do this dance three times. They did not know where to walk or find water and their usual food. The few that people killed were as thin as skeletons. Even the ravens, the first birds that attract the Indians and Metis, had not arrived. Nevertheless, I left. On 29 May I had my two birchbark canoes brought to the head of the Telini-Die at the place where it leaves the lake. I had my food supplies, my sleeping equipment, and my tent taken there by sled, and on the 30th we left from this spot late in the morning.

87 Dry Moss, the Moss that Regrows, and Beaver Breed.

334

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

My young servants did not expect a great success from our dangerous trip but, being young like me and as much in love with dangerous adventures, as soon as they saw that I was resolved to try the luck of the current, all their doubt and fear evaporated. They left as happily as if for a holiday. Objectively speaking, I admit that their confi¬ dence did not rest on a very solid foundation. But, for what concerned them, it was as stout as the trust that we Christians place in God himself. “Can misfortune come to anyone who trusts in the sacred power of the priest?” they had said. “Let us go, then. Nothing can go wrong. What’s the use of being a servant of God if we have no more power and luck than ordinary mortals!” And with this pious sophism they started out with unshakeable self-confidence. It was three o’clock in the morning. We tied our two canoes together with the help of crossbars that formed a solid raft and, committing ourselves to the torrent called the Telini-Die, we were carried with the speed of an arrow and we navigated quite safely until we reached the entrance of the Great Rapid. But there we found the river still blocked with ice held back, no doubt, by the narrowness of the gorge formed by the two mountains and Canada Goose Island, which restricted the outlet of this strait. Since our departure we had not seen an inch of bare shoreline. A double wall of ice, cut vertically and polished by the current, bordered both banks of the Telini. Nni’nkon, my helmsman, noticed on the left bank a large area of pack ice which was firmly stuck to the shore and projecting above the waves. He directed my double craft there and, after we were sure that it was solid, we took a few tentative steps, one after the other with me in the rear. Then we landed our baggage, the supplies, and even the canoes, and I had them placed in a safe place. But, misfortune! At the very moment when the unloading was finished the enormous mass, disturbed by so much move¬ ment, detached itself from its land base and fell into the water along with several metres of shore, including trees, bushes, and stones, too. This breakup caused waves in the river from shore to shore that lasted a long time as the river closed over its prey in a swirl. What would have become of us if this accident had happened while all four of us were busy unloading and hauling out the canoes? Truly, there is a special Providence for missionaries and travellers even when they seem to challenge it by their foolhardiness and carelessness. In these regions, moistened by the mists that arise endlessly from the moving waters, forest moss and lichens are extremely thick. They form a soft bed on which we stretched out in the sun with pleasure. Unfortunately, there we had to stay until ten o’clock at night the next day, 2 June, waiting for the river to clear a way through the Great Rapid’s pile of ice. Thus, I lost the time that I had wanted to save by hastening my departure. But this was not the end and I was to be tested even more. At ten o’clock at night, Nni’nkon clambered up the tallest fir tree he could find on the plateau’s summit and called to me that the rapid was free except along the edges. But could one ignore these edges after the accident that we had almost had? We decided not. On the right bank there was an Indian road along the clifftops for the length of the

Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

335

Ice breakup on the Telini-Die, 3 June 1868

Great Rapid or at least for five leagues. It is ordinarily used by the Indians who travel in bark canoes and have not enough nerve or nautical talent to brave the rapid cur¬ rent. We preferred to use this route rather than risk our lives in the midst of ice that could shift and pulverize our frail vessels. But it was necessary to cross the river and make a second landing at the beginning of the portage on other ice blocks sticking into space or lying only on the running water. It was a terrible chance that we were taking. Our landing, however, was made safely, we reached the portage and, in two days of continuous travel, we completed the transportation of the canoes and all my belongings by land. So, on 4 June I found myself with canoes and baggage and without any damage where the torrent Kfwe-ta-delin [Mountain Torrent River] meets Bear Lake River. This torrent comes down like a lava flow the length of Rapid Mountain, whose foot it washes and which it crosses much higher up in a natural crevasse of the rock. It bathes the base of the mountain where it is quite shallow but, as a result, at the en¬ trance to the strait I spoke of, it has built up against that mountain a glacier more than twenty feet high which never entirely has time to melt from summer to autumn. The ice of one winter joins the next and postpones even more the winter breakup: Ubi delcuit nondum prior, altera venit,88

This enormous mass of ice must give way under the repeated blows of the insist-

88 (“So when an earlier fall is not yet melted another has come.” Ovid, Tristia, Book III, section 10, line 15.]

336

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

ent waves so that the Telini-Die can force its way through the gorge. First, it forms a tunnel under which the waters flow until they break through above, leaving a double rampart of sheer ice on each side the whole length of this dangerous passage for a long time afterwards. The Kfwe-ta-delin torrent then does likewise and digs a tun¬ nel into the thickness of the glacier. Its arch is as big as that of the Port-Neuf in Paris. And when the ice of the Telini has passed, this arch remains standing alone during part of the summer. For us then there was no way to re-embark and reach the waters of the Telini other than to do it on the Kfwe-ta-delin, by venturing under the ice arch. That was not difficult. We had only to assure ourselves beforehand that the Telini was open on the other side of Canada Goose Island. Since this island forms a natural dam at the strait’s exit, we did not wish to risk being swept under the ice that was still on top of the water. To make certain of this, we had to climb to the top of Great Rapid Mountain and, to make this climb, one had to ford the torrent because the mountain is situated on the right shore. Nni’nkon knew a ford and he led us to it. We should not have had water higher than our belts, and to cross this swift current safely it would have been enough to use the tactic I later employed in the mountains of Alaska,89 in the company of some Dindjie. But, instead of forming a chain by holding onto one another and all four walking forward, parallel to the current, we went into the rushing water separately, each holding a stick, single file and following Nni’nkon who showed us the ford. I walked third and Tsa-djiye, the smallest and youngest of the four of us, came at the end. We had water only to our knees because in this place the current spread out over a pile of pebbles and round stones. The water, although icy, struck our legs with such violence that it prevented us from feeling the cold. Our legs were warmed by it in some way. Already the two who entered first had reached the right bank safe and sound when Tsa-djiye said to me that his legs were giving way and that the violence of the current made him dizzy. He had moved a little ahead of me. 1 took a few strides, seized the young man by the right arm and dragged him towards shore. But the poor Dogrib could barely stand up. He paled visibly and soon let go of his stick and fell on his back, carried away by the current. Not being strong myself because of an internal rupture from which I was still suffering, I had a lot of trouble keeping the young man’s head above the water. It I had panicked at that moment, we would both have drowned, but I did not lose my head and hastened to the grassy bank. Unfortunately, I had left the ford and found myself in deeper waters that came up to my armpits. My cassock and a large duffle overcoat I was wearing over it had

1,9 In the month of |une 1870. See my work entitled Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire (Paris, 1889), Part 3, “Youkon."

Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

337

soaked up water and become so heavy that it was dragging me down. My boots were like barrels. Alone, I would have been able to get through the current to the ford and reach land. While dragging the inert body of Tsa-djiye behind me, I felt my strength fail me and the chasm of the Telini-Die come closer and closer with its icy perpendicular rampart, against which my fingernails would have torn in vain. Death threatened on all sides. What could be done? To abandon my companion would be to save myself, but he would be lost forever. I did not even think of it. Even if the idea had occurred to me, I would not have carried it out. Save him or die with him; it was that simple. It was what I felt in the moment of danger and could not think of anything else. So, I was rapidly drifting along, carried by the torrent which was rushing even more strongly, sometimes losing my footing and going under, sometimes coming up but always getting closer to the abyss, half swimming, half supported by my stick. I was wondering where I was going to end up when I saw a long, narrow, little delta of gravel and sand that rose scarcely a few inches above the water at the meeting of the two waterways practically under the ice tunnel I mentioned earlier. It was my only hope and my last chance. My only thought then was to throw myself on it by a last and supreme effort while dragging Tsa-djiye by his hair. I had to reach that bank or die, for I was exhausted and too far from either shore. Half swimming, half sinking, I reached there happily just at the moment where, carried off by the current, I was going to pass right by the delta. Almost convulsively, I dug in my nails in a desperate effort such as only drowning people can make. I threw myself flat on my stomach like a landed fish, but without letting go of the native boy who had fainted. The wave pushed him and he landed motionless. In that moment all the feverish activity that had sustained me by increasing my strength tenfold left me, and I remained exhausted on the gravel bank, my legs and stomach in the water, my arms thrown forward and grabbing the earth with my hands as in a stranglehold. I must have resembled a crocodile stretched out in the sun on the mud of the Nile. This was the first idea that crossed my mind when I heard an outburst of crazy laughter from the shore where Nni’nkon and Nni-kpachie had landed some time earlier. These young men, who first considered us lost and who had watched in terror the succession of waterfalls that pushed us towards the abyss, when they saw me and my companion finally out of danger, could not stifle their amusement at our funny situation. I myself ended up laughing. Meanwhile, there was still the business of getting off our wilderness island where, dripping water like gargoyles, we trembled in every limb despite the healing heat of the sun. The first thing we did was to take off our clothes to get the water out of them. Then, Nni’nkon came to my aid. When my strength recovered thanks to rest and warmth, he and I placed Tsa-djiye between us and all three of us holding on to each other’s hands this time, we re-entered the current

338

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

along the axis of the gravel bank as far as the ford and safely reached the shore. There we lit a big fire in front of which we dried ourselves from head to toe, like shipwreck survivors, and then we ascended Rapid Mountain. The view is vast from this high spot. The summit, however, cannot be seen from Great Bear Lake. Also, it is not towards the Lake that it offers anything of interest, but really west and south. To the right, north, the mountain becomes a chain of rocks that has raised the terrain and stood its layers on end. This is Tchane-ttsou-chiw or Old Man’s Mountain, which meets Kfwe-tcho-detelle [Great Red Rocks range] of the Hareskin River. To the left, south, Blue Jay’s Belly Mountain or Phonolite Mountain, Onkkaye-bess£, raises its tooth-like peak from the middle of the still-frozen crater lake although it is surrounded by green pines. Between the two mountains winds the Telini-Die where it has dug its way in the vast plateau covered with black forests and spotted with lakes resembling antique mirrors. It sparkled with the brightness of silver, but its course was not yet free. A shroud of ice covered Canada Goose Island from one shore to the other a kilometre wide. It was the final barrier. It could not last long, and as soon as the ice was gone, nothing else could stop our departure. Below the island our eyes could follow the few twistings and turnings in the Telini all the way to the Mackenzie to which it joined its waters. These meanderings could only be distinguished by the different cliff heights, because the water itself could not be seen. This magnificent panorama was cut off by the Kfwe-tpeh-niha [Rock Which Falls to the Water] Mountain, the second of this name and, even further away, by the first range of the Rocky Mountains with its saw-toothed peaks cutting the pale azure. To the east, I saw only the sombre forest of black spruce and the covering ice sheet, the cascades and foam of Great Rapid whose raucous and menacing voice rose up to us in an immense roar. Since we would be free to go from one moment to the next, we waited patiently on the mountaintop until the breakup reached Canada Goose Island. We lay down in the sun like lizards, trying to forget our hunger in sleep, for we had left our supplies on the torrent’s left bank. At four o’clock in the afternoon, nothing having changed in our situation, we went down dejectedly from the mountain to take a little food at the edge of the river, the scene of my earlier exploits. Nni’nkon again concerned himself with going to find dry meat, tea, a small pot, and two cups, but he saw that the river had swollen, probably as a result of the snows’ melting under the heat of the sun’s rays. Great Rapid Mountain is an extinct volcano like so many other heights in the Rocky Mountains of which it is the most easterly part of a parallel range. It is lime¬ stone severely eroded by contact with trachyte90 rocks that make up the core. Still, it is one of these numerous terrestrial upheavals, cysts, or tumours that cannot break

90 [A light-coloured volcanic rock.]

Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

339

out or that has been blocked just as it began. As with Clarke Rock, one can see in the two mountains that go down to the water, and in the case of Pewinkka [White Owl Mountain] and other mountains of the same range, a long and deep slot that leaves the tip ot the cone and goes to the base of the mountain on the western side, similar to a channel by which combustive materials would have flowed from the summit. The sketch of this mountain, in the Narrative of the Expedition of Franklin of 1825, is inexact and incorrect in every respect. One sees that the drawing was not made on the spot, that it had been done only as a rough draft that was completed later with the help of imagination. I am sorry to have to say this about nearly all of Captain Back’s drawings. It is impossible to make accurate sketches by this method. At the foot of Rapid Mountain, I collected beautiful specimens of dolomite, of milky limestone, and of carbonate of lime in clear crystal form. On 5 June at two o’clock in the morning, the ice broke up and the Telini-Die was open to navigation. We immediately went back down from the mountaintop where we had spent the night, hoping to leave on the spot. But a storm that the heat built up over our heads for several days burst in the meanwhile and soaked us to the bone, not leaving us one dry thread. It put out our fire, made it impossible for us to light another, and left us frozen and shaking from the cold, without any shelter. We should have foreseen the disastrous result that this storm was going to have for our re-embarking, and we should have recrossed the fast river, all four of us holding onto each other’s belts. Our experience in the mountains failed us again. We thought we should wait on the right bank for the return of good weather. The storm, however, continued to follow the mountains. There soon came down such avalanches of rain water from the summits that our torrential river took on a violence and rapidity that held us prisoners. Not one of us felt strong enough to resist it, not even Nni’nkon. It poured buckets all day, all night, and all the next day, 6 June, the day the boats were to leave Bear Lake. The torrent continued to be so swollen, so dizzying, that it was absolutely impossible to cross it or even to start out by canoe. I then very much re¬ gretted not following the advice of my converts at Bear Lake; but there was no longer a way back and the essential thing now was not to rash ly try to conquer obstacles that we could not overcome. On the 7th the sun rose brightly, making us see, with regret, that the level of the Kfwe-ta-delin had not gone down. Moreover, neither Tsa-djiye nor Nni-kpachie wanted to attempt the ford again. “What good would it do?” they stubbornly said. “The boats will be here today. They’ll pick us up here just as well as a little farther down. We have suffered enough and we do not want to risk our lives uselessly.”

Since they were within their rights, I did not insist. They went back up to their observation post on the summit where they lit a large fire that could be seen from afar by the boat crews and would notify them to come to our aid. The two young men were to call to us as soon as they saw the boats. Nni’nkon and I remained at

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

340

the bottom of the rock. At eleven o’clock in the morning, a cry of joy came from the mountain: “Ella-tcho! The boats!” At the same time the two sentries came running down the slopes of the headland. The boats reached the junction of the rivers at the same time that my young servants arrived near me. We all hailed them together and it seemed they made signs of recognition, but it was not easy for the two boats to make their way through the current and come back. The violent current of the Telini swept them away like two arrows. They rushed over the foaming waters like two swift-moving otters. The first boat passed in front of the ice arch and disappeared be¬ hind the rampart of the riverside glacier. We uttered a loud cry of disappointment. The second boat followed the first closely and, like it, disappeared behind the shore. Had they not then been able to go through the entrance to the tunnel? Had they been afraid to try to break free from the two walls of ice that enclosed the straits? Had they not then been able to pass under the arch of the glacier? Had we not been heard above the din of the waves and the beating sound of the sixteen big paddles? Abandoned to our fate, we would have to try crossing the ford at the risk of being drowned. But as I was thinking this, the bow of one of the boats appeared under the ice arch, and working back against the river as far as the gravel bank on which I had grounded, the vessel landed. Across the harsh roaring of the torrent, the sailors’ cries reached us, but so feebly that we understood at once that our voices had not been heard by them while they were rowing. It was our fire that had drawn their attention. An instant later, four powerful savages entered the water up to their sashes, clamp¬ ing on to one another so they would not be carried away, and reached us. We attached ourselves to them and thus arrived safe and sound in a saving vessel. Nevertheless, in this second crossing of the torrent, I had the bad luck to encounter a hole that made me go in over my head. But what does that amount to when one is supported by other companions? De torrente in via bibet, propterea exaltabit caput.9' Other sailors had gone to get my baggage and canoes on the left bank. All was put on board and the boat continued its downstream trip to Canada Goose Island where we landed to eat and to dry ourselves. Needless to add that I generously rewarded the excellent men, Francois Gendron and his people, who came to our rescue to their own great peril. We reached the Mackenzie at three o’clock in the afternoon, the ninth day after I left Great Bear Lake, with the humiliation of being rejoined by those who had left nine days after us, and preceded on the river by two brave little Scots who had come down the Telini on a raft built by themselves, which we had not even seen pass! Thus

91 [Vulgate, Psalms 109 (110)7, “Let him but drink of the brook by the wayside, he will lift up his head in victory.”]

Dangerous Descent of the Telini-Die

34i

Valley of the Telini-Die near its mouth

was confirmed my flock’s charitable warnings: “You want to leave ten days before us to save time, well then, you will see that you will lose as much time, and we will catch up to you on the way.” Youth is a wonderful thing. It is brave, courageous, and fears nothing, but it is rash and presumptuous! And yet I had then completed twenty-nine springs. Now that I recall these adventures at the age of fifty-five, they seem to me entirely mad. But they were the madness of an apostle.

CHAPTER VII Summer at Great Bear Lake Ascending the Mackenzie in a Birchbark Canoe—The Tow-rope—Great Bear Lake's Outflow Frozen over in July—The Steppes in Summer—New Cases of Reincarnation A Young Catechumen’s Pious Ruse—A Forty-day Summer Return to Good Hope

—

From Great Bear Lake, after a stay of three months in the steppes, on June 13, 1867, I returned to my residence, Our Lady of Good Hope, at Fort Good Hope in the Mackenzie Basin. With the intention of preparing pieces of carpentry for a chapel, I left again fourteen days later in a bark canoe for Bear Lake with two Hareskin Indians and a Dindjie or Loucheux. The three natives were to tow and transport me in my canoe, fish, cut down fir trees, and square them to make them into joists, posts, and other lumber, thanks to natural dexterity and a good will that makes them, like our Metis, fit to practise any craft. The first, Julien Dene-gounli, was the son and nephew of chiefs. His name means Unto Us a Man Is Born.” Alexander Kkwie, Mosquito, his companion, was an Indian of the river, an orphan with neither father nor mother. As for the Dindjie Jean Vitazjie, I had baptized him in 1865 in the region of the Great Eskimo Lake northeast of Fort Anderson. None of the three knew Great Bear Lake, or even the Mackenzie River upstream from the natural Rampart Rocks of Fort Good Hope, but I already knew the passage well enough to do without a guide. Moreover, unless a strong gust of wind from the north came to fill our lateen sail and allowed us to overcome the fast current of the Giant River of the North, this trip would be completed entirely by towing. When one of the young men had completed his two hours of towing he sat down for another two hours in the stern of the canoe to steer it with a paddle while the helmsman slept for two hours at the bow of the ves¬ sel replacing the man towing with the line. So, that gave them each then two hours of walking on the riverbank, two hours on the paddlea and two hours rest. Thanks to this system of navigating, we could travel night and day without too much fatigue, only landing three times a day for meals. Nevertheless, considering the violent winds on which I had not counted, I could scarcely make any headway in Bear Lake River, where on 4 July I met a horde of the Kkpay-lon-Gottine natives who were going from Willow Lake to the Rocky Mountains to spend the summer. These good people would very much have wanted me to follow them on their hunts for the argali, the Asian big-horned sheep, in order to receive between times the

343

344

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

religious instruction that I could not otherwise give them as I had to the other Dene of Great Bear Lake. But they only mentioned it to my servants, and the latter were so anxious to see Bear Lake that they only told me when it was too late. Still, I spent the day of the 4th catechizing them. 1 baptized their children and received two poor lit¬ tle children, orphans, whom I sent to the Sisters of Charity at Providence. They were named Ti-gokke-nahi, She Who Hides in the Earth, and Ti-gokke-wetpi, She Who Rests on the Ground. At the junction with the large torrent that drains the crater lake of Phonolite Mountain, Dene-gounli killed two superb otters whose skins I bought from him to make a winter kolback92 and a muff. Going up the six leagues of the Great Rapid, whose descent takes only an hour’s travel, required from us two long days of hard labour and unheard of fatigues that I had to share with my men. We ran the risk of being carried away by the speed of the dizzying current which almost cost the lives of Pranklin’s companions in 1826. We often nearly broke our tow line and came close to being crushed against the reefs that just break the surface of the water. The glacier of the straits was still in the same location. It had only receded a little, uncovering enough of the shore so that the young men could get through by clinging to the verti¬ cal rock walls. Only the river’s ice arch had melted and been carried away by the two currents combined. But beyond the straits, I did not find any more ice on the shores. All had been swept away by the flooding. The morning of the third day we had fortunately overcome the rocks, the rapids, and the raging of the Telini-Die, the most dangerous current I had ever encountered, and we were going to complete our trip peacefully. Suddenly, to my great astonish¬ ment, a second disaster occurred which I had not anticipated. The Bear Lake Indians told me it only happens in July and might not be the last disaster. Until the evening of the 6th we fought bravely against chunks of drifting ice, sometimes crushed, some¬ times in big floating sheets, and we received numerous blows despite our efforts. We had to land on the shore several times, unload my big and heavy Chipewyan canoe, drag it ashore to empty it, and repair it with birchbark, melted resin, and tallow. But towards eight o’clock in the evening, it received its coup-de-grace when it was so badly staved in by a large block of ice that we despaired of being able to repair it again with the inadequate means that I had. There was no birch in this part of the riverside forest, and I did not have any more spare bark. We had, however, arrived upstream from the Lirst of the Woods River which was not yet open and resembled an enormous glacier. On foot, it would not be a very long trip to reach the Big Lake. So, I decided it was necessary to abandon my canoe. We carried it into the cover of the woods. I placed the baggage there, everything under my tent and, each being supplied with a blanket and a bit of the dried goods that I had

92 [Headgear with earflaps.]

Summer at Great Bear Lake

345

lett, we continued on our path on foot. Upon arriving at my mission of Ste Therese I sent two Indian women with new bark, resin, and watap9i to repair my craft and bring it back to me. I walked in the lead because I had the smallest load, my gun on my shoulder and kit crosswise. I killed, one after the other, three black grouse cocks that provided food for our breakfast. Then that was it. 1 did not meet any other bird or animal until we arrived. Our path was the shoreline, a flowered lawn, sprinkled with white and blue violets, briar roses, and sweet-smelling wild roses. But this was followed too soon, alas, for my feet shod in thin Indian buckskin boots, by steep and muddy slopes or shingles of slippery shale. I had no more tea, and nourished only by raw and very greasy food, especially pemmican, my stomach could not accept the extreme harshness of ice-cold spring water. I suffered half-faints from it. Jean Vitazjie, the youngest among us, was exhausted and always seemed ready to give up the ghost. He dragged himself along, stopped, collapsed under the weight of his load, and gave vent to his sufferings with groans and tears that brought gales of laughter from his two companions. As for these latter, they entirely justified the reputation of their tribe, the Hareskins, as good travellers. Believe it if you want—I am not obliged to convince you but to tell the truth—dur¬ ing the night of 8 July, my Celsius thermometer that never leaves me when travelling went down to minus 8°. The Telini River, hemmed in at this point by high banks and blocked by the ice breakup, stopped flowing and froze to form a solid bridge over which a regiment could have passed to the left bank with impunity. A cup of cold water, which I had left by my head while sleeping in the lichen and moss, was frozen when I awoke. I could not believe my eyes. It was the movement of the ice on Great Bear Lake that gave us this very considerable drop in temperature. And this cold snap had stopped and taken hold of the river. Both phenomena would be reversed. From this point on I left the shore of the Telini to reach the Big Hares steppes, Kha-tchottsoghe, across the woods and muskeg.94 Finally, early in the morning of 9 July, we came out of the forest and let out cries of joy while treading the steppes of Great Bear Lake. Keith Arm was still the same as when I left it at the end of May: a solid and immense mass of sheer ice, dazzling white and reflecting the fiery sun. Nothing had apparently changed in the condition of the lake, except for a narrow strip of blue water which bordered the shore. How can one explain the breakup that I had witnessed three days before? Contrasting the violent alabaster of the ice floe and the intense blue of the open water, the steppe stretched out like a green and beautiful prairie, but a prairie of lichen. It really was lichen, nothing but lichen, and always lichen that we walked on. There was not a sign of grass, of any cyperus plant, on the soft surface that rolled in

93 Spruce resin prepared for sewing bark canoes. 94 Open areas of lichen and moss.

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

346

waves of fresh green under us. Only some tufts of little yellow and violet flowers that were unknown to me emerged from large patches of Cetraria, like the multicoloured . sea anemones that mottle the coral reefs of the ocean. Some other flowers were famil¬ iar to me, such as Katmia glauca, silver stars of the Parnassia Kotzebiiei, and snowy bushes of scented Ledum palustre, Labrador tea, which crops up on all the steppes and moors of the Northwest and the far North. At ten o’clock in the morning, I reached my little house after thirteen days travel¬ ling, my legs buckling from weakness, my stomach aching from hunger and cold water, my body stiff from walking on spongy soil and lying on damp moss nights. If what Persius says is true, that it is hunger that makes the poet and teaches the parrots to say: “Quis expedivit psittaco suum xxire? “Venter,... “Quod si dolosi spes refutserit nummi, “Corros poetas, etpoetrius picas “Cantare pegaseium melos eredas.95

that day I would have become a poet or a parrot for the rest of my life. I will re¬ member that miserable trip for a long time. But what! Have I not said or thought as much about each and every one of the trips I undertook in this likeable country? So, how did I find it all charming then and how can I regret it today, after a lapse of twenty-six years? But how can I forget all that I had suffered there, only to remember the vastness, the freedom, and the poetry that my soul received from it? My good Danites from Great Point at Sagebrush [Mountain], Klo-tsen-eta, had not all left yet for their summer hunting on Smith Arm’s northern shores. They awaited the complete breakup of the lake ice by making canoes and praying that the east wind would free them by relieving the lake of its breastplate of ice. They received me with their usual transports of joy, thanked me effusively for my speed, and rejoiced at my prompt return. Their joy and gratitude amply repaid me for my troubles. After having allowed me one or two days of necessary rest, these fine Indians once more took up their religious exercises with their accustomed attentiveness, while my three servants occupied themselves with their new jobs as carpenter-builders. I conferred holy baptism on about fifteen adults, which raised the number of Christians at Bear Lake to 268. Of this figure the Hareskins amounted to 188 souls, and the Dogribs eighty. That is very few, one might tell me, and it was hardly worth the trouble to leave one’s country and its thirty-eight million inhabitants for such a

95 [“Who made the parrot so ready with his salutation?... The belly ... But if the hope of deceitful money shall have shone forth, You may believe that ravens turn poets, and magpies poetesses give vent to strains of Pegaseian nectar.” Prologue, lines 8,11-13.]

Summer at Great Bear Lake

347

little group. To that I answer, the total number of my flock at Our Lady of Good Hope rose to two thousand souls and, moreover, everybody practised the Catholic religion, even the catechumens, even the Indians who were still pagans. They never failed to make their confession or to attend religious services. These 268 native converts, therefore, represented 268 villages around Paris where there is scarcely one good Christian keeping Easter and never two men at Mass on a Sunday. My dear readers recall perhaps the case of the migration of souls and reincarna¬ tions which I had the honour to describe in the first volume of my Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire.90 This belief, which is so similar to the ancient doctrine of metempsy¬ chosis that the Egyptians had borrowed from the Chaldeans and bequeathed in turn to Bactria, India, China, Media, Greece, Gaul, Scandinavia, and the Roman Empire itself, could have easily moved from Asia to America in the Hamo-Semitic migration waves. They say Hurons interred their little children beside the paths that led to their fortified villages so that the women, passing to and from these places, could receive in their bosom the still incomplete young souls and by this means give them again an existence that had too soon been snatched from them.97 Is this not also the belief of the Romans? ... Anne aliquas ad coelum hinc ireputandum est Sublimes animus, iterumque in tarda reverti Corpora? ,..98 The Talmud likewise teaches that the souls of the elderly are reborn in the body of little children. Did the Iroquois, the Chipewyans who give to their little children the funny names of “little grandfather,” “little grandmother” share this belief? Whatever the case, I was less astonished this time than I was in 1865 at Fort Good Hope when I first discovered the Buddhist conviction of reincarnations implanted among the forests of the Dene Hareskins. Etiritcho, Great Monster, had presented to me for bap¬ tism a son who had been born to him during my absence. His wife, Marie, showed herself strongly opposed to it under the pretext this child could not be baptized with¬ out its mother, who was still a pagan. “Baptize the old lady,” simple Marie Koyitalleli said to me, “and this child will be presented to you at the same time.” “What old lady are you talking about?” I asked her. “The old lady Tsenaoundja, Nni’nkon’s mother.”

96 (Paris, 1889), 130. 97 Relations des Jesuites in Migne’s Dictionnaire d’Ethnographie. 98 Virgil, Eneide. [“Can it be conceivable that souls go up to the heavens and return again to some slug¬ gish body?” Aeneid, Book VI, lines 719-20.]

348

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

“You want her as godmother? Nothing could be better. I am going to prepare tor the sacrament.” “ It is not a matter of a godmother for the child. I am talking about his mother. “ Then this child is not yours?” I said to Marie, blushing. “I believed your husband was more faithful. Has he then forgot himself?” Those sitting around broke out laughing and Etiritcho affirmed with vehemence that this child was certainly that of Marie, his legitimate wife. “And yet, although I brought him into the world I am not his mother,” added the simple Indian with conviction, “it is Tsenoundja who is the real mother. 1 he proof of this is that the soul of my child is that of Ttseondi, Crazy One, the old lady’s oldest son, who died last year and resurrected in my bosom.” “Do not listen to her,” cried the husband in turn. “This child is my son, created and born of my blood. I do not believe a word of these witches’ dreams. My wife has gone crazy from them. Do not listen to her and baptize my child.” Ralli, Shore Rail, informed me then, half seriously, half jokingly, that according to ancient Danite beliefs, the first baby conceived by a woman after the death of some¬ one in the tribe is considered most certainly as the incarnation or transmigration of the deceased. We are to understand that through this the ancestors always remain with their tribe and that a Dene can easily be his own grandfather. This American shaman theory, borrowed from the adepts of Tartar Lamaism, so incompatible with the Christian truth, is so rooted in the timid spirit of the Hareskins that neither my authority nor the will of Emmanuel Etiritcho could triumph over the two women’s stubbornness. The real mother did not acknowledge her own child, and the old witch laid claim to the little child completely. I had to cut the Gordian knot immediately, according to the father’s wish, by baptizing his child in spite of the recriminations of the two women. Straightaway they brought me another child whom they had not yet presented to me for baptism for the same reason. The unfortunate little Buddha, who was now five or six years old, had already transmigrated twice, they said. And they called him Fwa-tsechya, One Who Has Been Known for a Long Time. During this mission, I admitted into the Church the Hareskins’ chief, who until then had held himself aloof. His adherence to the Christian faith did not come about without the serious joined to the comical that makes up the basic Dene character. One Saturday evening this man called Sa-kpa netra-tpa, Father of the Bear Hunter, came to find me with a serious look, and while smoking his pipe to steady himself, he harangued me thus: Me, then, they call me the great chief of the Great Bear Lake people, Sas-tcho-tpoue. Well, I would prefer not to be that at all, so much is my dignity a burden to me. What good is it to be chief when one is scorned by every one of his followers, when the priest treats you like an enemy and refuses to pray for you, when he throws you out of the church and excommunicates you? However, that is my position among my young people. All have been purified of the stains of their lives by holy water. I

Summer at Great Bear Lake

349

alone remain impure and do not pray. And why so, you may ask me? To please John Hope and some other of the fort’s Orkney employees. What profit is there for me in paying court to these English? Absolutely none. They are only servants and we note that they are not as worthy as we are. And now, look, you’ve excommunicated me like a criminal. Do you want me dead? Will you take pleasure in my final agony? But finally, speak, what have I done to you? That is what I came to ask you.

The old chief’s tirade being all Greek to me, I assured him that I had every respect for him and every regard that one owed to legitimately constituted authority, and that never had the idea come to me to chase him from the Church, and that for a good reason: because he had never joined it. “Now,” I said to him, “if you want to convince yourself of the truth of my statement, come tomorrow to the high Mass and I will in your presence dare all the believers to witness against me in this matter.” The next day I then asked my audience about the chief’s supposed excommunica¬ tion of which I had been reproached. Everybody agreed that it was the chief’s own wife who had made this remark, but they had never heard it repeated by anyone else. Having questioned the wife of Sakpa-netpa-tpa, she replied that it was her eld¬ est daughter, Tsa-kelle, Beaver Road, who had reported it to her as being a public rumour. I then went on to interrogate Beaver Road. The young girl blushed to the ears, hid her pretty little face in her hands, then guffawed and confessed that it was she herself, Beaver Road, who had thundered forth this excommunication against the author of her days. She had done this, she said, to cause all of them to look inside themselves and bring themselves through fear to ask for and to receive baptism because, the poor girl added, she burned with a desire to see her sins wiped out by the sacrament. Moreover, she did not want to receive it before her father and mother. Thus, the excommunication pronounced by female lips vanished in all the clouds of charity that filial love created. It seemed a sentiment which could only come from the Spirit of God. A murmur of general approval showed Tsa-kelle that all her relatives were moved and touched by her beautiful feelings. And, as the stratagem was new and comical, my sermon ended that Sunday in general laughter, each finding that the young girl had enough spirit to be elected chief in her old father’s place. The icefield disappeared from Keith Arm only during the night of 20 to 21 July. When we arose we were amazed to see that the bay was completely free of ice. As soon as I could, I had Alexander set the nets for whitefish as well as long lines for salmon trout. He took two Arctic loons, one mallard drake, some very beautiful whitefish, and one trout so big and heavy that, making twenty portions, it provided the four of us with five large dinners. Note, please, that these meals were without bread or any condiment. The head alone of this monstrous trout provided me with two meals. It was reserved for me as being the most delicate portion. The eyes above all are exqui¬ site like some portions of the mouth. For fishing, I had bought a smaller boat than

350

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

the one we had come in and which I had had repaired. We used an elnade-ttoh or double paddle with it. I made some delightful outings on the lake, hunting for puf¬ fins, coots, and loons. My flock being gone, I busied myself with my carpentry work. I had 270 pieces of wood cut for a house thirty-five feet by twenty but, as I had had no time to carry them to my dwelling, I could not find them the following winter. An Anglican schoolmas¬ ter who had been sent to Bear Lake had decided to take them in my absence and build a house with them. In truth he did assure me that he had only borrowed them, but these pieces of wood were never returned to me. By 3 August I had completed the carpentry work and other jobs, and already I had to think about leaving. The nights were now three hours long. At eleven o’clock at night Dene-gounli’s eagle eyes had already picked out the stars of the first magnitude although for a long time they still remained invisible to my European eyes. The sharp and biting cold of these short nights was enough to form a sheet of ice along the shore’s edges, and the Celsius thermometer went down to minus 40 and minus 50 so that, for the whole year of 1867, I recorded a maximum of fifteen days without ice in this southern bay of Great Bear Lake. All summer the ice floes con¬ tinued to drift wherever the winds carried it. Even in the warm years, it never had time to melt completely and, on the eastern shore, the ice never disappeared and was still there the following winter. The days of germination and growth increased in 1867 to forty days at most. On 3 August some odd tufts of grasses that grew between the rocks on the shore where there was no lichen were already dead for lack of water. The lichen steppes had already taken on that colour of dead leaves which gives them the appearance of a vast field of sponges in autumn and early spring. How does this colour change work? It was scarcely understandable since the lichen never seemed to die. They wither and regenerate again. In summary, I found that Great Bear Lake is the gloomiest and most demanding sojourn for a European in all of the Far North. There are only three compensations for a great number of disadvantages: the extreme abundance of caribou in the wil¬ derness, the exquisite quality and the exceptional size of the fish, and the prompt dispersal of the clouds of mosquitoes, which, from the end of June, come out of the waters and the steppes to swarm over the whole country like one of the ten plagues of Egypt. At Bear Lake they last only thirty days, a time already too long in regard to the unspeakable sufferings and irritation that these accursed little beasts provide for the inhabitants of this high region. On 4 August I returned to Good Hope in my bark canoe. Thanks to a favourable wind and the speed of the current, I arrived home in four days.

