Adventures Among the Red Indians Part 27

"Come along," cried the old man gaily to his youngest son; "we are only waiting for you."

Then ensued a quaint mingling of ancient and modern Mohawk custom.

Much of the success of Catholic missions probably lies in the fact that the clergy have never opposed those traditions and customs of savages which were in themselves innocent; here was an instance. A girl was about to become engaged to her future husband, and there was no difficulty in grafting on to the Indian ceremony the mediaeval religious rite of betrothal.

The chief's youngest son, the girl's father, approached the lover, carrying a bow and four arrows.

"My brother," he said solemnly; "you have asked to have my daughter for your wife. But, before you can take the bird to your own nest, you must catch her."

He fitted an arrow to his bow and shot it so that it stuck in the ground about a hundred yards away. Then, amid dead silence, he stuck a second arrow in the turf at the young man's feet, and, taking his daughter's hand, led her to where the first arrow had dropped. He shot a third arrow, this time high in the air, and it fell about twenty yards away from where the girl was standing.

"Will you try to catch my bird?" he shouted to the bridegroom-elect; and of course received "yes" for an answer.

"Then fly," and he shot his fourth arrow as a signal for the start.

It was queer handicapping--a hundred yards start out of a hundred and twenty--but the girl had doubtless made up her mind beforehand. After hurrying off at full speed, in coquettish pretence of wis.h.i.+ng to escape, she contrived to stumble, fell on her face, lay there till the happy man was within a yard or two of her, and allowed herself to be caught before she reached the goal. Of course, the ceremony was a survival from a time when an Indian girl received no other intimation of the wishes of the man who wanted her for his wife, and might reasonably wish to bestow her hand on some other suitor--in which case here was an escape for her; but the result of the race was received with as much applause as though everything had been real earnest.

Immediately afterwards, everyone went into the church; the lovers stood at the altar, and the priest read the short betrothal office (_Fiancailles_) which had been introduced by the early French settlers. Games and dancing followed; not the genuine Indian dancing which Kohl had hoped to see, but a rough imitation of the French peasants' dance; and the day ended with a great feast in the a.s.sembly house.

Kohl was obliged to proceed on his way in the morning, but he made many subsequent visits to this queer little community, and always found himself treated like an old friend.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NOVEL BRIDAL CEREMONY

Among the Mohawks a suitor must pursue and capture his bride. She is given a start, and if her lover captures her before she reaches a certain point she becomes his wife, and to bring about this happy result she coquettishly trips, or gets exhausted.]

CHAPTER XXIV

CANADIAN LAKE AND RIVER INDIANS

The Athabaskan or Athapascan family of Indians may be found anywhere between Alaska and Manitoba, and some of the more unsettled or enterprising tribes have even wandered as far as the Mexican boundary.

In Southern and Western Canada they are princ.i.p.ally represented by the Kuchins and Chippewyans, hardy hunters, canoemen, and fighters, many of whom are to this day very unsophisticated in their views and habits. In the 'sixties, Canada still knew little about railways; lakes and rivers were the recognised highways of travel, and the Eastern Chippewyans made a steady income as carriers, boatmen, and guides; to which occupations, says the Rev. C. Colton, they applied the same combination of energy and deliberateness that their tribe has always displayed in its hunting or its warfare.

Mr. Colton was rector of an Anglican Church in New York, and, in 1860, he set out to visit some friends who lived on the Saskatchewan River--a journey similar in point of distance to that from London to Moscow, or Palermo to Dublin. After a stay at the famous Niagara Falls, he embarked at Buffalo for Detroit, which meant a three-hundred-mile run across Lake Erie; then made his way to Port Huron, whence a little steamer would carry him to Port Arthur, Ontario.

The morning before the boat came in sight of this place, he observed quite a swarm of Indians on the near bank, leaping into their canoes in the greatest excitement; none of them had guns or bows, but--which looked neither promising nor peaceable--every man had, either beside him or in his hand, a long, barb-headed spear. Indians had, on many occasions, paddled out to the steamer, but it had always been with the sole object of selling fruit or furs or fish, and this was the first time that Mr. Colton had seen them carrying weapons of any sort.

