Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men Part 21

FORT AND SETTLEMENTS.

Here, as everywhere else, I am struck by the difference between the two sh.o.r.es. On the American side there is a settlement of whites, as well as a large village of Chippewas; there is also a mission (I believe of the Methodists), for the conversion of the Indians. The fort, which has been lately strengthened, is merely a strong and high enclosure, surrounded with pickets of cedar-wood; within the stockade are the barracks, and the princ.i.p.al trading store. This fortress is called Fort Brady, after that gallant officer whom I have already mentioned to you. The garrison may be very effective for aught I know, but I never beheld such an unmilitary-looking set. When I was there to-day, the sentinels were lounging up and down in their flannel jackets and shirt sleeves, with muskets thrown over their shoulders--just for all the world like ploughboys going to shoot sparrows; however, they are in keeping with the fortress of cedar-posts, and no doubt both answer their purpose very well. The village is increasing into a town, and the commercial advantages of its situation must raise it ere long to a place of importance.

On the Canada side we have not even these demonstrations of power or prosperity. Nearly opposite to the American fort there is a small factory belonging to the North-west Fur Company; below this, a few miserable log-huts, occupied by some French Canadians and voyageurs in the service of the company, a set of lawless _mauvais sujets_, from all I can learn. Lower down stands the house of Mr. and Mrs. MacMurray, with the Chippewa village under their care and tuition; but most of the wigwams and their inhabitants are now on their way down the lake, to join the congress at the Manitoolin Islands. A lofty eminence, partly cleared and partly clothed with forest, rises behind the house, on which stand the little missionary church and school-house for the use of the Indian converts. From the summit of this hill you look over the traverse into Lake Superior, and the two giant capes which guard its entrance.

One of these capes is called Gros-Cap, from its bold and lofty cliffs, the yet unviolated haunt of the eagle. The opposite cape is more accessible, and bears an Indian name, which I cannot pretend to spell, but which signifies "the place of the Iroquois' bones:" it was the scene of a wild and terrific tradition. At the time that the Iroquois (or Six Nations) were driven before the French and Hurons up to the western lakes, they endeavoured to possess themselves of the hunting-grounds of the Chippewas, and hence a bitter and lasting feud between the two nations. The Iroquois, after defeating the Chippewas, encamped, a thousand strong, upon this point, where, thinking themselves secure, they made a war feast to torture and devour their prisoners. The Chippewas, from the opposite sh.o.r.e, beheld the sufferings and humiliation of their friends, and, roused to sudden fury by the sight, collected their warriors, only three hundred in all, crossed the channel, and at break of day fell upon the Iroquois, now sleeping after their horrible excesses, and ma.s.sacred every one of them, men, women, and children. Of their own party they lost but one warrior, who was stabbed with an awl by an old woman who was sitting at the entrance of her wigwam, st.i.tching moccasins: thus runs the tale. The bodies were left to bleach on the sh.o.r.e, and they say that bones and skulls are still found there.

THE WHITE-FISH.

Here, at the foot of the rapids, the celebrated white-fish of the lakes is caught in its highest perfection. The people down below[37], who boast of the excellence of the white-fish, really know nothing of the matter. There is no more comparison between the white-fish of the lower lakes and the white-fish of St. Mary's than between plaice and turbot, or between a clam and a Sandwich oyster. I ought to be a judge, who have eaten them fresh out of the river four times a day, and I declare to you that I never tasted anything of the fish kind half so exquisite. If the Roman Apicius had lived in these latter days, he would certainly have made a voyage up Lake Huron to breakfast on the white-fish of St. Mary's river, and would _not_ have returned in dudgeon, as he did, from the coast of Africa. But the epicures of our degenerate times have nothing of that gastronomical enthusiasm which inspired their ancient models, else we should have them all coming here to eat white-fish at the Sault, and scorning c.o.c.kney white-bait. Henry declares that the flavour of the white-fish is "beyond any comparison whatever," and I add my testimony thereto--_probatum est!_

I have eaten tunny in the gulf of Genoa, anchovies fresh out of the bay of Naples, and trout of the Salz-kammergut, and divers other fishy dainties rich and rare,--but the exquisite, the refined white-fish exceeds them all; concerning those cannibal fish (mullets were they, or lampreys?) which Lucullus fed in his fish-ponds, I cannot speak, never having tasted them; but even if _they_ could be resuscitated, I would not degrade the refined, the delicate white-fish by a comparison with any such barbarian luxury.