Ra-tpou-youe Mountain

352

CHAPTER VIII Across the Devil’s Land Homeland of the Pigs—Indians’ Superstitious Terrors—Crossing a Burned Forest— Rat’ou Mountain and Lake—Dangerous Crossing of Kfwe-tchd-detelle—Devil’s Lake’s Overrated Reputation—Great Hay Lake and a Mountain Pass—Lakes of the Giant Wolverines and Beavers—The Hydra of the Hareskins is like the Lerna Hydra—I Follow Franklin’s Journey—Lake of the Mountains—Economical Hygiene

A celebrated conjuror among the River Hareskins, Nni-tchon-tchele, surnamed Little Pig, had bragged a great deal about a region parallel to the Mackenzie and situated behind the range on the right bank as very rich in game animals and concealing a string of big lakes that was completely untouched by any incursion by Whites. It ought to be, he told me, the most direct and best way of communication between forts Good Hope and Norman, but only his family knew it and could serve as my guides to it. This man had drawn the map of this country for me in 1865, and the fol¬ lowing year he went and died of measles there along with his wife and nephew, while his brother and another nephew passed away at the mission itself. Until 1870 neither of the two surviving men of the Little Pig family had wanted to accompany me into this country, which had aroused my curiosity because they claimed it was haunted by all the evil spirits of their land. It was the dwelling place of the Fallen One, Ya-tpeh-nonttay, the One Who Crossed the Heavens in His Fall. There, one saw the lair of a problematic hydra who lived at the bottom of the lake where it enticed and swallowed travellers. There a giant beaver lived, a giant trout, an immense wolverine, all haunting many of the fateful and bewitched lakes. It was the hideout of evil spirits and the graveyard of a crowd of renowned sorcerers at the head of whom were the Pigs. The only two survivors of this illustrious family, our servants Jacques Tatekoye and Hyacinthe Dzan-You, had resisted all my seductive offers rather than serve as guides for me in that zone parallel to the range of the most easterly Rocky Mountains that I really wanted to explore. Promises of great pay, praise, prayer, jeers, sarcasms— nothing could get rid of their childish fears nor shake their resolve never to see the “land of the Devil” again, when suddenly an extreme shortage of caribou and fish struck the lower Mackenzie at the end of January 1870—the severest winter that I ever spent in the far North—and convinced our odd-job man Jacques to go exploring

353

354

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

the cursed country again. He made one condition for this trip: that I would accom¬ pany him, which was my dearest wish. We left early one fine morning at minus 20 degrees Celsius, which was very mild for the Arctic Circle because, from the first to the 17th of the month inclusive, the temperature had stayed between minus 420 and minus 48° 30' Celsius." After having climbed the bare slopes of Ewi-kka [White Hills] that were white with snow and form the right wall of the Mackenzie to a height of 200 feet, and having travelled through an immense forest of spruce, birch, and willow, ravaged by a fire in 1864 that had changed it into a horrible and hideous wilderness of black sticks and scorched trunks, I camped at the edge of Glacier River, Nni-kkweni-he, which crosses it. The second day I saw the edge of that burned-over area and the remains of a few green woods that the fire had spared, thanks to the swampy condition of the country. I came out into a steppe parallel to the Ratponne-youe or Ra-tpou-youe [Geese Lake Mountain] range which is a detached spur at right angles to the Rocky Mountains. Because this steppe was on top of a foothill of the mountain, we enjoyed a wide vista. The mountain greatly resembles Mont Ste-Victoire in the Arc valley near Pourrieres in Provence.100 On the north side, it presents a vertical wall of 1,200 feet above the steppe, support¬ ed by the landslide slopes and stratified by undulations that go southeast. Certain large skittles of stone, which are fantastically detached at an angle and jut out into space and threaten to fall on travellers’ heads, led me to believe that the structure of the mountain is carbonated sandstone. It is certainly the same as the Nahanni Mountains and the range called Smoke. At the foot of this mountain where I camped after Tatekoye had killed two very fat caribou, on the morning of the third day, I witnessed an exceedingly rare parhelion since it was the only one of its kind that I had ever seen during my stay in the Northwest. Here is how it was produced and of what it consisted. My Celsius thermometer, which had reached 220 below zero during the night, went down to minus 320 at sunrise. Such a great evaporation of the snow followed that the mountain and the steppe that surrounds its base were entirely lost in a very dense fog. Only at eleven o’clock, when the sun’s heat began to be felt, did this white steam leave the earth and gently rise in a horizontal, silky, and almost transparent sheet. Instead of dispersing completely to form clouds in space, it stopped at the rampart of Ratpou-youe Mountain and hid the summit from us. The sun, veiled by the fog, took on a red hue and could be observed with the naked eye as it rose over the rocky crest. Suddenly, the star, reflected by this semi-transparent cotton-wool, multiplied itself

99 Some new thermometers that I had bought in Paris in 1875 showed me that it had gotten to minus 52° Celsius.

100

[Mont Ste-Victoire, a favorite subject of Cezanne, and a site Petitot visited.]

Across the Devil’s Land

355

into fourteen solar spectres arranged horizontally at the level of the summit of the mountain and around the firmament. The parhelion did not rise vertically into the depths of heaven but stayed on the earth like an immense wheel enclosing four other wheels full of eyes. In other words, the solar spectres formed a cross which is the commonest form of a parhelion. It hung its false suns around the azure cupola in a kind of cornice resembling alabaster or mother-of-pearl, like so many shining globes of electric light whose intensity gradu¬ ally diminished as they spread out from the real sun, the source of this splendid and most rare display. Moreover, it ended like other parhelions when the sun separated from the horizontal sheet of fog which caused it, and the vapour itself broke up and fell in the form of a rain of free ice crystals similar to carbuncles. The Indians ac¬ companying me were so awed by this phenomenon that I understood that it did not occur often. They assured me they had never seen one like it. We spent our third day hunting caribou on the steppe, and then came upon a large lake about a kilometre or scarcely more around, deep, dug out funnel-shaped and on all sides surrounded by wooded hills. No one knew its source or of any obvious dis¬ charge but, as it supported excellent whitefish that teemed endlessly, one suspected it had subterranean communications with other basins. Unfortunately, the waters of this lake harbour a larva which surrounds itself with a little sheath like a yellowish straw that serves as a means of moving on the water. Whitefish feed on this worm, whose scientific name I do not know, but it also feeds on the fish, because it can at¬ tach itself while the fish is dormant, penetrate its body like a barnacle that attaches itself to ships’ hulls to pierce them, and eat the fish alive. This lake is called Ra-tpou or Grey Geese and marks the beginning of the Devil’s Land. I went icefishing there with my two natives until 10 February and only came back to the mission once I had 132 whitefish (Coregonus albus), each weighing four to five English pounds. Returning to the fishery a few days later, I left it on 2 March to continue my exploration of the accursed country in the company of three Indians, among whom was Hyacinthe Dzan-You who is already known to my readers. Turning my back on the Ra-tpou-youe range, following in the tracks of the young man, I head¬ ed for the Kfwe-tcho-detelle or Red Mountains [Red Rock Mountain range], which form the other valley wall. There we met the pretty and winding Tpa-welini River, The One That Flows Among the Lakes, a tributary of the Hareskin River, which we followed upstream for several hours. Then we struck out bravely across the woods and climbed the mountain. When night came, we were on the edge of a rock wall which overhung an elevated valley without any water. Facing us rose a mountainous hilltop more elevated than the one we had crossed and where we perceived a pass that Tatekoye indicated to me as the only point at which one could cross this range. We slid down to the bottom of the mountainous cradle by way of a crevasse amply lined with snow, and we bivouacked in this low spot. The next day, the fifth day of my forced march from Good Hope, I reached the

356

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

summit of Kfwe-tcho-detelle in four hours of climbing. Instead of the comfortable pass that our hunter had promised, I only found a big hoax. The summit was scarcely 1,200 feet above the Tpa-welini which wound around it, but towards the south went in a straight direction. Towards the west it ended in a steep headland. It was only a spur, which was only equalled by the opposite side of the valley, the Ra-tpou-youe. Only on the left, towards the east, the mountain stretched out in impassable zigzags like a citadel designed by Vauban. At our feet, however, in the centre of an amphi¬ theatre whose summit we were on, sleeping under its shroud of ice and snow, lay lake Tpa-welini, the famous Devil’s Lake [Kearney Lake] that I had come so far to find. The river of the same name flows out of it, twisting and forming a white trail between the gloomy rocks in the dark mass of the forest. Black and white, it is dismal. This then was the Pigs’ Promised Land. This was the favoured land where, they had told me, the rivers flow with melted lard and caribou marrow. Well, for a Promised Land neither its appearance nor the path that led to it held anything very attractive. But for a Devil’s Country it must be said that the site was not ill-chosen and that I should not wait for another kind of terrestrial paradise. We still had to get through it, though, and we had neither an air-balloon nor ladders. Instead of a negotiable pass and a path fit for people or mountain sheep, we found ourselves on the crest of a frightful precipice whipped by the wind and walking on unstable snow which gave way under our sleds and rolled into the abyss in small avalanches dragging stones with them, too. Although I have a cool and steady head, I did not have enough nerve to walk at such heights with assurance and delight. I felt certain tremors under the soles of my feet that warned me of the danger I was running. Alone, I would not have been able to skirt the chasm at the risk of taking the plunge with my poor dogs. By constantly veering to the left and turning away from the precipice, they showed that their na¬ ture was not like that of cats, and that God had not made them, any more than he had made me, to walk along the eavestroughs at the edge of roofs. One often does in company, through human respect, self-love, or natural rivalry, what one would not dare to try all alone. And I followed my three natives, men whose heads spin if they climb a staircase, but who stay cool on a mountaintop because they say it is very solid and there is no risk ot it collapsing under their body weight as a staircase of wormy wood might do. We soon had to pass a second headland that formed almost a right angle with the brink that we had followed. The precipice was even more frightening because it was double. The winds had so beaten and swept this outcropping of red porphyry that it was bare and treeless. For a moment my dogs no longer wanted to follow the Indians. They glued themselves to the rock with painful whimperings that expressed their ter¬ ror. Nevertheless, we circumvented it and finally reached a slope. It was a moraine or heap of rocks trom a slide, dug funnel-like between two protruding points, which arrived at the foot ol the mountain in the form of a pot. We were able to leap down it

Across the Devil’s Land

357

easily thanks to the snow which covered it. But if the Tpa-welini River had not frozen, where the slope ended in a kind of rock groove and a jump of a metre and a half, we could never have got into the Devil’s Country by such an unusual entrance. Once on the ice, all went well and we arrived without difficulty at Devil’s Lake or Giant Trout Lake in good time to bivouac comfortably in the shelter of the Tpon-jyoue Mountain. This year I did not push my geographic explorations any farther in that direction, but on 8 February 1871, having to return on foot from my residence at Good Hope to Providence a distance of 301 metric leagues to the south, I made this trip by the same route with three Indians and as many dogsleds. On the one hand, I was anxious to complete my new discoveries by linking them to the route Sir John Franklin had kept while crossing the woods between Great Bear Lake and Fort Simpson. On the other hand, I was not upset about destroying the Indians’ prejudices concerning this alleged country of the Devil by travelling through it in every direction. The future proved that I was not too presumptuous about my influence, for soon after my trip the Indians again began to frequent these beautiful regions and to seek their liveli¬ hoods there. Now they live there. That is a service that I rendered to them. Having learned from two previous attempts, I was able this time to make more haste and was eating dinner at noon on the fourth day of the trip at the end of Lake Tpawelini. It did not at all deserve its fierce reputation. Neither did I find its proportions as large as people had said. It measures only fifteen to sixteen kilometres long by four wide, and is surrounded by wooded mountains on the west and the east. From south to north, however, it is crossed by the tortuous course of the river of the same name which, at its southern extremity, is only a very short river branch which empties the waters of the beautiful Great Hay Lake, Klo-kpakha-ti-tpoue [Gaudet Lake]. As the only known monsters that I met on these beautiful lakes were some caribou who crossed it slowly, I baptized the lakes with Christian names, those of my two friends from Fort Good Hope, Misters Kearney and Gaudet.101 I camped on a long point that took up half of Great Hay Lake. The direction of the basin is from southeast to northwest, parallel to the Bekke-denatchay mountain range (or Frost Mountains) [now called the Discovery Ridge Mountains] which borders the Mackenzie. Another lower range, Tpa-tchininene (Sheer Cliff in Water) forms a hollow to the east. During the fifth day, I reached the source of the Tpa-welini, which is Medicine Lake, Nadidee-tpoue [Lennie Lake], a charming basin that looks like a Scottish loch. Wooded hills dip their feet there. Spruce, aspen, and birch form a green sash, while the bottom of the picture is filled by two gigantic pylons separating a perpendicular opening made by nature in the precipitous Bekke-denatchay range. This remarkable gorge opens the way to the Red Carp River, Dedelli-djyan, which is a tributary of

101 [Joseph Patrick Kearney (1834-1918), Irish-born Oblate brother; Charles P. Gaudet, Hudson’s Bay Company agent at Fort Good Hope at the time when Petitot was publishing his memoirs in France.]

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

358

the Mackenzie. But the little route map that Nni-tchon-tchele made for me six years earlier did not lead me in this direction. It told me to follow another mountain gorge, at right angles to that of the Dedelli, which is filled with other large lakes. A path ought to have already been made there. We discovered it after some searching and reblazed it with our axes. This was a holiday for me, so delighted was I by the beauty and picturesqueness of this country. It is absolutely impossible, moreover, to get lost in this gorge, unless you cross the mountain ramparts that shape it, which cannot happen even by distraction or clumsiness. Furthermore, one is perfectly sheltered in a thick forest. The only inconvenience that you encounter there are the strong winds that steadily blow snow backwards and forwards before it eventually falls. One also find many springs there that sometimes change the forest into a glacier and sometimes into ponds of running water. Nevertheless, we bivouacked in this gorge and only reached its southern end at eight o’clock in the morning, the sixth day, 13 February. It measures in all four and a half leagues to five leagues in length and has a semicircular shape. Squeezed between the mountains, it is sprinkled with little funnel-shaped lakes whose ice is always solid and very thick. One of them is the faithful copy of Mirror Lake in California’s Yosemite Valley. Giant Wolverine Lake, Tpou-pa-koetie or Tpou-pa-kountie-tpoue, Lake of the Aquatic Monster, is at the end of the gorge. It has the same dimensions as Great Hay Lake and is enclosed on all sides by mountains of a granitic appearance. If you believe the Pig tribe, this lake ought to be the most terrible of all the lakes of this haunted and monster-infested region. Some of them say its frozen flanks harbour a gigan¬ tic upright walking monster, nonpa-tchd. Others say a hydra, tpou-edetay, a water¬ drinking monster, tpou-lkoudhi, a winged bull, yikone, whose lair is undoubtedly to be seen at the foot of a mountain. Which one is unknown, and I certainly would have looked for it carefully all day if there had been a way to keep a foothold on the ice. Never in my life, however, had I struggled to stand against a wind that was so icy and so violent. The wind, which blew like a hurricane, was caused by the gorge itself. Tatekoye later assured me that it blew all the time in those parts, that only its direc¬ tion varied, and I should not be surprised if this were the lake’s only mystery. The ice, completely free of snow, was extremely slippery and we had the greatest difficulty in the world to run on it without falling. This was quite a rough and terrible crossing that we had to make at a gallop. I gave to this beautiful body of water the name of my bishop, Faraud. It is an ordinary lake with a beautiful surface: a faro lake.102 What to think now about the superstitious belief of the Hareskins regarding Wolverine Lake or Devil’s Lake No. 2? According to the Pigs, the only judges in this

102

[Petitot may have been merely ironic in describing the lake as ordinary and superficially beauti¬

fully, but “faro”—akin to fairy—does mean “bright light,” or “lighthouse” in several European languages. There is presently a town named Faro, Yukon.]

Across the Devil’s Land

359

Giant Wolverine Lake, or Lake Faraud

matter, one hears first a subterranean noise in a lakeside mountain, then the water rises rumbling to the surface as if an underground fire was making it boil, and when this bubbling occurs at the end of autumn, the lake does not freeze all winter in this region. This phenomenon is intermittent, however, and only occurs at long inter¬ vals. This, it seems to me, reduces the fable of the lake monster to its real and sane proportions. It comes, then, from an intermittent hot spring such as the one that the Greeks attributed to Cepheus at the foot of Mount Aetna. 1 recalled then the bitumi¬ nous schists and the combustible lignites that border the western side of the Bekkedenatchay range, in which the Indian legend sees the kitchens of the terrible giant Yanakfwi-odinza. Was it possible that these same underground fires were connected to the boilings in Wolverine Lake, and could we not have been seeing the eruption of a small underwater volcano in this water bubbling? In 1872, having gone over the same route with only one native, I saw long plumes of smoke coming from the eastern shores of the next lake and, finally, in 1878 I saw other plumes of smoke, much larger and much more numerous, breathing out of the western shores of the same lake. The subterranean rumbles, the movement of the waters, could then be caused by the intermittent eruption of sporadic thermal water. I must confess in any case that I have never seen any other natural phenomenon than the steam or smoke that I have just mentioned even though I travelled for four years throughout the Devil’s Land after discovering it and opening it to Indian settlement. Wolverine Lake is separated from the next one by only a very small river branch, in the ice of which we found a large Canadian moose trapped and frozen. No doubt

360

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

the unfortunate beast, wanting to cross the thin autumn ice, broke through under its own weight and could neither escape by swimming nor manage to save itself by climbing out. For our dogs, we cut off some parts of this meat that was as hard as a rock, but in the end despite all our efforts we could not free the whole animal, for the ice was too thick. The next lake is that of the Giant Beaver, Tsa-tcho-ta-titpoue [Mahony Lake], to which I gave the name of the supreme pontiff, Pius IX. Its whole surface, swept clean by violent winds, was as smooth and polished as the previous lake. One would have said it was an immense paving stone of veined marble. By the depth of the cracks in this fissured ice, I estimated that its thickness was not less than six to eight feet. This lake, like the three before it, extends from one mountain to the other without any shore except a narrow, sterile, and stony band; also their depth must be immense to judge by the extreme steepness of the mountains. Following our sled dogs on the run, the whole distance took us only six hours, which I estimated at a minimum of thirty-eight to forty kilometres. The following year, the distance of the same large basin took me a whole winter’s day’s walk, although at a good pace. However, I swear it is not as large as beautiful Lake Vatimesml, which I discovered in 1878 to the west of Great Slave Lake.103 I camped at the entrance to the Great Bay, Kla-tcho, and on 14 February breakfasted well beyond the southern extremity of the lake, at the edge of the river that comes out there and is a tributary to the discharge from Great Bear Lake. This waterway, which is larger than the Marne, connects a string of a number of lakes one to another. Some of them, sprinkled with small wooded islands, are very picturesque. The last, Willow Lake, Kkpay-lon-tpoue [Brackett Lake], gives its name to the river. We camped there that evening. Then, instead of going to the Telini-Die, I went directly to Great Bear Lake in two days of forced marches. The 16th, at seven o’clock at night, I again saw the solitary hearths of my mission, Ste Therese, where I rested all the next day. I said above that I had planned to go from Fort Norman on Bear Lake to Fort Simpson by the interior journey that the celebrated Franklin had followed on 20 February 1827. He estimated this distance at 117 metric leagues, which he divided up thus: twenty-four leagues of steppes—we knew them already—seventy-eight and a halt leagues of forest, and fourteen leagues on river ice. I would not do the fourteen leagues on the Mackenzie because, having followed another route parallel to that of the English explorer, a little more to the east, I reached the river only about two miles downstream from Fort Simpson, not quite a metric league, whereas Franklin landed below 63° latitude at Little Fish Rapids, L’oue-ya-mi. Franklin accomplished this voyage on his back, comfortably stretched out in a cutter sled driven by one of his men. He had with him two other sleds, for baggage

103 Autour du Grand Lac desEsclaves

(Paris, 1891), 340 [ch. 16].

Across the Devil’s Land

361

and supplies, and was accompanied by ten men, five English, four Dogribs, and the Eskimo Oglibouk. As for me, I also left by sled, but 1 did not hesitate to put my foot on the ground in order to do what I had done on all of my previous voyages: walk on the snow on foot and with snowshoes. I had five men and three sleds, having obtained two guides at Bear Lake in the persons of the Indians Alexander Kkwie and Paul Klele, who had already made the trip together in 1867.1 covered the twenty-four leagues ot lichen steppes without meeting a living soul, without seeing a single cari¬ bou, not even a ptarmigan or a snow grouse. Everywhere was the picture of death and desolation in these fertile wildernesses where life had been affirmed up until now by thousands of living and edible animals that attracted numerous Indian clans. I asked myself if the murder of innocent children, coldly perpetrated by the Dogribs, had not drawn down on their dreadful country the wrath of heaven. I left Ste Therese on 18 February. On the 25th I crossed the pretty Highland Snares Lake, Roe-ti-gottcho-tpoue, which is only three leagues in length. It empties into Black Water Lake and extends to the hillock called The Muskrat, Dzen-tcho-khin [Muskrat Butte or Big Rat Lodge], This was the most distant point south that I had reached by this interior route. I had come to visit the Indians at this hillock during the winter of 1867. Between this highpoint in the shape of a burial mound and Burnt Mountain, Kodlen-chiw, from east to west between Blackwater Lake and Lac Ste Therese, there is a large steppe sprinkled with woods which must not be less than twelve or thirteen leagues, because I roamed there all day on the 26th, crossing eighteen lakes or large swamps before reaching the foot of the mountain where I spent the night. At this place, we found an Indian trail that crossed mine at right angles and which seemed to come from the Mackenzie towards the lakes Intaa-tpie [Cassino Lake] or Nounkfwe-djighe-tpie [Anglerfish Lake], in Dogrib country. During the afternoon of the 27th we crossed two other trails parallel to this one without seeing anybody. By seven o’clock in the evening I had crossed the Kodlen-chiw Mountain plateau and camped on the southern slopes, not seeing anything but another steppe of lichen barely broken by several clumps of scrawny spruce, and where a deceptive mirage gave us the illusion of a large beautiful lake still distant by two days’ march. It van¬ ished from sight with the last rays of sunlight. On 1 March I reached this large basin, Arm Lake, Tpou-kone-tpoue, whose dimensions are so vast that I could not see the other shore. One could easily assign to it a length of thirty kilometres and a breadth of five to nine. I would have liked very much to have made an accurate picture, for the map does not carry any of these geographic data, but I could only do it quite superficially because of the intolerable cold, minus 430 Celsius at the lake. What made it even more painful was a very biting wind from the southeast. With temperatures like these, neither geography, nor feeling, nor scientific or poetic enthusiasm can resist the necessity to keep oneself completely wrapped in furs and snuggled down on the bottom of the sled. The previous night we had again encountered four new Indian

362

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

trails, one of which led me to Arm Lake. Then it changed direction and went towards the east like the others. Evidently, they had only come on a reconnaissance to look for caribou, since it could not be found elsewhere. It became evident to us that scarcity prevailed as far as the shores of the Mackenzie since all the Dene were going to the eastern forest. Still, during the afternoon, we finally saw a small herd of caribou of about thirty head. The herd ran into us at only half a gunshot’s distance and, as we were taken off guard, it surprised us so much that it was able to get away without having received the salute of a single shot. I even lost an excellent double-barrelled shotgun which was lying loaded on my sled. My dogs, throwing themselves after the caribou, caused my gun to fly against a fir tree where it broke in two like glass because it was frozen. At the same time, both barrels went off together, happily without wounding anyone. We then crossed the Chiw-kolla Mountain plateau [Barrier Mountain range] which measures more than ten leagues in length. There, I saw the first Banks pines or, if you wish, the last pines that one sees when coming from the south because, as a matter of fact, 63° 22' north latitude, which crosses this elevated zone, is the northern limit of the conifers. In 1864 I had already crossed this boundary line but a little fur¬ ther south, below 64° 30' north latitude, and in Dogrib country. Here we were in the homeland of the Slaveys or the land of the Etcha-Ottine. On my map this mountain carries the name of Van-den-Bergh, which I had given it at that time. The whole day of 2 March was employed in crossing the plateau and giving chase to another herd of caribou that we met there. This led us on a trail that this time took us east to west, which my guides absolutely wanted to follow despite my protests. They claimed that this was the route for provisioning Fort Simpson, the most recent opened up by the hunters of that post, and that it could not fail to lead us there very quickly. Being at the mercy of these Indians, I necessarily had to submit to their wishes. This trail made us describe a large circuitous route to the summit of Chiwkolla, towards the southern end of Lake Nounkfwe-djighe, and only ended at a single cache of meat, what the English call a cairn. I could then enjoy the crestfallen and sheepish air of my two guides. When they wanted to return to the straight road that we had previously followed, we found ourselves in the middle of such a labyrinth of hunting tracks that we wandered and had to bivouac without finding the real path. Blindly moving ahead, on 3 March we crossed beautiful Souchets Lake, Klo-tikkatpoue [White Hay Lake or Cypress Lake], which I judged to be the one that Sir John Franklin discovered 5 March 1827 and travelled along from northeast to southwest without giving it any name. Two more, even larger, lakes come next on the great navi¬ gator’s map. That is why I gave them the great man’s name. It was by way of them that he reached the Mackenzie, whose shores I saw a short distance away. But I turned aside from this route because at ten o’clock in the morning the guides came across the former beaten trail that was evidently the one to Fort Simpson. At the same time that we found this road, we found a very fat caribou the Slavey hunters had left behind

Across the Devil’s Land

363

after removing its tongue and ribs. This was proof for us that either those Indians were swimming in an abundance of caribou meat or their clan was too distant for the hunters to carry the whole carcass there. We made our dogs happy with it. From Souchets Lake, on the horizon south one could make out the Last Mountain, Eteye-chie [Horn Mountains], in the shape of a bluish ribbon that quivered in the mist. This name alone is proof that the Dene came into the Mackenzie from the north because, in fact, Eteye-chie is the last transverse range that one encounters when going from north to south, just as Eta-tcho-kfwere, the First Promontory, is the first range in the same direction. French Canadians called Eteye-chie, Montagne de la Corne, which the English have translated as “Horn Mountain,” because they confused eteye, “last,” with ete, which means “horn.” During this day, I crossed six little lakes but above all beautiful Spruce Glacier Lake, Ttsou-kkweni-tpoue [Fish Lake], which measures twenty kilometres long, and at the end of which I camped in a forest of great pines, slender as palm trees. On 4 March I travelled over thirteen lakes, crossed the Shell River, Gounkfwara-tpoue, which joins the waters of the lake of the same name to those of Glacier Lake, and breakfasted at ten o’clock in the morning at the top of Eteye-chie. The shellfish I ate were Unio fluvialis,104 which is extremely common in the lakes and rivers of North America. Burned in 1868 by the carelessness of the savages, Horn Mountain presents us with the gloomiest of views. It is a madness among the Dene to ravage their sad country by depriving it quite pointlessly of the only thing that might gain the coun¬ try some notice: its spruce forests. After breakfast and thanks to a trail growing ever firmer and increasingly well opened up, we again made our frantic way across gla¬ ciers, lakes, steppes, and burnt woods. I bivouacked on the site of an abandoned Slavey camp after having crossed twelve lakes and reaching the southern slope of the aforementioned Eteye-chie Mountain. On 5 March I crossed forty-two lakes or swamps before reaching Moose River, Rata-ti-die, erroneously called by the French Canadians Willow River [Willowlake River], It has the appearance and width of the Drome River. We camped on its icy shores and only arrived at Fort Simpson on the 7th, at two o’clock in the afternoon after twenty-six days of forced march from Fort Good Hope and the crossing of 142 lakes of every size. After resting a day at Fort Simpson, I continued my route towards the mission at Providence with only Alexander Kkwie, having merely to follow the river bed of the Mackenzie. Its ice offered us a natural road, which was more conven¬ ient after all than the shelter and cover of the forests. In seven more days, I reached the goal of my trip. This amounted to thirty-three consecutive days on snowshoes. I had left Our Lady of Good Hope sick and lying in a sled. I arrived at the hospice of the Sisters of Charity on foot and covering twelve leagues a day. There was nothing

104 [Freshwater clam.]

3&4

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Giant Beaver Lake, or Lake Pius ix

else to do there than to ... go back at the earliest occasion after paying them my respects. The occasion presented itself immediately. There was nothing else to do. This is how missionaries look after their health in the lower Mackenzie in case of illness. The method is a good one and worthy of recommendation to our Faculties of Medicine.

CHAPTER IX Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson Sadness and Desertion Departure for Lake Colville—An Ingenious Family—A Child Killed Accidentally—Departure for Lake Petitot—Crossing Lakes Colville and Petitot Race to the Moon—Camp of the Kha-tcho-Gottine—Child Metamorphosed into a Caribou—The Fire of Souls and the Fire of Martyrs Sabbath Labour Providentially Punished

—

I made five great exploration voyages in the land between Great Bear Lake and the sources of the Anderson River: two in 1871, as many in 1872, and the last in 1877. These five excursions produced more anecdotes the further I went from the Mackenzie. It was less known to the Whites residing in the Northwest, more untouched by any European intrusion. Also, it is represented on all the maps of North America by a hardly eloquent void. To enter such a land was bound to produce numerous discover¬ ies, enrich the map with a host of geographical details, not to mention the glory of God that I probably was going to increase by making Him known, praised, and loved by unfortunates who until now were ignorant of Him. This was a goal more impos¬ ing and important than the increase of the sum of human knowledge. My first exploration of this terra incognita took place at the beginning of autumn 1871.1 had just entirely revised, by correcting and completing it, the Dindjie language dictionary that my excellent confrere, Mr. Jean Seguin, had previously compiled with the aid of a woman who was patient but really of little intelligence. For me this had been a long and painstaking work that took up all of my free time. Sylvain Vitoedh, my instructor in the Dindjie language, acquitted himself with all the intelligence and wisdom one could desire. It is true that knowing and speaking the two languages, Dindjie and Hareskin, he had all the means necessary to complete this task with honour. I went over the whole dictionary with him from beginning to end. Our servants had just left us to go fishing or hunting until the Christmas holidays. They had left without a regret, without a sigh, without a cordial word that could dispel the anguish that we felt each hunting season because of our isolation on this deserted and lonely open space, lost on the shore of Nakotsya-kotcho [Mackenzie River] near the so-called Fort Good Hope which also became just as deserted. The two of us wanted them to go. They were necessary to our existence since these Indians had made themselves our appointed, but paid, provisioners. We could not reproach them at all on this matter. Each autumn we waited for them out of necessity, but, never¬ theless, I could not get used to these frequent separations, to the travels that were

365

366

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

the delight of these nomadic people. What joy for them to live again in the outdoors, exchanging the floor and the mundane chimney corner for the moose-skin tent, the green branches scattered on the frozen ground, and the large fire of flaming spruce in the middle of the lodge. They followed the caribou in their peregrinations. They ate rich booty; they would have eight, ten, twenty meals a day if they wished. They cut down whole swaths of the forest to warm themselves and enjoyed complete freedom without any outside control. The prospect of this happy vagabond life made them leave happy. I heard their outbursts of laughter and the songs that wakened sleepy echoes under the forest vault. These happy notes gripped my heart, not from envy or jealousy of their happiness to become like caribou or birds of passage, but from a moment of weakness caused by the loneliness and misfortunes arising from my freely accepted choice to be a hermit and a bachelor. So, I followed them from afar without their knowledge, and I soothed my soul as a man without a spouse, my heart as a father without children, and when I had paid this tribute to my troubled nature, and calm had been restored to my being by relaxing this sensitive fibre, I came back alone home to take up again my daily occupations there. For ten years, I experienced a faintness of heart, unknown perhaps to pastors who are always surrounded by their civilized flocks, and I had not yet been able to find in myself enough strength of soul that would give me an armour of insensitivity. Trials of another kind were destined to make me at last know and savour stoic indifference to all sorts of blows and heartaches. In 18711 had not yet shaken off every one of life’s illusions, and I still had faith in the good feelings of my fellow creatures. For several days then, I chewed on my bit and swallowed my sorrow in patience and virtue, but on 9 November I could stand it no longer and I also left my residence at Good Hope. “I can no longer live between these four walls, and I am leaving you,” I said to my companions, Messrs. Seguin and Kearney. “I’m going away on an expedition, God knows where, and God knows when I will return to you. It will be when I tire of the life of a savage, when the vermin keep me from sleeping, when the affection of my converts becomes a burden to me, when I have had my fill of the steppes and the for¬ ests, weighed down with demands and grievances, tired of yawning out benedictions and delivering homilies. Goodbye until we meet again!” While in France one scarcely had begun to place logs on the hearth, under the Arctic Polar Circle the water had become like the earth, changed into hard rock. I dressed myself in a long and heavy iron-gray Russian caftan, trimmed with beaver, I covered my head with a kolbach of otter skin, buried my arms up to the elbows in warm and silky muffs; I wore on my feet my Chipewyan buckskin boots and my little Hareskin snowshoes; I hitched my sled dogs, and at six o’clock the next morn¬ ing I threw myself at an athletic pace onto the trail broken by two Indians, Jeannet Sida-Kha-ya, Master Little Hare, a true type of Laplander, almost white with a small pointed face, sharp and intelligent, and Toussaint Kfwi-tpeh, War Feather, a true

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

367

swarthy Mongol, chocolate-coloured, with small slanted eyes, and a flat and shin¬ ing face, but honest, gentle, and always cheerful. Both were affectionate Christians, both excellent guides and servants, full of devotion and attentiveness propter retribntionern [because of payment]. In a day and a half of travel across woods and lichen steppes, I reached as far as the Hareskin River, which I crossed at its junction with the Bluefish River, Ttae-niline, to get to the right shore of the first of these waterways. The meeting of these rivers had formed a grassy delta. Between the delta and the southern channel, the Dene Hareskins had built a dam and created slides. In the month of June the bluefish or Back’s little cod (Coregonus signifer) abound there and one can easily take them by the hundreds with the help of a scoop. These fish then form the main diet of those Indians, who eat them raw. They smoke and dry what they cannot eat on the spot, fatten their work dogs with them, and make pemmican, stock, and lamp oil from them. This last would successfully replace cod liver oil. I had inspected all these small operations in detail in the summers of 1865 and 1866. In November 1871, everything being frozen and the fishery deserted, we passed on to bivouac not far from there in a clump of forest. A string of pretty little lakes led me on the third day to the summit of Ti-gotcho105 or the High Land Mountain, a sandy hill that separates the Hareskin River from the Bluefish. One finds there the Muskox plateau which I travelled over in 1866 and crossed several times since then. To the west one can even see the Rocky Mountains which the high banks of the Mackenzie hid from us at Good Hope. It is a magnificent panorama. From the two sides of this rather narrow hill, everlasting and sombre forests of spruce, larch, and birch stretch to the horizon. We camped halfway across Island Lake, and on our fourth day crossed Canada Goose, Whitewater, Sulphur Rain, and Mountain Torrent: each one a new geographic discovery in the land, for these basins were not on any map, having never been seen by any European. However, the Metis servants from Fort Good Hope visited them very occasionally when necessity pushed them to go as far as Colville Lake to get fish. The discovery of this last lake is due to Mr. Roderick MacFarlane106 in 1862, when he was the trading agent of Fort Anderson, but he never mapped it nor was he sure of its position. According to Hareskin traditions, one used to see the sky lit up above Sulphur Lake, Ya-dikkpon-tpoue;107 sulphur and melted bitumen fell from it in a rain that formed a type of Dead Sea which apparently had no outlet and which only received

105 Ti and tie mean land in Dene Hareskin and Danite Secanais. Compare the same word in Chinese, ti; in Tagalog, ti; in Dindjie, tien; in Beaver Danite, tiye; in Zend, ttiye; in Doune Dogrib, te, teye; in Korean, tta; in Japanese, tta-ti; in Nahuatl, tal; in Dindjie, tan; in Malay, tana; in Tongonese, toch, tor; in Moki, touch, ton; in Gallic, tir tallof; in Latin, tellus. 106 [Roderick MacFarlane explored the Anderson River in 1857 on orders from Sir George Simpson.] 107 Literally: Sky-Burning-Water; lake where one sees the sky burn.

368

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

a thin trickle of water. Its surroundings are rich in swamps containing semi-liquid pitch under a bed of lichen and peat. The inhabitants of this new Sodom were all destroyed by the conflagration which is no doubt only an oral and traditional memory of the much more important and ancient one of the Pentapolis.108 We camped beyond Sulphur Lake, not far from a range of granitic Bedzi-a-jyoue or Little Deer Mountain [Belot Mountain] range that separated us from Colville Lake. Nne-ye-erelin-tpoue, Torrent Lake, spills its water through a descending siphon or gorge whose location Jeannet pointed out to me. The water threads its way under¬ ground to resurface several leagues farther away, swelling the Hareskin River. I had twice crossed its mouth on my first trip to Great Bear Lake in 1866. I also saw a lake of smaller dimensions which had lost all of its waters in the same manner through a cavern now dry and gaping in the northern wall of its hollow. There is nothing left in the basin of this lake other than a pond that gets ever lower. On this fifth day, we crossed Little Deer Mountain to the left of a small mountain of diorite which takes the shape of a volcano. However, it has no hole. In four hours of travel we crossed the mountain, and at four o’clock in the afternoon, we reached the shores of beautiful Colville Lake, Lcoughe-nawouttonne-tpoue, after having crossed two other lakes. All of this land is thinly wooded with skinny and stunted spruce. We found ourselves at the northwest end of Lake Colville at the place where it empties into Lake Tpou-tcho [Aubry Lake] by a rather short branch of the river called Piereeghe, Trout Lock, which I had to cross. In this place, ill-favoured by nature, on a low, boggy, bare shore deprived of all charm other than a very restricted view of Lake Colville where a large point hid a complete view from me, I found three log houses that had been constructed by an intelligent family of Hareskins, that of old Louison Sida-Kha-ya,109 Mister Hareskin, father of Alexis or Alek, of Charles or Charly and of Jeannet, all short men with well-defined, fine Laplander features. They received me under their hospitable roof with cries of joy and an expression of unequivocal happiness. They were so isolated on the edge of this vast basin that the Europeans had visited only a single time!110 At once the large pot was filled with Iresh caribou meat and hung on a crane—Indian cuisine consists only either of boiling or of roasting, without any condiment or seasoning. Old Sida-Khaya had been one of Sir John Richardson’s guides in his 1848 Arctic expedition to search for

108 [Five cities—Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar—mentioned in Genesis 14:2 and 8 and called Pentapolis in the Vulgate, Wisdom, 10:6.)

