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WITH the opening spring
Indians began to come in from the plains, and for several weeks we had
hundreds of lodges beside us. Mr. Woolsey was kept busy holding meetings,
attending councils, visiting the sick, acting as doctor and surgeon,
magistrate and judge; for who else had these people to come to but the
missionary? A number of them had accepted Christianity, but the majority
were still pagan, and these were full of curiosity as to the missionary and
his work, and keenly watching every move of the "praying man" and his party.
The preacher may preach ever so good, but he himself is to these people the
exponent of what he preaches, and they judge the Gospel he presents by
himself. If he fails to measure up in manliness and liberality and general
manhood, then they think there is no more use in listening to his teaching.
Very early in my experience it was borne in upon me that the missionary, to
obtain influence on the people, must be fitted to lead in all matters. If
short of this, their estimate of him would be low, and their respect
proportionately small, and thus his work would be sadly handicapped all
through.
While Mr. Woolsey was
constantly at work among the people, the rest of us were fencing and
planting a field, whipsawing lumber, taking out timber up the river, and
rafting it down to the mission, also building a house, and in many ways
giving object lessons of industry and settled life to this nomadic and
restless people.
It was at this time that I
got a name for myself by winning a race. The Indians had challenged two
white men to run against two of their people. The race was to be run from
Mr. Woolsey's tent to and around another tent that stood out on the plain,
and back home again—a distance in all of rather more than two-thirds of a
mile. I was asked to be one of the champions of the white men, and a man by
the name of McLean was selected as the other. Men, women, and children in
crowds came to see the race, and Mr. Woolsey seemed as interested as any.
The two Indians came forth gorgeous in breech-cloth and paint. My partner
lightened his costume, but I ran as I worked.
At a signal we were away, and
with ease I was soon ahead. When I turned the tent, I saw that the race was
ours, for my partner was the first man to meet me, and he was a long
distance ahead of the Indians. When within three hundred yards of the goal,
a crack runner sprang out from before me. He had been lying in the grass,
with his dressed buffalo-skin over him, and springing up he let the skin
fall from his naked body, then sped away, with the intention of measuring
his speed with mine. I had my race already won, and needed not to run this
fellow, but his saucy action nettled me to chase him, and I soon came up and
passed him easily, coming in about fifty yards ahead.
Thus I had gained two races,
testing both wind and speed. That race opened my way to many a lodge, and to
the heart of many a friend in subsequent years. It was the best introduction
I could have had to those hundreds of aborigines, among whom I was to live
and work for years.
A few weeks sufficed to
consume all the provisions the Indians had brought with them, and a very
large part of ours also; so the tents were furled, and the people recrossed
the Saskatchewan, and, ascending the steep hill, disappeared from our view
for another period, during which they would seek the buffalo away out on the
plains.
We went on with our work of
planting this centre of Christian civilization. Though we had visits from
small bands, coming and going all summer, the larger camps did not return
until the autumn. All this time we were living in skin lodges. Mr. Woolsey
aimed at putting up a large house, in the old-fashioned Hudson's Bay type—a
frame of timber, with grooved posts in which tenoned logs were fitted into
ten-foot spans—and as all the work of sawing and planing had to be done by
hand, the progress was slow. My idea was to face long timber, and put up a
solid blockhouse, which could be clone so much more easily and quickly, and
would be stronger in the end; but I was overruled, so we went on more slowly
with the big house, and were smoked and sweltered in the tents all summer.
However, taking out timber and rafting it down the river took up a lot of my
time.
Then there was our garden to
weed and hoe. One day when I was at this, we dined on buffalo tongue. Quite
a number of these had been boiled to be eaten cold, and as our sleigh dogs
were always foraging, it was necessary to put all food up on the stagings,
or else the dogs would take it. As soon as I was through dinner I went back
to my hoeing and weeding, but looking over at the tent, I saw Mr. Woolsey
leaving it, and thought he must have forgotten to put those tongues away. As
our variety was not great, I did not want the dogs to have these, so I ran
over to the tent just in time to save them. I thought it would be well to
make Mr. Woolsey more careful in the future; so, putting away the tongues, I
scattered the dishes around the tent, and left things generally upset, as if
a dozen dogs had been there, and then went back to my work, keeping a sharp
watch on the tent.
When Mr. Woolsey came back he
went into the tent, and very soon came out again shaking his fist at the
dogs. Presently he shouted to me, "John, the miserable dogs have stolen all
our tongues!"
"That is too bad," said I;
"did you not put them away?"
"No, I neglected to," he
answered. "I shall thrash every one of these thieving dogs."