He asked the master of the boat what it meant; but neither he nor the engineer could account for the demonstration; and the four negroes who formed the crew showed by their restless motions and their inattention to everything but the three or four dozen canoes that were flocking towards the launch, that they were considerably alarmed. The only pa.s.sengers besides the clergyman were three ladies, and a Canadian journalist named Barnes, who was returning to the British Columbian gold-diggings, and who, like the rest, did not know what to make of the sudden and rapid approach of the Indians.

"They're Chippewyans," he said. "And, by the look of it, they mean to board us. Have you got a 'gun'? Then take this one; I've another in my bag."

"Look out for yourselves and your baggage, gents," cried the Yankee skipper, producing a six-shooter. "They mean to hold us up. Ladies, please go into the cabin."

Mr. Colton was dumbfounded. One minute they had been gliding easily along with no more thought of piracy or highway robbery than you have when on a Thames penny steamer; the next, a revolver had been thrust into his unskilled hands with the recommendation to "look after himself." It was too absurd, yet decidedly awkward; and it would not be a mere case of driving off the canoes by a distribution of grapeshot, but--unless their engine was more powerful than Chippewyan paddles--of being outnumbered by about ten to one and robbed of every cent and every thing they possessed, even if not killed.

And worse was behind all this. Why on earth was the boat stopping instead of steering out? Stopped it certainly had, and a cursing match was in progress between the infuriated master and the engineer. In their excitement they had, between them, managed to run the steamer on to a pebble-bank. A yell of delight arose from the Indians; their paddles flashed through the water with greater rapidity than ever, and in another minute the canoes were round the steamer's bows, the paddles dropped, and the spears picked up.

Colton had never fired a pistol in his life, but, like many of his cloth, he had a very pretty notion of using his fists when need arose, and he took his stand fearlessly by the side of the journalist, determined to sell his life dearly. Barnes regarded the matter coolly; he had had many a brush with Indians, and had more than once "stripped-to" and thrashed an offensive digger.

"What do you want? What's your game?" he shouted to the redskins in their own dialect.

"Look; look!" cried the skipper. "Do they conclude to stave her in?--What is it they say, Boss?"

Sure enough, every Indian was stooping low, spear in hand and point downwards, earnestly studying the water, and as much of the boat's underside as they could distinguish. A conversation was proceeding meanwhile between Barnes and the Indian nearest him; and all of a sudden the journalist fell back into the arms of the skipper, choking and convulsed with laughter.

"_Say!_" remonstrated the skipper mildly. "Don't keep it all to yerself, Squire; if they don't mean mischief, what the plague _do_ they mean?"

"_Sturgeons!_" gasped the Canadian. "Oh, my aunt! Somebody's been plumbing them up that the 'fire-canoes' are towed along by great sturgeons. Look at the n.o.ble savages."

With breathless antic.i.p.ation, every Indian was gravely watching the water round the bows, ready in an instant to plunge his spear into the first sturgeon that came handy.

"Wal," said the skipper, "even then their intentions wasn't more'n middlin' benevolent, I allow. How did they calc'late we'd make any way when a neefarious gang had cleared out our propelling gear for us--_s'posing_ we was towed that way? You'd better argufy with 'em, and bring that p'int home to 'em, Mr. Barnes."

After another conversation the journalist turned to the master.

"If you'll pay out one or two tow-lines, skipper, they'll soon have us off this. I've told them it's their fault we ran aground, and that, if they don't tow us off, we shall report them at the next cavalry depot, and they'll get hurt."

No time was lost in throwing over four tow-warps, and the Indians, much impressed by Barnes's representation to them of the measure of their iniquity, considered themselves let off very cheaply. The canoes were divided into four lots, one to each rope, and as soon as they had "tailed-on" one to the other, the four long teams paddled with a will, and the launch--no bigger than a Brighton fis.h.i.+ng-smack--was towed free without the least difficulty.

Only too glad to fall in with a companion who, in addition to being a decently educated man, undoubtedly "knew his way about," Mr. Colton readily agreed to the young Canadian's becoming his companion as far as his destination. He still had a very long journey before him, but the newness of all his surroundings and the beauty of the country made it seem all too short. Sometimes they got a lift in a farm-waggon or were able to hire horses as far as the next water-way; failing these, they walked, sleeping at night at a farmhouse, or sometimes in the forest; and in this way they came to the Lake of the Woods, whence they would be able to travel all the way by water to the Saskatchewan River, where the clergyman's journey ended.