109 The word sida belongs to

the old Dene language fallen into disuse. No one has been able to tell me

its significance. I translated it as Monsieur, Master, or Sieur, by analogy with the sidi of the Arabs and the Saxon sir or sire, which have this meaning. Sida also exists in Chinese; but I do not know its meaning. I have known several Danites who carried this title; but they were not numerous: Sida-Khaya, Sida-Benihay, Sida-Zjen, Sida-Bedellay, Sida Tchye, Sida Betalen. 1,0 1 have already said that this was Mr. R. MacFarlane from Fort Anderson.

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

369

the lemains ot Sii John Franklin, although the famous surgeon did not make any mention of it. It is one of those little hypocrisies of the explorer that I delight in revealing. One cannot ask tor too much gullibility from the good people who travel only in books and who explore only their smouldering logs and the four corners of their room as does the good Xavier de Maistre.111 Many French, even members of the geographic societies or among the erudite and bigwigs of our academies, quite simply believe that the travellers called explorers, because they are or have been the first to visit, travel across, describe, sketch, and draw a map of a country, owe their discoveries only to their own sagacity, to their own initiatives, to their own and other astro¬ nomical calculations, following the fashion of sailors who steer themselves on the sea with the aid of the sun, the stars, and a compass. Poor simpletons, I would like to see them do it. As for Arctic explorers I can certify that all, even Franklin, even Back, Hearne, Mackenzie, and Richardson, indeed had numerous companions that they chose from among the people of the country—French Canadians or Metis—and of whom they had the honesty to enumerate the names under the heading of sailors, lumbermen, and builders. Of course, this does not tell the whole story, because they all, without exception, resorted in all of their actions to the expertise of the Indians or Eskimos, to real guides whose counsels, unfortunately, they did not always heed. We know the guides to Franklin’s discoveries: Ekhetchop, Otchibouk [Ooligbuck], Adam, [Francois] Beaulieu, chief of the Yellowknives, Baptiste Boucher, and oth¬ ers whose names were never given. Le Camarade de Mandeville, de Charlois, King Beaulieu, Louis Cayen, Ekhechop again, Totanouk were Sir George Back’s guides. Baptiste Brousse, Forcier, and Bouvier guided Messrs. Anderson and Simpson. Boucher, Sida-Khaya, Khayade, Makakon, and other Hareskins were employed, al¬ though unofficially, by Dr. Richardson in 1848, and St Georges de Laporte was em¬ ployed by Commodore Pullen, who did not follow his advice and went off course by going up the Peel which he mistook for the Mackenzie. One knows the famous Sambdachiemba for the French explorers Hue and Gabet;112 the black guides who always accompanied the explorers Livingstone, Levaillant, Speke, Grant, Baker, Cameron, and so many others; and Baldwin113 himself, the great African Nimrod,

1,1 [Xavier de Maistre (1763—1852), author of Le Voyage autour de ma chambre, published in translation (Toronto: W.J. Gage, 1891 and 1896).] 112 [Fathers Evariste Regis Hue (1813-1860), and Joseph Gabet, missionaries in northern China, disguised themselves as lamas and made an epic tour through Inner Mongolia and Tibet. They were the last explor¬ ers of those regions whose motive was exclusively evangelization, and they recorded their experiences in their entertaining Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine pendant les annees 1844,1845 et 1846, which was translated and widely read in English.] 113 [David Livingstone (1813-73), central Africa; Francois Le Vaillant (1753-1829), Africa; John Hanning

370

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

had the straightforwardness to recount what trying dangers he was exposed to every time he drew aside, however little, from his camp to hunt all alone. In all of my stories, I have always had the decency to give the names of the Indian or Indians who guided me on my explorations of discovery, and I also expressed my appreciation. Our discoveries are only such in relation to Europeans, to those civilized people who have never visited, travelled, or lived in those countries. To the inhabitants of these same countries they would never think of them as discoveries, and every European who travels through them usually is, in their eyes, only a curi¬ ous person, a tourist, a hunter, a researcher, a scholar, a missionary, or a businessman, if he is not a tenderfoot, a novice, and a good-for-nothing who trusted himself to them to be guided, directed, and piloted by them in their own country. It must not be forgotten that the great Stanley himself, Barth, Trivier, Mungo Park, Brazza,114 and all the great African explorers fit into this category, too. I do not except even the ancient navigators who discovered the New World. Let one attentively read the history of their discoveries and one will be convinced that they all and always had foreign guides and pilots who directed them on their expeditions and who most fre¬ quently drew the maps of these lands for them. Christopher Columbus was the only exception. So, Louison Sida-Khaya had been Sir John Richardson’s guide in 1848, and it was he who told the doctor the name of the river whose mouth he discovered to the east of the Mackenzie, the Unknown River [Anderson River], in Hareskin Si-tchoniline; in Dindjie, Sio-tchpo-ondjig; a name that the doctor preferred to translate, I do not know why, into the Chipewyan dialect of Lake Athabasca, Bepoulle-desse, for which there is not the smallest reason. He could have just as well named it in Sioux or in Tupinamba. Why not? Master Little Hare’s house, a masterpiece of Indian patience and ingenuity, had been built with the help of tools that his three sons had to make before anything else: an adze, which replaces our two-headed axe, a plane, metal shears, and a ham¬ mer. From an old gun barrel cut lengthwise into narrow strips, then cut into pieces of equal size, the three brothers had made nails. Some copper barrel hoops had been transformed into door hinges, window hinges, and door latches. In this little house, furnished with a wooden floor and a ceiling of squared planks, like a Russian isba, they had built a stone chimney, made warm and comfortable beds, a table, stools, and even a sofa (because they had seen one at my place, thanks to the skill of my com¬ panion, Mr. Seguin). And Jeannet put the cherry on the top of all these European marvels by making a violin out of odds and ends.

Speke (1827-64), Africa; James Augustus Grant (1827-92), Africa; Sir Samuel White Baker (1821-93), Africa; Verney Lovett Cameron (1844-94), Africa; William Charles Baldwin (1826-1903), Africa.] 114 [Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), Africa; Heinrich Barth (1821-65), Africa; Elisee Trivier (no dates known), Africa; Mungo Park (1771-1806), Africa; Pierre Paul Francois Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (1852-1905), central Africa.]

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

37i

Unfortunately, all that these convinced Christians had accomplished to raise themselves in the eyes of their countrymen by a faithful imitation of civilized people had hi ought them little or no prestige. In vain these little gentlemen had given up the nomadic and savage life, deserted the cold and uncomfortable sojourn of the lodges to live in a warm and comfortable house, sleep separately in as many beds, eat at a table with real dishes and with the help of utensils of hammered iron; in vain they had adopted a single family and patronymic name, washed themselves every day with soap and used a water closet; in vain had become the designated fishermen of Fort Good Hope and provisioned for the Whites of that post, nothing had been able to whiten them in the prejudiced or envious eyes of the Harey and Rabbity people. One did not consider them less than people properly so-called, Dene-wa, circum¬ cised like all their river companions, and they were stubbornly denied the glorious attribute of Bene-ounl-lay, or French. “Louison is a vain and proud person,” the few Indians that lived near his dwelling told me. “He regards us as savages ever since he lives under a bark roof, but he is neither more nor less than one of us.” Sida-Khaya well knew what people thought and said about him. “You think,” he said to me, “that 1 could not suffer such an insult. Chosen by Mr. Gaudet, the factor of Fort Good Hope, as his right-hand man, his chief translator in the midst of all these chawa,115 of these drafwen,116 me, the former companion of Richardson and Rae, I ought to affirm my superiority. Come on, I said to my sons, we really have become French, clerks, employees of the great Hudson’s Bay Company. So, goodbye now to our ancestors’ customs, the old observances, the taboos or gofwen, and all that rubbish of the lodges and soothsayers, nakohm. All that is all right in the woods. With the French we must live as French. Let us be up to our superior position.” From then on Mr. Little Hare only spoke to his children in French, or more often in an abominable gibberish that he had learned in the boats when travelling with the English and French Canadians, which he thought was French. He used candles that he made himself with a real mould obtained from the fort. He no longer blew his nose with his fingers, but carefully kept what he had previously thrown away in disgust in squares of cotton printed in Manchester; and his glory was to be enthroned on a seat of office, papers in hand, within the four walls of a little study. This was pushing the love of civilization and the imitation of the Whites to their ultimate limits. Worthy imitators of such a father, the three younger Little Hares tried to think up very French novelties, and this resulted in the sofa and the violin. It was a real violin, although it was made of white wood, and so well made that it brought forth cries of admiration from all the savages. It only lacked the colour and polish of mahogany, as

115 Savages, in Slavey jargon.

116 Sheet, from the French

phrase du drap fin used by French Canadians as a term of contempt to desig¬

nate the Dene Redskins, because they only wanted superfine, top quality cloth.

372

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

well as real gut strings, to make it a Stradivarius. Unfortunately, the strings and the bow were made of caribou sinew, and this did not make its sounds very harmonious. But, such as it was, it enchanted everybody, and people came from far away to hear little Jeannet scratch away on his instrument. This was about all the profit that this interesting family got from all this display of energy and effort. As for me, I was so overjoyed to see them enter seriously on this path and to claim the title of French as the highest expression of civilization, that I did not spare praises either in private or in public, actively urging all the Indians to imitate them, which they were capable of doing with a little good will and courage. 1 have said that some nomads were there, a sick one among them. I got them all to meet at Louison’s house to pray and confer with me. I had the pleasure of easing the suffering of the sick man with my medications. Since leaving Fort Good Hope in 1878, I learned that poor Norbert Ta-ti-koye-tay, He Who Is Seated on the Ground, had died of his infirmity, dysuria [urinary disorder]. He had a twenty-year-old daughter whom I had baptized as a child and I had watched her grow up. I had also married her the previous year, but since her marriage, she had separated from her husband under the pretext that God had revealed to her that she would be the mother of His son, Jesus, born again for the salvation of the world. In other words, the unhappy woman, either a hypocrite or hallucinating, was playing the role of the Holy Virgin, just as was Koundatak-tsi, the young Dindjie from the Anderson steppes that I have spoken of elsewhere.117 Her father brought her gently by the hand to me with religious respect and robust faith, warning me that she saw the Virgin Mary and was called to replace her soon for the greater glory of the Danite nation in general and the Hare tribe in particu¬ lar. Seeing that I had to deal with religious maniacs, I received them with the pity and scoffings that they deserved. The young woman confirmed to me her father’s declarations with imperturbable self-assurance, and asked at once to speak with me in private, in order to recount to me the list of exalted revelations of which, she said, she had been the recipient. But as soon as we were alone, the unhappy woman threw herself into my arms, asking me for another kind of revelation that my conscience as an honest man refused to give her. Suddenly, I understood what kind of Holy Virgin she saw and by whom she wanted to conceive the Son of God reincarnated. I asked her to describe for me the being from whom she received the visions under the name of the Virgin Mary. “He is as tall as that,” she answered me, raising her hand a metre high. “He has pointed ears and a tail, and grey hair all over his body like that of a mouse. I often make him dance on my knees.” I saw that the poor creature was crazy and I recommended spiritual rest to her. As

117 Petitot, Quinze ans sous le cercle polaire (Paris, 1889), 189.

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

373

for any kind of care, nothing else could be done for her in this frightful wilderness. She died less than a year later, without having given to the world its reincarnated god, but also without being cured of her religious mania. The day after my arrival, 16 November, I celebrated the holy sacrifice of Mass in Sida-Khaya’s house and gave communion to five people. After my horn ily in Hareskin, Louison turned towards the assembly and said to his countrymen, “You see now, arekhe, how my dwelling has been sanctified by the presence of God. It is as true that He has come here, as it is true that He lives in heaven. Well, henceforth, do not ever utter a word that my ears do not want to hear, and when I gather you for prayer on Sundays and feast days, do not refuse to come here by saying: Ah! My grandfather, you are not a priest, to call us together. My grandfather, why do you get involved in making us pray in your house?’” Then, his tirade finished, the little old man looked at me without adding anything, but with a look of waiting for confirmation from my mouth of his words. I strongly approved of what the good old man had just said and recommended to those present to come together to pray and sing in this house on Sundays and feast days. Some Indians had told me that to the south of Colville Lake there was a very large lake called Tpa-tchini-tpoue, Floating Woods Lake [Lac des Bois], that had not been visited or explored by the Whites. When leaving from Good Hope I thought to go there on reconnaissance if I could find the means. Chance and Providence gave me my wish. I learned at Sida-Khaya’s that there was presently a large Indian camp in that area where I would have a marriage to bless and two grieving people to console: Enna-kray, White of the Eyes, surnamed Grilled Meat, who inadvertently had just killed his brother-in-law while hunting, and a son of Essa-golla, Nighthawk, who had just smashed his knee while playing with a loaded gun one Sunday, instead of praying with his parents. At once I made my preparations to go to those places, still unknown to geographers and even to all the Whites of the country. One morning Enna-kray had left to hunt caribou, accompanied by his young brother-in-law, aged thirteen to fourteen years, and by Ella-odeniha, Canoe Tip. Separated from each other in the heat of the hunt, they returned to camp that night separately. As Grilled Meat approached the camp, he saw a black shape lying in the snow on a lake that he had to cross and which appeared to try to rise at his approach. Without stopping to think that it was unlikely a caribou would loiter so close to a crowded and noisy camp, my man took aim at the unknown shape and fired. A heart-rending cry rang out, and Enna-kray recognized the voice of his young brotherin-law. He ran as fast as possible, but he found only a dying person. The bullet had gone through the body of the youth in the area near the heart. The unfortunate boy expired in ghastly pain, and Grilled Meat, overcome by the agony of his despair, would have killed himself on the spot if people had not prevented him by guarding him closely. All that they would let him do was smash his gun to pieces while they watched.

374

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Then they feared he would become crazy from sorrow and regret.11* So I did not hesitate to visit the unhappy man, to comfort him, and try above all to sooth the _• parents of the deceased who never stopped shouting abuse at Enna-kray for his imprudence. Louison gave me his second son, Charles, to serve as my guide and companion. “I am quite satisfied that you are taking him,” he said to me. “There is a young widow here that he loves and who is making him waste his time although I have in¬ sisted to her she will never become his wife. She is his cousin in the fifth degree. You know well that I cannot tolerate such incest.” I warned the old man in vain that he was wrong, that there was no incest in such a marriage. Furthermore, 1 possessed the power of dispensation from the Holy See, even for first cousins. He would not listen to reason. Lifting his arms skyward in stupefaction, he cried, “Never, but absolutely never! These things are all right for Whites. Our national customs expressly forbid them to us. I have no desire that this evil woman should cause my Charles’ death. Moreover, she is lazy, good for nothing, clumsy, a widow with two children, and older than Charles by ten years. Is it not a senseless thing to marry an old woman when there are young and pretty girls in our tribe? But our children are going crazy. We see that well enough. They no longer want the young ones, they only run after widows, single women of a ripe age. Do you understand anything in that?” It is to be noted that the scholar Mr. Elie Reclus observes that, in India, among the Iroulas, an aboriginal people, the widows were similarly pursued by the young men, in preference to young women.119 I had also ascertained the same fact among the Chipewyans, without having been able to explain it. When I had asked the young men the reason, they replied: “The young girls are good for nothing. They must be told everything. They must be taught everything. They balk at everything and only want to play. Further, they like to dress up to be loved and sought after by the boys. The mature women are already broken into housework. They have experience, know how to do everything, care for us, pamper us, love us for ourselves, and are faithful to us until death.” So, it is self-love, egotism, and self-interest that bring the young Dene to wed wid¬ ows. Love had nothing to do with it. It is no less true that there was an even more ridiculous practice in accordance with the ancient customs of this people: a man was allowed to adopt and raise a young girl of eleven to twelve years, train her in obedi¬ ence, respect, work, and household chores, until she was mature and could become

118 Ennakpay did not become crazy, but he died of chagrin and languor less than a year after this sad event. He was a man endowed with excellent qualities and great gentleness of character. 119 [Michel-Elie Reclus (1827-1904), geographer and ethnologist.] Primitifs (Paris: Chamerot, 1888), 223. I strongly believe that Livingstone says this about certain young Africans that he evangelized.

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

375

his wife. But because we rose up so much against such an immoral and abusive cus¬ tom, Christian youth have fallen into the opposite excess. On 16 November 1871,1 left with Charles from Piere-eghe for Floating Woods Lake. We took six hours with our dogs at a run to reach the southern end of Colville Lake which places this basin at the geographic degree of 67° 30' north latitude. Its direction is from northwest to southeast. 1 his lake is divided into three large, broad, and deep bays, and two others of smaller dimensions. The granitic Bedzi-ajyoue range is the southwest boundary; that of Piere-ajyoue or the Trout Lies to the East. The Eyounnekhin range or Lodge of the Souls [or Ghost Lodge] is to the north. These hills have an altitude of a thousand to twelve hundred feet above the lake. I did not cross Lake Colville’s entire length, but only crossed it diagonally. It is situated between the 126th and 127th degree of longitude west of Paris. Going along the south shore from point to point, we passed a large bay to the north and angled towards Ndou-tcho-kka island and other small islands bare of vegetation, composed only of sand and pebbles smoothed by the waters, obvious indications of the consid¬ erable lowering of the level of this lake, for these islands are nothing but reefs that have now appeared above water. A rather short portage composed of lichen moors and sparse spruce separates Colville Lake and Tpa-tchini Lake. I camped there with Charles, and the next morn¬ ing, to my delighted eyes, this second lake unfolded its immense surface that still echoed with the rumbles of the ice moving under the pressure of the cold, minus 350 Celsius. As we were travelling on this little lake whose icy crust trembled under our steps as if disturbed by the wind, we saw long and wide fissures, roaring and rum¬ bling like thunder, which ran in winding zigzags right to the opposite shore, caused by our passing. This phenomenon furnished me with a most natural and plausible explanation of the causes and effects of earthquakes. If you puncture or crack land subject to volcanic tremors, the earthquakes caused by the expansion of hydrogen protocarbons will cease as soon as the gases find an escape route. The diagonal cross¬ ing of beautiful Floating Wood Lake also required a six-hour sled trip. So, it has the size of Colville Lake. Charles baptized it with my name because I was the first White to see and cross it, but I later returned several times. It appears that a portage of one day’s march separates Petitot Lake and Smith Arm of Great Bear Lake. The lake’s waters are tributaries of the arm by way of Kkpa-tse-yedie or Dry Willows River. They go underground at the end of an appendix of the lake, named L’oue-tchoni, Place of the Trout, like those of so many other lakes of the same granitic region, passing under L’e-peze Mountain, which connects Piere-ajyoue to Nontpyen-kfwe [Mountain of the Steppe], and reappears from it under the name Dry Willows River. I almost believe that in a certain epoch the great lakes L’oughe-tcho or Maunoir, L’oughe-nawouttonne or Colville, and Tpatchini or Petitot made up an integral part of Great Bear Lake. They were later separated by the rising of the Ti-della and

376

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Ti-depay ridges which are trachytes120 and so were raised very weakly, so weakly that they are only little cones that have had difficulty piercing and raising the earth s lay-_ ers a little, leaving between the layers a host of geological continuities. That would explain the great number of subterranean rivers and cave openings that characterize this region. Lake Petitot is oval. Its direction is from north-northwest to south-southeast. It has a little bay to the north, a second to the west, and two others to the south, which are separated by a narrow channel. Towards the middle of its length it is similarly divided by a stony, long, and narrow point which is submerged at high water, for the lake undergoes fluctuations that the Indians could not explain to me. Periodically one sees floating trees but no one knows where they come from, the forest that used to border the lake being actually distant one to two hundred metres from the shores, and these form a steppe like those of Great Bear Lake. So there exists a subterranean connection between Lake Petitot and some other large neighbouring lake, probably Maunoir or Colville, and perhaps even with both of them. But the Indians, who share my opinion in this matter, have said to me that they have not looked for the point where the siphon rises. Moreover, this may happen only in the summer, and in summer they do not inhabit these shores. In the neighbourhood of my lake is an asphalt swamp that I crossed with Charles. Although the Hareskins had spoken to me about it as a marvel, it is scarcely a curios¬ ity, and it is not rare in the far Northwest. These deposits of liquid naphtha are even abundant in the country neighbouring Ti-della. Fort Good Hope can obtain some around Laporte Lake, the source of the Lockhart River, a country that I have crossed four times between 1865 and 1868. The dimensions of Floating Woods Lake or Petitot Lake are those of beautiful Lac la Biche in Saskatchewan: ten leagues long including the two bays in the south, or six leagues without them. Its width is one and a quarter leagues. Its bowl seemed quite large to me, but its shores are only slightly elevated. Not having found anyone at Lake Petitot the evening of 18 November, we had to turn south and come to the shore beyond L’oue-tchoni Bay. What flourishing cities might spread out on the shores of such a great basin if it were situated under more fortunate skies! How many gracious steamships would carve their wakes on its clear waters! Here, however, it lies useless, surly, and frozen, amid thick mists caused by the evaporation of the snows, surrounded by an almost unbroken solitude where silence and the ghostly stillness of the tomb reign. We landed on a lichen steppe hardly above the level of the lake, on a tongue of land without any bushes, trees, or any sign of the passing or dwelling of man. The horizon, towards the north, was the cloudless blue sky. Obviously, man had nothing to do in a country so poorly endowed by nature. Towards the south the closing day turned

120

[Light-coloured rough volcanic rock.]

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

377

some twisted and doddery dwarf spruce purple in colour. They cast their spindly and ridiculous long shadow at our feet. When this red glow had disappeared and the sky had taken on a violet shade, the northeast horizon revealed a narrow and faintly black edge, no thicker than a thread that one might have thought stretched between the dull white of the lake and the grey-white of the sky. It was nothing but earth, forest, and shoreline. Leagues still separated us from it. Having fasted since morning and out of supplies, I viewed the situation in obvious bad humour. Was Charles Little Hare going to offer me a second, revised, corrected, and considerable augmented edition of the stupefying wanderings of Heavenly Wolf, my guide of November 1865 and of sleepwalking memory?121 Why did he not get me to bring supplies for three or four days since he knew the distances? At this moment I felt much more disposed to turn back than to repeat my exploits of this memorable voyage. But Charles, as a good, very resolute, and courageous Hareskin, was not at all inclined to go back, and later on I was grateful to him. We are going to head towards Nonceni or Early Thaw Bay,” he told me, “a short walk of two or three hours, hardly worth mentioning. If there is nobody at Nonceni, well then, we will go further. Let us hope not! We will pass close to my lake, Tcharlytpoue [Lake Charles], the real source of the Anderson River. We will go, if we have to, to Eh-dekkpale, White Locks Lake, or to Whitefish Lake, always towards the sources of the Anderson. There, we will certainly find people, and you can do good while you satisfy your curiosity. It is quite close to here. See, there are no mountains separating us from it.” I already knew for some time what these assurances meant in the mouth of a Hareskin who was a good walker. It meant that we would have nothing that whole night but a forced march and no sleep. So, I continued to run behind my dogs on the lake, after having covered the point of the aforementioned steppe. But at this time of the year the nights are not less than eighteen hours long. You can see that there was some margin. Suddenly, with the sky darkening even more as the night fell in the north, there appeared above the horizon ahead of us a little white plume that started to wave in the light breeze. “There!” Charles shouted with joy, “There is smoke. The Dene are there. A few more steps and we are there.” However, one could not trust that! Nothing can be seen further than smoke. It appears even if the hearth is located below the horizon several days’ travel away. This seemed to me to be the case here for the horizon was, or looked to be, as distant as that of the sea. Losing hope, 1 called to Charles, who was running ahead of the dogs, to stop, and we lit a fire at dusk. It was, after all, only two and a half hours into the afternoon. But we had been moving since four in the morning. We warmed our

121 See my work entitled Quinze ans sous le cerclepolaire (Paris, 1889), 209, 233.

378

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

stomachs with a cup of sugared tea, all that remained of my supplies, in fact, and then we started our trip again, in spite of the darkness of the night and a temperature . of minus 37.30 Celsius which was falling rapidly towards minus 40°. Night fell, and we saw a small bright light stab the sky in the same spot where we had seen the white smoke. That was, according to Charles, the glow of the camp reflecting off the smoke. Already he heard the howling of the dogs. He saw a swirl of sparks fluttering, but the more we advanced towards our goal, the more the fire seemed to recede. Charles could even detect its smell; he saw the shadows of dancers pass and repass as they turned in front of this fire which grew increasingly larger, and the plume of smoke waved in the wind and swelled, becoming rounded out like the back of a cloud. “That is,” he said, “because the wind blows from the northwest.” But I interrupted the guide’s epic account with a burst of laughter which brought from him a large guttural sound of mystification. In this supposed fire which grew and swelled out I had just recognized the face of the moon, topped off by a little white cloud, its nightcap probably. Alas! Yes, it was nothing more than the moon, as red as a Provencal racasse,122 boiled with saffron, or the round face of my late humpbacked Gascon professor, Saquet de Montjoux, when he was angry. With all my heart, I held a grudge against the goddess of woods and nights for reminding me of those less than heroic times of my life in Marseilles. “And now,” I said to Charles, letting myself fall on the frozen snow from hunger and exhaustion, “go ahead and run after your fake chawa and drafwen illusions! As for me, I am going to camp here.” We had arrived at the edge of a very small lake which is found at the south end of Charles Lake, called the Little Bustard, Ra-tsele. It was the true source of the Anderson River, the head of a vast river system which in truth measures almost three geographic degrees, seventy-five leagues as the crow flies, from south to north, but which in reality is more than double that in width. It has no fewer than thirty tribu¬ taries and receives the waters of ninety-four lakes, several of them very large. This source is placed at 66° 54 north latitude and 1240 30' longitude west from Paris. I was annoyed at my poor guide—who in truth was not at fault—and at the moon, at the father, Mr. Little Hare, who had so badly advised me, and at the Indians who had gone to hide themselves so far away. I was going to decide to bivouac without eating or even a fire, for the shores of Bustard Lake are flat and marshy like the whole surrounding region, when my dogs took it upon themselves to cross this little basin, only one league wide, and dragged me against some old fwi or caribou-hunt palisades123 lying on the edge of the lake. The intelligent animals smelled smoke and human scent at a great distance and had decided rightly to leave the beaten path to cut across the steppes and lakes without caring any more about the road since the

122

[Scorpion fish.]

123 [Stakes forming an enclosure into which animals were driven for slaughter.]

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

379

region and even the lakes are so flat they can hardly be distinguished from the land around them. A short time later, they threw us into the middle of a camp made up of seven large lodges in which I was quite astonished to find .... Who? My good friends, the Great Bear Lake Ehta-tcho-gottine, the Fur People. What had then become of the chawa and the drafwen of Good Hope? I will not describe the warm reception given me by these Danites whom I had not been looking for nor expecting at all, but whom I met again with the greatest pleasure. The “shake hands over and the first fireworks of enthusiasms exhausted, I had to choose a shel¬ ter tor the night while not distressing any of the seven lodge owners, who all wanted to draw me into their respective smoke houses. My triends, I exclaimed, I love you all equally and would like very much to make seven parts of me and give a piece to each of you. But this would be too violent a pro¬ cedure and one that cannot be reversed. I beg you then not to think of it. But as I am as hungry as thirty-six wolves, show me the lodge that has the most meat, and I will throw myself in there with my mouth open.” They broke out laughing, and putting all jealousy aside, they sent me to the lodge of their chiet, Lin-ya-betpa, Son of the Little Dog, as being the best provided with food. I immediately settled down there. Naughty one,

these good people said to me, 'it has been two years since we

saw you at Great Bear Lake. We have hungered for your word, thirsted for religious instruction. Have you then abandoned us? Do we have to burn your house? Return to our old fetishes? Call again on our magicians? Give ourselves over once again to the Cloven Hoof?” Before retiring, I visited the sick and distributed to them the medicines appropri¬ ate to their condition. I had established a good little pharmacy at Fort Good Hope, and I did not make a single trip of any length without providing myself with the main remedies as well as some instruments for minor surgery. Ah! If only I had medical knowledge beyond that given in my dry textbooks on pathology and pharmacy. The next day I celebrated Mass in Little Dog’s lodge, did twelve baptisms and blessed two marriages. Then I heard the confessions of the whole tribe. But my ministry was unexpectedly troubled by an arrival that I had not counted on. Ten days earlier two young men from this camp had gone to carry the dried meat to Mr. Taylor’s house in Fort Norman-Franklin, and they were expected back any moment. They came back, but not alone. They brought two servants of the fort with them: the Scot Taylor (not the factor), and the Chipewyan Kene, who came just to raid the camp for everything they could find in the way of food. These two men were also astonished to find me with these Indians, at least eighty leagues away from Fort Good Hope, as I myself was to see them there, having hastened from Fort Norman which is a good thirty-five to forty leagues away. “Alas!” I said to myself at that moment, “so much for my glory as an explorer. Until today I had been the only European, the only White to have crossed these northern steppes and discovered even the source of the Anderson River after having descended

380

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

that waterway right to its mouth in 1865. And now I will no longer be the only one since here is a Scot who meets me here, unaware of the prejudice he will bring to my renown. . I had been, in effect, only eighteen hours ahead of him. However, I had not talked with the poor devil five minutes before 1 was convinced that he would do me no harm. 1 he excellent boy was an illiterate fisherman. He had servilely followed the path that led him with his companion to this camp, without knowing where he would end up, not planning any discovery and even ignorant of the existence of the Anderson River and its true source. I breathed more easily and was careful not to tell him anything. The evening of the same day, there arrived two Hareskin Indians from Good Hope whom I had planned to visit. They informed me that they were walking from camp to camp to learn the news, that they had just come from Mr. Little Hare s house, and that they had followed my trail. Their camp was on the edges of a large lake, L’oughetcho or Maunoir, a big tributary of the upper Anderson. Thus, in heading for Lake Petitot, I had turned away from them. My meeting with the L’in-ya-betpa People was therefore providential because, without it, Charles and I would have had to eat one of our dogs and return none the wiser, perhaps after having reached Great Bear Lake. These two young men, one of whom was none other than the cast-off husband of my Colville Lake Holy Virgin Mary, by virtue of the need of all savages to make an impression with some sensational story and to play to the gallery, told us that they had seen on the lake caribou hoofprints that ended as human footprints. This was said with the greatest seriousness, with a convincing air, and with an expression of alarm. But a group of young people, who had passed exactly the same vicinity the same day, formally refuted such extravagant suggestions by telling the two Kha-tchoGottine that the human footprints that they had seen were only theirs, which gave me a good laugh. My hilarity wounded the feelings of one of the audience of this literary fantasy, Alfred Tazin-a, Little Swan. “Still, Father, you must not believe,” he said respectfully, “that these instances of metamorphosis are rare among us. Without speaking of the conviction that we hold from our ancestors that the caribou were formerly people, our former enemies, it fre¬ quently happens to us to be victims of these inexplicable transformations. Everyone here knows that I have been the plaything of them not so long ago. You recall my little daughter, Emerenkoule?” “Is she not the pretty little child of eight or nine who, by similarity of name, I called Emerentiana when baptizing her?” “Precisely. Well, Father, last winter my poor child disappeared without us knowing how. She was changed into a caribou.” “Come on! How can you think that?” Well then, listen. As soon as we saw that she was no longer in the camp with us, everyone went looking for her. There were so many paths traced out and beaten down around the camp that we understood how she got lost. Coming back from the hare snares, she could not find the right path in the middle of this labyrinth; a

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

381

child does not notice much. In order not to miss our target, we acted as if we were on a moose hunt in her respect. We went in a large circle around the camp, walking until we found my child’s footprints. From this point we started another large circle close to the first, and so on until the little footprints of Emerenkoule left the tangled network of our hunting trails. Her tracks being identified and found again, we started off in pursuit of her. She was walking without snowshoes, steadily towards Great Bear Lake. Not knowing the location of our camp, she had turned away from it. Arriving at the lake, she had gone along a bay, then turned into the forest again where she made indistinct marks. Then, finally, she went again towards the lake. No doubt she panicked. By this time the child must have been very exhausted, for she used a stick for walking, and she walked at random. We followed her far on the lake, until her steps were mixed with numerous tracks from a caribou herd. There was a considerable number of caribou on the lake that winter, and the lake stretched out before us in all its vast¬ ness. We would have seen my child if she had been there, is that not so? Well, in vain we made new circles. From then on it was impossible to distinguish any trace of Emerentiana’s footprints. My daughter had changed into a caribou. May God keep her angelic soul!

Thus did the poor father express himself. I could well have corrected him about his sweet error by suggesting that a pack of wolves following the caribou might more easily have snatched his unfortunate child than to stretch their legs and chase faster animals. But what good would it have done to add to his grief by this suggestion? Better to leave him with his gentle illusion. The second Indian who had arrived with Tepele-ttsen-kpayelle, He Who Is Going to Urinate in Spite of His Dreams, was Dindjie-tcho, Great Squinter [Loucheux], an old, ugly, one-eyed shaman, awkward and dreadfully squinty with his remaining eye. He told me mysteriously that when arriving, he had received a great fright because in the middle of the night, he saw the Devil’s fire. “You would not have stolen that fire, Dindjie! “ several young women replied to him maliciously. “You have well earned it, that fire there, because of your many sins.” The sorcerer did not answer them. I recalled the cause of our mistake the previous evening, at the same hour, and I sent a look of understanding to Charles, who, in his turn teased the shaman on the subject. But the other one did not want to give in. “No, no, Tcharly, it was not the moon. This fire sparkled. It cast a whirlwind of flames and smoke.” We remembered that we had seen the same thing. “If it is not the Devil’s fire,” Great Squinter continued, “it is that of souls or rather that of the dead.” There were new outbursts of laughter from every Indian. “Well then, it must be the fire of the caribou, or that of the grouse, or even better that of the martens, but you can be sure that it was not the moon. The moon does not give off flames or smoke, see!” I held my sides from laughing while listening to this gibberish, and in a low voice I asked my neighbour Ralli, Shore Rail, if Dindjie-tcho was crazy.