But seriously, and badinage apart, it is really the most luxurious delicacy that swims the waters. It is said that people never tire of them. Mr. MacMurray tells me that he has eaten them every day of his life for seven years, and that his relish for them is undiminished. The enormous quant.i.ties caught here, and in the bays and creeks round Lake Superior, remind me of herrings in the lochs of Scotland; besides subsisting the inhabitants, whites and Indians, during great part of the year, vast quant.i.ties are cured and barrelled every fall, and sent down to the eastern states. Not less than eight thousand barrels were shipped last year.

[Footnote 36: The first British commandant of the fort was that miserable Lieutenant Jemette, who was scalped at the ma.s.sacre at Michilimackinac.]

[Footnote 37: That is, in the neighbourhood of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.]

THE SKEVaT.

These enterprising Yankees have seized upon another profitable speculation here: there is a fish found in great quant.i.ties in the upper part of Lake Superior, called the skevat[38], so exceedingly rich, luscious, and oily, when fresh, as to be quite uneatable. A gentleman here told me that he had tried it, and though not very squeamish at any time, and then very hungry, he could not get beyond the first two or three mouthfuls; but it has been lately discovered that this fish makes a most luxurious pickle. It is very excellent, but so rich even in this state, that, like the tunny _marinee_, it is necessary either to taste abstemiously, or die heroically of indigestion. This fish is becoming a fashionable luxury, and in one of the stores here I saw three hundred barrels ready for embarkation. The Americans have several schooners on the lakes employed in these fisheries: we have not one. They have besides planned a ship ca.n.a.l through the portage here, which will open a communication for large vessels between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, as our Welland Ca.n.a.l has united Lake Erie with Lake Ontario. The ground has already been surveyed for this purpose. When this ca.n.a.l is completed, a vessel may load in the Thames, and discharge her burthen at the upper end of Lake Superior. I hope you have a map before you, that you may take in at a glance this wonderful extent of inland navigation. Ought a country possessing it, and all the means of life beside, to remain poor, oppressed, uncultivated, unknown?

THE RAPIDS.

But to return to my beautiful river and glorious rapids, which are to be treated, you see, as a man treats a pa.s.sionate beauty--he does not oppose her, for that were madness--but he gets _round her_. Well, on the American side, further down the river, is the house of Tanner, the Indian interpreter, of whose story you may have heard--for, as I remember, it excited some attention in England. He is a European of unmixed blood, with the language, manners, habits of a Red-skin. He had been kidnapped somewhere on the American frontiers when a mere boy, and brought up among the Chippewas. He afterwards returned to civilised life, and having relearned his own language, drew up a very entertaining and valuable account of his adopted tribe. He is now in the American service here, having an Indian wife, and is still attached to his Indian mode of life.

Just above the fort is the ancient burial-place of the Chippewas. I need not tell you of the profound veneration with which all the Indian tribes regard the places of their dead. In all their treaties for the cession of their lands, they stipulate with the white man for the inviolability of their sepulchres. They did the same with regard to this place, but I am sorry to say that it has not been attended to, for in enlarging one side of the fort, they have considerably encroached on the cemetery. The outrage excited both the sorrow and indignation of some of my friends here, but there is no redress. Perhaps it was this circ.u.mstance that gave rise to the allusion of the Indian chief here, when in speaking of the French he said, "_They_ never molested the places of our dead!"

The view of the rapids from this spot is inexpressibly beautiful, and it has besides another attraction, which makes it to me a frequent lounge whenever I cross the river;--but of this by-and-bye. To complete my sketch of the localities, I will only add, that the whole country around is in its primitive state, covered with the interminable swamp and forest, where the bear and the moose-deer roam--and lakes and living streams where the beaver builds his hut.[39] The cariboo, or rein-deer, is still found on the northern sh.o.r.es.

The hunting-grounds of the Chippewas are in the immediate neighbourhood, and extend all round Lake Superior. Beyond these, on the north, are the Chippewyans; and on the south, the Sioux, Ottagamies, and Pottowottomies.