Of course I did not expect
him to do this, but at any rate I did not want to see him touch Draffan, my
old leader, so I ran over to the tent, and could not help but laugh when I
saw Mr. Woolsey catch one of the dogs, and, turning to me, say, "This old
Pembina was actually licking his lips when I came back to the tent. I all
but caught him in the act of stealing the tongues."
I can see old Pembina as he
stood there looking very sheepish and guilty. Mr. Woolsey stood with one
hand grasping the string, and with the other uplifted, holding in it a small
riding whip; but just as he was about to bring it down, the expected
relenting came, and he said, as he untied the dog, "Poor fellow, it was my
fault, anyway." I let him worry over the thought that the tongues were gone
until evening, when I brought them out, and Mr. Woolsey, being an
Englishman, was glad they were saved for future use.
Our principal food that
summer was pemmican, or dried meat. We had neither flour nor vegetables, but
sometimes, for a change, lived on ducks, and again varied our diet with duck
eggs. We would boil the large stock ducks whole, and each person would take
one, so that the individual occupying the head of the table was put to no
trouble in carving. Each man in his own style did his own carving, and
picked the bones clean at that. Then, another time, we would sit down to
boiled duck eggs, many a dozen of these before us, and in all stages of
incubation. While the older hands seemed to relish these, it took some time
for me to learn that an egg slightly addled is very much improved in taste.
Our horses often gave us a
lot of trouble, because of the extent of their range, and many a long ride I
had looking them up. On one of these expeditions I was accompanied by an
Indian boy, and, having struck the track, we kept on through the thickets
and around lakes and swamps, till, after a while, we became very hungry. As
we had no gun with us, the question arose, how were we to procure anything
for food? My boy suggested hunting for eggs. I replied, "We cannot eat them
raw." "We will cook them," he answered. So we unsaddled and haltered our
horses, and, stripping off our clothes, waded out into the rushes and
grasses of the little lake we were then beside. We soon found some eggs, and
while I made the fire, my companion proceeded with what, to me, was a new
mode of cooking eggs. He took the bark off a young poplar, and of this made
a long tube, tying or hooping it with willow-bark; then he stopped up one
end with mud from the lake shore, and, as the hollow of the tube was about
the diameter of the largest egg we had, he very soon had it full of eggs.
Stopping up the other end also with mud, he moved the embers from the centre
of the fire, laid the tube in the hot earth, covered it over with ashes and
coals, and in a few minutes we had a deliciously-cooked lunch of wild duck
eggs. I had learned another lesson in culinary science.
On another horse-hunt we
found the track late in the day, and, following it up, saw that we must
either go back to the mission for the night, or camp without provisions or
blankets. The latter we could stand, as it was summer, but the former was
harder to bear. While we were discussing what to do, we heard the calling of
sand-hill cranes, and presently saw five flying at a distance from us.
Watching them, we saw them light on the point of a hill about half a mile
off. Laughingly, I said to my boy in Indian phraseology, "I will make
sacrifice of a ball." So I got my gun-worm, drew the shot from my old
flintlock gun, and dropped a ball in its place; and as there was no chance
of a nearer approach to the cranes, I sighted one from where I stood, then
elevated my gun, and fired. As we watched, we saw the bird fall over, and my
boy jumped on his horse and went for our game. We then continued on the
track as long as we could see it, and, as night drew on, pitched our camp
beside some water, and made the crane serve us for both supper and
breakfast. I might try a shot under the same conditions a hundred times
more, and miss every time, but that one lucky hit secured to us a timely
repast. and enabled us to continue on the trail of our horses, which we
found about noon the next day.
We had to have lumber to make
anything like a home for semi-civilized men and women to dwell in. In my
humble judgment, the hardest labor of a physical kind one could engage in is
dog-driving, and the next to that "whipsawing" lumber. I have had to engage
in all manner of work necessary to the establishing of a settlement in new
countries, but found nothing harder than these. I had plenty of the former
last winter, and now occasionally try the latter, and, in the hot days of
summer, find it desperately hard work.
In the midst of our building
and manufacture of timber and lumber, rafting and hauling, fencing and
planting, weeding and hoeing, every little while there would come in from
the plains rumors of horse-stealing and scalp-taking. The southern Indians
were coming north, and the northern Indians going south; and although we did
not expect an attack, owing to our being so far north, and also because the
Indian camps were between us and our enemies, nevertheless we felt it
prudent to keep a sharp lookout, and conceal our horses as much as possible
by keeping them some distance from where we lived. All this caused
considerable riding and work and worry, and thus we were kept busy late and
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