382

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

“He has never had much of a mind,” replied the Indian. “However, what he said there is true. Father, you cannot ignore that during the winter all the animals warm themselves like people. How do you think the caribou, wolves, foxes, muskox, par¬ tridge, grouse, martens, etc., can pass nine long months of an intolerable cold out¬ doors and without fire, while we, intelligent people, cannot last half a day there, in spite of our furs and our warm clothes? No, Father, you must understand something. All the beasts warm themselves, you see, and the poor dead, themselves, their souls, spend their nights comfortably before a good fire. Only, not everyone sees this mys¬ terious fire. Only seers, nakohin, see them, and if you and Charles had had that advan¬ tage last night, it is because you are nakohin without knowing it.” After this point-blank compliment, Ralli believed I had been converted to Danite ideas. When I shook my head and smiled with an air of someone less than convinced, he added, “I see, Father, that you doubt what I have said to you. Well, 1 am going to give you proofs. These last days you have crossed the vast space between Island Lake and Sulphur Lake, is that not so? What did you see there?” “A forest of black sticks and broom handles, bruised and scorched, that put me in a foul mood against your mania for destroying everything and burning everything in your country.” “Well, only, you must know that I was still but a little child when that forest was already in the same state as you have seen it. Further, from time out of mind, no one has ever seen in those places anything else but sticks and poles blackened by fire. There should nevertheless have been green trees there since then, long ago, is that not so? Well, who destroyed this forest? Nothing else, Father, but the foxes and the martens with their nocturnal fires, lit by those very animals to heat themselves and to warm their numbed paws.” I was going to object to the tradition of fire from the sky, of the sulphur and bitu¬ men rain that the Good Hope Indians had told me about, but someone called to Ralli who immediately left the chief’s lodge. Then Little Dog and several other fathers of families changed the subject, complaining to me loudly that they could never suc¬ ceed in getting their wives to observe Sunday. “For many years now we have rested on Sundays and feast days,” they said to me. “We did not hunt unless there was a famine. We put on our Sunday best. We gathered to pray, to sing canticles, and read from the books you gave us. As for our wives, it is impossible to instill this duty in them. They cannot stay still. They must scrape skins; they smoke or debone meat; they crush bones, or even, if it is in summer, they all go together to harvest wild berries on the steppes. That is how they keep the Lord’s Day holy. And we cannot change them.” “That is very bad,” I said to those ladies. “It is not permitted to work on the Sabbath day which has been moved from Saturday to Sunday since the resurrection of our Saviour. All that you can do on that day—except for what necessity imposes—is to wash, get yourselves ready, and prepare your food. However, I allow that you can go

Discovery of the Sources of the Anderson

383

to gather fruit after you have prayed, provided that it is not for business purposes, but simply for you and your families to eat them that day, and as a pastime. This is what the law of God commands.” Good,

said the husbands. “Now, listen carefully, wives, when next you crush

bones on Sunday, we will force you to swallow all the bones you have crushed, so that it will serve as your food since it is the only thing permitted to you that day. You can take that as an order.” “Ah! Father, if you knew how stubborn our wives are!” sighed Lanky, our old ac¬ quaintance from the Tpa-ta-ttsoghe steppes and from Providence.124 “That is no surprise,” his dear better half, Victoria Tarentpin-a, Fine Needle, Nnikpachie’s sister, answered back to him, “you others, men, you spend your leisure time reading your prayer books, singing, playing hand games or cards, dancing, or visiting your traps. But we, who do not know how to read, what do you want us to do, after we have said our prayers? We are condemned to sleep all day, curled up like dogs, or work if we do not want to go gallivanting. And, it is better to work, I guess, than to do the latter.” The poor woman was partly right. Total Sunday rest is a hard punishment for the illiterate, poor, and ignorant people who live in a land as desolate as the one I was crossing at the time. I believe God will forgive them much because of their good intention and because Lie has deprived them of all kinds of distractions and amuse¬ ments permitted on those days. The poor little people worked for fear of offending God during their idleness. Can we blame them? On 25 November I returned to my residence at Fort Good Hope, after fifteen days of apostolic excursions and geographical explorations, happy to have discovered the great lake which carries my name, as well as the source of the Anderson River, but still happier to have been able to do some good for very isolated, poor, and aban¬ doned souls. As for the Indians I had wanted to see, I did not see them because I fol¬ lowed another road on my return trip. I returned after crossing seventy-seven lakes and five rivers. The only incident that occurred to me on the return trip, by way of Trout and Siphon lakes, was to be preceded for three hours on Ti-go-tcho plateau and the lakes after it by four large wolves who stubbornly travelled ahead of me, in spite of my shouts, as far as Hareskin River. When Charles and I arrived on Whitewater Lake, Tpou-yale-tpoue, three kilometric leagues from Fort Good Hope, we were quite surprised to hear the distinct ringing of the mission’s little bell, which only weighed fifteen kilograms. This acoustic phe¬ nomenon is all the more curious to note because often you cannot hear this little bell at the fort itself, which is only three hundred paces away! One can only reasonably explain this unusual event as being caused by the extraordinary density of the air

124 See En route pour la mer glaciale, 340; and Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves.

384

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

during the winter, or by the ricocheting the sound makes on large flat surfaces, like a stone being skipped across water. The sound is heard at the point of contact with, the earth and at the places it bounces in its waves. It is not perceived where the wave carries it into those layers of the air higher than the layers in which the hearer’s ears are surrounded. Will scholars accept this theory? That is what I ask myself. Nevertheless, one now understands how the Greenland legends can be true when they record that the Inuit of Greenland heard the sound of bells at great distances from the Scandinavian settlers. If a bell of fifteen kilos could be heard very clearly at a distance of three leagues, at 66° 20' north latitude, a bell of thirty kilos could then be heard—and easily—at six leagues, at 70°, and a fortiori—more so a still larger bell. Now, the bell metal debris that has been found amid the ruins of the Scandinavian settlement of Kagortok, on the west coast of Greenland,125 proves that there were bells there. It would be wrong to take these bell sounds for cannon blasts. Moreover, bells were already invented in the ninth and tenth centuries, and artillery and gun¬ powder were not yet invented in Europe. If a bell could be heard from afar at the Arctic Circle, it is a quite different sound from an explosion that would barely suc¬ ceed in shaking the air there.

125 Revue d’Ethnographie (Paris, 1888) January-April, 20. Account by the explorer Count Nordenskiold.

CHAPTER X Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River A Ruse Causes Distrust—Inconveniences of a Badly-made Yurt—Where Are the Savages?—Ella’s Dream and Conversion—Superstitious Fears—More Than Naive A Conjuror s Advice—Hindu Way of Hunting—A Moving Encounter— Tadipale—On Great Lake Petitot—A Narrow Escape—Arrival at Nonceni Bay— Raging Wolves—An Indian’s Exploits

In the month of September 1872, the great chief of the Kha-tcho-Gottine or Hareskins of the steppes, an excellent Christian named Patrice Kopa,126 Dawn, or Early Morning, had made me promise that when I left my residence at Our Lady of Good Hope I would go visit him at the source of the Anderson River, which was to be the scene of his hunting operations that winter. Furthermore, at the end of October of the same year, I received from a subchief named Tseli-kfwo, Yellow Marmot, better known by the name of Moose, an invitation to visit Nonceni [Early Thaw] Bay, at my lake’s southern end, to help some sick people there. fust going there was a trip of five days’ travel by light sled, but since the two camps were in the same direction, I could satisfy the two chiefs and their subordinates while exploring the great Lac des Bois and the sources of the Anderson which I had dis¬ covered the preceding year. Better still, I decided after that I would go to my flock at Great Bear Lake, on the same trip, in order to offer the comforts of religion. As soon as I decided this, I carried out my project. I hired a young fourteen-yearold Kha-tcho-gottine orphan, Tadipale, Abandoned One, who was doing nothing at Fort Good Hope where his mother had left him at the end of the summer because he had been sick. I made him my guide and my servant for the whole duration of the trip. From the mission kennels, 1 chose four beautiful Siberian dogs from Alaska, cross-bred with Eskimo dogs, named Guizot, Nancy, Lightning, and Dahlia. On 8 November, at four o’clock in the morning, I left Good Hope on the most beautiful night one could imagine, with a mild temperature of only minus 20° Celsius. My dear reader now knows as well as I do the road leading from Good Hope to the sandy hill Ti-gotcho [High Land Mountain] and even to Island Lake. My route

126 In this word, K is a plastic consonant, a sort of article, analogous to the Greek digamma, which other tribes replace with G or W, and others by the Greek rho, P or p. The same mutation occurs between the Celtic and Teutonic idioms, such as I have noted elsewhere. Certain tribes omit it completely. Compare Kopa, dawn, white light, with alba in Latin; oba in Dene Chippewayan; auba in Assiniboine; opa in Yellowknife; komba in Slavey Dene; pa in Apache tegwa; /covein Dindjie; pae-atas in Sanskrit; and para, sun, in Egyptian.

385

386

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

was the same as the previous year, but on that lake I changed direction. Instead of heading towards Colville Lake by way of Sulphur, I took a trail more to the south, consequently towards the right, well marked by the hunters from the Fort and which should lead me without stopping or great fatigue as far as Big Narrows Lake, L’at a-kotcho [Lake of the Great Strait], and to White Reindeer steppe, Etie-dekpale-ttsoghe. From there, we no longer would have a marked trail, but Tadipale knew this country which was his own and could lead me as far as Kopa’s place. 9 November. We had camped on Ti-gotcho’s summit and wanted to be able to spend our second night with the hunters from Good Hope at Big Narrows Lake. The youth had assured me that we would not reach that lake until nightfall, and I had no trouble believing him, having already gone there in 1866. Suddenly, an hour after our lunch, at two o’clock in the afternoon, we met the hunters. They had just arrived and had not yet spent a night at their new camp. The hunters were Dattonhi, Scaffold, Ella-odeniha, Canoe Tip, Dene-gounli, Unto Us a Man Is Born, and his brothers. But Dene-gounli was absent from the camp. I was cordially received, and although it was still broad daylight at this latitude, I made my arrangements for spending the night warmly in these good people’s yurt. The yurt was made in the Loucheux manner, in the shape of a dome or a skullcap. Once settled in, I gently reproached Tadipale for having misled me by promising me a camping ground for the night that we had found after midday. Old Dattonhi came to his defence: We others, Dene, we do not resemble the Whites who always speak crookedly and falsely. We always say the truth, even when we appear to lie. It is enough to know our customs. So, when we send out children into the forest to look for venison left in a cache, we consider their tastes, their aptitudes, by coaxing them or praising them for these trips which are always a little tiresome. If we see that they like to make long, long trips, we then tell them that this meat lies far, far away, that they will have to camp alone, that they are about to make an expedition of which they will be able to speak with pride. Then their curiosity is aroused, and the love of travelling causes them to obey, which they would not do if they had known that the cache was only a few steps away because they would not come back from there with any glory. That is how Dene-gounli has been raised, because this ambitious child dreamed only of glory. If, on the contrary, our children are fearful, timid, nervous, and lazy, if they dread camping all alone at night in the forest, if they are afraid of wolves and ghosts, then we say to them, the first time, that the cache is far, very far, so that they take their courage in their two hands and prepare to camp on the way. And when they find that it is quite close, they return charmed by the agreeable surprise that we gave them and quite ready to obey again on the next occasion. But then we do not say anything more to them, and it often happens that they spend two days outdoors, which they certainly would not have agreed to do if one had warned them about the distance at the outset. So, you see that it is by the goodness of heart of your young man that he stretched the distance. He thought you were tired, bored with

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

387

the length of the road which leads to our camp, and he wished to make you happy by giving you an agreeable surprise.

I approved of the goodness of heart of these decent people, but I had to teach them that one must not let oneself bend the truth, even as a favour or to make someone obey, still less to trick the children, for fear that they lose all trust and respect to¬ wards their elders. When the moment arrived to prepare the evening meal, Canoe Tip exclaimed in an egotistical way: “Yaze beer oulle, taoti/” It is an old refrain I had heard often before, “There is not the smallest piece of meat in my house!” Among the Danites this means, “I have no more tobacco, give me some and you will have as much meat as you want.” I had a little money with me to obtain food en route, but as I was well provided for until Kopa’s camp, I was not willing to waste it uselessly. And, when I speak of money, my reader already knows that I am referring to trade goods, such as tobacco, glass beads, handkerchiefs, braid, needles, small knives, thread, combs, etc., since in the far Northwest, payment is always made in kind. I did not answer Tip then, but begged Tadipale to go to search the supplies in my sled so that I could assist these poor starving people. The youth came back with pemmican which I placed before Point politely. But again he exclaimed: “Aren’t they funny, these Whites, my God! Aren’t they funny! They just don’t think straight! Who ever saw a White give food to Dene hunters? And do you wonder why we say to you, Father, that we are not like you? Do you really think that I simply do not have a meal of fresh meat to offer you?” I knew well that he had some, as I explained above, but I wanted to teach this convert a little friendly lesson in hospitality, and I imitated the gullible fool: “But of course not!” I answered him. “Since you just said to me a moment ago that you did not have a mouthful at your place, the charity and friendship that I have for you made it my duty to share my supplies with you. Unless,” I continued, “yaze taoti, not the least morsel, means kountlawe Van, very, very much. After that, if you go hunting for fresh meat to offer me, I will no longer know what to think about your truthfulness.” He laughed his head off, a great boisterous laugh, bent over as if I had said the most comical thing in the world. Dattonhi and all the others joined in. “Yaze! yaze!” he exclaimed. “How these Whites are twisted! I have never seen any¬ thing like it!” He went out and soon returned with an enormous plump moose haunch on which I measured two good inches of fat. He cut it, filled the pot, and hung it over the fire, without mentioning tobacco. I left the pemmican in front of the Indian, to be used at the evening meal. I added a pancake to it and had my young man make a large pot of sugared tea. While the supper was cooking, my eyes cooked, too, because the yurt had filled with a thick and bitter smoke that hid us from one another. I cried

388

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

copiously, without showing any distress, and my hosts, although more accustomed to the smoke, were inevitably reduced to imitating me. “Sa Vini! Naughty bear!” Dattonhi finally exclaimed, addressing himself to the women. “Every time that you get together to put up a Dindjie lodge, this is what you do to us. Is it not annoying? We cannot take it any more. We cry our eyes out, even me, although a branch has already almost torn one of my eyes out. Tchin se ta kpanachie he tazje taoti! Your nose runs like the sky on a rainy day, and you see how our Father is distressed, he has his eyes in his handkerchief. Sa Vini! Sa Vini!” “But the Dindjie yurts are much warmer than our tepees,” the women protested, “you know that very well. In this world, you have to put up with something to benefit from something more important.” “What good is that, if it makes me blind? I ask you. You will never make me believe that Dindjie yurts are this smoky. And if you do not know how to prevent them from becoming smoky, do not make them any more, that’s all. You must ask the Loucheux women the secret of making yurts.” I examined the yurt without saying anything, and I saw at once that they had made a vent at ground level on the side opposite to the entrance. This air-hole is necessary to increase the circulation of air in the lodge created by the door. So our yurt was like a well-stuffed oven with no chimney. In these conditions even the best oven smokes and suffocates you. I seized a spatula and thrust it into the snow pile which was fac¬ ing the door, and turning it in every direction I made a hole there large enough to shove your arm through. At once, all the smoke pushed by the air current that was created rose and went out through the higher hole I made for the smoke’s escape. “Here,” I said to the women. “That is what your yurt needed to get rid of the smoke. That is the Loucheux women’s whole secret.” “Se dejyekhe! By my ancestors!” cried the old Dattonhi, astounded. “Do you see that, you others? Do you see that? Do you see that?” Then, turning towards Ellaodeniha, who was crying like everyone else, though not from emotion: “Ey, seghen, my brother-in-law, here is our Father who is not a man (a Dene), and who neverthe¬ less has shown us all up, even in the woods. Truly, I tell you that Frenchmen of this calibre are real savages.” Until 1866 this Ella-odeniha had been a stubborn conjuror or shaman and an un¬ relenting enemy of the priests. He never put his foot inside our place, never gave us a glance or shook our hand, never spoke a word to us. To quote Tip, to speak of him was to speak of our worst enemy. Suddenly, in November 1866, I saw him become mollified, humble, even a little penitent, asking me for baptism. Struck by such a sudden tranformation I could not believe was sincere, I gave him the same scoffing and mocking tone that he ordinarily put on with me. But he looked at me with such sadness and feeling that I had never seen in him until then. “I am speaking seriously,” he said to me, “Father, I thought that you would not be¬ lieve me because I have been so hostile to prayer. I myself am quite overwhelmed by

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

389

my change. How can it be that the spirit of a man can be transformed to the point of wanting what he feared, ot valuing what he hated, ot loving what he used to want to destroy? However, that is the case: 1 can do nothing else. And to admit that a dream worked this change in me! Truly, there is a God. I now confess it, and you are going to see how He had pity on me.” “A dream, always dreams? God leads you people with dreams?” I do not know if He leads us differently than other people, but in any case, you are going to see. You know my stubborn hostility to your religion and to your persons. I did not like any of you. Without despising you—for in no way you deserved scorn since you are great, wealthy bourgeois, knowledgeable and skilful in all things— I hated you cordially and would have very much liked to have seen all of you at the bottom of the great Mackenzie River. Suddenly, I had a dream, but a dream so strange that it made me what you see now. I was in a birchbark canoe on the Naotcha127 with a crowd of my countrymen, also in canoes, and we were all going down river together. In the blink of an eye downstream from the place where we were peacefully drifting, a chasm formed that filled the whole width of the river. The river plunged down, forming a cataract that none of us would dream of cross¬ ing. It was death. We tried to reach the shore but there was no more time. We found ourselves too far from it to hope to reach it before being swept into the chasm that was suck¬ ing us down. What were we to do? We were frantic and exhausted by fruitless ef¬ forts. Little by little my companions were carried towards the chasm, and I saw them being swallowed up there forever. I myself felt lost and I was ready to abandon myself blindly to my unhappy fate when right at the edge of the precipice, as if hanging above the foaming and roaring cataract, there arose a small rocky island surmounted by a large white cross, similar to the one that stands beside the mission. Standing at the foot of the cross there was a man dressed in an alb who called to us, beseeching us by voice, appearance, and gesture to come to him if we wished to save ourselves. One had to obey him or perish, because the shore was so far away. I used the paddle to go towards the rock. I loudly urged my companions in misfortune to do the same. I reached the shore and found safety. All those who imitated me were also saved. The others were swallowed up in the chasm and perished there like their predecessors. Suddenly, I woke up, trembling with fear and changed from top to bottom. I hadn’t the least doubt about the worth of this warning. I am not asking you for an explanation; these things make themselves understood all by themselves. I could not have imagined such a vision by myself since I hated you. The Devil could not have inspired me. Then, who is it, if it is not God or one of His angels He sent to me? I understood that night in the wink of an eye that your word is true, that the chasm is eternity, that the cross is the mystery of the Redemption that you preach. I

127

One of the Hareskin names for the Mackenzie. The word means giant land, implying the word

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

390

understood that the angel is each of you, priests. No doubt whatsoever, some great calamity still threatens us, after the epidemic of last year.128 Well, I do not want to perish. I am afraid. I am giving up the Inkponhit (the Shadow) forever.129 Hurry up to instruct me and baptize me.

And I instructed and baptized the seer Tip in the month of December 1866, giving him the name of the glorious archangel Raphael who led Tobias across the waves of the Euphrates. While Tadipale laid the table for supper, two little children muffled up in capes of caribou skin, fur outwards, entered the yurt, all beaming with joy, “Mother, Mother,” cried the elder, a little child of eight years named Tsoghe-houle, “we have just killed a shrew.” “Oh! Thank you my children, thanks! Tell me how you did this fine thing.” And the two little ones told step by step when and how they had killed the poor lit¬ tle beast and cut it in pieces. The mother praised them to the skies and was so pleased with the phallic-named child that she appeared to me to be supremely ridiculous. So much emphasis and such big words and praises to celebrate the death of the most inoffensive of all rodents struck me as odd. I remarked about it to Fortunata, the mother of these children. “Ah! Father, a shrew! Do not speak to me about it. Mice and shrews devour our supplies and ruin our furs. They attack everything, straps, hare snares, the sleds, and even gnaw the tendons in our legs during our sleep.” “They are terribly bold, your mice. Our houses, too, are full of them but they do not gnaw our feet.” “Frankly, that is not precisely why we destroy mice and shrews. But our ancestors have told us that these little animals are the reincarnation of Ettsonne, the spirit or genie of death, and they killed them without pity. That is why we imitate them.” “Then why do you invoke the shrew in the moon, Klo-da-tsole,13° at the time of the new spring moon as well as during the eclipses of the moon?” “Who told you that?” “It is not important who told me, but you see that I know it. And I also know

128 In 1865 a scarlet fever epidemic struck down a quarter of the Mackenzie region. In 1867, six months after the vision that Ella-odeniha had had, a measles epidemic devastated the Arctic district again, and out of four thousand inhabitants, one thousand were victims. 129 The Shadow, a vague divinity that the shamans or Danite conjurors invoke. It could well be the same as Ettsoun, Ettsonne, or Essoun, the angel of death who lives on the moon. The ancient Cimbres and the Etruscans worshipped a similar divinity: Esun, (Esus, Edsus, or Asu, the Terrible, the Fearful, god of the dead and Gaulish Mars. The Kymris or Cimbres worshipped Koupai, the Shadow; the Finns and the Slavs, Koupalo, also the Shadow; finally the Quechuas or Incas, inhabitants of modern Peru, also venerated the Shadow under the name of Koupai. 130 A mouse with a sharp, conical snout; literally: mouse-mouth-stick.

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

39i

that you still observe these practices, Christians though you are, as your son, Denegounli, has assured me.” A bit shamefaced, Fortunata replied, “Precisely so that the genie of death will free us of our enemies by exterminating them, and to have them changed into caribou that we in turn kill to feed ourselves, because everyone knows that these animals are tormer people. Also, when we see the moon where Kld-da-tsole lives surrounded by a halo, we say: There are going to be very many caribou on the steppes because there, the star sa, girds his head to fight our enemies, sa kfwi nadetti” 1 hen, it is the moon or rather the little man who lives there who supplies you your sustenance and from whom you ask for your daily bread? See how far I have gotten, I who have preached about God and his nurturing Providence for the last eight years!” “Ah! Father,” they all exclaimed together, “far, far from that! We are telling you what we believed and did in former times. But we well know that since we have been baptized and pray to God, and above all since you are among us, there has never been such a great abundance of caribou. We say that your arrows are much more powerful than those of Klo-da-tsole. Before you arrived, we addressed our worship to the moon, or rather to the genie that lives there, Sa-weta or Eboe-ekon, Belly Shield, because he had promised us his assistance if we ask him with trust in him. And, effectively, he answered our prayers. But today since you forbid us this practice, we only address ourselves to our Father in the heavens.” Fortunata, Dene-gounli’s mother, then said, “In the past we had another excellent way of getting meat. During the caribou’s rutting month, all the young women and mature girls wore a large hood with eye slits that they pushed over their heads in such a way as to hide their chest and shoulders completely. And the caribou were abun¬ dant, and we lacked nothing. Today, no more of that. No more of the little hoods, no more of young women in cloaks and hoods, the good old customs are gone, and the caribou are more difficult to find. Tell me, Father, will you let us, Dattonhi’s daughter and I, put on the big headdresses? Who knows if we, by this ancestral magic, could not get caribou for our men again?” I clearly saw that the gossipy woman did not speak except in jest for I had never forbidden them to wear the hood, which I had not known about, and, moreover, that it had such great hunting powers, but I could not refrain from noting how many popular practices are totally devoid of any kind of common sense, of all appearance of logic and of sound reasoning. Oh God! How great is the number of fools on this earth! Truly, this woman was as simple and naive as her older son, but she was not more stupid than the majority of Danite women and, with very few exceptions, all were like her in their gullibility and senseless prejudices. One day Fortunata summoned me to heal her of a supposed paralysis of the right side, which she said had occurred the night before. I saw that she had been exposed to cold air, and she believed the stiffness that had resulted from it to be paralysis. I did

392

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

everything I could to get her to move around and move her arm. It was impossible for me to get her to obey. She persisted in saying the arm was dead. So, I employed a harmless trick. I put in her hand an inoffensive pill and guaranteed her that it was a marvellous antidote in cases of paralysis, on the condition that she extend the arm as much as she could and that she move it bit by bit as flexibility returned. Seeing or believing that I took her seriously, she immediately stretched out her arm and shook it, marvelling at the fantastic effect of my remedy. And all those present slapped their right thigh in admiration and astonishment. Is it believable that humans allow themselves to be deceived even while tricking their fellow creatures? Or rather must it be admitted that some unbalanced brains have a measure of stupidity which absolutely requires a certain veneer of trickery— what do I know?—to overcome some spirits or genies that they believe haunt or tor¬ ment them? When I examine the warp and woof of the Redskin’s character and when I weigh the value and force of his reasoning, I cannot but note that many of those people are nothing less than mad or have one-track minds. Who knows? Perhaps the nomadic and wild life from the beginning had no other principle, no other cause, than folly and hallucination, leading these unfortunates to flee the society of people of common sense to be in the company of their own kind. If I had had no experience of how to get around a difficulty, appear to curry the favour of others, and pretend to follow it while keeping my own opinion, dealing with the good Hareskins would have quickly taught me. The chief, Patrice Kopa, himself one of our better converts, furnished just such an example. One day, at our little household chapel at Good Hope, he had just heard his brother-in-law Tchounya, Little Bird, a former conjuror, father of Dene-gounli and husband of Fortunata Etla-kodaha, tell me in an artless way about a dream he had had and which he wanted me to explain. Kopa learned from my response to the dreamer that I scorned dreams in general and those who were preoccupied with them. Kopa immediately left the chapel and, drawing Little Bird aside, he began to lecture him gently, not afraid if I heard every single word: “Sou kouneyon? Do you not have any self-respect,” he asked him, “to let yourself be told off by our Father? When one is baptized one must avoid talking about dreams, visions, and revelations the way we did in the old days when we were nakohin (seers), because the French priests believe nothing and mock all of these things. But, should it happen to us that we see something strange, frightening, or consoling while we are sleeping, then you must use a scheme to get it accepted by the priests, and here is what you must say to them: ‘My Father, God has taken pity on me since he has sent me such and such a nocturnal message.’ Then the priest takes you seriously and will not mock you.” And in giving this farcical advice which was nothing less than deception, this Ghristian did not at all doubt that he was being less than frank in advising his more simple-minded brother-in-law on how to deceive a priest. This deceitfulness is inbred among the Indians; it is natural. They do not even notice it and would not

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

393

recognize it as such although it is accompanied by a childlike openness which always betrays it. They have their reason wrapped up in swaddling clothes. 10 November. I continued my trip northeast, preceded by Dattonhi who went on a caribou hunt on a neighbouring steppe where he wished to show me, he said, a Hareskin trick that I probably did not know yet. Following his hunting road, already beaten down and frequented by the Fort Good Hope servants, which Dattonhi and Ella were supplying that winter, we crossed the steppe Blazed-with-Moss (Nni-el’eniha-ttsoghe) and Big Narrows Lake. We arrived at eleven o’clock in the morning at the large White Reindeer Steppe, Etie-dekpale-ttsoghe, where several beautiful caribou herds were grazing peacefully on the lichen. I did not see a single ruminant that was white. White caribou do not exist in the Arctic forests of America. They are only found in northern Asia, among the Youkaghires, from where they sometimes migrate to cross the Bering Straits at the extreme northwest of Alaska. Perhaps there are some of them on the islands of the Polar Sea but I have never heard tell of them. This steppe was the stage for old Dattonhi’s exploits. It is there that he wanted to satisfy my curiosity with the sight, new to my eyes, of a planned hunt. Hidden behind a clump of green spruce which shielded us from the view of the caribou, Dattonhi drew from his net gamebag a caribou hide complete with its hair, to which was attached the head of the animal surmounted by its antlers. He rigged himself out with this, placed the openings of the caribou’s missing eyes in front of his own eyes, loaded his gun, took it in his arms ready to use, and, with a piece of caribou antler that he held in his right hand, he struck the stock of his gun with little blows to imitate the noise made by a caribou rubbing its antler against lower branches to detach it. At the same time, signalling us to stay hidden downwind behind the spruce, he showed himself to the astonished caribou, all the time mak¬ ing certain contortions with his head to imitate the movements of these graceful animals. His costume being entirely of caribou skin, fur outwards, he was able to approach them until a short distance from his prey. On seeing him, the caribou stopped, looked with curiosity, and came forward. The old man quickly shouldered his gun and fired. Then, when the caribou bolted, he pursued them. He stopped when they did, called them back to him by the same ploy of pretending to be a cari¬ bou in rut, and fired again. In this ingenious fashion, Dattonhi killed five caribou in short order. He had to continue his hunt still longer, but because I was pressed for time, I left him without saying goodbye. As I was leaving, he was still making the rutting sounds. This way of hunting is also used by certain Indians of California who are perhaps the Umpquas,131 natives of the Danite family. But I also know, having read it some¬ where, that in Hindustan, certain indigenous people employ the same method against

131 [Formerly spelt “Umpkwas,” a tribe on the Pacific coast (now Oregon).]

394

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

Caribou hunt on the steppes of the White Caribou

the axis stag.132 It must have been popular among the Dene, when these Indians only used bows and arrows. Another caribou decoy also used by the Hareskins is a little bundle of hooves from this animal, strung on thongs, which they carry for this pur¬ pose at their belt. By shaking these types of rattles they draw the caribous’ attention towards them. When we entered White Reindeer Steppe, we began to catch sight of the Bedzi-ajyoue [White Reindeer Mountains] range to our left, and on our right that of the Tidella [Lands in a Line]. Between these two ranges, there exists a pass or way towards which we steered in a straight line, travelling all the time in the midst of innumerable caribou tracks. They covered the whole country beginning in Ti-gotcho [High Land Mountain] like a vast geographic network entangled in a multitude of directions. We had passed all the lakes of a less-important size on our left. We had to cross only four swamps scattered on the steppe. Then, we entered an endless virgin forest where we were very happy to find an excellent well-defined road, made by Kopa’s and Tselikfwo’s people, a road that Tadipale and I had not counted on. We had been walking scarcely ten minutes there when a caribou herd cut across our path and was pursued by Tadipale’s dogs who were in the lead. They launched them¬ selves with such vigour that they smashed their sled to pieces, tore and snapped their traces, and scattered their gear across the forest. It was impossible for the desperate

132 [South Asian deer with a white spotted coat.]

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

395

youth to control or recapture them. 1 then took on my sled Tadipale’s bit of baggage as well as the scraps of his harnesses, and we continued our route without thinking any more ot his three wild dogs. But that evening, before we camped, we saw the dogs return, panting, exhausted, their heads hanging low and dragging some tattered pieces of their harness behind them. The youth was so happy to see his team again that in¬ stead of beating them, as he angrily had not stopped threatening to do while he was walking, he embraced them tenderly, hitched them up as well as he could with the remains of the cords and straps, and placed them in line ahead of mine. We continued on our way with only one sled. It was not very convenient, above all on the detours from the path, but that did not stop us at all. We camped in this same forest on an elevated plateau from the foot of which arose the Underground River, and we enjoyed a very comfortable night, thanks as much to a large quantity of wood that we could burn to warm ourselves as to the relative mildness of the temperature, only 26° below zero. Towards the end of the night, I was awakened with a start by less than harmonious music, but which was not new to my ears. It was the howling of wolves. It was so noisy that one would have guessed that there were a dozen of these undesired guests. They had probably been hunting and were inviting their comrades to the spoils, for the wolves are like Beranger’s beggars;133 they like company and willingly share their good fortune with their fellow creatures. Or, rather, and I saw a little later that it was the real purpose of this concert, they had arrived suddenly, hav¬ ing followed our trail from the smell of our fire and our dogs and they called other colleagues to the rally before attacking us. Whichever it was, it is a disagreeable thing to be torn from sleep by such a morning wake-up call. I called Tadipale who had also heard them. The two of us got up, and while the youth relit the fire, I seized the dogs’ harnesses and hurried to put them on and to tie up the dogs within the camp for fear that they would take off after the wolves. That done, I looked at my watch: six o’clock in the morning! Ah! The wolves had certainly done well to pull us from the arms of Morpheus, for it was high time to depart. We quickly swallowed a cup of tea and a small griddle cake, and we started out again. At the noise that we made, the wolves had turned around and hurried away on our own trail. We saw them no more. n November. We reached the pass or low place that separates Ti-della from Bedziajyoue, without our having noticed it earlier because we had camped on the western slope of the plateau. The view there is extensive but extremely monotonous. One discovers only an interminable spruce forest with some shaggy and bristly hillocks of

133 [Pierre-Jean de Beranger (1780-1857), poet and songwriter who was regarded in his lifetime as France’s national poet. His verses, set to popular old tunes, were so critical of the French government that he was twice fined and sentenced to prison. An admired friend of a host of contemporary literary giants, Beranger was both a skeptic and a moralist, but three years after his death, public opinion turned against him and he was virtually forgotten.]

396

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

taller spruce in the distance that break through like hairy warts in the beard of a poor man. Since meeting the caribou horde the evening before, we did not see any more of these animals during this lengthy trip, and it ended without our having even noticed any more of their tracks. That winter all those noble Cervidae seemed to have agreed to rendezvous in the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Good Hope. Between the eastern side of Ti-della, which is abrupt enough, and another range of plateaus call Piere-ajyoue, or Trout Mountain, in a region that seemed to me to be picturesque and happy, I crossed “The Water That Stretches Out,” which is only a narrow extension ofLake Nne-ye inlin [Siphon Lake], then Pike Lake. Onta-ra-tpoue [Tweed Lake], and finally Trout Lake, Piere-tpoue. These were more discoveries to my credit since Whites had never gone beyond the Great Narrows on this pathway. I was going to camp on Great Steppe Ttsoghe-tcho that night where we could hardly find enough firewood for the night. And what wood! Sticks the thickness of your wrist. Nevertheless we slept there like dormice at 340 Celsius below zero, thanks to weariness and our youthfulness. In the valley’s extension with the three large lakes I had named, there is also Lake of Reborn Water or Dick Lake, which I had discovered in March 1866. 12 November. The Great Steppe occupies the summit of Piere-ajyoue. You cannot see anything sadder or more desolate than this white plain swept by the east wind. But, my God! I have already given the same unflattering account about so many other steppes and plateaus that I do not know how to vary my descriptions. This one, however, offers one peculiarity: it is the site of a forest of small dead spruce, imma¬ ture and whitened by the weather. They are no bigger than some reeds of Provence. A stillborn forest that will never come to life again, can you imagine anything more desolate? From this summit one clearly sees the vast expanse of Colville Lake on the left, the cone of Bedzi-ayoue on the right, and the long ridge of the Lodge of Souls, Eyounne-khin, that separates it from my lake. Then the sun steadily descended by stages as far as the last big basin, Lake Petitot [Lac des Bois], which I was going to cross again, although in a different direction from the preceding year. The thought that no European before me had crossed these wildernesses made me find them odd. I felt as if I had just discovered a sixth part of the world. Yet this hon¬ our, if it is one, had already fallen to me time and again during peregrinations off the paths frequented by Whites and missionaries. I was the one and only first White and missionary to usher in a new age. I was so accustomed to the fact and had so filled in the map of Arctic America with so many itineraries crossing in all directions that my discoveries seemed a normal thing to everyone in this vast region. I had named lakes, rivers, or mountains for all of my relatives and friends with such generosity and munificence that one would have thought that I had created them and that they had become my property. Oh, the emptiness of human vanity! I sometimes said to myself that if a Speke, a Butler, a Stanley, or a Livingstone had done as much, my country would not be slow in praising them and celebrating

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

397

their discoveries. But this involves a missionary, a Catholic priest, a Frenchman. Oh! In that case, we have merely nothing to say or admire, for it is agreed that all that a Frenchman and a Catholic missionary discovers or has discovered is attributed to others, or does not count for anything greater than the famous trip across Africa by the German carpenter Daremberg.134 Well, there is nothing more absurd than the reputation that the French give to their missionaries: all of them minus habentes, fanatical ignoramuses, rascals, or idiots. In vain you invoke Hue and Gabet, Du Halde, Dutertre, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Domenech, De Smet,133 and so many others, yet you cannot manage to get rid of the odious and stupid prejudice. The secular priest himself shares and favours it, up to a certain point, and when he speaks of a missionary, you hear him use phrases like these: “Does he know his theology? Can he exercise the holy ministry? Does he know how to give a homily, a sermon?” Unimaginable! Unimaginable! We could have started on Floating Wood Lake that same day but, as the shores are unsuitable for a bivouac, Tadipale and I camped on the slopes of the plateau. The youth told me his story. Moreover, the whole thing is contained in his name: Nadinkkale, to speak without kha-tchd-ottineen grammatical errors, that is to say, “He who has been thrown away like a stone or a bit of bad meat.” Do you under¬ stand? Garbage. Not even a human being; otherwise, one would have named him Nadintpile. The poor wretch, in effect, was doomed to death from birth by his father and his mother. The first had died, and the mother, Kha-Cetie, Hare Word, was still living. “‘He must die!’ It had been decided about me,” the youngster said, “and they put me out the door, as soon as I entered the world. A good soul, such as one meets everywhere, even among scoundrels, even among pagans, picked me up and carried me away. It was a woman. She nourished me with her milk, raised me with her own children, and, when I was big, she even got my evil mother to take me back and have pity on me. That is my whole story.” An ordinary story among the people of the woods and the nomads of the vast western prairies, but still more common and even the order of the day among certain degenerate Christians who have fallen back into unbelief in our great civilized cities. So it is useless to goggle at pagan misfortunes when Christians are no better. Let us move on. Yes, move on, and may the unfortunates

134 [Charles Daremberg (1817—72), author of Dictionnaire des antiquites grecques et romaines (Paris, 1872).] 135 [Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674-1743), author of Description geographique, historique ... de Vempire de la Chine, 1736; probably Jean-Baptiste Dutertre (1610-87), French Dominican who wrote a history of the Antilles; Etienne-Charles Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814-74), secular priest best known for his Histoire de Canada, de son eglise et de ses missions (Paris, 1852; reprint 1968), a history considered by the Canadian Roman Catholic hierarchy to be insulting, unjust, and error-filled, DCB, X:i86-8; Emmanuel Henri Domenech (1825-86), missionary in Texas; Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801-73), Flemish Jesuit missionary to the western American Indians, explorer of interior British Columbia, and prolific author, DCB, X:226-27.]

398

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

that I have evangelized never know what became of their brothers in western Europe when they forgot their baptism! 13 November. The sixth day after my departure, I crossed a plain three leagues in extent containing seven lakes of which only two had names: Waterless Lake and Little White Hillock Lake. This plain is bordered on the End of the Mountains steppe, Ewallon-tpiele, an elevated and completely bare plateau. It brought us to the southwest shore of the great lake Tpa-tchini or Petitot, while the preceding year I had arrived on the northwest side. So, we crossed the lake at its widest spot, from west to east. Reaching the beach, I had to my right L’oue-tchoni [Trout Bay], which has the shape of a closed purse, on the left a chalk platform stretching north and called the Sled of the Skinned Heads or of the Giants, Kfwi-detelle-peh-weh-wetponhi. It would make a magnificent cut stone quarry. These horizontally stratified layers are on the same axis and under the same meridian as the limestone beach and strata of Smith Arm, which is, moreover, not far away. Facing us, at eight kilometres, there rose up a wide promontory which, by its dryness, recalled the dreariest Arctic beaches. It is Big Fish Cape, a rich fishery for salmon trout, similar to those of Great Bear Lake, l’oue-tcho. We set our course for this cape with the hope of making a bivouac on Swollen Point, Ehta-naweley. Just when we were going to round the promontory, Tadipale, who was running in front of our dogs, with his head muffled in his hood that was horned like a caribous head, suddenly jolted to a stop just short of seven enormous white wolves. He recoiled towards the dogs who all backed up towards the sled that I was following on foot. Driving the sled, I was the least exposed. Moreover, at this moment I did not feel the smallest twinge of fear. Wolves are so commonplace in this country, so cowardly and so lazy, and these ones had just appeared so unexpectedly in front of us, that I had not had time to be afraid. But a prompt decision had to be taken, for it was evident that if they had not thrown themselves on us, it was because they were as surprised as we ourselves, and they must not be given time to realize our numerical weakness. “Grab the collar of the lead dog,” I called to the youth. “I am going to get the axes out of the sled.” Surprised by our unexpected arrival, because the promontory had hidden us, the wolves had leapt in astonishment. Then, in three or four more leaps they had sur¬ rounded and hemmed us in. At that moment, if they had thrown themselves on us with one accord, they would have torn us to pieces before we could have defended ourselves. I had left the axes at the bottom of the sled under the covers, and had even thrown my little pocket knife into the bag that contained my cooking equipment. Our dogs would not have defended us. The dogs of the Northwest are neither guard dogs nor hunting dogs. They are the laziest, the stupidest, and the most untrustwor¬ thy beasts of all their race. They do not attach themselves to their master; they even abandon him in time of danger. Like the savages, they think only of two things: eat¬ ing well and doing nothing. As for bravery, they have even less of it than the wolves.