I might here multiply facts and details, but I have been obliged to throw these particulars together in haste, just to give you an idea of my present situation. Time presses, and my sojourn in this remote and interesting spot is like to be of short duration.

[Footnote 38: I spell the word as p.r.o.nounced, never having seen it written.]

[Footnote 39: The beaver is, however, becoming rare in these regions. It is a curious fact connected with the physiology and psychology of instinct, that the beaver is found to change its instincts and modes of life, as it has been more and more persecuted, and, instead of being a gregarious, it is now a solitary animal. The beavers, which are found living in solitary holes instead of communities and villages, the Indians call by a name which signifies _Old Bachelor_.]

MRS. JOHNSTON.

One of the gratifications I had antic.i.p.ated in coming hither--my strongest inducement perhaps--was an introduction to the mother of my two friends, of whom her children so delighted to speak, and of whom I had heard much from other sources. A woman of pure Indian blood, of a race celebrated in these regions as warriors and chiefs from generation to generation, who had never resided within the pale of what we call civilised life, whose habits and manners were those of a genuine Indian squaw, and whose talents and domestic virtues commanded the highest respect, was, as you may suppose, an object of the deepest interest to me. I observed that not only her own children, but her two sons-in-law, Mr. MacMurray and Mr. Schoolcraft, both educated in good society, the one a clergyman and the other a man of science and literature, looked up to this remarkable woman with sentiments of affection and veneration.

As soon, then, as I was a little refreshed after my two nights on the lake, and my battles with the mosquitoes, we paddled over the river to dine with Mrs. Johnston: she resides in a large log-house close upon the sh.o.r.e; there is a little portico in front with seats, and the interior is most comfortable. The old lady herself is rather large in person, with the strongest marked Indian features, a countenance open, benevolent, and intelligent, and a manner perfectly easy--simple, yet with something of motherly dignity, becoming the head of her large family. She received me most affectionately, and we entered into conversation--Mrs. Schoolcraft, who looked all animation and happiness, acting as interpreter. Mrs. Johnston speaks no English, but can understand it a little, and the Canadian French still better; but in her own language she is eloquent, and her voice, like that of her people, low and musical; many kind words were exchanged, and when I said anything that pleased her, she laughed softly like a child. I was not well and much fevered, and I remember she took me in her arms, laid me down on a couch, and began to rub my feet, soothing and caressing me.

She called me Nindannis, daughter, and I called her Neengai, mother (though how different from my own fair mother, I thought, as I looked up gratefully in her dark Indian face!). She set before us the best dressed and best served dinner I had seen since I left Toronto, and presided at her table, and did the honours of her house with unembarra.s.sed, unaffected propriety. My attempts to speak Indian caused, of course, considerable amus.e.m.e.nt; if I do not make progress, it will not be for want of teaching and teachers.

AN INDIAN LODGE.

After dinner we took a walk to visit Mrs. Johnston's brother, Wayish,ky, whose wigwam is at a little distance, on the verge of the burial-ground.

The lodge is of the genuine Chippewa form, like an egg cut in half lengthways. It is formed of poles stuck in the ground, and bent over at top, strengthened with a few wattles and boards; the whole is covered over with mats, birch-bark, and skins; a large blanket formed the door or curtain, which was not ungracefully looped aside. Wayish,ky, being a great man, has also a smaller lodge hard by, which serves as a storehouse and kitchen.

AN INDIAN FAMILY.

Rude as was the exterior of Wayish,ky's hut, the interior presented every appearance of comfort, and even _elegance_, according to the Indian notions of both. It formed a good-sized room: a raised couch ran all round like a Turkish divan, serving both for seats and beds, and covered with very soft and beautiful matting of various colours and patterns. The chests and baskets of birch-bark, containing the family wardrobe and property; the rifles, the hunting and fishing tackle, were stowed away all round very tidily; I observed a coffee-mill nailed up to one of the posts or stakes; the floor was trodden down hard and perfectly clean, and there was a place for a fire in the middle: there was no window, but quite sufficient light and air were admitted through the door, and through an aperture in the roof. There was no disagreeable smell, and everything looked neat and clean. We found Wayish,ky and his wife and three of their children seated in the lodge, and as it was Sunday, and they are all Christians, no work was going forward. They received me with genuine and simple politeness, each taking my hand with a gentle inclination of the head, and some words of welcome murmured in their own soft language. We then sat down.