They reached the lake early one morning after having pa.s.sed the night at a fur-agent's house on the Minnesota boundary; and, before they were aware of it, they had walked straight into a camp of wandering Chippewyans, who had been resting on the lake sh.o.r.e for a few days before returning northwards from disposing of their furs. Evidently they were used enough to meeting with white men, for, beyond a cheery "good morning," they took no further notice till the strangers addressed them; and then it appeared that several of them spoke English or French. They had just finished their breakfast, for the fires were still smoking, and cooking utensils and broken food lay about the ground, though most of their other property had already been stowed in the canoes.

"We also want to reach the Saskatchewan," said Barnes, when they mentioned their destination. "What reward do you ask for taking us there?"

The braves conferred in a low voice, and at last the chief said:

"We will take you there, and feed you by the way, for five dollars each"; which meant that, for a guinea, a man might travel four hundred miles by water, in beautiful weather, and be fed for a whole week at the least. Colton was about to offer them more, but his companion checked him.

"Give them what you like extra at the end of the journey, but we must haggle now, or they'll think we're worth robbing"; and he actually had the face to beat the redskins down to three dollars a head, money down.

"What did you get for your furs?" he asked, when his terms had been agreed to. They named a sum which was a disgrace to the white agents, for it meant that they had bought skins which the Indians had toiled for months to get, and had brought all the way from the Saskatchewan, for a sum that would yield about five hundred per cent profit.

"You see?" he whispered to his companion. "They've no idea of values, poor chaps; a few dollars seem a gold-mine to them; and then, when a man comes along and offers an honest price without any bating, ten to one he'll be robbed and murdered because they think he's a millionaire."

But the day was rapidly coming when unscrupulous persons could no longer defraud the savages; writing only ten years later, an English traveller deplores the extortionate charges made by the redskins for even the most trifling service, and points out that he could have bought furs in Regent Street as cheaply as they would sell them to any private individual.

The two travellers paid their money, of course prepared to add liberally to it at the journey's end, and their boat was pointed out to them. The canoes were most of them very large, and capable of seating a crew and a family. The one a.s.signed to the white strangers was manned by a chief and five braves; the other men, with their wives and children, distributing themselves pretty equally between the remaining canoes.

"How will they get these down? Or are they going to leave them?" asked Colton, pointing to the huts, or lodges, as Barnes called them.

"Get them down? You might as well talk about taking home empty wine-bottles and lobster claws after a picnic. They may take the matting, but I doubt it. They can make and erect a hut in less than an hour."

Hitherto the only Indian dwellings they had pa.s.sed had been huts, or else the well-known wigwams made of gra.s.s-cloth, or coa.r.s.e linen; but these "lodges" were very different. They were nearly dome-shaped; more strictly, they were octagonal with a convex roof, and were constructed by eight long, slender rods of some flexible wood being stuck in the ground at equal distances; the tops were bent down till they met or overlapped, and then bound securely together with vegetable fibre.

Lengths of bark, cut from the paper birch, were tied over these to form a roof; and the sides were made, in some cases by hanging strips of matting from pole to pole, but more commonly by erecting thatch walls, speedily improvised with fibre and bundles of wild rice stalks, which grew like rushes in the shallows. No attempt was made to remove them, and they were left to the next comer--an altruistic practice which had its reward; for other wandering Indians had done the same thing higher up the lake, and more often than not, when the flotilla stopped for the night, there was a camp of ready-made tents awaiting the travellers.

All that week the two adventurers lived, like the proverbial fighting-c.o.c.k, on the fat of the land: sturgeon, salmon, woodc.o.c.k, wild-duck, venison, eggs, and sometimes fruit, were all to be had for the asking; for, though the Chippewyans had no guns, they had spears and arrows and quick sight. The boat's crew were decent fellows, who soon lost their taciturnity and suspicion when they found the pa.s.sengers kindly and conversationally disposed; and they made no demur at being asked, from time to time, to turn out of their way a little, that Colton might explore one or other of the channels, side-creeks, and rivulets that form part of the complicated water-way between Minnesota and the Saskatchewan.