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

399

In the presence of this animal, they lie down and make a sorrowful whimpering that seems to beg for mercy. In short, they are typical of their country. So, we had nothing but our nails and teeth against the claws and terrible jaws of seven monsters. How I busied myself at unlacing the sled to get at the axes! “What are we going to do?” I called to Tadipale, who had difficulty holding his dogs who, in a fleeting moment of courage, wanted to start the fight and had begun to howl. The youth broke into gales of laughter and replied: “Soundi! I do not know!” Since he was no more afraid than that, I was reassured. If terror had paralyzed him or had made him scream, my situation would have become worse, and the wolves themselves, with that animal instinct in the presence of an intelligent creature, would quite quickly have noticed it. It is not as difficult as one would think to face up to ferocious beasts and overcome them with a look. It is enough to have courage, a sturdy heart, and a self-assured look, but these are absolutely essential: it is necessary not to waver. And these seven monsters, as big as year-old calves, these Arctic wolves who can finish off a formidable muskox with a head like iron armour, trembled and hesitated before the majesty of a human countenance, before a weak youth who guf¬ fawed with laughter under their noses. However, these beautiful lords faced us like bloodhounds stopped in front of two partridges. They lifted their huge heads, bared their terrible fangs, and began to let out menacing howls. The cowards called to other companions, as if seven of them were not enough. We were only two mouthfuls! “When a wolf howls and then stops, that is when he is going to attack,” Tadipale said to me. “Hurry up or they are going to jump on top of me.” The dogs, who at first had wanted to chase them, quit as soon as the wolves began to howl. Then they huddled trembling against the youth, all the while joining in the chorus with their enemies. Why? God knows. “Hurry up,” the youth called again. “You can see they are not afraid of us. They are not going away at all. Little by little, they are getting closer. They are looking at us side¬ ways and wrinkling their noses. If they start the attack, all is finished, we are lost.” I knew it well, and did not need to be encouraged to work. My fingers, numbed to the tips by undoing the straps of the sled, had very quickly recovered their warmth, and while unlacing them, I uttered great shouts to scare off the wolves who were ad¬ vancing little by little, tightening their menacing circle, not giving up their ferocious plan. Then anger overcame me, that kind of intense rage that the danger of death causes, the confronting of an unjust enemy, systematic opposition. I threw one of the two axes to Tadipale. I pulled mine from under the laced cords of the sled. 1 took my whip in my hand and, after having the youth squat behind me, I also squatted on the sled and gave the dogs the signal to start off: “Mush!” They left like arrows, without hesitating, going straight ahead, cutting through the circle of wolves while Tadipale and I brandished our axes and shouted loudly. The seven monsters separated politely, like humble footmen, to make an open pathway

400

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

for us. Four went to the right, three to the left, and we paraded gloriously between them and, while passing, 1 handed out several well-aimed blows with my whip to the closest ones. “And you got through without a problem?” you may ask me, dear readers. And we got through just as I have related it to you, without the smallest scratch. Now, believe in romantic adventures and imaginary voyages! In fact, the wolves regrouped behind us, following for quite a long time, always howling, but no doubt they let themselves be intimidated by our shouts of anger and our great menacing gestures, for they quit when they were faced by two hearts that they had been unable to frighten and who were quite resolved to sell their lives dearly. It must be that ani¬ mal instinct makes them sense what they have to deal with, and it must be believed that it would have been otherwise if terror had paralyzed our actions. Long afterwards we again heard their less than melodious concert, sounds of regret wrenched from them by the shame of a defeat without a battle and the stomach pains of hunger twisting their guts. Ever since that day I have had a special esteem for Tadipale and the greatest possible contempt for wolves. They do not deserve any¬ thing else. Only, in memory of the danger when we were totally without firearms, I did not ever undertake another trip after that without being properly armed with a rifle or revolver—something I had never done before. Courage does not replace pru¬ dence because it does not always make up for it. The strengths of David and Solomon were no less worthy although they slept with their swords at their sides in case of an alarm in the night. The white wolf (Lupus arcticus) is plentiful in the region of Great Bear Lake, attracted by the great quantity of caribou. When this graceful animal abounds, there the wolf is not to be feared. He only becomes dangerous when caribou are scarce because he is starving. In that case, he attacks hunters and even large groups of trav¬ ellers; he follows from bivouac to bivouac to attack the sled dogs during the night. I have no doubt that those seven wolves were the same ones that had awakened us at the right moment on the eleventh of this month. At four o’clock in the afternoon, we arrived at the eastern extremity of Nonceni Bay, or Early Thaw Bay, after having dined at Ehta-naweley and crossed Frenchman’s Arm Point, Banlay-ekone-ehta. There, I found five little wooden houses, each divided into two rooms and furnished with a drum. They were the work of the little chief, Moose, the man who had asked me in October to help some sick people. The Hareskins that I saw there, forty-five individuals, told me the most fantastic tales about their daily disputes with a legion of wolves. As a matter of fact, I recall that in the preceding October they had reported to me that a veritable flood of these animals, white, grey, and black, had arrived in their territories. Never, however, either in the Arctic Circle or in the subarctic zone, had anyone seen black wolves. People said they were even much bolder than the white or grey ones, with whom moreover they came to terms and mixed perfectly. I had not wanted to believe it

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

401

until, in March 1879, 1 encountered three wolves who attacked me on Great Slave Lake. Iwo were white and the third was as black as a raven. That same year, I learned at Lake Athabasca that the Fort Chipewyan neighbourhood was infested by an inva¬ sion ot black wolves of a kind until then unknown in the Northwest, who came from the south. They seemed to be mad, people said. They feared nothing and nobody, and the Chipewyans believed they were a recent and diabolical creation. Only then did I believe the stories of the Nonceni inhabitants that I transcribe here to finish these wolf stories. An Indian told me that, in September, while camping not far from the large Maunoir or Whitefish Lake, tributary of the upper Anderson, three children who were playing on the shore were surprised and attacked by an enormous wolf. The oldest of the children fled and gave the alarm at the camp. The second one threw himself into the water up to his neck, and the wolf did not dare go fishing for him there. The third, only eight years old, little Lla-kka, White Hand, took refuge in a rock crevice, where the wolf succeeded in grabbing his heel and pulled and shook it until the moccasin came off. He would even have managed to drag the child from his hiding place if the latter had not defended himself with a spruce branch which came to hand. Very happily, Chief Kopa’s people freed the poor little fellow by killing the wolf on the spot. The second event was told to me by Lazarus Be-kkpa-kpayelli, The One Who Goes Hunting for His Bacon, a serious, religious, and truthful man. It happened in December 1871. He told me: I came back empty-handed from hunting caribou on Lake Tpou-tcho [Great Bear Lake]. I was tired from having crossed mountains and valleys without having killed anything but two skinny grouse. These two partridges would have to make a meal for five people if my son had not also killed something. I was returning quite sad at nightfall, in those very short days where the hunt is so uncertain, so unprofitable, and I was reciting the rosary while walking. Suddenly, I had a feeling that I was being followed and, turning around, I saw a pack of wolves who were pursuing me, panting, jaws open, eyes on fire, breathing death and carnage. Some of them were white and others were black. I had never seen anything like it. I had not even heard tell that black wolves existed, black as ravens. What a horror! I immediately stopped. I let out loud shouts to frighten them. I made great ges¬ tures. I waved my gun and my axe, but did not fire at them. As I saw that they hesitated and stopped, I turned right around and began to run at top speed on the frozen lake. Its surface was hard and packed down by the wind. I could take off my snowshoes to run better to get well ahead of the wolves. But, you know, these animals run faster and longer than a man can; they had soon caught up to me and, shortly after, I had them again at my heels, panting heavily. One or two wolves would not have frightened me. I would have attacked them with my axe. But a whole pack! What hope was there of overcoming and warding off the assaults of so many enemies? However, I was quite far from home and on a large lake. What was I to do?

402

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

While running, I took one grouse from my gamebag and threw it down on the ice. Then I ran even faster. The wolves threw themselves on this meagre prey and tore it apart. There was not a mouthful for two in it. They were starving and I soon had them hot on my heels again. The second partridge followed the first, and the same action occurred again, without any more success for me. Then I took off one of my caribou-skin fur mit¬ tens, and hurled it to the wolves for their amusement. My enemies stopped again to fight over it, to tear and shred it, and that gave me something of a lead. When the mitten was swallowed, the wolves resumed their charge, more determined than ever, as if stimulated by the concessions I had made to them. I threw them the other mitten. But I was starting to panic. I saw trouble coming. I was bathed in sweat in spite of the intense cold; the wolves’ eyes bewitched me, and I was afraid of making a wrong step while running, for if I fell I would be lost forever. The second mitten being eaten up, my enemies hatefully again began their pursuit with an obstinacy that I did not know they had. Were they mad? Then I took off my sinew-net gamebag and threw it to them. That kept them busy longer than the mittens had, but after they had torn it into pieces and swallowed it, they made up the lost distance and I soon heard their breath whistling behind me. It was unbearable. I do not know any more what I did then. I thought I was lost, because I had noth¬ ing else to throw away; I called on God in my distress: ‘My God, help me! Nne-wessi, se ttsen neti!’ and turning towards the wolves, I made a laige sign of the cross. They immediately stopped, and perhaps you will not believe this, they turned back and I saw no more of them that evening.

Such was Lazarus’ simple and naive story. Besides, he is the most edifying, the most innocent, the best example of a good man in the country, a real saint of our God. It is permissible, however, to have doubts about the ending of his story or to explain it by natural causes. As for me, what astonished me in his narration, was that the man did not use his gun against the wolves, when by a single shot he could have put them to flight. It is so simple, why did he not think of this? I made this observation to him. He blushed to the ears and sadly replied to me: “I am too poor, Father, to use my hunting ammunition that way and above all to sacrifice my only gun. You well know that the gun you fire at a wolf or a dog becomes taboo, anathema, and cannot be used any more to hunt pure and edible animals. The stain that the gun gets never goes away. Now I have only the one gun. The wolf and the dog are unclean. People beat them. They do not shoot them unless they can sacrifice an old scrap weapon. When with the Whites, we do like you, because Whites do not believe any of that, but in the forest it is another thing, we observe the old customs. Now, with what could I hunt the next day and the days that follow? What would my poor children eat, if I had deprived myself of my means of living?” This was said to me in a plaintive and reproachful tone against which I did not even try to reason. These age-old prejudices that do not damage either faith or

Second Exploration to the Sources of the Anderson River

403

morality cannot be uprooted by reason but only by examples and the passing of time. Lazarus remark only proved to me that the holiest of Den£ converts is not always entirely lacking in all superstitious beliefs and practices. In the present case, it was an ancient custom founded on the distinction made, even by the conscience of this circumcised man, between pure and impure animals. I had to respect it, since it was inconsequential while saying to him in passing that baptism relieves us of these out¬ dated and repealed ritual observances. But there was another superstition that I ought to have attacked head-on, because it had no basis in the Mosaic law: namely, that which takes the wolf, Pele, as the totem and guardian fetish of the Dene in general and the Hareskins in particular. Lazarus did not tell me this, but I knew it very well. It is the Hareskins who never kill this ani¬ mal, for the same reason that the Kaffirs and the Arabs respect the life of the lion. I did not know a single Indian possessed of a spirit so independent and a mind so healthy as to be able to shake off these barbaric swaddling clothes. When they are with Whites, they are above all fear because they believe themselves to be placed under the protection of superior men. On their own ground all their superstitious terrors return because they imagine that the manitous of their ancestors are again their masters. They believe that by infringing on the old gofwen, they will needlessly provoke the anger of the manitous. It will require centuries of religious practices and civilizing insights to get rid of such prejudices. Very fortunately, they only go skin deep, and they do not at all prevent the practice of Christian virtues.

CHAPTER XI Through the Danite Camps: Continuation of the Voyage Yellow Marmot’s Inhospitality—Assassination of Three French Metis—Crossing the Khadier Plateau

Sources of the Anderson River—Hareskin Pusillanimity—The

Dene-djiere or Summer Ghosts—A Young Woman’s Heroism—Departure for Great Bear Lake—Way to Kill a Fox-Ti-de ay—Smith Arm—The Soldier’s House—A Corpse Is Resuscitated—Departure for Kfwe-k a-tlane Beach

13 November 1872. Between Fort Good Hope and Nonceni Bay on Lake Petitot, I had crossed four waterways and sixty-one lakes. I was received by Yellow Marmot’s Khatcho-Gottine with great cordiality. After I had shaken hands with everyone, this lit¬ tle chief who had made an attempt on my life three years earlier said to me with the volubility of a waiter at a one franc twenty centimes restaurant: “Father, what do you want to eat? Beefsteak, roast, boiled, or fricassee?” I had greeted this cook’s sally with an involuntary smile, and Marmot, alias Moose, drawing himself up to his full height, paid me the honours of his loghouse, of which he was prouder than the Parisians are of the Louvre’s colonnade. He had also built a storehouse for food, where he hurried to put away my sled and my dogs’ harnesses, to keep them safe from the greed of those animals. He made me sit in front of a good fire in the corner, where I found old Khacetie, Tadipale’s mother, and her daughter, Tpeni-kha-poe, Kettle of Hare Meat, Marmot’s wife. While I warmed myself, Marmot busied himself in telling me that he proposed nothing less than to build a chapel, asking me if, in this case, my bishop would come to bless it and put a priest in resi¬ dence here. Finally, he told me the secret but very important news that he had just cut pieces of wood from the nearby forest necessary to build a small public toilet, which in Paris is called a “cottage of necessity,” “because,” said the little chief with charming good-naturedness, “when one wants to live like the French, you must do everything in the French style.” One can see how Mister Little Hare’s example was already bear¬ ing fruit. Mimicry or jealousy was rearing its head among the affected chiefs and was making them work miracles. Henceforth, one could no longer talk to the Danites about the traditional two copses of wood that they used outside camp, after the fash¬ ion of the Hebrews, nor about the little hole dug in the earth or the snow. After I had removed the icicles from my beard, my eyelashes, and my hair; and after I had warmed up enough so that I could speak, Marmot asked me this question: “Why did you come and where do you propose to go?”

405

406

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

“But,” I said to him, “do you not remember any more that you asked me to look after and help the sick people of your camp, telling me that you were all dying and . that you needed medicines and the sacrament of Extreme Unction? “Exactly,” he replied, “but after that, where will you go?” “Well, then, I will go further on. After spending a few days at your place, if neces¬ sary, I will go the to camp of the grand chief Kopa, who has also asked for me. And after that I will go to the Soldier at Smith Arm. I will go everywhere where you have excellent relatives, as far as the great steppes around Keith Arm if necessary. My answer had the effect that I feared but that I had not sought to soften. The little chief’s face darkened as did that of Madam Kettle of Hare Meat, his wife. The husband said to his wife in an aside, but so that I understood him: “He does not come for us alone, allonhi! He only thinks about Kopa’s people, llonla! There is no point in making a fricassee for that man.” It was quite clear that this good man was jealous of Sida-Khaya as well as of Kopa and the Soldier, otherwise called Philippe Yettanetel. Possessive and egotistical like all Indians, he had tried only to outshine them in order to ruffle his compatriots’ feathers, to gain prestige in their eyes, to put down his competitors and to be named great chief in Kopa’s place. The steppes and the forests are no shelter from human ambitions, court intrigues, the pretensions of superiority among people, in which each one of the four gentlemen would certainly have wanted to see me take an active part for their personal and egotistical interests. I did not want to lend myself to such narrow and uncatholic views. I could not join a league of any handful of Indians or share their small jealousies. I expressed myself quite categorically about this mat¬ ter and in such a way that Moose did not come back again to the subject. Then he mocked me, like the cheat and trickster that he was, with an appearance as sharp and intelligent as a fox’s. “Really, ttatte itta, you are a universal Father,” he began to say to me. “One moment, you are a Dindjie, and then an Eskimo. Today you are our Father, and tomorrow you will be that of the Fur People. One day you make yourself Chipewyan, the next you are Dogrib. Then you become a Hareskin, again. Really, Father, you have as many children as there are people in our whole island.” The conclusion of that ironic tirade was this: “Aensin, Intpa, bee dou gounli, yaze taoti, deti belle. Therefore, Father, there is no meat, so there. Truly, there is not even the smallest morsel.” And this same Yellow Marmot, who had tried to tempt me a minute ago with his appetizing culinary offers, before I had even put a foot in his house and greeted him, now snubbed me to punish me for being and for showing myself to be a Catholic in the fullest sense of the word. Tpeni-kha-poe shoved his elbow into Marmot’s ribs to warn that he was lacking tact and hospitality: “What is the point?” He repeated to him in a low voice, “What is the point, since he does not come only for us!”

Through the Danite Camps

407

I could have taken oftence and left, harnessed my dogs and continued my trip. I would have done so if he had been alone in this hamlet, but there were other Indians there who did not share his mean and narrow-minded sentiments, and I preferred to show Moose that I had other things to do, being sufficiently at ease to do without his services. I ordered Tadipale to prepare my supper with my own provisions, and I drank my sugared tea and ate my marrow pemmican right in Mooses face. I even condescended to buy fresh meat for my sled dogs from this small-hearted man. All evening Tpeni-kha-poe and Kha-Cetie, Tadipale’s old mother, who was the spit¬ ting image of Louise Michel,136 at least in her appearance, brought forth every state¬ ment jealousy inspired in them to separate the youth from my service. The only valid reason that they alleged was always the same: “But since he does not come for us alone! And he prefers the Bear Lake people to us!” The thought of the financial profit alone that Tadipale was going to get from this long meandering trip on snowshoes, that it would be worth at least thirty-two skins or eighty francs for forty-five days, not counting the food, the honour of serving as a guide and companion to a priest, and the prestige that he would acquire by this great long trip at fourteen years of age, that thought was enough to make them pale with envy. They did not, however, suc¬ ceed in wearing down the young man’s determination. He found a way to say to me without them knowing: “Let them talk. Do not discuss it with them. It is not love that makes them want me back. They want to make me their little dog, without any payment. I know my relatives. I very much prefer seeing the country in your com¬ pany, while being well-fed and well-paid, to living with my brother-in-law. You can count on me.” Without taking into account the ill will and the secret opposition from these three people, after my supper I then gathered the forty-five people who made up the ham¬ let, gave them some religious instruction, made them pray, and announced to them that I would remain with them all the time necessary to complete their devotions. 14 November. The next day, the fourteenth, I celebrated the holy mysteries at Marmot’s, delivered a second instruction, heard everyone’s confessions, and regular¬ ized some false positions. A young man, whom I had married in the previous spring, Epou-tsie, Broken Tooth, informed me that his young wife, Fwa-etsi, Sand Carried by the Wind, had left him to take refuge with her family at Kopa’s camp. He begged me to send her back to him and I promised that I would. A young woman, Marmot’s youngest sister, was also separated from her husband, Yenawetloun, whom we al¬ ready knew. She entrusted me with a similar message for him. As for the number of dying to whose bedside I had been called, I did not see a shadow of them with the exception of one man who had a cold. It was nothing more than a ruse that the little

136 [Louise Michel (1833-?), woman of letters and a revolutionary. This reference by Petitot is to a comedy by Plautus about twins separated at birth.]

408

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

chief had used to get me to his place out of jealousy for Sida-Khaya whom I had gone to visit the previous winter. Lazarus Bekkpa-kpayelli came to beg me to change the name of his last-born whom my confrere had baptized during the autumn and to whom, this fine Indian said, he had given the name of a damned person. “How is that? How is that?” I said to him. “I know my confreres well enough that they would not give at baptism any other names than those of the saints of the Old and New Testament: Abraham, Peter, Noah, Stephen, Jacob, James, Moses, Paul, Joseph, John, David, Thaddeus, Isaac, Eleazar, Dominic, Tobias, etc., etc. It is all immaterial because they are equally good.” “Exactly,” Lazarus replied. “He called my son Adam. Can you imagine? This Adam, who was the cause of all our ills, who made us so miserable, could he be a holy indi¬ vidual? He can only be a damned person. I do not want my son to carry that name.” I had to make a long speech to convince this father that our common ancestor had done a very rigorous penance for the sin he had committed, that he was a holy patri¬ arch, that the Church, considering the offence that Adam perpetrated, had earned for humanity the badge of honour of being redeemed by the Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, calling it a happy sin,felix culpa, and that the Church did not hesitate to number the penitent Adam among its saints. 15 November. Before leaving Nonceni’s camp, I wanted to know the etymology of the name of the last point of land that I had crossed before arriving there and that Tadipale could not explain to me: Bonlay ekone-ehta. Frenchman’s Arm Point. Old Essa-da-tpa, Father Goatsucker Beak, also known by the name Banlay-tcho or Big Frenchman, Marmot’s father-in-law, undertook to tell me. He said to me: It was in the time of the two rival companies, the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwest, both fighting over the savages and grabbing our provisions and our furs. A bloody tragedy took place on the shores where we live, nearly fifty years ago.137 I was young then, but I remember it perfectly. The employees of the two fur-trading companies annoyed us in a thousand ways while trying to supplant each other. Always armed with swords and pistols, they made us tremble. In that era, Fort Good Hope138 or Bonne Esperance was exclusively for the Dindjie or Loucheux, and was situated on the lower Mackenzie at the place called Fox, Yekfwee. As for us, Dene Natle-tpaGottine or People of the Wilderness Deer, we carried our furs and smoked provi¬ sions to the Fort at Great Bear Lake. It was built on Big Hare Point, Kha-tcho-ehta,139 from which quite recently came our name of Kha-tcho-Gottine, People of the Big Hares or Fur People. At that time, I was saying, no White man had penetrated

137 As you will see further on, that was during the winter of 1826. It had then been forty-six years in 1872; sixty-seven years in 1893. 138 In Hareskin Kla-kotcho, the Big Arm, or Dekkewi-kounhe, the House of the Loucheux. 139 This was the fort built by Big Neck Mackenzie. I spoke of it in [Chapter 2 of] this volume.

Through the Danite Camps

409

east of the Mackenzie further than Big Hare Point. But then three Metis SaulteuxFrench Canadians came to NoiTeni Bay, where they met their death, and here is how it happened. All the employees ot the Northwest Company lived with Hareskin women whom they had stolen or persuaded to cohabit with them. There was also a captain there who had built a new tort14” and where the young men had mistresses who had been taken from us or from the Dogribs.141 During the summer which followed their arrival, those men left Great Bear Lake to go somewhere, we do not know where.142 In their absence their concubines, bored of living with the Whites whose language they did not understand, ran away to the woods, each to her own tribe. Three of them crossed the peninsula-steppe Klo-tsen-ewa [Sagebrush Mountain or Little Steppe] as well as Smith Arm and returned to their relatives at Nonceni. These feared the anger of the Whites, who were always armed to the teeth. They did not want to receive the three women and urged them to return to the French143 who had taken them as wives. But they said they were so unhappy at the role they filled in their relationship that they absolutely refused to return. Then three young men offered themselves and were accepted as husbands during a meeting in the presence of the whole tribe. Autumn arrived and none of us dared go to the fort for fear of being mistreated by the French. But one fine day we saw three Metis arrive, the very ones whose mistresses had run away. They were annoyed. They uttered terrible threats if we did not return their wives. My relatives were numerous and these men only three. Nevertheless, we were afraid of them and we gave up the three girls, begging them to return very quickly to their fort. We treated them decently and they slept in our tents. The next day we again invited them to leave, but they still stayed to help themselves to our finest meat. We began to fear that they had some evil plans, and we asked them politely to leave. But they were determined to stay with us. So, we decreed their death if they persisted in wanting to stay a second night in our camp. Their presence, their appearances, everything about them was hateful to us. “Rather than be killed by them, let us kill them ourselves,” people said. It was not long be¬ fore that one of the men from the fort had killed eleven people for a Slavey girl he loved named Ninttsi-natcho or Month of the Big Wind, whom you know well.144 The following morning, all had been said. One was stabbed right in the chest with a knife. The second had his head smashed with a stone axe, kfwekfwin, and the

140 Sir John Franklin and the fort that carried his name.

1411 am only reporting Essadtpa’s story, I leave to this Indian the responsibility for all these statements. 142 At the Arctic Ocean, as I said in Chapter 2. 143 Needless to say, these were Franklin’s Englishmen. 144 I wonder if Essadatpa did not make an interpolation here; if this murder of eleven persons of his tribe was not committed in reprisal for the assassination of the three Metis who are in question here. I know that the massacre of eleven Hareskins was perpetrated by three Metis, of whom one was taken to Montreal and hanged. I saw the second at Fort Isle a la Crosse in 1862, and the third, named Lafleur, at Fort Athabasca where he died suddenly the 1st of the year 1879. Would these not be the same three Metis that

4io

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

third, having received a gunshot in the shoulder, was able to escape. They let him get away. Some days later, we had broken camp to move it to the low point that you crossed on the other side of the bay. From the first night that we spent there, we heard a dog who was chewing some bones a few steps away. We went to see and we found in the mouth of the animal a man’s arm, a white arm, that ofthe third French Metis, the wounded one who had escaped. Fie had gone to die of hunger and misery on the point where our dogs had discovered and devoured his corpse. Since then the name “Point of the Frenchman’s Arm” has been applied to the place.

Thus spoke the Big Frenchman with the Goatsucker’s Beak. Tadipale and I left that same day. The temperature was only minus 26° Celsius, which was very good weather to travel without sweating or suffering from the cold. We headed directly northeast, between L’etpale [Separated Land] Mountain to the south, which we could not yet see, and my lake to the west. Behind us, straight south, we distinctly saw another extended limestone hill that began at the end of Nonceni Bay and ended abruptly at the edge of Smith Arm on Bear Lake in a 500-foot preci¬ pice. That is Steppe Mountain, Non-tpyen-kfwe. Finally, to the north another hill of the same altitude, Fwae-kfwe, Eagle Rock, the second of this name, separates Petitot Lake from the sources of the Anderson River which defines the valley. As it gets closer to Nonceni Bay, this long hill diminishes in height to the point where, at the latitude where I was, 66° 50,’ it is level with the plain: an immense steppe, covered with ponds and swamps, that I had to cross as far as the Anderson. I again came upon Lake Ratsele [Little Bustard Lake] and Charles Lake, the most remote sources of this river. I did not see an Indian camp this time. I again crossed a round lake, eight kilometres in diameter, called Trout Lake, Pieretpoue, then at last White Locks Lake, Eh-dekkpale, which is a dozen kilometres long and only four wide. Both are tributaries of the upper Anderson and thus are the first basins of its western source, because this river has four basins that all carry the same name, Si-tcho-niline. These two lakes have no outstanding features. They lie on high plateaus between slightly wooded flat shores, battered by the east wind, and buried under Icelandic moss and lichen. It is, properly speaking, the country or hunting territory of the Kha-tcho-Gottine. It is a very dismal country for people of such a cheerful character. At five o’clock in the evening, in the dark of night, I arrived at Kopa’s camp, thanks to a trail well beaten down and very little snowed in from the latest wind. The camp was made up of five large circular and pointed lodges that contained altogether twen¬ ty families, around 125 persons. I was then two days’ march north of Smith Arm on Great Bear Lake, from which Sinuous Mountain, Ti-depay, separated us. It is a

the Hareskins prided themselves on having assassinated, in order to affect opinion and to stop people say¬ ing only three men, three strangers, had been able to massacre with impunity, in the middle of an entire Dene camp, eleven people for one woman?

Through the Danite Camps

411

narrow, bare limestone wall covered with snow that made it sparkle like an alabas¬ ter or marble rampart under the brilliant light of the radiant moon. Its appearance made me shiver. I he Khadier plateau, or Hare Country, extends between Ti-depay and the sources of the Anderson. The four sources are born here in as many little lakes surrounded with lichen. It is an immense steppe, this Hare country. It is dreary, desolate, broken by clumps of willow, heather, and islands of spindly spruce, and sprinkled with creeks and asphalt deposits, a frightful land if there ever was one. Ti-depay, Sinuous Land, with L’e-tpale, Broken Land, and Nontpyen-kfwe [Steppe Mountain] to the west and to the southwest, and Ti-dekpale, White Land, to the east and to the northeast, form a gigantic S but an S lying on its back (0n). They constitute the northern side of the Great Bear Lake basin. Some of L’etpale’s peaks are shown on Franklin s 1825 map but without any name. They had only been seen from Bear Lake by Kendall and Richardson. I had to cross this mountain barrier to reach Great Bear Lake, but tor the moment I had nothing to do but plan on how to carry the comforts of religion and medicine to the “crowd of dying” that Kopa told me were languishing in his camp and calling for the services of my double ministry. As at Yellow Marmot’s, the first words that the Indians addressed to Tadipale on my arrival were these: “Are, friend, what brings him here?” I did not give my servant time to reply. “Well,” I said to them, “you should ask me that question: Why did you call me here? What! You summon me and you do not know why I come? Where then is this crowd of the sick and dying that your chief begged me to come visit? I see, by the grace of God, that you are all in excellent health and I thank Heaven for that.” “Ah! Father, do not say that we are well,” objected people on all sides. “We are all sick, all, all. You see, it is only yesterday that we began to feel better.” And they all began to groan, cough, and whine, striking the most pitiful poses. Some complained about their head, others about their belly, still others about their heart or stomach. Finally, if they were to be believed, there was not a single healthy person in the camp. I was not the man to be taken advantage of by this play-acting. In order, however, to please everyone, I had to pretend to take them at their word, and I distributed a little camphor for their headaches and some laxative pills for the other imaginary ailments. A moment later Kopa served me a good meal of fat caribou meat, accompanied by tongues, and no one gave a further thought to the illnesses that my presence had given birth to and had done away with. After supper, the conversations, or rather the general brouhaha of voices that intersected without waiting for a reply, turned on the subject of the alarms these good Christians claimed they had suffered during the summer. These were the latest news and the only ones they judged worthy of interest. The basically timid character of the Dene makes them see enemies where there is not even a shadow of them. They always imagine themselves surrounded by ambushes, vexations, attacks, and oppressions and pursued by relentless enemies. They all have

412

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

a persecution complex. Someone may tell me it is an unhappy relic of their ancient tribal quarrels. Or it is the result of their miserable way of life, living alone, lost in the . middle of the woods, to some degree fleeing from the society of their fellows. Or it is even, very probably, the consequence of their immigration into these awful wilder¬ nesses, an immigration they claim was definitely caused by evil treatment suffered at the hands of a more powerful people whose slaves they had become. I accept all of these reasons, but I notice, nonetheless, that the whole Danite nation is warped by a persecution complex but only in the summer. From the time winter arrives with its procession of snow, fog, and ice, their minds again take on their normal basis, and all these cerebral phenomena disappear. No one thinks any more about Dene-djiere or ghosts, about Nakan'e or enemies, about Eyounne or phantoms, and everyone sleeps peacefully without fear of being stabbed in his sleep. “Last summer,” Kopa began to tell me, “we were terribly harassed. Our country was invaded by countless enemies.” “That is true,” I said to him. “Never have the flies and mosquitoes been so numer¬ ous and so thirsty for human blood. They swarmed around the fort and the mission, too. What an abominable mob!” “We are talking to you about real enemies, Father, about palpable enemies of flesh and bone like us. We have seen the fires of their bivouacs all around the great Khadier plateau. On the shores of the Dease River where we go hunting they pestered us so much we could not live.” “How many of you did these people kill? Have you very many wounded?” “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! You always joke when we speak seriously to you. Go on! It is no laugh¬ ing matter. Men six feet tall, dressed in beautiful fine cloth, carrying caps trimmed with gold or ribbons on their bonnets, having a forked beard and long red hair.” “Good! English then! Naval officers! To describe them so well you must have ap¬ proached them quite close. But these enemies must not have been too unsociable to let you describe them so exactly. Did you capture one of them, alive?” “My friends, our Father does not believe it,” exclaimed Kopa a bit overwrought but nevertheless still self-controlled and smiling out of politeness. “Take a living one, did you say? Even better than that. Epou-tsie, Broken Tooth, whom you must have seen at Moose’s camp, killed two of them himself. We saw the blood. There was much blood. Yes, there was.” “And the bodies, did you see them? Epou-tsie has been seeing things. The blood he saw might have been the blood of a caribou or partridge. Fear often makes you see enemies where there is not even a shadow.” I thought that a riot was going to break out among these good people who are or¬ dinarily so peaceful, but also so enthusiastic, so easily overexcited and, consequently, so quick to lose all self-control. There arose against me a hubbub of indescribable protestations, and the more they shouted, the more I laughed. Men, women, and children yelled, gestured, and protested with all their strength under the impact of

Through the Danite Camps

413

various feelings. Their sell-love was offended. Their prejudices were attacked headon, their testimony challenged, their beliefs misunderstood or counted as nothing, and all their arguments reduced to naught, and by whom? By a stranger. Chief Kopa himself, ordinarily so calm and gentle, could not master his emotions. “Father,” he exclaimed with a vehemence that I did not know was in him, “you talk like a child. Arekhe, my friends, you must excuse our Father, he has no sense. The Whites are all nonbelievers, skeptics, infidels....” “Well, I certainly want to grant you something,” I said to him. “You, Chief, who are such a good Christian, can you assure me that you saw these Dene-djiere or enemies that you speak of?” “Certainly, I saw them. Khou-edi-kkwa! Yes, I saw them! All of us here have seen them. All of us, all.” “Yes, yes, it is true,” they exclaimed from all sides. “Me, too, I saw them; all, we have all seen them.” “And me, then.” “And me, too.” “Me, also,” cried fifty voices. “Me,” added Etsoukwi’s young wife, “I spotted them making a sign to me to go to them, but I was wary of them.” “As for me,” said a young man, Ekhe-a, “I heard them whine like starving wolves.” And the racket began again even louder. “Silence! My children! Please, let us be reasonable,” I exclaimed to them. “It is obvi¬ ous that I cannot believe that all of you are liars.” “Ah! Ah! You see! It is very true.” “But, on the other hand, I cannot conceive how such fine people as you can have so many enemies on earth. Who then would be so evil as to hate you and want you dead?” “Oh! Oh!” And all laughed with glee; this praise, deserved moreover, tickled their egos. “Let us study it, however. Let us look at it a little. Your neighbours to the north, the Bastard-Loucheux, and those to the northwest, the Loucheux, are all excellent Christians. Do you suspect them of plotting your destruction?” “Certainly not. Not them. They are good; we know them. They are our relatives.” “Very well, my friends. Your neighbours to the west, the Mackenzie Hareskins, are also your own relatives. How could they have become your enemies?” “Not them, either. It is impossible, we guarantee that.” “And I do, too. The Dene to the south, Dogribs, Slavey, Yellowknives, and Chipewyans, were, without question, your bitter enemies in olden times, but it has been many years since they have been baptized. They behave like Christians and do not think any more about setting ambushes for other tribes. Do you still suspect them?” “No, no! We see them each summer in the boats when going to Portage La Loche.