The conversation became very lively; and, if I might judge from looks and tones, very affectionate. I _sported_ my last new words and phrases with great effect, and when I had exhausted my vocabulary--which was very soon--I amused myself with looking and listening.

Mrs. Wayish,ky (I forget her proper name) must have been a very beautiful woman. Though now no longer young, and the mother of twelve children, she is one of the handsomest Indian women I have yet seen. The number of her children is remarkable, for in general there are few large families among the Indians. Her daughter, Zah,gah,see,ga,quay (_the sunbeams breaking through a cloud_), is a very beautiful girl, with eyes that are a warrant for her poetical name--she is about sixteen.

Wayish,ky himself is a grave, dignified man about fifty. He told me that his eldest son had gone down to the Manitoolin Island to represent his family, and receive his quota of presents. His youngest son he had sent to a college in the United States, to be educated in the learning of the white men. Mrs. Schoolcraft whispered me that this poor boy is now dying of consumption, owing to the confinement and change of living, and that the parents knew it. Wayish,ky seemed aware that we were alluding to his son, for his eye at that moment rested on me, and such an expression of keen pain came suddenly over his fine countenance, it was as if a knife had struck him, and I really felt it in my heart, and see it still before me--that look of misery.

After about an hour we left this good and interesting family. I lingered for a while on the burial-ground, looking over the rapids, and watching with a mixture of admiration and terror several little canoes which were fishing in the midst of the boiling surge, dancing and popping about like corks. The canoe used for fishing is very small and light; one man (or woman more commonly) sits in the stern, and steers with a paddle; the fisher places himself upright on the prow, balancing a long pole with both hands, at the end of which is a scoop-net. This he every minute dips into the water, bringing up at each dip a fish, and sometimes two. I used to admire the fishermen on the Arno, and those on the Lagune, and above all the Neapolitan fishermen, hauling in their nets, or diving like ducks, but I never saw anything like these Indians.

The manner in which they keep their position upon a footing of a few inches, is to me as incomprehensible as the beauty of their forms and att.i.tudes, swayed by every movement and turn of their dancing, fragile barks, is admirable.

George Johnston, on whose arm I was leaning (and I had much ado to _reach_ it), gave me such a vivid idea of the delight of coming down the cataract in a canoe, that I am half resolved to attempt it. Terrific as it appears, yet in a good canoe, and with experienced guides, there is no absolute danger, and it must be a glorious sensation.

INDIAN WARFARE.

Mr. Johnston had spent the last fall and winter in the regions beyond Lake Superior, towards the forks of the Mississippi, where he had been employed as American agent to arrange the boundary line between the country of the Chippewas and that of their neighbours and implacable enemies, the Sioux. His mediation appeared successful for the time, and he smoked the pipe of peace with both tribes; but during the spring this ferocious war has again broken out, and he seems to think that nothing but the annihilation of either one nation or the other will entirely put an end to their conflicts; "for there is no point at which the Indian law of retaliation stops, short of the extermination of one of the parties."

I asked him how it is that in their wars the Indians make no distinction between the warriors opposed to them and helpless women and children?--how it could be with a brave and manly people, that the scalps taken from the weak, the helpless, the unresisting, were as honourable as those torn from the warrior's skull? And I described to him the horror which this custom inspired--this, which of all their customs, most justifies the name of _savage_!

He said it was inseparable from their principles of war and their mode of warfare; the first consists in inflicting the greatest possible insult and injury on their foe with the least possible risk to themselves. This truly savage law of honour we might call cowardly, but that, being a.s.sociated with the bravest contempt of danger and pain, it seems nearer to the natural law. With regard to the mode of warfare, they have rarely pitched battles, but skirmishes, surprises, ambuscades, and sudden forays into each other's hunting-grounds and villages. The usual practice is to creep stealthily on the enemy's village or hunting-encampment, and wait till just after the dawn; then, at the moment the sleepers in the lodges are rising, the ambushed warriors stoop and level their pieces about two feet from the ground, which thus slaughter indiscriminately. If they find one of the enemy's lodges undefended they murder its inmates, that when the owner returns he may find his hearth desolate; for this is exquisite vengeance! But outrage against the chast.i.ty of women is absolutely unknown under any degree whatever of furious excitement.[40]

This respect for female honour will remind you of the ancient Germans, as described by Julius Caesar: he contrasts in some surprise their forbearance with the very opposite conduct of the Romans; and even down to this present day, if I recollect rightly, the history of our European wars and sieges will bear out this early and characteristic distinction between the Latin and the Teutonic nations. Am I right, or am I not?

