Pathfinding on Plain and Prairie
Stirring Scenes of Life in the Canadian North-west
9781465641106
400 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
pany for a time with my readers in "SADDLE, SLED AND SNOWSHOE." We were domiciled for the night in Muddy Bull's lodge. The weather was intensely cold. I believe I am safe in saying that all through January the mercury never rose above 10° below zero, and that it ranged from this down to 50° below. In our lodge, which was one of the best, with ordinary travelling costume on, a blanket or a robe over our shoulders, and a brisk fire in the centre of the tent, we were passably cosy; but even then we had to turn around every little while and "warm the other side." Great bright, brisk fires were kept up in those "thin leather homes" of our Indian people, entailing a vast amount of work upon the women and girls of the camps. Gradually, by example, perhaps, more than precept, we brought about a lessening of the labor of the women; but in the meantime, during the cold winter months, the furnishing of wood to keep those huge fires going gave them constant employment. It must be said, however, they accepted the labor and drudgery with cheerful alacrity, and could be seen at all hours of the day stringing over the hills and across the plains with dogs and horses and travois, their own backs loaded to the utmost carrying capacity with wood. The life of an Indian woman in those early days was, indeed, an extremely busy one. Packing and unpacking dogs and horses, making camps, providing wood, making and mending moccasins and wearing apparel, cooking, cutting up, drying and pounding meat, rendering grease, chopping bones to get out the marrow fat, making pemmican, stretching, scraping and dressing buffalo hides to make robes or leather—a long, tedious process, in which not only the brains of the worker were needed in order to excel, but also those of the dead animals as well—kept her going early and late. Besides all this, the manufacturing of saddles, travois, tents and shagganappi also devolved upon the women; and yet, notwithstanding all this, they seemed, generally speaking, to be contented and happy, and with true feminine resource still found time to give to attire and adornment, and the practising of all those mysterious arts which have charmed and magnetized the other sex, doubtless through all the past of our race. No wonder these women and girls were at a premium, and cost all the way from a blanket up to a band of stolen horses! The more of them a man had, then the greater man was he. Nor was the life of the male Indian altogether that of a sinecure. Somehow or other the idea has gone abroad that these Indians led a very lazy life. But if the man who thought this had spent some time with either wood or plain Indians, and had accompanied them on their hunting and war expeditions, he would have materially changed his views. To follow a wood hunter on foot from before daylight in the short days, through brush and copse and heavy timber, over big hills and across wide valleys, on and on for many miles, sometimes until noon or late in the afternoon before a "kill" is made; or, having started game, to run for miles at a terrific pace, hoping to head off the quarry and at last secure a shot; then, having killed, to butcher or secure from wolf, or coyote, or wolverine the desired meat and strike as straight as possible for the camp, sometimes many, many miles distant, with thick forest and dense darkness now intervening; or it may be to have all the labor and exhaustion of such a chase without the chance of a shot, reaching camp late at night wearied and disappointed. To continue this for days, sometimes feasting and again famishing—and all this not from choice but of necessity—could be counted no easy matter. It is not for fun, but life; health, income, influence, honor, respect, all these are dependent on your efforts.