414

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

They are of our race, they are Dene like us and not enemies. We know them well now.” “Exactly. Then, there only remain your neighbours to the east and the northeast, the Eskimos. Oh! As for them, I believe they are capable of all trickery and mischief; but I also know that they are basically coastal people, that they do not move far from the shore of the Arctic Ocean and the mouths of the rivers that empty there, and that they very much fear the forests and the mountains, that they have not got red hair or forked beards, and above all they dress in skins and not in fine cloth, nor in caps trimmed with gold. So, in the last analysis and everything weighed and considered, my children, as you all agree to say that you were attacked by a legion of enemies, without any of you being killed, wounded, or made prisoner, in my opinion it is the Devil himself along with all his followers who pestered you, because no doubt you did not live a Christian enough life.” If my good Kha-tcho-Gottine had seen Yatpehnonttay himself, the Fallen One, fall on them like a bird of prey with the horns, tail, and wings that they attribute to him, they could not have been more terrified than they were by my statement. A thousand protests rose around me, although very respectful. “No, Father, it is not the Devil and his followers. There are no devils in our country. May God preserve us! Never have we heard that anything at all devilish was in our lands. That is perhaps the case for the White Man’s country.” “My children, I will tell you the same thing that the late venerable American bishop of Buffalo said: ‘The Devil, my friends, he is everywhere!’ Yes, he is everywhere, or rather he has emissaries everywhere, for he is not God who can fill all with his pres¬ ence. You do not need to be amazed at being pestered like other humans.” “No, no, a hundred times no,” Kopa repeated vehemently. “It is not the Devil. What! Have I myself seen the Devil? Never in my life will I believe that. I am no saint, far from it. However, I try to live according to the law of God, and I guarantee you this, Father, that I have never seen the Devil in my life.” “My children, even if you see him, you will not be any more at fault because of him. It is not a crime to have seen the Devil. Great saints have seen him and have put him to flight.” Well, we are not like those saints. Never, a big never, have we seen devils, do you hear? It must have been wolves we saw.” I hat s that, I said, laughing at this retreat. “Wolves dressed in fine material, wear¬ ing ribbons on their decorated bonnets, wolves with forked beards like old caribou.” They all burst into laughter. “Well,” said Kopa, “we must have imagined it. It must be our fear of the solitude that made us see these enemies. For, as for devils, Father, just as truly as we have guts, se ttsiye tta, there are none at all in our country.” They all said the same. Thus ended that stormy but friendly discussion. My method succeeded marvellously and I stayed on top of public opinion. It was important that

Through the Danite Camps

415

I control and steer the debate in this foolish matter. A quarter of an hour later, these simple and good people again said among themselves in a low voice: “Me, I have never seen anything.” “Me, neither.” “Me, I have certainly found blood but it could have been the blood of a wounded caribou, just as our Father said, and he has more sense than we have.” “Me,” said a woman—the same one who was sure she had received amorous invita¬ tions from these enemies—“me, I do not believe this nonsense any more. We always hear talk of enemies, and nowhere do we see them.” “We would be very sorry if the Devil were in our country. That is not possible, is it?” “Certainly not. God preserve us from that! So, do not talk any more about it, for that might make him come here, as when one speaks of a wolf.” And each timidly retracted so that, in fact, they all said, as David did when speak¬ ing of Judea, which had been purged of giants and monsters by his little troop from the forts of Israel: Non est Shaytan in via nec inimicus. “There is no Devil on the roads, nor an enemy.”145 16 November. I spent the days of 16 and 17 November in this camp, celebrating the holy sacrifice of the Mass and hearing confessions. I did eight baptisms and had the consolation of rehabilitating two young households that jealousy or misinformation had disrupted but, instead of the crowd of dying persons that had been described to me, I only saw a single man slightly indisposed and one old woman sick for years with a cancer of the groin, an incurable illness of which she died soon after. I regretted to note in this camp, as in the other Danite ones, that greed had replaced their former hospitality there, because the love of lucre had made them undertake long trips in the Company’s service, and because the desire to get big profits from the fur trade or from jobs in the forts and the missions had replaced the simple morals and tastes of former days. But this progress is decreed, if not desired, by God and, at least, permit¬ ted by His Providence. In proportion as the wilderness becomes organized, the harsh craving for gain drives out patriarchal hospitality. The Indian suffers less and enjoys more and more, but is he happier and better? That is a question to be examined. These Dene would, nonetheless, be very good people in every sense of the word— since hospitality is scarcely more practised by us, the civilized—if the Christian religion tolerated two little liberties: divorce and polygamy. However mild the Gospel’s yoke may be, we cannot deny that, relative to these two glaring points, it is a much more perfect and heroic yoke to bear than the Mosaic Law and the Natural Law. For the shoulders of people so free from all restraint, from all social hindrance,

145 Kings. [Nunc autem requiem dedit Deus meus mihi per circuitum non est Satan neque occursus malus. “But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary [Satan] nor misfor¬ tune.” Vulgate, 1 Kings 5:4.]

416

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

and from all coercive law as these woodland people are, the unity, sanctity, and indissolubility of Christian marriage, properly speaking, constitute the only and the heaviest of their burdens. It is acceptable when they have several children and their wife is fertile because the numerous posterity that they seek and desire with all the ardour of their soul often consoles them for the sour nature of their better half and makes them cherish and respect it. But to persevere in fidelity or conjugal union with a sterile wife! Ah! That goes beyond the judgement and understanding of the Dene. It is only with death in their soul and by a heroic sacrifice that they consent to live alone and without honour, deemed to be dry and unfruitful trees. So, I do not hesitate to consider married Danites who live in chastity and conjugal fidelity, in the midst of the freedom of the wilderness and lack of restraint of the forest, as real saints in spite of the flaws and prejudices inherent in their rustic sim¬ plicity. Such were, without contradiction, Patrick Kopa, Lazarus Bekkpa-kpayelli, Joseph Etsoukwi, Banlay-tcho, and a great number of other Indians in these two remote camps. Moreover, among them there are no bachelors, a hateful wound in our civilized countries. 17 November. Yenawetloun, the young man who had left his wife at Nonceni, and the young wife, Fwa-etsi, who had left her husband left this morning to go and rejoin them. I joyfully noted the morality of the two chiefs Kopa and Tseli-kfwo, who did not keep aloof from these temporary separations. They quietly stirred up both of the young people, for the purpose of augmenting the importance of their respective bands by attracting to each of themselves the young people from the other camp. One need not be surprised at these petty rivalries. They are only on a smaller scale here than elsewhere. I was consoled to see the two young people enter into my con¬ ciliatory views on the spot with touching generosity and promptness. Father, they said to me last evening, “do not refuse us the sacraments because of our thoughtlessness. Tomorrow morning before you leave, we will already be on our way to NonLeni.

Indeed, they left while I was preparing to celebrate Mass.

Yenawetloun was not worried; he was Marmot’s brother-in-law. Kopa did not think to hold him back. But it was otherwise with Fwa-etsi. This chief, while keeping her at his place, wanted to force her husband to come and join her there, which would increase his camp by one more household. But Epou-tsie would not hear of it. Hence the division, and always for the same cause: the chiefs’ pride surpassed the extent of their mandate and by abusing the exercise of their authority infringed on the liber¬ ties ot their subordinates. This could not be tolerated. I observed everything out of the corner of my eye without appearing to see or hear anything, my nose in my breviary and reciting the preparatory prayers for holy Mass. Kopa and his supporters looked for every possible way to keep the young wife in their camp. Let me go, she said to them. and to no purpose.”

I have stayed here long enough without a reason

Look, youi husband will come to rejoin you, here. We have told him that through

Through the Danite Camps

417

Yena. Who is urging you to leave us? Would it not be better that he runs after you? He will treat you even better.” No, it is me who separated from him on a whim. I should go rejoin him. The priest told me that. Moreover, my husband is asking for me. 1 love my husband and the priest, too. I do not want to disobey them.” “Stubborn woman, go! Father did not scold you in public. He has said nothing to you. We love the priest, too. Wait until he goes; then, you will go.” No, I want to leave while he is here, because after he leaves you will still keep me,” she replied with courage and firmness. “It has been a very long time since I left my hus¬ band. I am guilty of all the bad things he has done out of spite. The Father told me that.” And tears came to her eyes while she was lashing her meagre baggage to her sled. How stubborn these women are!” the chief repeated quietly. “But, Fwa-etsi, the Father told you to wait a little. He wants you to hear Mass before leaving. Come on, you should not leave before Mass; it is Sunday today. It is not every day that we get Mass at the sources of the Anderson.” Finding myself involved, I entered resolutely. “What is it my children? You seem to be talking about me?” “Oh! Nothing, Father, absolutely nothing,” the chief said. But Fwa-etsi called to me from the door: “Father, do you want me to hear holy Mass before I leave?” “What must be done before praying, my daughter, is to please God by fulfilling your duties. Your duty at this moment is to return to your husband as quickly as pos¬ sible. Leave. You can pray on your way.” This excellent child did not have to be told twice. She shook my hand, made the sign of the cross, with her snowshoes on her feet, then she hitched herself to her sled and left all alone, about one hour after the departure of Yenawetloun on the same road that had led me to Kopa’s the night before last. She was not bothered in the least by a great east wind that blew a swirl of frozen snow in her face. If there is not heroism in this Christian behaviour, I do not know where to find it. It is very much to be feared that these so-called savages may one day be our own judges at the throne of God. I had been received with cordial enthusiasm in Kopa’s camp. In spite of the little quarrel I picked with them on the subject of the Dene-djiere, they did not think any less of me. We forgive everything to those we love. And with moanings and mutterings they watched me prepare for my trip to Great Bear Lake. Naturally, I turned a deaf ear. I know that every Dene is a big baby, not at all naughty but jealous of fatherly caresses and fondlings from the priest. It is a real guardianship that we exercise over the Redskins. Europeans cannot imagine it because their faculties are of the same kind and capacity as those of the priest. But compared to the priest and even to all Europeans, the mental powers of the Redskins slump, seem to shrink and cringe, with more or less very few exceptions, because our reasoning dominates theirs. The presence of a White among them and above all that of a priest is then an

418

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

honour that they appreciate and of which they are jealous. Like spoiled children, they want the priest all to themselves alone with these honours, these friendly and paternal visits, these religious or instructive conversations. When they see that we want to give the same unsparingly to their other brothers, they sulk and take of¬ fence. Poor wretches! These complaints were another way to make me understand that they wanted to hold on to me, that they appreciated my short visits. One only misses whatever one values. 18 November. I have already said that for me to go from the sources of the Anderson to Great Bear Lake, I had two more days of walking to do, across the great Khadier steppe and across Sinuous Mountain. At Kopa’s I learned with pleasure that a trail existed between his camp and the Soldier’s House situated on the shore of Smith Arm. Only, no one had passed that way since the beginning of the month, and it was filled in by the snow-bearing winds that always blow violently in these higher areas. Kopa and Mitseatpa or Mountain offered to accompany me as far as the beginning of the trail. To follow it would then be no more than a business of natural insight and mechanical probings. That did not at all frighten the two of us, Tadipale and myself. At the end of a quarter of an hour of walking, we had left the burned area in the middle of which the camp stood, and we found ourselves on the bare plateau, bor¬ dered on the left by the edge of a green wood that separated us from Lake He-dekkpale. In front of us stretched the little Ttae-kke-nagheni Lake. To the right was the long white Ti-depay ridge. There prevailed on this frightful plain an east wind so terrible and so cold that I could not face it and had to throw myself flat on my sled and hide my face. I only got up when we arrived at the first trap that Mitseatpa had set along this old road. An unhappy raven was caught there by his foot. “Oh! These miserable ravens!” exclaimed Mountain. “They eat all the bait from my snares.” With this, he released the bird from the trap, wrung his neck and left him for dead, believing he had killed him. But the raven untwisted his neck and hurried away with his foot hanging and his large beak half open from suffering and anguish. Mountain pursued him, caught him again, jumped on him with both feet, tore off his feathers, buried him in the snow with great blows from the butt of his gun, and, this time, he believed he had well and truly killed him and went away. We followed him and were saying our goodbyes to Kopa who was returning to the camp. Scarcely had we taken a few steps than: “croak! croak!” It was Master Raven, powdered white like a lawyer of long ago, dragging his black cloak in tatters and with his leg broken, insulting his executioner while heading for the forest, which he managed to reach. We crossed a pond, then a brook, heading east. The first is Ttae-kke-nagheni, an¬ other source of the Anderson. We veered a little south and found another trap to the left of the trail. A beautiful silver fox (Canis decussatus) was caught there by its paw. This time Mountain could not have been happier. It was a fur worth four pelts, ten francs, that he had just earned. The fellow lost his tongue and his mind because of it.

Through the Danite Camps

419

He only replied to my questions with incoherent sounds. He no longer understood me. No doubt he was already calculating what he would buy at the fort with his ten francs. “A good day! A good day!” Seeing that he was slow to kill the poor fox, which was gasping with pain like the raven in the cruel jaw of the trap, I hit the animal on the head with a large stick. Mountain immediately recovered his speech. “Enedjinl Look, my Father does not want me to take any more foxes!” he exclaimed. “He is going to kill it for me with blows from a stick as if it were a dog or a wolf! Ah! We are going to do well at this rate! Wait, wait, I am going to teach you how to dis¬ patch a fox properly and in a good way.” Before he had even finished his speech, my man took a long and strong stick from his sled. It was thin and hardened by fire, and he drove it without pity into the fox’s anus. He prodded the entire body of the animal, which writhed in agony, and punc¬ tured all its organs, especially the heart. Then he left it dying on the ground, com¬ pletely impaled on his hard stick, like a Moslem sodomite stuck on a lightning rod. “There,” said Mountain, “there, Father, that is the proper way to kill a fox. You see, that does not damage the skin while blows from a stick would damage the fur. Furthermore, you would have prevented me from trapping others hereafter, because there is agofwen (taboo) on everything in this lower world, and as soon as one neglects or scorns it, crack! a man (a Dene) will not succeed at anything.” Fifteen paces further along in the same direction but at the intersection with another trail, the one I had to follow to go to Bear Lake, another fox was caught. This time the animal was reddish-brown, a fox worth only one pelt, that is to say, two francs fifty centimes. No matter; I thought that Mountain was going to start dancing. He ran like a child towards his new prey and, before I had time to hit the poor fox on the head in order to spare it atrocious and useless sufferings, he vigorously pierced it with another stick which he similarly left in the body. Then, proudly, he said to me, looking at the back of his left hand and counting on his fingers—not without hesitation: “That makes, let’s see, four and one ... five, ikkela! Yes, five pelts of good merchandise that I have earned today. By my ancestors! A good day. Oh! I thank you with all my heart, Father, for without a doubt it was you who brought me this good luck. Good things open up at your steps.” “Without counting the ravens,” I said, interrupting him with laughter. “Och!” said the Indian. “That one was sent to me by the Devil.” “So, the Devil is in your beautiful country, eh?” Laughing, he shook my hand and showed me the trail that I had to follow. Alas! It was all filled in. He gave me a thousand wise recommendations and returned to his foxes to skewer them again. It appeared that they were not dead enough. It is horrible. He had to skin them on the spot while they were still warm. Tadipale and I crossed about fifteen lichen bogs scattered over the sterile steppe, cleared Sinuous Mountain between the L’etpale and Ti-depale sections and camped in the forest on the southern slopes.

420

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

19 November. We went down four natural terraces, on each of which we encoun¬ tered as many lakes, then emerged at the river Ra-inkwene or Leg of the Bustard, which the English explorers in 1826 named Haldane River. It led us to the natural harbour, Tpou-koyintti, the Port, which measures three quarters of a league long by a kilometre wide. We were then on the frozen waters of Great Bear Lake, midway between Dease and Smith Arms. It was evening. Raising my eyes towards the shore which suddenly loomed up as an abrupt amphitheatre on our right, I saw two American-style log houses before which stood a great hr tree with its branches cut off except at its snowy top: a maypole. We soon made our way there and two minutes afterwards we were relaxing beside a good fire in the home of Philippe Yettanetel, called the Soldier because of his moustache. His half-brother, Joseph Norqway, called Lanky or L’outsietpa, another old acquaint¬ ance of my readers, lived with him in an adjoining room. Yettanetel or Soldier was a convinced and stubborn house builder. This man and his brother never lived in a lodge except when the caribou hunt required it. After having built a house of squared logs on Keith Point in 1865, he abandoned it after the death of his brother-in- law, Napatpieha, to go and build another at the end of Smith Arm. But when he saw me arrive at Bear Lake in 1866, he abandoned that project and rebuilt his house on Big Hare Point, two or three hundred paces from mine. Unfortunately, first his daughter, then his wife died there in 1867-68, and in accordance with the Danite gofwen that requires one to abandon or demolish any building in which a human being had given up the ghost, he again gave up his dwelling and began to build anew at Tpoukoyintti, where I found him and his half-brother and about twenty Fur People that day. I had not seen these poor neglected people since the previous year, and they had a burning thirst for prayer, confession, and communion. So, they received me with joy and required me to spend two days in their company. 20 November. At Tpou-koyintti I saw a somewhat fickle woman to whom her hus¬ band, a solid Christian, had affixed the Devil on her back, in the form of a crude picture from Metz that depicted the torments of the damned. “See,” this unloved husband said to me in a plaintive tone, “see what I am forced to do, to try to win my wife over! There is not another on earth more surly and diso¬ bedient. However, I am the son of a White, and ever since I saw death at first hand in 1867, I have behaved in an exemplary manner. Everyone will attest to that. Then why does she not do the same, this wife that I love and who repays my love so badly? I hung the Devil on her back, hoping she would be afraid and would change her life. Well, I did not even make her tremble.” While giving this thoughtless wife a fatherly rebuke, I secretly urged her husband not to take these things too seriously, and above all not to scorn his wife in public, for fear that she would leave him at the first opportunity. Eight days after my arrival, a shaman as stupid as he was feared, Tson-kfwo, Dysentery, had died an unrepentant death in the camp, in spite of the baptism he

Through the Danite Camps

421

had received a year earlier. He had not stopped his conjuring right up to his last moments, denying God, blaspheming, ripping into little pieces the image of Christ the Redeemer, and calling to his aid his partner in shamanism, Khe-pwo, Crooked Feet. This reprobate’s death frightened all of the Indians of the camp. They assured me that they heard him moaning every night and calling for help from the bottom of his grave. That same evening, as 1 was about to have my meal, a woman appeared and said to us with a distraught look: “Ah! My friends, Tson-kfwo is not dead. You should go see, for I have just heard him again crying and calling for help. Why does our Father not bless his burial mound? That would stop the strange happenings that have been frightening us since the sorcerer’s death.” Considering what had been told me about this wretch’s end, 1 could not agree to give a benediction, but after supper I went to his grave to assure myself that the con¬ juror had not been buried alive. Needless to say, I did not hear any noise or moaning. They were the results of the terror that this man inspired even after his death. The following spring, because of this same death, Soldier abandoned this fourth house, and went to build a fifth one not far from the Mackenzie. There was no need for him to stop his wonderful travels there since construction wood costs nothing in the North. 22 November. Having learned yesterday night that there was another camp of Fur People at the end of Smith Arm, in the woods, I resolved to visit it after I had finished with the Soldier’s people. At this place, there was at that very moment a young Slavey whom 1 had baptized and married in 1869, Emile Dekke-woya, who had to return to those regions because he had left his wife and all her family there. He was an orphan. He offered to accompany me and I accepted his free services at once. We left Port Tpou-koyintti 22 November at five o’clock in the morning, when the temperature was only minus 120 Celsius—a real rarity at this time of year. We went very quickly, because we could run without snowshoes, thanks to the ice being al¬ most bare of snow. We travelled along Smith Arm’s northern shore, following the recommendation of the poet: Litus ama ... Altum alii teneant... ,146 and, twelve hours later, we passed the archipelago Ndou-intl’on [Kruger Island], and camped at the point of Steppe Mountain, Nontpyen-kfwe, whose precipice over¬ hung us. There, on a slightly wooded isthmus called Ttsou-tcho-nadaze-ehta [Point of the Two Tall Firs That Can Be Seen from Afar], Dekke-woya recounted to me in what wonderful manner these shores, that were heavily populated in earlier times, had been transformed into an immense and horrible wilderness.

146 [“Keep close to the shore ... let others venture on the deep.” Virgil, Aeneid, Book V, line 163.]

.

CHAPTER XII Stories of the Conjurors: End of the Voyage Metempsychosis—A Conjuror’s Horrible End—Klinch-an-eye and His Revelations— I Go to the Great Steppes around Keith Arm—-Dangerous Return on Smith Arm— Return to Our Lady of Good Hope—My Last Mission at Fort Norman—I Go to the Far West

22 November 1872. Dekke-woya began, In times past, all these trees that you see around us, these flocks of white partridge that we have met, the caribou herds that crossed our path, these packs of wolves which followed them, were people like us. I have not learned why or how they were changed into trees, into birds, or into quadrupeds, but I have been positively as¬ sured that often they resume their previous form. During the day they remain such as you see them, but when night comes they become people again and harass the liv¬ ing. Only, it is not given to everyone to see these marvels, to witness these transfor¬ mations. The Christians do not see them and the priests even less, but the conjurors, the enchanters, see them, and that is why they are called seers, nakohin, and why so many young people aspire to be conjurors, even today. Here, I am going to give you some facts that will convince you. Once, one of our countrymen left to go to visit his snares on the ice of a great lake. Night came and he could not And his way again and he arrived on a part of the shore that he did not know. Having seen the glimmer of an outdoor camp, he went towards this bivouac to spend the night there. Our relative was well received and well treated there. These strangers were very cheerful and very polite. They roasted a fish in front of the fire. They shared their meal with him and invited him to sleep with them, there. But the next morning when he awoke, everything had disappeared. Our relative found himself lying in the snow at the edge of the lake and, in getting up, he frightened a flight of partridge that fled swiftly from the little holes in the snow where they had spent the night. You see then, Father, that these grouse had been humans in the shadows, but in the daytime they resumed their former shape as birds.

We know Ralli wanted to convince me of the same belief. Dekke-woya went into details. He continued: Another time, of our relatives got lost on a hunt. (Always lost, those Dene.) When night came, he saw smoke in the forest and ran there. It was an outdoor bivouac. A very tall stranger was camped there all alone and was roasting a loach for his supper.

423

424

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

The stranger welcomed our countryman heartily. He shared the loach with him and made him sleep beside him. The next morning, when he woke up, our man found himself in the snow next to a large fir tree. This tree was the man with the loach. He had just resumed his previous form at dawn’s first light.

1 forego reporting the young Slavey’s other stories. Wolves, marten, caribou, and squirrels each had their own legend, with several small variations, but always the same fabulous theme borrowed from the Greeks. 23 November. The next day, we went past Flat Island, Ndou-nne-wetti, and on each side of the island, there was a kind of parade, which are the Nontpyen-kfwe [Steppe Mountain] range to the north and the Kfwe-ttsenkfwe [Mountain That Joins the Mountain] range to the south. We passed in front of the mouth of the Kkpa-tse-yedie, Dry Willows River, and the two little islands in it, to go to eat at the wooded Etche-kweye or Elongated Tail Point. I have already said that Dry Willows River is the semi-underground outlet of my lake. We reached the west shore of Smith Arm north of Kfwe-kkpa-tlane [Flat Rock Beach] in a mountainous locality whose naked knolls covered with hoarfrost gave me the impression of sand dunes. I was unable to learn their nature. The camp to which Dekke-woya belonged was situated in the forest not far from the lake. We arrived there about three o’clock, while the men were still out hunting. We only found there a small number of people. When these good people learned that I had camped with my two Indians at Ttsoutcho-nadaze, the point of the two large firs that can be seen from afar, they showed their astonishment: “We never camp on that shore under the steppe mountain,” they said to me. “It is full of genies and evil spirits.” “I warned our Father about that,” Dekke-woya answered them, “but he paid no attention. ‘An excellent reason for us to camp there,’ he said to me, and 1 assure you that in fact we slept there very well.” “Would you have by any chance cut the two large firs that stand at the end of the point?” someone called out. “It is an excellent landmark.” “It is green wood,” I replied. “We respected it. But why this question?” “Ah! Because they are not spruce, but men.” “See, then!” exclaimed Dekke-woya, filled with wonder and his eyes sparkling with joy. “See, then! I did not know that, otherwise I would have already told their history to our Father, who was eager to hear such stories.” “Yes,” said Khe-pwo, the shaman, “they are two enemies, two Chipewyans who, long ago, came to this shore to plunder the women and burn the lodges of our an¬ cestors. They had hardly landed when our countrymen ran towards them in great numbers. Thus seeing themselves surprised and lost, the Chipewyans raised their arms to the sky and, immediately, by the power of their medicine, they were changed into fir trees. Since that time, we respected them and we do not cut them for fear of causing the two men to perish when they had become inoffensive and had already been severely punished. We had pity on them and let them live.”

Stories of the Conjurors

425

Truly, our enchanters have astonishing power,” observed Tadipale. “You have been convinced of this by what was told to us about Tson-kfwo. The Soldier told me privately they were afraid the same thing would happen to this magician as to La Lavette [Dishrag], for it also happened at Nonceni where La Lavette came back to life five years ago.” Then I remembered that in 1867 Lazarus Bekkpa-kpayelli, One Who Goes Hunting for His Bacon, had a younger brother named Barnabas Be-boer-kpalleli, One Who Goes Hunting for His Meat, also called La Lavette [Dishrag]. This younger man had been the hero and the victim of a horrible drama. Either he had been buried while in a coma or, as his relatives told me, he had deceived them by pretending to be dead, after having made them promise not to bury him before three days had passed, because he was going to be resurrected on the third day, like Jesus Christ. Are we to believe that he was afraid to be buried alive, knowing with what haste the Redskins proceed with the funerals of the departed, without even waiting until twenty-four hours have passed? Or must it be admitted that this man wanted to impress his countrymen by getting them to believe he was a saint? I dare not say one way or the other, but these are the facts. La Lavette died or appeared to be dead, and his relatives, instead of respecting his last wishes and waking his body for three days, thought that the shaman had been delirious when he spoke. They took no notice of his request and hastened to wrap him in his wool blanket and to bury him not far from camp. They surrounded the burial mound with pickets and contented themselves with not breaking camp at once as the gofwen would have required but resolved to stay in the same place until three days had passed in order to see what would happen. Then, always according to the Indians, it happened that during the same evening as the funeral, during the deepest part of the night, full of wind gusts and snow flurries, the camp dogs made an infernal din around La Lavette’s grave, from which issued dismal moans and re¬ peated calls. But no one went to help the unfortunate conjuror. No one had the courage, and the whole camp stayed frozen with fear. Only on the next day, when it was daylight, did they timidly venture to see. It was over, this time. La Lavette was quite dead, but apparently he had, in the end, pushed himself through the thin layer of earth covering his body, and sat up on his bottom, wrapped in his shroud. Partially re¬ lieved of this cover, the unfortunate man was perhaps going to try to pull himself out of the grave and go surprise and scare his relatives if the pack of wailing camp dogs, frightened by these strange movements and not recognizing La Lavette, had not thrown themselves on the phony dead man and well and truly ripped his throat out. The Indians found his face gnawed and fleshless just like his arms. The latter were extended, and his fingernails, driven into the earth on each side of the grave, still seemed to be trying to raise the poor emaciated body that death had surprised in this horrible position. If this man was a hypocrite and if he had wanted to play at

426

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

resurrection, to impress the crowd, it must be said that his ungodly pride had been cruelly punished. 24 November. From Dekke-woya’s camp, I had hoped to be able to reach Fort Norman and Keith Arm by the usual route. To my great disappointment, no one had used it yet, and it would have been necessary for TadipaR and me to open the road ourselves. I did not feel strong enough. With three of us, I would have decided to go on. For the lack of a second companion, I had to settle on camping at Soldier’s home again and to store the food that my good converts had sold me. I left them in the afternoon of 24 November, intending to go and again bivouac at the two Chipewyan trees, and the night of the 25th I slept at Tpou-koyintti where I spent the whole day of the 26th. In the evening, there arrived at the home of Yettanetel, the old shifty, stupid, and one-eyed pagan conjuror, the Great Loucheux, whom the English had baptized as Clinch-an-eye, and whom I had met the previous year at Little Dog, Dindjie-tcho’s camp. After having asked me in vain for baptism, this man, who passed for a great sorcerer in spite of his stupidity, later had the audacity to boast in front of me about the sublimeness of his revelations. “I have three great protectors in the woods,” he said to me, “I must tell you about them. It is the raven, tpa-tson, the sea osprey, tpou-tae, and the mink or weasel, tpewa. All three sing for me at night.” “Oh! Really? That is marvellous. And what wonderful things does the raven say to you in his less-than-harmonious songs?” “The raven! He sings to me: ‘Na-ti-kokkwene, ton, se ta ndyondetpie. Ey! ey! eylyohe! Ey! ey! ey! yoke! yoke! At the beginning of the world, on the dry steppes, one had a dream before me. Tra la a la!”’ “But, my friend, your raven’s songs have not got a shadow of common sense. That sentence has neither head nor tail. So, let us see now what your sea osprey tells you.” “The eagle!” continued the hallucinator as if carried away by his lofty thoughts. “Ah! I often see him in the summer nights, and he sings to me: ‘Ya-kke, yawin tchd tpawekkwin; yakkezin dinlloue etin deha! In heaven, I heard the roaring of the waters; from the sky I bring you back a fish!’ The eagle gives me this heavenly fish, and I fed myself with it.” I shrugged my shoulders from pity and begged the crazy man to spare me the songs of his mink. “My poor friend,” I said to him, “your head is not sound and I urge you to look after yourself, if you do not want to lose it completely.” But the en¬ chanter would not listen to me. Completely engrossed in his raptures, he exclaimed again: “That is not all. My nightcap also sings to me during the night. I am the only one to whom my nightcap sings.” I did not doubt it at all. The Indians were convulsed with crazy laughter. “And what does your nightcap say to you?” I asked him. “My bonnet! It sings to me: ‘Ede-deyetpie! Ede-deyetpie! I dream about myself! I

Stories of the Conjurors

427

dream about myself!’” It was with such stupidities that this poor fool tried to pass himself off as a seer and a prophet. All the Danite conjurors are like this. Ab uno disce otnnesd47 27 November. Having learned at the Soldier’s House that a beaten track existed between his residence and Fort Norman-Franklin, across Sagebrush Mountain, Klotsen-ewa, I reached my mission at Ste Therese by this route, which took me across nineteen lakes or large swamps. I reached home on the 30th at two in the afternoon and, without delay, I went into the Tpa-tta-ttsoghe steppes, home of my flock, the Slaveys. I performed ten baptisms, heard all the confessions, and came back to camp at the mission on 4 December. The next day, I was already en route for Soldier’s cabin, which I only reached on the 9th. I arrived at the shore of Smith Arm on the 8th at sunset. The shore on this side being a dry and treeless steppe, there was no reason to stop. The Arm had to be crossed immediately or we would have to retrace our steps to camp in the forest. We preferred to go forward, although the sun was setting bright red, which made us fear the onset of a violent wind. It was calm a third of the way across the bay, but then the wind really began to blow. It was at first a sharp little east wind which made the powdery snow drift on the bare ice, but this was the prelude to a khamasan. An hour later it erupted in all its rage and blew a whirlwind of snow as fine as cinders and as burning as embers in our faces, without a stop or a pause. Night surprised us during that long crossing. It entirely hid our view of Steppe Mountain, which could have guided our steps, and it made us lose the trail. By mis¬ take, for a long time Tadipale followed an old crack in the ice that had closed but was visible, since it had been swept by the wind, and resembled a path made by a sled. In the end, I perceived that it was parallel to the two shores, and had made us turn our backs to the east wind which we should have had on our right cheek. It was going to lead us inevitably to Kfwe-kpa-tlane’s camp. I warned Tadipale about this at once, but since he felt it necessary to find the lost path again, he caused me to make endless zigzags and to freeze on the spot, prey to anxiety easily imagined. Suddenly, the youth turned toward me, because he was running in front of the dogs: “Father, I am confused. Bad luck! It is as if I was going in endless circles. I do not know any more where I am or where I am going. If you cannot lead us to the northern shore we are lost. We will have to sleep on the lake. My legs are frozen, I cannot feel them any more, and the inside of my mittens is as hard as a rock. My poor hands! My poor legs !” And the youth began to cry. “Rather than sleep on the lake I will walk, if necessary, all night,” I answered him. I took off my leggings and wrapped them around his legs. I drew off my mittens and

07 [“From one example judge of the rest.” Or, “to know one is to know them all.” Virgil, Aeneid, Book II, line 65.]

428

Exploration of the Great Bear Lake Region

hung them around his neck. “As for me, I move enough to keep warm without them, I said. “I am going in front. Follow me with the dogs, closely. Hurrah! Forward, and keep moving as much as you can instead of like a snail.” I made a right-angle turn from the direction that Tadipale had followed, and I started to run with all my strength, my hands bare and legs without leggings. I was so hot that I sweated and had to lift up my kolbach’s earflaps. The dogs followed me closely. So, there was no danger. About ten minutes later, my feet encountered a firm trail that I instantly judged was the one that we had followed when going to Dekkewoya’s place on 24 November; but Tadipale was so disoriented that he would neither recognize nor follow it. “Listen,” I said to him, “I am sure that this trail goes to Soldier’s House, but we will have to walk against the wind.” And I started to run. “If you do not want to follow me,” I added, “well, go where you want. Good night.” When the youth saw my self-confidence, he decided to follow me. Less than a halfhour later, Nontpyen-kfwe’s dark silhouette could be made out in the midst of the snowstorm. The poor child cried tears of joy on seeing land again, but he still per¬ sisted in stating that he did not recognize the shoreline and thought we were lost. “You will recognize it tomorrow in the daylight,” I told him. “Meanwhile, let us camp here, because there is plenty of dead wood and green spruce for the encampment.” We bivouacked below Steppe Mountain’s headland. The next morning we arrived at Soldier’s House, and on the 10th I set out again on the Nonceni road without pass¬ ing Kopa’s camp, thanks to the existence of another trail that goes from this bay directly to Ndou-intl’on [Kruger Island] archipelago.148 I did not return to my residence at Our Lady of Good Hope until 18 December, af¬ ter forty-one days of travelling and after more than 260 English leagues on foot and on snowshoes. I had twice crossed 168 lakes of every size and thirteen waterways. In January 1877,1 made the same trip again with Tadipale and a young Bastard-Loucheux named Tchane or Old Man. My purpose was my successor’s installation at the Bear Lake mission. He was Mr. Georges Ducot from Bordeaux, a young missionary who had arrived in 1874. That roundtrip lasted forty-five days, because I returned via the Mackenzie and thus made an immense circle. After having overcome every danger, I nearly perished with Tchane almost at the door of the Good Hope mission, be¬ cause of the extreme intensity of the cold. It was minus 490 30' Celsius, plus a violent north wind which very nearly paralyzed our strength and even that of our dogs and almost made corpses of us all.

148 [Narakay Islands, on the southwest side of Dease Arm.]

Stories of the Conjurors

429

fc=S=)

I do not intend to recount here every event of my missionary and coureur-des-bois life under the Arctic Circle. A sixth volume would be necessary if I wanted to leave nothing out, but then I would strongly risk producing an over-abundance and per¬ haps even worse. So, I must confine myself to these pages. I gave my last mission to the Great Bear Lake Indians from March to June 1878. I had the opportunity to see there sixty Sekani Dane who came from the western side of the Rocky Mountains, led by the little chief, Tsa-pfui-pa, Head of the White Beaver, who had a very fierce reputation. These Indians are white, with large almondshaped black eyes. I have not seen one who had slanting or oblique eyes. Their women and daughters are beautiful and somewhat resemble Tamils. Like those Hindus, they wear nose rings, but they insert them in the septum, not in one or other nostril. The Hareskins have told me that they were almost all circumcised. When returning to the Mackenzie Basin in 1876,1 was quite prepared to live there until my demise, not counting on any more enviable end than to fall asleep and rest among my children of the woods. God decided otherwise. An internal wound that I had sustained in my torso on my last winter voyage caused such a blood clot that I had to find a warmer climate and gentler skies. In the month of March 1879,1 left for Lake Athabasca after passing the winter at the mission of Providence. I was able to explore the branches and deltas of the Peace River and make the map that the Royal Geographical Society of London consented to publish along with a detailed report of my travels in that land. The following June, I embarked for Lac la Biche and went up the Athabasca River as far as that magnificent and picturesque basin which is in the district and future province of Saskatchewan. I was charged with the founding of a mission or reduction149 for the Chipewyan Indians of Cold Lake and Beaver River, and I laid there the foundations of the St. Raphael mission farm at Hook Lake. I spent some happy days there until the year 1883 which saw my final return to France. But the story of my long and numerous voyages in the vast prairies of the Far West cannot be included in these pages. They will be the subject of one or two other volumes, if my kind readers do me the honour of receiving this one favourably. THE END

149

[a concentration of a formerly scattered population into a model village or parish as practised by

Spanish civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the New World.]

INDEX Abandoned One, see Tadipale

Back River, 49, 52, 55-6

Accanyo, see Ikanyo Island

Back, Sir George, his guides, drawings, 49, 52-6, 259, 261,339,369

Adam, Jean-Baptiste, 53 Adelaide Peninsula, 58

Back’s Cod, 308, 367

Alaska, 75, 95, 97.104-7.184. 211, 241,

Baikal Lake, 9

300-1, 336, 385, 393

banlay, 58, 60-1, 67, 400, 408, 416

Alaska River, 223

Baptiste, 14, 27

Algonquin, 40, 97,173,183, 209

Barnabas, One who goes Hunting for his

Allonge, see Gascon, Zephirin

Meat, or La Lavette, DishRag, Be-bcerkpalleli, 401, 425

Anderson, Alexander Caulfield, 56, 369 Anderson River, Unknown River, ix, xxii,

Barren Grounds, Barrens, barren lands, Otpel-Nene, 49, 76,115,118,143-4.151.

xxiv, xxvii-xxxi, 212, 223, 228, 235, 237,

167,180

242, 252, 290-1, 343, 365-403. 410-11, 417-18.