[Footnote 40: "The whole history of Indian warfare," says Mr.

Schoolcraft, "might be challenged in vain for a solitary instance of this kind. The Indians believe that to take a dishonourable advantage of their female prisoners would destroy their luck in hunting; it would be considered as effeminate and degrading in a warrior, and render him unfit for, and unworthy of, all manly achievement."]

THE SAVAGE AND THE CHRISTIAN.

To return to the Indians. After telling me some other particulars, which gave me a clearer view of their notions and feelings on these points than I ever had before, my informant mildly added,--"It is a constant and favourite subject of reproach against the Indians--this barbarism of their desultory warfare; but I should think more women and children have perished in _one_ of your civilised sieges, and that in late times, than during the whole war between the Chippewas and Sioux, and _that_ has lasted a century."

I was silent, for there is a sensible proverb about taking care of our own gla.s.s windows: and I wonder if any of the recorded atrocities of Indian warfare or Indian vengeance, or all of them together, ever exceeded Ma.s.sena's retreat from Portugal,--and the French call themselves civilised. A war party of Indians, perhaps two or three hundred (and that is a very large number), dance their war dance, go out and burn a village, and bring back twenty or thirty scalps. _They_ are savages and heathens. We Europeans fight a battle, leave fifty thousand dead or dying by inches on the field, and a hundred thousand to mourn them, desolate; but _we_ are civilised and Christians. Then only look into the motives and causes of our bloodiest European wars as revealed in the private history of courts:--the miserable, puerile, degrading intrigues which set man against man--so horridly disproportioned to the horrid result! and then see the Indian take up his war-hatchet in vengeance for some personal injury, or from motives that rouse all the natural feelings of the natural man within him! Really I do not see that an Indian warrior, flourishing his tomahawk, and smeared with his enemy's blood, is so very much a greater savage than the pipe-clayed, padded, embroidered personage, who, without cause or motive, has sold himself to slay or be slain: one scalps his enemy, the other rips him open with a sabre; one smashes his brains with a tomahawk, and the other blows him to atoms with a cannon-ball: and to me, femininely speaking, there is not a needle's point difference between the one and the other.

If war be unchristian and barbarous, then war as a _science_ is more absurd, unnatural, unchristian than war as a _pa.s.sion_.

This, perhaps, is putting it all too strongly, and a little exaggerated--

G.o.d forbid that I should think to disparage the blessings of civilisation! I am a woman, and to the progress of civilisation alone can we women look for release from many pains and penalties and liabilities, which now lie heavily upon us. Neither am I greatly in love with savage life, with all its picturesque accompaniments and lofty virtues. I see no reason why these virtues should be necessarily connected with dirt, ignorance, and barbarism. I am thankful to live in a land of literature and steam-engines. Chatsworth is better than a wigwam, and a seventy-four is a finer thing than a bark canoe. I do not _positively_ a.s.sert that Taglioni dances more gracefully than the Little-Pure tobacco-smoker, nor that soap and water are preferable as cosmetics to tallow and charcoal; for these are matters of taste, and mine may be disputed. But I do say, that if our advantages of intellect and refinement are not to lead on to farther moral superiority, I prefer the Indians on the score of consistency; they are what they profess to be, and we are _not_ what we profess to be. They profess to be warriors and hunters, and are so; we profess to be Christians and civilised--are we so?

Then as to the mere point of cruelty;--there is something to be said on this point too. Ferocity, when the hot blood is up, and all the demon in man is roused by every conceivable excitement, I can understand better than the Indian can comprehend the tender mercies of our law. Owyawatta, better known by his English name, Red-Jacket, was once seen hurrying from the town of Buffalo, with rapid strides, and every mark of disgust and consternation in his face. Three malefactors were to be hung that morning, and the Indian warrior had not nerve to face the horrid spectacle, although--