Barrier Mountain and range, Kokkwajyoue, 147. 309.362

Anglerfish Lake, Nounkfwe-djighe-tpoue, or Mackau Lake, 309, 361-2

Bastard Loucheux, see Loucheux

Ankle Bone, 153

Bear Meat Point, Sa-tcho-kfwen, 308

Aquatic Big Tail River, Tpa tcheghe, see

Bear Snares Lake, or Inconnu Nets, Sa-mitpie, see Faber Lake,

Lockhart River, Arctic Circle, xix, 117,169, 225, 230, 242, 261, 354, 384, 400, 429 Arctic Ocean, ix, xxii, xxvii, xxix, 50-6, 97,102-3,121-2, 211, 253-5, 259-61, 284,

Beau-Chemin, Jean, 25, 42, 53 Beaulieu, Miracle Worker, Ttcha-bedeti, 313, 324 Beaulieu, Franpois, 50, 52, 67,158, 257-61, 313. 369

409, 414 Arctic Red River, [Tsiigehtchic], 251

Beaulieu, Pierre, 90

Arm Lake, [Tonaeenlee Lake], 297, 361-2

Beaulieu, Jacques, Nade, 158

Armorica, 107-8

Beaver Lake, 11, 360, 364

Arrow Presqu’ile, Kkpas-nou-tche-lla, 165

Beaver River, Tsa-deze, see Peace River

Arrowsmith, Aaron, 121, 230, 310

Beaver Road, Tsa-kelle, daughter of Sakpa-netpa-tpa, 349

Artillery Lake, 55 Asphalt River, Beye-dze-etlin, 147

Beaver Sea, see Bering Sea

Athabasca Lake, xviii, 26, 213, 259, 370,

Beghe, 10 Bellanger, Salomon, 53-4

401, 429

Belly Shield or Man in the Moon, Eboe-

Atpouna-entpa, father of Atpouna, 203,

Ekon, 69, 291, 391

206

Belot Mountains or Little Deer or Small

Aubry Lake, Tpou-tcho, 368 Aylmer Lake, Yetrae-tpoue, 55,164

Reindeer Mountain range, Bedzi-a-

Aymard, Gustave, 224

jyoue, 232, 368-9

431

432

Index

Benihay, Sida, 368

Black River, see Petitot River

Bering Sea, 102-6, 211

Blackwater Lake, 296-7, 361

Betso-bie-kkpa-enli, Cariilon-tpa or

Blackwater River, Starling River, Kokkae-

Father Carillon, 301-2

die, 297

Beya, 266

Blazed-with-moss Steppe, see steppes

Big Bay, Kla-tcho, 119, 360

Bluefish or Blue Fish River, Ttae-niline,

Big Belly Lake, Bes-tchonhi [Trout Lake], see Sabre Lake

50,229,329,367 Board, Jim (Wetta), 311-12

Big Cape Rock, 145,163

Boisrame, Louis, 9,12-13, 20-1, 26-7

Big Dog Cape, 310

Bompas, William Carpenter, xxi, xxviii,

Big Feet, Ekhe-tchop, 54-5 Big Fish Cape, 398

146 Boothia Peninsula and Strait, 55-6

Big Fish River, see Back River

Bootis Hill, 202

Big Frenchman or Father Goatsucker

Boucher, Baptiste, 259, 369

Beak, Essa-da-tpa, or Banlay-tcho,

Bourke, John, 63

408-10, 416

Brackett Lake, 7, 212, 266,329, 343,360

Big Hares or Fur, see People of

Bresciani, P„ 7

Big Hares Point, Kha-tcho-ehta, 257

Brisebois, clerk, 249, 299, 304

Big Hares steppes, see steppes

Brisebois, Paul Klele, Strike-Fire, 299,

Big Head, Michael, Kfwi-tewe, 330-1 Big Island, and Fort Big Island, 9-14,19, 50, 92-3, 200, 203, 227, 242

304-5.

318, uncle, 311

333.

36i; Muskox, Klele’s

Broken Land, L’e-tpale, 411

Big Joseph, Zouze-tcho, 298-303

Broken Tooth, Epou-tsie, 407, 412, 416

Big Narrows Lake, Lake of the Great

Brousse, Baptiste, 262, 369

Strait, L’at a-kotcho, 386, 393 Big Point [Gypsum Point], 111,155, 212, 240

Brown Bear Lake, 148 Brue, Etienne-Hubert, 227, 310 Brushwood Steppe, see steppes,

Big Point People, see People of Great Bear Lake

Burke, Annie, 39-41

Big River, Des nedhe yape, see Mackenzie

Burke, William Charles, 39-41

River Big Sow, 278 Big Tail of Water, Tpa-tche-we-tcho or

Buffalo River, 19, 213

Burnt Islands, 297, 361 Burnt Mountain, or Frozen Mountain, Kodlen-chiw, 297, 361

Tpa-tcheghe see Dease River Bigfish archipelago, Lcoue-tcha-niline, 248 Birch Lake, 191 Black Back, Dos-Noir, Ttazin-zene, 9, 19-20,30, 51 Black Hares Lake, Kha-khieze-tpoue, see Kakisa

Calder River,

121,149, 252

Cambronne, see Lac la Martre Cameron Hills Mountain, 199, 201-2 Campbell, Colin, 251 Camsell River, 145-6,148 Canada Goose Island, 332-40 Cannonbone, Ekhie-Kkwene, 154

Index

Canoe River, Ttse-ra-niline or Kld-niatche-retpin, see Camsell River Canoe Tip, Ella-odeniha, 373, 386-90 Cape Turnagain, 32, 54, 259

433

Dane, 7, 30-1, 63-6, 71, 95,101-8,133,139, 172,180,199, 202, 211-12, 290, 311, 333, 429

Danites, Arctic, 49, 64-5,103,106,109,170,

Caribou Island, 161, r65

172,179-86,194-5, 214, 232-4, 241, 255,

Carrel, Mr, 78-9

266, 269, 288, 295, 301, 315-16, 346, 368,

Cassino Lake, Intaa-tpie, 297, 361

379, 387, 405, 416

Cayen, Louis, 50-2, 69, 80,369

Dease Arm, xxxii, 224, 243, 251-2, 428

Charbonneau, “the Loucheux,” 14, 33

Dease, Charles, 251, 259

Charency Lake, see Kakisa Lake

Dease, Peter Warren, 58

Charles Lake, 378, 410

Dease River or Big Tail of Water, Tpa

Charlevoix, F.X., 177,180

tcheghe, 50, 55, 252, 261, 412

Charlois, de, 52, 56, 369

Deer Worm, see Warble Fly

Chiglit, see Inuit

Dekke-woya, Emile, 421-6

Chipewyans, xxvi, 20, 27, 35, 42, 46, 50-1,

Delilie, Jacques, 16

56, 61, 63, 66, 69, 71, 75, 80, 87, 95,104,

Dene, xi, xxvi, xxix, 1,19-21, 25-36, 47, 50,

140,167,172,177,180,190, 209, 212-13,

52, 58-75, 80, 85-6, 88, 95-8,101-17,125,

273. 347. 374. 401, 413. 424

133-4,144,157,165,167,171-3,177-84,

Christie Bay, 165

187,190-4,197, 203-8, 212-13, 224,

Churchill River, 98,177,180

233-6, 239, 247, 250, 253-7, 266, 271-2,

Clarke Rock, Kfwe-tewe, 256, 262, 267-8,

276-301, 306-7,311-12, 316-22,327,

338

329, 343-8, 362-3, 367-8, 371, 374, 377,

Clinton-Colden Lake, 55

386-94, 403-23 Dene Etcha-Ottine, 31,179

Clut, Isidore, xix, xxiii, xxvi-xxvii

Dene-Dindjie, xxvi, xxix, 65, 97,133,172-3,

Cold Lake, 97, 429 Cold Falls, Wokkpa-die, 159

180-4,187, 273 Desmarest, 257-8

Colville Lake, Lcoughe-nawouttonne-

Desmarest Islands, 14, 93, 200

Clinch-an-Eye, see Yettanetel

tpoue, 367-8, 373. 375, 380,386, 396 Confidence, see Shining Sun

Detchin-yie, Pierre, Wood Pith, Little Chief, 115,122

Copper people, see Yellowknives

Devil, Land of the, 353

Copper River, Alaska, Tsan-tsan-des, 95,

Devil’s Lake and River, Tpa-welini, see

97,101-3, in Coppermine River, 46, 53-5,102-3,119, 121,147,149-50,178, 213, 256, 259, 261

Kearney Lake Devil’s Lake no. 2, see Faraud Lake Dick, chief, 248

Crooked Feet, Khe-pwo, 421, 424

Dick Lake, 235, 237-8, 245, 247, 396

Currant Bush Mountain, Tarwo-djiye-

Dindjie, see Loucheux

nene, 247 Cypress Lake, see Souchets Lake

Discharge River, see Great Bear River Discovery Ridge Mountains or Frost Mountains, Bekke-denatchay, 357

Index

434

Dogribs, Klin-tchonpeh, xxxi, 50, 62-3,

Eskimos, see Inuit

69, 95,111,114-15.118,120-1,123,125,

Etamon-tpa, 208

127,130-2,135-6,138-9,141,144,148-51.

Etcha-Ottine, see Slaveys

153-8,164-5,167.171.173-83.190, 209, 213, 227, 252, 258, 261, 269-70, 274, 290,

Etsoukwi, Joseph, 413, 416

297. 311, 313. 323, 346, 361, 409. 413

Ettsoun, EttsonnG or Essoun, Spirit or Angel of Death, 300, 390

Dolphin and Union Strait, 261

Ettsouze, Augustin, 129,134

Dorsey, J, Owen, 63

Ewi Mountain range, 297, 309

Douglas, Sir James, 78

Excrement Lake River, Tsan-tpie des, see

Drummond, Thomas, 259, 284 Dry Fruit (Djiye-kran£), Marc, 85-8 Dry Willows River, Kkpa-tse-ye-die, 242, 252,375. 424 Dry Moss, Nni’nkon, 305-8, 310, 312, 316-

La Martre River Eynard, Emile, 10, 26, 33, 35-6, 41, 57, 77, 115

Eyounne, Dog-Man, 178,180 Eyounne-netchouy Point, 245

17, 319. 321-4, 333-4, 336-9, 347 Ducot, Georges, xxvii, 428

Faber Lake,

Durocher, Flavien, 42

Fallen One, Yateehnonttay, 49, 353, 414

dysentery, 324

Falling Head, Ekfwi-takkwe, 135

Dysentery (Tson-kfwo), 420

Faraud, Henri, xviii-xx, xxiii-xxvii, 9-10,

Eagle Rock,

Fwae-Kfwe,

Early Thaw Bay, Nonceni,

218, 229-31, 410 377, 385, 400

Edges of the Great Rapid, Die-tcho-ellontpiele,

232-3, 287

Ewie-daettini, Those Who Drag Death Behind Them, 269 Eggs Islands archipelago, Epeze-ndue, 163

111,116,119-20,148,154-7

57, 74, 93 Faraud Lake, [Kelly Lake], xxvii, 118, 358-9

Father of Grass, Jacob Klo-be-tpa, Windikouk or Old Man-eater, 196-7, 187, 330 Father of the Bear Hunter, Sa-kpa-netpatpa, 286, 313, 315, 348-9

Ehta-raley Point, 310

Father of the Beaver Dam, Tsa-he-tpa, 190

Ekodi-fitae, 231-2

Father of the First Dancer, Athe-etlin-

Ekounelyel, Warble Fly, 46, 69,167, 283

entpa, 203-4

Ella-odeniha, Canoe Tip, 373, 386, 388, 390

Fawn Lake, Tse-tpie, 188

Elliott Bay, 56

First of the Wood River, 329, 344

Ellousse, Marianne, Fish Bladder, 54

First Promontory Mountain, Eta-tcho-

Elongated Tail Point, Etche-kweye, 424 Emerentiana or Emerenkoule, 380-1 Emmanuel, Etiritcho, 347-8 Empty Sled, Beh-foule, Arsene, 229, 231, 235, 237, 240, 247, 292

kfwere, 363 Fish Lake, see Spruce Glacier Lake, Ttsoukkw£ni-tpoue Flanquet, 31-2

Enatpehi, 146

Flat Rock Beach, Kfwe-kkpa-tlane, 242, 424

End of the Mountains Steppe, see steppes

Flett, James, 78

English River, see Churchill River

Index

Flintstone Range, Mountain That Rejoins the Mountain, Kfw£-ttsen-kfwe, 242 Floating Woods Lake, Tpa-tchini-tpoue, see Lac des Bois, 373, 375-6, 385, 396 Fort Anderson or Eskimo Fort, xxii, 228, 235, 367-8 Fort Big Island, 9-10,13, 92-3

435

Fort Reliance, 52, 55, 259 Fort Resolution, xix, xxi-xxii, 9-10, 25, 34,38, 42-5, 51, 57, 63, 68, 77-8, 80, 84, 89-91,146,151,163,168,196, 252 Fort Simpson, xix, 10,36, 38, 52, 78-80, 83, 146,187,196, 205, 227, 249, 259, 261, 265, 268, 274, 297, 328, 333, 357, 360, 362-3

Fort Bolting Beaver, 231, 249,330

Fort Vermilion, 206

Fort Chipewyan, xviii, to, 53,146, 401

Fort Yukon, 35-41, 79, 211

Fort Churchill, 55

Fortunata, Etla-kodaha, 390-2

Fort Confidence, 115,150, 251, 261-2,325

Franklin River, see Great Bear River, 327,

Fort Enterprise, 54, 65-6,143,147-9.151 Fort Franklin, xxiii, 145-6, 227-8, 245,

329

Franklin, Sir John, ix, 8, 46, 49-57, 62,

Fort Garry, 47, 59

65-6,114,121,143,147-151,157,163,177, 180, 223-4, 227, 230, 245, 250-2, 256-62,

Fort Good Hope, xix, xxi-xxii, xxvi-xxx,

272-4, 296, 306-9, 327, 331, 339, 344, 353,

248, 251, 255, 260-2, 274, 279-80, 328

7. 30. 36, 38, 41. 57. 83,115.145.161,167, 187,192, 227-31, 235, 245, 248, 251-2, 255, 259, 261, 265, 273, 278, 283, 290-1,333, 343. 347, 357, 363, 365, 367, 371-2, 376, 379, 383, 385, 393, 396, 405, 408 Fort Good Hope no.i or Fox, Yekfwee, 251, 408 Fort Liard, ix, xxx, 202, 206 Fort McPherson, xxii, xxvii, 38, 260

357, 36o, 362, 369, 409, 411 Frenchman’s Arm Point, Banlay-ekoneehta, 400, 408 Fringe of Hare Skin, Kha-khie-monne, 274 Frog Portage, 58 Frost Mountain, see Discovery Ridge Mountains Frozen Lake, Tpa-wokkpay-tpie, see Icy Water Lake

Fort Moose, 52, 56-7

Fur People, see Hareskins

Fort Norman, xix, 30,146, 212, 228-31,

Fwa-etsi, wife of Broken Tooth, 193, 407,

240, 245, 248-55, 261-74, 283, 286, 288-

416-17

92, 300, 302,305-6, 312, 317-32,360,379, 423, 426 Fort Norman-Franklin, 199, 256, 265, 271, 379, 427 Fort Providence, ix, xviii-xix, xxi, 2-11,

Garbage, He who has been thrown away like a stone, Nadinkkale, 397 Garry Island, 260 Gascon, Zephirin, 78, 83, 91-2,168

13, 25, 33, 45, 53, 80,113,163,187,191,194,

Gatschet, Albert S, 63

196-7,199, 203, 206, 208, 210, 252, 274,

Gaudet, Charles P., 357, 37i

302, 344, 357, 363, 383, 429 Fort Providence no.2, Jean-Kounhe be kpounke, 163 Fort Rae, xix, xxi, 26, 33, 41, 77, 83, 94, 111-16,119,122-3,127,146,151,153,155, 158-9,161-3,191, 255, 269, 297

Gaudet Lake, [Turton], 357 Gaudin River, 117,158 Geese Lake Mountain, Ratponne-youe or Ra-tpou-youe, 352, 354-6 Gendron, Franpois, 250, 253, 328, 333, 340

436

Index

Giant Beaver Lake, or Pius IX Lake, Tsatcho-ta-titpoue, see Mahony Lake Giant Trout Lake, or Devil’s Lake, Tpawelini, see Kearney Lake Giant Wolverine Lake, or Lake of the Aquatic Monster,Tpou-pa-koetie or

Great Point, Ehta-tcho, 252, 256, 346 Great Rapid Mountain, see Rapid Mountain Great Red Rocks, Kfwe-tcho-detelle, see Red Mountain range Great Slave Lake, ix, xii, xix, xxi, xxvii,

Tpou-pa-kountie-tpoue, see Faraud

xxix-xxxi, 7-80, 83-93, 96-106,111-22,

Lake

126-40,144-50,153-69,172,174,177-

Glacier Lake, 363

210, 213, 251-2, 255, 257, 261-2, 309,316,

Glacier River, Nni-kkweni-he, 354

360,401

Goat People, Dounie Espa-tpa-Ottine, see People of,

Great Squinter, Dindjie-tcho, 381, 423, 406, 426

Good-for-Nothing, 271

Great Steppe no.i, see steppes

Goutton Lake, It has been found, 188

Great Steppe no.2, see Leith Peninsula,

Governor, see Olivier Grandin, Vital-Justin, xix, xxi, xxvi, 10, 25-6, 77. 83, 89,167 Grange, Lucie, 39 Great Bay, Kla-tcho, 119,360 Great Bear Lake, Sass-tcho-trie, ix, xii,

and steppes Great Swimming Worm, Gou-tchotaembe, 308 Great Trout Lake, Samba tcho tpoue, see Great Slave Lake Great Wind Howling Lake, Lake Where

xxii-xxiii, xxvii, xxx-xxxii, 14, 48, 67,

You Hear a, Ninttsi-tcho-nawekkwen-

100,102,115,117,121,145,147,149-151,

aytpoue, 242

153,174.179.181, 202, 212-13, 223-29,

234-62, 265-92, 295, 297, 303-9, 312,3D, 319-20, 323, 327, 331-3, 338, 340, 343-50, 357, 36o, 365, 368, 375-6, 379-81, 385,

398-401, 405, 408-11, 417-18, 420, 429 Great Bear Mountain, Sa-tcho-jyoue, see Grizzly Bear Mountain Great Bear River, 245, 249, 251-2, 256, 260, 318, 327, 329, 331-41, 344, 360 Great Enemies Mountains, Enna-tchoKfwe, 262, 284, 297 Great Hay Lake no.i, Klo-tikka-tpoue, see Souchets Lake Great Hay Lake no.2, Klo-kpakha-titpoue, see Gaudet Lake, Great Lake of Breasts, Tthou tpoue, see Great Slave Lake Great Monster, Etie-ri-tcho, 286, 319-20, 347

Grey Geese Lake, Ra-tpou, 248, 250, 258, 262, 273 Grey Geese Wing River, Ra-inttsa-niline, see Hare Indian River

Grilled Meat, White Eyes, Enna-kpay, 114, 373-4

Grizzly Bear Mountain, 252, 305-6, 308 Grollier, Henri, xix, xxi-xxii, 36, 39, 57, 67, 83,114-15,167, 270,329 Grosse Tete, 30 Grouard, Emile, xxii, xxiv-xxvi, 26, 35, 80-1,194 Grouard Lake, 149 Grouard River, xxiv Guano Islands, 165 Gwich’in, Gwitch’in or Kuttchin, see Loucheux

Index

Haldane River, 420 Hale, Horatio, 65 Hanging Bow River, Intpin-ta-fwetponniline, 247-8, 252

437

Hope, John, 145,199, 201-3, 206-7, 228, 250, 268, 328 Horn Mountains, 188, 363 Horn River, 188

Harbour, Kfwe-tpon-dintti, 308, 320

Houle, Antoine, 35, 37-8, 41

Hardisty Lake, [Hislop Lake], 117-18,

Houle, William,166

149-5L 157

Hardisty, W.L., 248 Hare Indian River, 228, 237, 353

House of the French, Kounhe-Manlay, 143,145.147-51

Hudson’s Bay Company, xviii-xxii, xxxii,

Hare Country Plateau, Khadier, 411

13, 39, 45, 49-50, 52, 56-60, 78-9,103,

Hare Snares Lake or Snares Lake, Kha-mi-

111-12,114,117,145-6,151,153,163,165,

tpie, see Rae Lake, Hares River, Kha-die, 157, 248 Hareskin River, see Hare Indian River

168,197,199, 202, 206-8, 225, 227-8, 249-51, 253, 256, 262, 286, 292, 301, 307, 328, 333, 357, 37i, 415

Hareskins, xxii, 49, 62-5, 69, 95,117,173-4,

Hyacinth, Dzan-You, Dirty Clothes, xx,

177, 212. 227-9, 231, 233-5, 238, 240-1,

xxvii, 229, 231, 234, 239-40, 247, 277,

254, 256, 269, 280, 286, 288, 290-1, 295,

293-4, 353,355

303, 305. 313, 345-8, 353, 358, 365, 367-9,

378-80, 385, 392, 394, 400, 403, 405-6, 408-10, 413-14. 420-1, 429 Hazel Grouse Lake, Kkapa-tsele-tpie [Grouse Lake], 296

Icy Water Lake, 14,16, 92-3,122,125,

144-6,148 Ikanyo Island, Ndou-newetti, Island that Spreads, 242

Head of the White Beaver, Tsa-pfui-pa,

Inconnu Nets Lake, Sa-mi-tpie, see Faber

429 Head Mountain, Thi-chi, 202

International Finance Company, 59

Hearne, Samuel, 8, 49-50, 55,102-3,119,

Inuit, Innoit, xi, xix, xxi-xxii, xxv-xxxi,

121,149, 256, 261, 369

Lake

43, 49, 54-5, 95-6, 98-100,104,106,108,

Heart, Edzil’ or Edzeee, 32

112,171,175,183-4, 209, 228, 233, 236,

Heavenly Wolf, 377

249, 251-2, 256, 259, 286, 318, 333, 369,

Height of the Trail Mountain, Kokkeraghe, 256

384, 414 Isabella Lake, 149

Hepburn, John, 53

Island Mountain, 159

High Land Mountain, Ti-gotcho, 2321, 367,

Isnard, Marcel, 187

385-6,394 Highland Snares Lake, Roe-ti-gottchotpoue, 158

Jacolliot, Louis, 32

Jacques’ Lake, 199

Hislop Lake, see Hardisty Lake

Jean-Marie, 236

Holy Cross Lake, see Pyrites Lake

Johnny Hoe River, 252, 309, 311

Hood River, 53-4

Julien, Unto Us a Man Is Born, Dene-

Hooper, W.H., 8, 227, 245, 250, 262, 265

gounli, 343-4, 350, 386, 391-2

438

Index

Kakisa Lake and Kakisa River, 50, 200

L’£-peze Mountain, 375

Kearney, Joseph Patrick, 357, 366

La Loche Portage, 59, 80,153,163,167,187,

Kearney Lake, 353, 355-8 Keith Arm, xxxii, 145, 224, 227, 229, 241,

213, 259, 262, 319,328, 330,333, 413 La Martre River, 50,158,181, 213, 309

245, 247-8, 251-2, 256-7, 262, 264-5,

La-tteze, Blackened Hands, 68, 73

268-9, 283, 291, 296,304,306, 308, 310,

Lac La Biche, xxiii, 30,199, 376, 429

312, 317, 324-5, 327, 345,349, 406, 423,

Lac des Bois, 373, 375-6, 385, 396, 410

426

Lac la Martre, xxi, 50,117-18,153,158-9,

Keith, James, 251 Keith Point, 420 Kendall, Edward Nicholas, xxxii, 223-4, 242, 247, 259, 261, 309, 411

181,188,190, 213, 228, 252, 261, 284, 309-10 Lac Ste, Therese, Kotcha-troue, x, 309, 311, 361

Kene, 379

Lac Seguin, see Yanehi Lake

Kettle of Hare Meat, Tpeni-kha-pce, 405-6

Lacombe, Albert, xxiii

Kha-nda, Adam, also called Eyes of the

Ladet, Victor, 188

Hare, 329-31 Khamasan, (East Wind, also known as Khambatsan), 9, 20-1, 25, 56, 89-90, 112,161,164,182, 237, 255, 292, 326, 332, 346, 396, 410, 417-18, 427 King, Cornelius, 146 King, Dr, Richard, 55-6

Lafleur, 52, 409 Lake of the Rocks, Kfwen-ye, see Isabella Lake Lake of the Large Flat Leaves, Intton-tchokka, see Hardisty Lake, Lake of the South, Intaa-tpie, see Cassino Lake,

King William Island, 55-6

Lake People, see People of the Lake

Kirby, William West, 36, 79,146

Lanoie, Louison, 90,166

Kkwie, Alexander, Mosquito, 343, 361, 363

La Porte (guide), 9,14,19-21

Klele, Paul, 299,305, 311, 318, 333, 361

Laporte, St. Georges de, 369

Klo-az£, Jacob, Little Grass, 77

Laporte Lake, 376

Klo-be-tpa, Jacob, Father of Grass, 196-7

Last Steppe, Ekke-ttsoghe, 283, 296, 299,

Kopa, Patrice, Dawn or Early Morning, 385-7» 392, 394, 401, 406-7, 410-14,

416-18, 428 Kotew, Joseph, Man Without Tobacco, Ttseedettou-oulle, 266; his wife Elisa,

303, 3D Last Mountain, Eteye-chie, see Horn Mountains Lazarus, One Who Hunts for His Bacon, Be-kkpa-kpayelli, 401-3, 408, 416, 425

265-7; children, Wave, Taetpi, 265-7;

Le Noir, 26, 29

and Crumbs, Zaa, 265-6

Le Camarade, see Mandeville

Koundatak-tsi, 372 Kounhe-Manlay, see House of the French

Le Brule, Captain Black, 227, 235, 237-8, 241

Kounhete-nayidhe Mountain, 202

Leblanc, 257-8

Koyitalleli, Marie, 347

Leg of Canada Goose or Leg of the

Kruger Island, Ndou-intl’on, 421, 428

Bustard River, Ra-inkwene, see Haldane River

Index

439

Leith Peninsula, 252

MacDougall, 268

Lennie Lake, 357

MacFarlane River, 252

Liard River, ix, 65-6, 99, 201-2, 212-13

MacFarlane, Roderick, 249, 367-8

Little Bird, Tchoun-ya, 392

Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, ix, 8, 50, 66,121,

Little Bustard Lake, Ra-tsele, 378, 410 Little Deer or Small Reindeer Mountain, Bedzi-a-jyoue, see Belot Mountain

211, 251, 256-7, 369 Mackenzie, Big Neck, 245, 257-8, 408 Mackenzie River and Basin, ix, xviii-xxiv,

Little Dog, 379, 382, 396

xxvi-xxxii, 7,10-11,19-20, 26, 36,38,

Little Fish Mountain, Loue-a-jyoue, 252,

42, 46, 49-50, 52, 58-60, 63, 66, 79, 83,

262,312

93,100,102-3,113,147,149,167,169,174,

Little Fish Rapids, L’oue-ya-mi, 360

187-8,196,199-202, 211-13, 223, 227-32,

Little Flare, Charles, Hareskin, 377-8, 380,

237-45, 249-62, 265-7, 270, 283-4, 291,

405-134

Little Hare, Jeannet, Sida-Kha-ya, 366, 368-71, 373, 406, 408

296-301, 312, 319, 327-33, 338, 340, 343, 353-4, 357-70, 389-90, 408-9, 421,

428-9

Little Loon, L’anonhon-ya, 188-9,194

MacLeod, Alexander Roderick, 52, 55

Little Pig, Nni-tchon-tchele, 353

Mahony Lake, 360, 364

Little Squint, Kpilli-aze, 161,167

Mandeville, Baptiste de, Le Camarade,

Little Swan, Alfred, Tazin-a, 380

51-2, 369

Little Tobacco, 116,153-4,157

Marc, see Dry Fruit

Little White Hillock Lake, 398

Maunoir Lake (Whitefish Lake), 375-7,

Live Louse, Ya-koti, 189

380,401

Livingstone, David, 233, 251,369, 374, 396

Mazenod, Eugene de, xvi-xvii, 83

Lockhart River, Aquatic Tail of the Water,

Mazenod Lake (White Deer Lake, Kon-

Tpa-tcheghe, 50, 55,164, 237, 376 Lodge of the Souls or Ghost Lodge Mountains, Eyounne-khin, 375,396

kka-tpie), 119,157 McClintock, Sir Francis Leopold, 56 McDonald, Robert, 37

Loon, Mr, 36-9, 43, 68, 78, 90-2

McLeod Bay, 55,164-5

Loon River, see Grouard River

McTavish Arm, 121,147,149, 243, 251-2, 310

Loucheux, xii-xiii, xvi, xix-xxvi, xxix, 7,

McVicar Arm, xxxii, 145, 224, 251-2, 297,

14, 28, 30,33, 36-8, 49, 62-3, 65-7, 69,

305-13

95, 97,100-1,103,105-6,108,117,129,133,

McVicar, Robert, 151, 252

171-3,180,182-4,187, 203, 209, 211-12,

Meat-Cache Lake, 229

228, 235, 241, 251, 273, 284-6, 290-1, 295,

Melting Glacier, Naecine-Kkweni, 227, 235,

303, 311, 336, 343, 365, 367, 370, 372, 381,

385-6, 388, 406, 408, 413, 426, 428 Louis, Warble Fly, Ekhounelyel, Old Blind Man, Layelle, 46, 69,167 Louison, Sida-Kha-ya, Mister Hareskin,

237, 242 Metal River, Tpaltsan-des, see Coppermine River Methye Portage, see La Loche Portage Michel, Louise, 407

father of Alexis or Alek, of Charles or

Mink Lake, 187-9,197

Charly and of Jeannet, 368, 370-6

Missi-Nipiy, see Churchill River

440

Index

missions, xix-xx, xxv-xxvii, xxx, 9, 39, 47, 85,146; La Nativite (Fort Chipewyan),

Nadaud, Francois, 250

Nadi, 203-6, 209

10; Our Lady of Good Hope (Fort Good

Nahanni Mountains, 63,354

Hope), xxii, 343, 347,363, 385, 423, 428;

Naltti-zae-aze, Marie, 46

Providence, xviii-xxi, 9-11,13, 25, 33,

Narakay Islands, 428

45, 53, 80,187,191,194,196-9, 203, 206,

Ndakka Mountain, see Cameron Hills

208, 210, 274,302, 344, 357, 363, 383, 429;

Mountain

St. Joseph (Fort Resolution), 10, 22, 25-

Ndou-tcho-kka Island, 375

6, 33-4, 47, 77, 83-4, 90,167; St. Michael

Ni-denichye, Eleazar, Fertile Earth, called

(Fort Rae), 94,147,1515 St. Raphael

Good for Nothing, 270-1, 329

(Hook Lake), 202, 429; Ste. Therese

Nicolet, Jean-Baptiste, 253

(Deline), x, xxiii, xxvii, 273, 283, 305,

Nighthawk, Essa-golla, 373

309-11,324,345, 360-1, 427

Nikamous, Marguerite, xxviii

Mont Losier, Sa-mi-tpie-kfwe, 148

Nioltsi, Creator of the World, 134,190, 270

Montagnais, see Chipewyans

Nni-kpachie, or Growing Moss, 312, 319,

Month of the Big Wind, Ninttsi-natcho (January), 274, 409 Montolinet Island, Kfwe-krp-nai'nha, 147 Moon of Stinking Meat, Etsen-gounsa (March-April), 289 Moose Island, xxi, 7, 9-10,14, 20, 22, 25-6, 33, 35, 41, 45-54, 56-7, 61, 63, 67, 72, 83,

89-90, 93,167 Moose River or Willows River, Rata-ti-die,

329, 333. 337, 339, 383

Nonteli, Cyprian, Wild Caribou, 147, 270 Norqway, Joseph, or Lanky, cLioutsetra, L’outsietpa, 315-6, 320, 383, 420 North Arm, xxi, 53,111,113,116,122,158-9, 163,165, 213 Northwest Company, 50, 52-7, 78,113,165, 227, 251-2, 257-9, 274, 409 Northwest Passage, 52, 55,105, 227, 249-50

see Willowlake River

Mosquito Berry Hill, Mosquito Mountain, Kkwi-tchi, 283, 305-25,312

Oglibouk, 53, 261,361

Old Blind Man, Layelle, see Ekounelyel

Mound of Witness, 206

Old Man, Tchane, 428

Mountain Lake, Nne-ye-erlin-tpoue, see

Old Man’s Mountain, Tchane-ttsou-chiw,

Belot Mountain

237, 338

Mountain Torrent River, 329, 335,367

Old People of the Sea, 235

Muddy Lake, Kotl’e-ti-tpie, 145

Olivier Sa-kcle or Bear Grease, Governor,

Muskeg River, Bes-tchonhi elinda, or Petitot River, 202 Muskox Lake or Buffalo Lake, Akka-tpie, 121,149 Muskox plateau, Akka-tpie, 229, 36 Muskrat Butte or Big Rat Lodge, Dzentcho-khin, 361

115-16,122,127,129,134 One Has Penetrated its Interior, Weyezatla, 117 One Who Has Gone Out, Inti ninandjay, 32 One Who Has Been Known for a Long Time, Fwa-tsechya, 348 One Whose Father Was a Little Dog, Klina-be-tpa, 179

441

Index

Outlet River, see Great Bear River Ouyam, 40

Pepin family: Baptiste, 30; Marie, 46; Nancy, 67, 77, 89, 90; Narcisse, 42-3, 46-7, 83, 86, 89, 92-3

Pass Between the Mountains, Kfwe-

tpon-dintti, 310 Peace River, 50,102,199-201, 206, 212, 251, 429 Peel River, ix, xxvii, 66, 79,149, 211,301, 369 People at the End of the World, Nne-laGottine, 212, 290 People from the Big Point, see Hareskins People of Excrement Lake, Tson-tpiepottine, 181, 213 People of Great Bear Lake, 212, 348 People of the Canoe, Ttse-Ottine, 181, 213, 256, 311 People of the Big Hares, or Fur, Kha-tchoGottine, see Hareskins People of the Lake or Water, Trou-ne, 211, 213, 256, 348, 407 People of the Long Knives, Bie-tchoGottine, Yankees, 300 People of the Open Country or Horizon (Prairies), 146, 212 People of the Rocky Mountains, in the Shelter of the Mountains, Ehta-Gottine, see Slaveys

People of the Sea, 212 People of the Sheep, Sheep Indians, People among the Bighorns, Dounie Espa-traOttine, 66,179, 212

Petitot Lake, see Lac des Bois Petitot, Fortunee, xv, xxviii, xxxi Petitot, Emile, as Yaltpii or Yatpii-yousse, Great Shadow, 63, 67, 76-7 Petitot River, 7, 202, 210-11 Pewinkka Mountain, see White Owl Mountain Phonolite Mountain, Onkkaye-besse, 332, 338, 344

Phonolite Rock River, 329 Piere-ajyoue, sec Trout Mountain range Pike Lake, 116-7, H9> 229, 396 Point Lake, 121,147,149 Poitras, 52 Pond, Peter, 49-50,179, 257 Port, Tpou-koyintti, 420-1, 426 Portage La Loche, see La Loche Portage Protestantism, xvii, xix, xxi, xxviii, 14, 36-7. 39-40, 51, 58, 61, 63, 78-80, 84,146, 201-5, 250, 273, 299, 302, 333, 350 Provencher, Norbert, xviii, 83 Providence, see Fort Providence Providence Lake, Intton-tcho-kka, see Hardisty Lake Pullen, William John Samuel, 226, 262, 369

Pyrites Lake, Kle-ti-tpie, 143,145-8,151, 155,160,170 Pyrites Islands, Klele, 147

People of the Water’s or of the Wave’s Beginning or of the Lively Waters, Tpa-

Ra-warazj Mountain, 237

kfwele-pottine, 111,115,120,122-3,129,

Rae, Dr, John, ix, 46, 56,114, 245, 261-2,

131,134.140,155.181, 213 People of Willow’s End, Khpa-lonGottine, 256 People of Willow Lake, Kkpay-lon-Ottine, 212, 266, 333, 343

371

Rae Lake, 111,115,120-2,131,136,145-9, 155,158, 297 Rampart Rocks, 343 Ramparts of the Narrows, 252

442

Index

Rapid, ii, 13-14, 25-7, 31, 33, 78, 84, 89, 92, 134,187,194,196 Rapid Mountain, 331, 335-6, 338-9 Raven Locks River, Tpatson-he-des, 148, 157

Raven Foot (also Raven’s Foot), Ttatsankhe, 42, 72-3 Read, Mr., 13-14,197,199, 206 Reborn Water Lake, or Lake of the

Rock Cape, or Big Cape Rock, Kfwe-eta, 122,136,145,148 Rock Point, Tpa-wokkpay-tpie or Tpawokkpa-tpie, see Icy Water Lake Rock Standing in Water, Kfroe-tpe-niha, 147

Rock That One Hears Shouting, Kfwetsezil’-kkwe, 156 Ross, Sir James Clark, 55-6, 261

Everlastingly Reborn Water, Trou-

Ross, Sir John, 52, 55-6

nagotlini-troue see Dick Lake

Ross, the Dogrib, 323

Red Carp River, Dedelli-djyan, 357-8

Round Rock Lake, see Icy Water Lake

Red Point, 113

Roure, Bruno, 151

Red Rock Lake, 149

Ruel, Jeannet, 39

Red Rock Mountain range or Great Red

Running Wind, Ninttsi-nako entpa, 202

Rocks or Red Mountains, Kfwe-tcho-

Russian American, 36-7,104

detelle, 230, 232, 237, 338, 355-6

Russian Company, 104

Reindeer Noose (Deer Traps) Point, Ekfwen-mi-ehta, 308 Reindeer River, Wedzi-mmi, 309 Residence of the Swampy Crees archipelago, 163

SA-Mi-TpiE-KFWE Mountain, see Mont

Losier Sabourin, 193 Sabre Lake, 117,158,199, 202

Richard, Francois, 250

Sacoche Bay, 55

Richardson, John, 8, 46, 53, 56, 65-6, 211,

Sagebrush Mountain or Little Steppe

223, 228, 242, 245, 247, 251, 256, 259, 261-2, 309-10, 327, 368-71, 411

Mountain, 252, 246, 409, 427 Saint-Germain, Pierre, 53

Rink, H.J., 98-100,183

Saline River, Teway-Die, 256, 267

River of Excrement Lake, Tsan-tpie des,

Sand Carried by the Wind, Fwa-etsi, 407,

see Lac la Martre

River of Lakes, Tpie-niline, see Johnny Hoe River River That Flows among the Lakes, Tpawelini, see Kearney Lake River That Flows on its Mother, Tonkkeze delin, 202 River We Were Looking For, Sought After River, Minkpa-al’a-die, see Calder River River Where One Turns North, Kounkfwe-kotsate, 234 Roast Fish River, Kounhete nadelin, 202

416-17 Sandy Floor Steppe, Fwa-tpiele-tawetpon, see steppes

Sans-Sault Rapid, 231 Saulteaux, see Swampy Cree Scaffold, Dattonhi, 386 Scented Grass Hills peninsula, 242 School of Big Fish archipelago, 163,165 Seat of Life Plateau, Ekodi-Etae, 227, 231-2 Seed Island, 147 Seguin, Jean, xx, xxii-xxiii, xxvi-xxvii, 36-40, 83,187, 365-6, 370 Sekani Dane, 50, 63, 212, 295, 429

443

Index

Sele, Suzanne, 329 Semalle Mountain, see Cameron Hills Mountain

Smith Arm, 227, 229, 238, 241-5, 247, 251-2, 256, 274, 284, 308, 346, 375, 398, 405-6, 409-10, 418-24, 427

Sharing peninsula, Netii, 19

Smith, Mr., 113

She Who Has the Sickness, Dza-ttini, 33

Smoke Mountain, 354

Sheer Cliff in Water Mountain, Tpa-

Smoky River, 102

tchini-nene, 357 Sheer Rock Lake, Kfwe-kkpa, see Grouard Lake

Snowstorm River, 50 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, xxviii

Shell River, Gounkfwara-tpoue, 363

Soiled Clothing, Henri, Tsan-hi, 114-15

Shining Sun or Confidence, Sa-na-indi,

Son of Little Dog, L’in-ya-betpa, 179,

Jean-Baptiste; sons and friends, 115-16, 125-6,128,136,149-50, 261, 269 Shore Rail, Ralli, 348, 381-2, 423 Shot Point, Kfwe-wae-ehta, 305-6, 312, 323

279-80 Souchets Lake, 147, 353, 357-8, 362-3 Spruce Glacier Lake, [Fish Lake], Ttsoukkweni-tpoue, 118,157,190, 363

Shoulder Blade, Eye-kokkwene, 120

Squirrel’s Nest, Fiacre Glie-ttop, 111

Sida Beni-hay, 30, 368

Squirrel Lake, 118

Sida Khaya, see Little Hare

St. Charles Rapid, 327

Silver Birch Island, 12

Ste Croix Lake, see Pyrites Lake

Simon, Fish Spawn, Ekpoundhe, 68

Steppe Mountain, Non-tpyen-kfwe, 242,

Simpson, Sir George, 165, 367 Simpson, Thomas, 58,115,150,180, 261-2, 369

Sinuous Land or Mountain, Ti-depay, 252, 376, 410-11, 418-19

375. 410-11, 421, 424. 427-8

steppes, 15, 21, 30, 73,103,111,113,115, 122,128,148,153,177, 200-1, 212, 223, 234, 241, 245-8, 254-6, 266, 268, 273, 277, 283-99, 301, 317, 319, 332, 343.

Siphon Lake, Nne-ye inline, 232, 383, 396

345-6, 350, 360-1, 363, 366-7, 372, 378-9,

Sisters of Charity, 14, 96, 274, 302, 344, 363

382-3, 385, 391, 393-4, 396, 406, 423,

Slave Bay, 43

426-7; Big Hares Kha-tcho-ttsoghe,

Slave River, Des nedhe tchape, 10, 43, 50,

345; Brushwood Steppe, Ttsele-ttsoghe,

56, 85,166-7

234-5; Blaze-with-moss-steppe, 393;

Slavey Cape, 19

End of the Mountains Steppe, Ewa-

Slaveys, 7,10, 47, 49-50, 62, 66, 69,111,174,

llon-tpiele, 398; Great Steppe no.2, see

179-80,187-91,199-206, 212-13, 256,

also Leith Peninsula, Kokkwin-tcho,

283, 290-1, 297, 299-301, 303-4> 313. 362,

252; Great Steppe no.i, Ttsoghe-tcho,

427

282-3,396; Kha-tcho-eta, Hares Point,

Sled of the Skinned Heads or of the

257, 292, 408; Last Steppe, Elkke[Ekke]-

Giants, Kfwi-detelle-peh-weh-

ttsoghe, 283, 296, 299, 303,313; Steppe at

wetponhi, 398

the Edge of the Water, Tpa-ta-ttsoghe,

Small Reindeer or White Reindeer or Little Deer Mountain, Bedzi-ajyoue, 232, 368, 395

265, 283, 292, 296, 383; White Reindeer Steppe, 386 Stewart, Alexander, 56

Index

444 Stone People, 272

Taylor, Nichol, 228, 249-54, 258, 261-2,

Stone Island, 166

265-72, 287-8, 298-9, 319, 330, 379

Stumps Lake, Klo-tikha-tpie, see Souchets

Taylor, Scot, 379 Tchane, Old Man, 428

Lake Suckling Fawn Island or Peninsula, Edeyan-ettoy, 242, 245 Sulphur Lake, Ya-dikkpon-tpoue, 367-8, 382, 386

Tchiezele, Trembling Magpie, Louison, 43, 75-6 Tekwiti, Paul, 274

Telini-Die, see Great Bear River

Sunbeam, Sa-kli, 118,190

Tepele-ttsen-kpayelle, He Who Is Going

Swampy Cree, Savanais, 39, 41, 58,145, 163,180,199, 201, 206-7, 209, 228, 250, 268, 287

to Urinate in Spite of His Dreams, 381 The-lape-Nene, Country at the End of the Rocks, 49

Swampy Islets, Tson-ndou-nevitti, 147 Swollen Point, Ehta-naweley, 398

The-river-we-were-looking-for, Minkpaal’a-die or Minkpa-aTa niline, see Calder River

TpA-ouwi-cm

Mountain, see

Bootis Hill

Tpatsan ottine, see Yellowknives Tpin-ttcha nardhoeri, One who lives off the trail, 32

Thi-chi, see Head Mountain Ti-della Mountains, Lands in a line, 227, 231-2, 234-5, 237, 241-2, 375-6, 394-6 Ti-gokke-nahi, She Who Hides in the

Tpon-Youe Mountain, 357

Earth,344

Tpou-kone-tpoue, see Arm Lake Ta-tpa-tpou-inha-kfwe Mountain (Mountain of Water that Unites Two Lakes), 110

Ti-gokke-wetpi, She Who Rests on the Ground, 344 Ti-mon-tsate, He Who Goes Around the World, 126,139, 269

Ta-ti-koye-tay, Norbert, He Who Is Seated on the Ground, 372

Tonkkeze delin, One That Flows on its Mother, 202

Ta-tsie-zele, One Who Shouts at the Top of His Voice, 276, 287,301

Torrent Lake, Nne-ye-erelin-tpoue, 268 Totanouk, Augustus, 53, 55-6, 261, 369

Tabachach, 25, 42-3,168

Touranjeau brothers, 52

Tache, Alexandre-Antoine, xviii-xix, xxi,

Toussaint Kfwi-tpeh, War Feather, 366

xxiii, xxvi, 9, 83, 97-8

Tozelli Lake, 151

Tadipale, Abandoned One, mother Khacetie, sister Tpeni-kha-poe, Kettle of Hare Meat, 385-7, 390,

394-5,

397-400,

405-11, 418-19, 425-8

Tra-tchape-ndou, Mountain Island, 112—13 Trail Heights Mountain, Kokkera-ghe, 252, 256 Treaty River, 251

Taetpi, Wave, see Kotew

Trembling Magpie, see Tchiezele,

Tarentpin-a, Victoria, Fine Needle, 383

Trout Bay, L’oue-tcho, 375-6, 398

Tatekoye, Jacques, 30, 290, 353-5,358

Trout Lake, and Giant Trout Lake, Piere-

Tathlina Lake, Tpa-tla-inlinhe, Lake That Has a River Coming in at its End, 200

tpoue, 49,199,357, 396, 410 Trout Lock River, Piere-eghe, 368, 375

Index

Trout Mountain, plateaus, Piere-ajyoue, 199.375.396

445

Wedzi-mmi River, 311 Wentzel, William Ferdinand, 53-4

Tsa-djiye, 327, 333, 336-7, 339

Wentzel, Marianne, 25, 53

Tsa-kelle, see Beaver Road

Wetta, called Jim Board, 311-12

Tsan-tpie des, see La Martre River

Weye-kpadeja Mountain, 117

Tseli-kfwo, see Yellow Marmot

Weye-zatla, Mountain, 117

Tsenaoundja, Nni’nkon’s mother, 347

Whale River, Chloue tchop desse, see Back

Tsepan-khe, Joseph, 72, 92 Tsi-nay, Pain-sufferer, or Tpinay-tse, One Who Goes out Crying, 86 Tsinzire, also Ttseondi, Crazy One, 116, 120, 348

River whirlwind, or Wind from Behind, Ettsen ninttsi, 290 White Deer Lake, Kon-kka-tpie, see Mazenod

Ttae-kke-nagheni Lake, 418

White Deer Steppe, see steppes

Ttcha-bedeti, Miracle-worker, Beaulieu,

White Earth River, Tsi-kka-tschig, see

134. 313

Ttsa-ttini, One Who Wears a Hood, 33 Ttsepan-khe, Joseph, Scabby Skin Boots, 72, 89, 92-3 Ttsou-tcho-nadaze-ehta, Point of the Two Tall Firs That Can Be Seen from Afar, 421, 424 Turnagain, Cape and Point, 52, 54, 58, 259, 261 Tweed Lake, Onta-ra-tpoue, 396

Arctic Red River White Eyes Mountain, Ndakka-yidhe, see Cameron Hills Mountain White Hand, Lla-kka, 401 White Hares Lake, Kia-go-tpie, see Hardisty Lake White Hares River, see Gaudin River White Hay Lake, see Souchets Lake White Hills, Ewi-kka, 354 White Land Mountain, Ti-dekpale, 411 White Locks Lake, Eh-dekkpale, 377, 410

Unalaska Peninsula, 100,102,105

White Owl Mountain, Pewinkka, 339 White Wind, ninttsi-pa, 161-2

Van-den-Bergh Mountain, see Barrier

Mountain range Victoria Island, 261 Vitazjie, Jean, 343, 345 Vitoedh, Sylvain, 365

Whitefish Lake, see Maunoir Lake Whitefish River, Intpin-ta-fwetpon-niline, see Hanging Bow River

Whitewater Lake, Tpou-yale-tpoue, 367, 383

Whole Mountain, Chiw-Kolla, see Barrier Wabisten, Franpois, his wife Fat Marie,

168 Walmsley Lake, 164

Mountain range Willow Lake, Kkpay-lon-tpoue, see Brackett Lake

Watpantsaze, 138,153

Willowlake River, Rata-ti-die, 332, 363

Water Lily Lake, Bekke-inlin, 296

Willow River, 188-9,191.195

Waterless Lake, 398

Winter Lake, 54,148

Water’s Beginning, Tpa-thele, see McLeod

Winter River, 148

Bay

Wolverine River, 329

446

Woman of Metals, 95-6, too, 102-5 Woman-who-holds-up-the-wor!d, 95-7 Wood River, Detchinkfwere-mon-welin, 329 Wooded Mountain, Ttsou-chi, 290-1 Wooded Cape, Ehta-tchin-la, 252

Index

Yellowknife River, Tpatson-ottine-des, 53, 148-9,157,163

Yellowknives, Tpatson-Ottine, 49-50, 53-5, 61-3, 66-8, 95-104, in, 114,148, 150,167,172,177, 209, 213, 252, 369, 413

Yena-wetloun, 407, 410, 416-17 Yettanetel, Phillipe (Big Loucheux) or He

Ya-inlin River, 296-7

Ya-mitsou, 10

Who Has the Evil Eye, Soldier,Young Hunter, 275-6, 303, 406, 420, 426

Ya-tpeh-nonttay, see the Fallen One

Young Rat, Dzen-aze, 85-6

Yamontchile, 266

Yukon River, ix, xxix, xxxi, 66, 79,101,

Yanehi Lake, 120,147

211, 301

Yaneya, Bernard, 270 Yellow Marmot, Moose, Tseli-kfwo, 385, 394. 405-6, 411, 416 Yellow Moss Point, Nni-rehfwo, 308

Zouze-tcho, Big Joseph, 298

Zaa, Crumbs, see Kotew

tC\)t Champlain H>octetp OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY, 2005

$onorarj> ipreSibent John Warkentin, OC, PhD, LLD, FRSC, York University, Toronto, Ontario

PrcSibcnt Michael Moir, MA, University Archivist & Head, Special Collections, York University, Toronto, Ontario

Jbotiorarp Thcc-iPrestticntS Frederick H. Armstrong, PhD, FRHistS, London, Ontario George W. Brigden, QC, Toronto, Ontario The Hon. Alastair Gillespie, OC, PC, MComm, Toronto, Ontario Conrad Heidenreich, PhD, Toronto, Ontario Morris Zaslow, PhD, FRSC, London, Ontario

Lhce-iPreSibents Patrice A. Dutil, PhD, Toronto, Ontario Allan Hoyle, MA, Newmarket, Ontario Frits Pannekoek, PhD, Athabasca, Alberta Karen Turko, MLS, Toronto, Ontario

inecretarp of tlje Iloart) Jeanne R. Beck, PhD, Dundas, Ontario

treasurer Brenda Hobbs, MA, Toronto, Ontario

jtlembers of Council Sarah Carson, MISt, Toronto, Ontario Bryan P. Davies, MPA, Toronto, Ontario Olive P. Dickason, OC, PhD, Ottawa, Ontario E. Jane Errington, PhD, Kingston, Ontario A. Ian Gillespie, MBA, Ottawa, Ontario Roger Hall, PhD, Toronto & London, Ontario Robynne Rogers Healey, PhD, Langley, British Columbia Bosko D. Loncarevic, PhD, Bedford, Nova Scotia The Hon. Roy MacLaren, PC, MDiv, LLD, Toronto, Ontario John Pepall, LLB, Toronto, Ontario

447

The Champlain Society

448

Carolyn Podruchny, PhD, Toronto, Ontario Lutzen Riedstra, BA, Stratford, Ontario (ill ten Cate, BA, Toronto, Ontario Germaine Warkentin, PhD, Toronto, Ontario lan E. Wilson, CM, MA, D.Litt., Ottawa, Ontario

(general Cbitor Roger Hall, PhD, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario

£§>erretariat John A. Becker, BASc, Toronto, Ontario

JElje Champlain H>otietp ©Hire Box 507, Station q Toronto, on Canada M4T 2M5 Tel. 416-482-9635 Fax 416-482-9341 [email protected] www.champlainsociety.ca

The Champlain Society was founded in 1905 to publish original Canadian historical documents. Between 1907 and 2005 it has published more than a hundred case bound books and several softcover Occasional Papers. The 2005 publications include this vol¬ ume and A Short History on the Champlain Society by Prof. Conrad Heidenreich of York University commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the formation of the Champlain Society. Members will receive both of these publications during 2005. A limited number of copies are available for purchase by members of the public. Our website at www.champlainsociety.ca carries a list of all publications. The website also carries information on the availability of back issues for purchase and provides ac¬ cess to eighty-five Society publications, which are displayed in our digital collection in a full text, searchable format. (Volumes still available for purchase from the Society are not customarily included in this digital collection.)

LIST OF INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS IN 2005 Life Members

Crooke, Kenneth W., Toronto, ON Crowley, Terry, Guelph, ON Friedman, Frank A., Robesonia, PA, USA Gillespie, A. Ian, Ottawa, ON Gmoser, Margaret G., Harvie Heights, AB Gough, Barry M., Waterloo, ON Canada

Aagaard, A. Kim, Newmarket, ON Aagaard, A. Kim, Newmarket, ON Abel, Kerry, Ottawa, ON Abler, Thomas S., Waterloo, ON Adamchick, Tom, Eganville, ON Agnew, J. Gurd, Toronto, ON Agranove, Dr. Larry M., London, ON Allenbick, Jeanette, Millbrook, ON Alston, Dr. Sandra, Toronto, ON Anderson, David G., Williamstown, ON Andrews, Robert James, Gananoque, ON Andrews, Tom, Yellowknife, NT Anglin, F. M., Ottawa, ON Angus, Graham F., Toronto, ON Angus, John F., Beaconsfield, QC Angus, Stephen F., Erin, ON Anson-Cartwright, Hugh, Toronto, ON Arkin, Harold J., Toronto, ON Armour, Douglas, Toronto, ON Armour, Andrew, M.D., Montreal, QC Armstrong, Frederick H., London, ON Arnold, Gordon, Toronto, ON Arthurs, David, Winnipeg, MB Bacque, James, Toronto, ON Bain, James D., Toronto, ON Baird, Donald W., St. Catharines, ON Baker, Warren, Montreal, QC Baragar, Robert, Greely, ON Barker, Mrs. Ruth B., Calgary, AB Barnett, H. J. M„ King City, ON Bartlet, James N., Windsor, ON Bartlett, Will, Ilderton, ON Barwick, Clifford H., St. Thomas, ON Baskerville, Peter, Victoria, BC

Baylis, John, Ottawa, ON Beasley, Tom, Vancouver, BC Beaulieu, Michel S., Kingston, ON Beck, Jeanne R., Dundas, ON Beers, Donald W., Calgary, AB Bell, D. G., Fredericton, NB Benn, Dr. Carl, Toronto, ON Berry, Michael J., Woodlawn, ON Best, Mrs. Janna Ramsay., Sudbury, ON Bethell, Dr. Walter, Ottawa, ON Billingsley, D. E., Russell, MB Binnema, Theodore, Prince George, BC Bird, Joanne, Yellowknife, NT Birks, G. Drummond, Montreal, QC Blackstock, Miss Cicely, Toronto, ON Blain, John, Victoria, BC Bliss, Prof. Michael, Toronto, ON Bloore, R. L., Toronto, ON Bohaker, Heidi, Bolton, ON Bourgeois, Donald J., Kitchener, ON Boxer, Richard, Toronto, ON Bradshaw, Graham, Milton, ON Brands, Andrew D., Toronto, ON Brennan, Terence, Montreal, QC Brierley, James D.M., Dunham, QC Brigden, George, Q.C., Toronto, ON Brock, Daniel J., London, ON Brown, Jennifer, Winnipeg, MB Brown, R. Craig, Toronto, ON Bryan, Prof. Alan Lyle, Edmonton, AB Bryden, D. G., Guelph, ON Buchanan, Dr. Roberta, St. John’s, NF Buckmaster, Dr. H. A., Victoria, BC Burnett, Frederick C., Upper Brighton, NB Burns, Rev. L. D., Toronto, ON Caldwell, Robert C., Waterloo, ON Cameron, C. Jean, North Vancouver, BC Carson, Sarah, Toronto, ON Caya, Dr. Marcel, Montreal, QC Charlebois, Miss Eloise, Penetanguishene, ON Charlebois, John Paul, Q.C., Burlington, ON Chochla, Mark W., Thunder Bay, ON Clark, Michael J., Ottawa, ON Cleghorn, John E., Toronto, ON Collier, Arthur )., East Preston, NS

449

450

List of Individual Members in 2005

Collingwood, Norman C.M., Surrey, BC Collins, John, Mahone Bay, NS Conaty, Gerald, Calgary, AB Connolly, Dr. John G., Toronto, ON Converse, John L., Kingston, ON Conway, Sean, Eganville, ON Cook, Kenneth A., Uxbridge, ON Cooper, Lawrence R., Niagara-on-the-Lake,

Franks, Dr. W. M., Duntroon, ON Fraser, John A., Toronto, ON French, Goldwin, Dundas, ON Gaba, Robert G., Victoria, BC Gaffield, Dr. Chad, Ottawa, ON Galt, Thomas M., Toronto, ON Gariepy, Thomas J., Toronto, ON Gauthier, Dr. Louis-Marie, Shippagan, NB

ON Coutts, Jim, Toronto, ON Craig, Barbara Lazenby, Don Mills, ON Cramer, W. A., Rosedale, BC Craven, R. J. N., Mississagua, ON Cuthbertson, Brian, Halifax, NS Dahl, Edward H., Gatineau, QC Davenport, Mrs. Alan, London, ON Davies, Bryan R, Etobicoke, ON Davis, John N., Toronto, ON Davis, Prof. Richard C., Calgary, AB Dean, William G., Perkinsfield, ON Deeks, Gordon D., Toronto, ON Delworth, Mrs. W. T., Ottawa, ON deMille, Dr. Evelyn, Calgary, AB Dibb, G., Peterborough, ON Dickason, Olive, Ottawa, ON Distad, Dr. Merrill, Edmonton, AB Douglas, W. A. B., Ottawa, ON

Gerhard, Howard, Toronto, ON Getty, Ian A. L., Calgary, AB Gibson, James R., North York, ON

Dove, Michael, London, ON Dreyer, Frederick, London, ON Duckworth, Harry W., Winnipeg, MB Duke, Scott, Yellowknife, NT Dunfield, R. W., Granville Ferry, NS Dunn, Jack, Calgary, AB

Hahn, Paul D., Toronto, ON Hale, Mrs. Nancy R., Montreal, QC Hall, David, Picton, ON Hall, Roger, Toronto, ON Hamilton,William B., Sackville, NB Hanks, Christopher C„ Yellowknife, NT Hardin, Dr. Harry T., Toronto, ON

Dutil, Dr. Patrice A., Toronto, ON Eayrs, James, Toronto, ON Elson, J. Bryan, Dartmouth, NS England, Dr. & Mrs. R. E„ Winnipeg, MB English, John, Waterloo, ON Ens, Prof. Gerhard, Edmonton, AB Errington, Dr. E. Jane, Kingston, ON Fair, Dr. Ross D„ Pickering, ON Fairley, Bruce F., Golden, BC

Gibson, John D., Toronto, ON Gilbert, Jeremy, Toronto, ON Gillespie, Alastair, P.C., Toronto, ON Gilmor, R. Paul, Moffat, ON Glover, Dr. William, Kingston, ON Godfrey, Paul, Port Hope, ON Goodwin, George, Toronto, ON Grace, A., Calgary, AB Grant, Shelagh, Peterborough, ON Gray, Wm. M., Toronto, ON Green, Larry, Prince Albert, SK Greene, Marianne, Toronto, ON Greene, Ronald A., Victoria, BC Grenville, John H., Kingston, ON Griffiths, N. E. S., O.C., Ottawa, ON Grover, Malcolm, Alvinston, ON

Hawken, Edwin F., Toronto, ON Hawkins, Emily, Thunder Bay, ON Hawkins, Mrs. Elizabeth, Vancouver, BC Hawkins, Ron, Thunder Bay, ON Haworth, Donald, Aurora, ON

Fairlie, Thomas F., Toronto, ON Ferguson, Kerry G., Toronto, ON

Healey, Robynne Rogers, Langley, BC Heidenreich, Conrad E., Lefroy, ON Heidenreich, Conrad J., Toronto, ON Heidenreich, Robert W., Toronto, ON Hele, Karl, London, ON

Fiell, John, Invermere, BC Fisher, Robert, Nepean, ON Foran, Thomas, Ottawa, ON

Hertzman, Prof. Lewis, Toronto, ON Hess, Dr. M. P., Calgary, AB Hewett, F. Robert, Ottawa, ON

Fortney, Thomas A.C., Sarnia, ON Fournier, Mike, Yellowknife, NT

Hillier, Bryan A., Etobicoke, ON Hobbs, Brenda, Toronto, ON

List

of

Individual Members in 2005

Hodges, Dr. R.D., Shanty Bay, ON Hodsoll, E. C., Etobicoke, ON Hogarth, Donald D., Ottawa, ON Hopcroft, Grant, London, ON Hordelski, Mrs. I„ London, ON Horn, Prof. Michiel, Toronto, ON Horne, Arthur G., Gadshill Stn., ON Houston, Dr. C. Stuart, Saskatoon, SK Houston, Prof. Susan E., Toronto, ON Howard, Ernest, Toronto, ON Hoyle, Allan L., Newmarket, ON Humphreys, D. J. R., Manotick, ON Hunter, Hope, Edmonton, AB Hunter, James, Wyebridge, ON Hutchins, Peter W., Montreal, QC Innis, John, Calgary, AB Jackman, Frederic L. R., Toronto, ON Jackman, The Hon. Henry N.R., Toronto, ON Jacobs, Dean, Wallaceburg, ON Jacques, Glen D., La Ronge, SK

45i

Loncarevic, Dr. Bosko D., Bedford, NS Lovisek, Dr. Joan A., Surrey, BC Lucas, Mrs. Alec, Plaisance, QC Lund, K. A., Toronto, ON Lundell, Liz, Toronto, ON Luste, George J., Toronto, ON Lysecki, Burton, Winnipeg, MB M’Gonigle, Shelagh, Ottawa, ON MacCallum, James D., Toronto, ON MacDonald, Don, Edmonton, AB MacDonald, Dr. Robert, Calgary, AB MacDonald, Graham A., Calgary, AB MacFarlane, Dr. Anthony L., Hamilton, ON MacFeeters, Ronald L., Toronto, ON Machnacky, Christina, Etobicoke, ON

Jaenen, Cornelius J., Gloucester, ON Jarvis, Kenneth, Millbrook, ON Jephcott, Amy H., Toronto, ON Jones, Prof. Elwood, Peterborough, ON Kealey, G. S., Fredericton, NB Keane, David R, Hamilton, ON Kerr, Don, Toronto, ON Killan, Dr. Gerald, London, ON Koerner, S.T., Victoria, BC Kofman, Dr. Oscar, Toronto, ON Koundakjian, Vicken, Ottawa, ON

MacKay, D. S. C., Ottawa, ON MacLaren, Roy, P.C., Toronto, ON MacLean, Duart A., Quathiaski Cove, BC Mactaggart, Sandy A., Edmonton, AB Magee, Marion E., Toronto, ON Marchildon, Dr. Gregory P., Regina, SK Martin, Joe, Toronto, ON Mathews, Lynn, Kitchener, ON Matthews, Douglas C., Collingwood, ON Matthews, F. Richard, Calgary, AB Matthews, R.O., Roches Point, ON McCalla, Dr. Douglas, Guelph, ON McCreery, Christopher P., Kingston, ON McDougall, Douglas G., Westmount, QC McDougall, Dr. A. K., London, ON McGarr, Richard G., Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON

Kowal, W. N. & M. A., Milton, ON Krizanc, R.A., Mississauga, ON

McKillop, Duncan C., St. Thomas, ON Mclernon, John R., Vancouver, BC

Lake, George W. C., Delta, BC Lamb, Rev. J. William, Etobicoke, ON Lampard, Dr. Robert, Red Deer, AB

McMillan, John B., Burlington, ON McNab, David T., Toronto, ON

Langille, Lyndon R., River John, NS Lapierre, Mrs. Paula, Montreal, QC Lash, A. B., Toronto, ON Lash, Timothy J. F., Ottawa, ON Latham, Brian, Yellowknife, NT Latimer, W. H., Islington, ON Lazier, The Hon. Colin S„ Hamilton, ON LeBlanc, Dr. Raymond, Edmonton, AB LeBlanc, M. C., Calgary, AB LeClair, Laurie, Toronto, ON Leighton, Dr. J. Douglas, London, ON Little, George, Mansfield, ON Logan, Ian, Peterborough, ON

McPhail, Ian D.C., Toronto, ON Millar, Laura, New Westminster, BC Miller, Jim, Port Lambton, ON Moir, John, Port Dover, ON Moir, Michael B., Toronto, ON Money, J. D., Agincourt, ON Moore, Miss Heather-Jane, Ottawa, ON Moran, William P., Oshawa, ON More, David, Kingston, ON Moreau, Bill, Toronto, ON Morin, Mrs. Ruth, Ottawa, ON Morley, William F. E., Kingston, ON Morris, Mrs. Mary Eleanor, Toronto, ON Morrison, James, Winnipeg, MB

452

List of Individual Members in 2005

Moysa, N„ North Vancouver, BC Muldrew, Ken, Calgary, AB

Roy, Miss Patricia E., Victoria, BC Rudd, Jeffrey M., North Vancouver, BC

Muncaster, Ian, Halifax, NS

Ruddell, Mrs. Rosemary A., Osgoode, ON Rudnicki, W., Ottawa, ON Russell, Dale, Saskatoon, SK

Murray, Jeffrey, Merrickville, ON Murray, W. Ross, Toronto, ON Neary, Peter, London, ON Neeley, Alastair, London, ON Nelles, H. V., North York, ON Nelson, Dan, Toronto, ON Nicholls, William T. A., Port Hope, ON Nicholson, Dr. A. J., Fort McMurray, AB Nicol, James Allan, Moncton, NB Nix, Rev. J. Ernest, Waterloo, ON Norton, David J., Belmont, ON O’Reilly, James M„ Toronto, ON Oleson, Robert V., Winnipeg, MB Osborne, Brian S., Kingston, ON Osborne, Dave, Orillia, ON Osier, Glyn W., Etobicoke, ON Page, Robert, Calgary, AB Pannekoek, Dr. Frits, Athabasca, AB Pashby, Dr. Thomas J., Toronto, ON Pathy, Ms. Barbara A., Toronto, ON Payne, Finlay J., Victoria, BC Pearson, J. Bruce, Coldwater, ON Peeling, Prof. James, Winnipeg, MB Penney, Gerald, St. John’s, NF Pepall, John, Toronto, ON Perron, Marie L., Ottawa, ON Pilon, Dr. Jean Luc, Aylmer, QC Plaunt, Frances Alan, Calgary, AB Plimer, B. H„ Ottawa, ON Pollock, John H., Toronto, ON Pond, David, Mississauga, ON Price, Mrs. Michael, Vancouver, BC Principe, Charles, Toronto, ON Rafuse, Mrs. Audrey J., London, ON Rath, N. S., Burlington, ON Reed, R. Keith, Victoria, BC Riedstra, Lutzen, Stratford, ON Ripmeester, Michael, St. Catharines, ON Risley, W. Cary, Halifax, NS Robertson, E. Suzanne, Burlington, ON Robinson, Sidney Ivor, La Ronge, SK Rollason Driscoll, Heather, Toronto, ON Ronaghan, Allen, Edmonton, AB Rooke, Richard, Kitchener, ON Ross, J. Donaldson, Orillia, ON Roy, Jacques, Charlesbourg, QC

Sabathy-Judd, Linda, London, ON Samuel, Edward, Toronto, ON Saunders, Robert E., Scarborough, ON Saywell, Dr. John T., Toronto, ON Scace, Dr. Robert C„ Calgary, AB Scott, J.M.G., Toronto, ON Scott, K.W., Q.C., Cobourg, ON Sears, Robin V., Toronto, ON Serafin, Michael, Midland, ON Shank, Robert J., Kanata, ON Sharratt, R. F„ Mount Royal, QC Shirtliffe, Steve, Saskatoon, SK Sloan, William A., Castlegar, BC Smith, A. Britton, Kingston, ON Smith, Charles H., Ottawa, ON Smith, David B., London, ON Smith, Donald B., Calgary, AB Smith, Mark J., Uxbridge, ON Smith, Ralph G., Mississauga, ON Smith, Stephen, Toronto, ON Snyder, R. B., Ottawa, ON Spears, Mrs. John C„ Toronto, ON St. John, Edward S„ Cornwall, ON Standen, S. Dale, Peterborough, ON Staveley, Dr. Michael, St. John’s, NF Stevens, John A., Toronto, ON Stewart, Dugald, Toronto, ON Story, Janet, St. John’s, NF Strathy, John G. B., Toronto, ON Struthers, Prof. J.R., Guelph, ON Stuewe, Paul, Toronto, ON Swainger, Jon, Prince George, BC Swainson, Eleanor, Kingston, ON Symons, Prof. T. H. S„ Peterborough, ON Fadman, Megan, Collingwood, ON ten Cate , Jill, Toronto, ON 1 hoburn, Weldon J., Toronto, ON

Thom, Graeme, Orangeville, ON Thomas, John, Toronto, ON Thomas, Morley K., Toronto, ON Thompson, Neville, London, ON 1 ingley, Ken, Edmonton, AB Tokerud, Bjarne, Victoria, BC Traviss, Dr. Brian, Kitchener, ON

List of Individual Members in 2005

Turko, Karen, Toronto, ON Turner, William I., Westmount, QC Vernon, G. Patrick H., Toronto, ON Vernon, John A.H., Innisfil, ON Waisberg, Lorie, Toronto, ON Waiser, Bill, Saskatoon, SK Walden, Keith, Peterborough, ON Walker, Caroline, Toronto, ON Wallot, lean-Pierre, Ottawa, ON Warkentin, Germaine, Toronto, ON Warkentin, John, Toronto, ON Weekes, Justice Robert N., Gravenhurst, ON Weir, James D., Calgary, AB Westcott, Beverley B., Toronto, ON Wetherell, D., Calgary, AB Williams, Richard M., Kanata, ON Williamson, Dr. Ron, Toronto, ON Willson, William A., Windsor, ON Wilson, Ian E., Ottawa, ON Wilson, L.R., Oakville, ON Wilson, R. B., Bancroft, ON Wilson, William S., Dundas, ON Winegard, Dr. W. C., Guelph, ON Wishart, D. H., Toronto, ON Wishart, Rev. Ian S., St. John’s, NF Wonders, Prof. William C., Victoria, BC Wood, J. David, Toronto, ON Wright, Glenn T., Ottawa, ON Wright, Joyce M„ South Mountain, ON Wright, Justice J. deP., Thunder Bay, ON Wright, Sherwood, Toronto, ON Zajac, Mrs. Dorothy, Newmarket, ON Zaslow, Morris, London, ON Zerker, Dr. Sally E„ North York, ON Zimmerman, Adam H., Toronto, ON

453

DeMallie, Raymond J., Bloomington, IN Dunbar, Gary S., Cooperstown, NY Elk, Charles, Grand Blanc, MI Erickson, David, Crestwood, NY Espley, Derek J., Riverview, MI Ferguson, Peter A., Middleburgh, NY Filemyr, Albert, Rockledge, PA Fowler Jr., William M., Reading, MA Ginsberg, Michael, Sharon, MA Gregg, John R., York, ME Hogan, James A., Moss Beach, CA Horton, John L., Chardon, OH Jackson, Dr. C. Ian, Hamden, CT Keith, H. Lloyd, Arlington, WA Kelly, Charles A., Chicago, IL Kurz, Dr. Joseph L., Lonedell, MO Lovis Jr., Dr. William, East Lansing, MI Malouf, Richard T., Twin Falls, ID Mandel, Larry, Chicago, IL Marcolin, Lorenzo, Rockville, MD Muchka, Albert, West Allis, WI Pearson, Dr. Mark Landed, Scottsdale, AZ Priebe, Chandler, Pullman, WA Putnam, William L., Flagstaff, AZ Roy, Curtis L., Minneapolis, MN Siple, Kenneth J., Watervliet, NY Slater, Sandra, Lexington, KY Smiley, J. J., Eureka, MT Sollish, George, Baldwinsville, NY Turner, Peter M., Muskegon, MI Ugarenko, Leonard G., Silver Spring, MD Vannah, Alison, Ph.D., Arlington, MA Walsh, Thomas H., Lancaster, CA Weber, Edgar L., San Francisco, CA West, James D„ Cleveland Heights, OH Willyard, Bruce, Carrington, ND

United States Overseas

Alsip, Edward, Yucca Valley, CA Axtell, James L., Williamsburg, VA Banks, Robert, San Antonio, TX Bigart, Robert, Missoula, MT Breckenridge, Andrew, Duluth, MN Coffman, Prof. Ralph, Marblehead, MA Cowger, Thomas, Thornton, WA

Baltes, Dr. Henry, Zurich, Switzerland Black, John B., Habere-Lullin, France Codignola, Luca, Genoa, Italy Feest, Dr. Christian F., Vienna, Austria Montague, Richard W., Ebenhausen, Germany Warkentin, Juliet M., London, England

DATE DUE

TRENT UN VERSI

11 64

644