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 principally 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 303 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 passengers 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. 304 “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 noble savages.”

With breathless anticipation, 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 depÔt, 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 fishing-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 passed the night at a fur-agent’s house on the Minnesota boundary; and, before they were aware of 307 it, they had walked straight into a camp of wandering Chippewyans, who had been resting on the lake shore 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 308 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 assigned 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 passed had been huts, or else the well-known wigwams made of grass-cloth, or coarse 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-cock, on the fat of the land: sturgeon, salmon, woodcock, 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 passengers kindly and conversationally disposed; and they made no demur at being asked, from time to time, to turn out of their 310 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.

On one of these experimental cruises, the explorers found themselves in an adventure which missed little of ending tragically. Barnes suggested following a little stream that appeared to run parallel to the main channel, and the Indians, who, of course, knew almost as little about the byways of the vicinity as their passengers, were not unready to indulge their own curiosity; if the stream did not bring them into the open water again, they could soon turn back. The banks were low and sparsely wooded, and suggested little in the shape of either game or human habitation; but these features did but add to the romance of the scene, and the two travellers were well content to go on; more particularly when they saw that ahead of them the banks promised to rise mountains high.

“We are coming to a caÑon,” murmured an Indian lazily. All the better; Mr. Colton had never seen a caÑon worth the name.

Gradually the speed of the canoe quickened, and the rowers’ labours became proportionately lighter; so much so that the chief looked grave.

“We must go no farther,” he cried. “With a current like this, there must surely be rapids ahead.”

“Then here’s one who’s for going back,” said the Canadian, who knew, far better than his companion, what this might imply; shooting low rapids in small canoes, with Indians who knew every inch of the way, was all very well; but who could say that 311 there was not a second Niagara within a few miles of them?

The Indians at once rested on their paddles, only to find that this did not greatly arrest the progress of the boat. For once, curiosity and indolence combined had got the better of their characteristic wariness. The chief signed to the white men to move to the other end of the boat, for there was no difference in the shape of her bows and stern, and, the weight properly adjusted, she could be worked either way and needed no turning. But even while they were obeying, the canoe moved swiftly on again; two of the Indians, in the confusion, had had their paddles swept from under them for a moment by the water, the canoe swerved a little more towards midstream, and was at once caught in an irresistible current.

“No good; we must take our chance now,” said the chief. The note of something approaching despair in his voice was not comforting to his hearers.

“Come; we must make some effort,” said the clergyman briskly. But his friend shook his head.

“Leave them alone; they won’t miss a chance. They know they may do more harm than good with their paddles in a wash like this.—I say; this is going it.”

The canoe was fairly held by the tide now, and the utmost that could be done was for the chief and the bowman to keep her head straight. The banks flew by at an appalling rate, rising higher and higher till they formed an imposing caÑon. Suddenly Barnes whistled under his breath.

“Can you hear?” he said.

The distant rumble which had hitherto passed unnoticed, or at least unconnected with coming danger, was swelling to a thunder roll that could only proceed from a mighty rapid. Their plight was only too horribly apparent now; in the ordinary course of events, nothing could save them from the destruction awaiting them, and to attempt to make matters better by trying to reach the smoother water under either bank, would only be to make that destruction quite as sure and much more swift. And the black dots ahead, where the current split into forty currents and joined again beyond; what were they? Rocks, beyond a doubt. That being the case, it was not easy to understand why the chief’s morose expression suddenly grew brighter. He made a motion with his head, and one of the braves picked up and loosened a coil of rope, muttering words in dialect to the other canoemen.

“O-ho! Sit tight,” whispered Barnes.

The Indian had doubled his rope, so that the bight formed a loop-noose; and now, on his knees across the bottom of the boat, with the three unoccupied canoemen ready to bear a hand at a quarter of a second’s notice, he was watching a spike of rock that rose two or three feet above the torrent, between which and a flat islet of stone, the current was bearing them. Colton involuntarily half closed his eyes; safety was so near now; yet so sickeningly doubtful. Now they were up to the passage. At any rate, the bows had not dashed on to either rock. Now they were through. Only a few yards beyond was a ghastly vision of boulders—a whole bed of them, over which the torrent surged and bubbled, and which they could never hope 313 to pass. He opened his eyes wide again. If they were alongside the little pinnacle of rock, why did the Indian still remain motionless?

But, at that very moment, the lean brown arm shot past his head, as though the brave had struck at him; the three waiting Indians fell almost on to their faces grasping at something; there was a jerk that brought a frightful spasm of pain to the face of the man who had thrown the rope, and the boat had come to a stop. The bight had fallen over the splinter of rock, and already the ends of rope had been made fast to the canoe by the three waiting redskins, while the fourth held the double line together till the chief had bound the two cords with a thong, so completing the noose.

The men could now take enough breath to enable them to realise that, so far, their case was not much better than it had been. As long as the line held, they were in no danger of being dashed on to the rocks, or beyond, to the distant rapids; but they could never paddle back; and, though there was a little food in the boat, they must starve to death in a few days if they stayed here.

“There’s the way out,” said Barnes confidently, after a lengthy silence.

Ay; it was a way out, but only such as a man of strong nerve could follow. They who dared might leap on to the flat rock on the other side of the canoe, walk across it, and, by a series of jumps, from one to another of the three stepping-stones beyond, reach a low spit of rock that ran out from the cliff foot; and from there the face of the caÑon might be scaled with 314 tolerable ease, in one place, by means of a series of ledges and boulders.

“I will climb up and examine,” said one of the redskins; and he leapt lightly across the awful current and began his walk over the rocks, the rest watching in breathless suspense. In half an hour he was back again, with the report that the top of the cliff was a narrow, barren hill, sloping gently down on two of its sides; would they not do well to abandon the canoe and walk back to the lake shore?

This course did not recommend itself to anyone; least of all to the white men, who could not afford to leave their baggage behind. The only other plan was to land, drag the canoe as far as possible out of the current and into the fringe of smoother water, and then tow her; and this they agreed to adopt. Five of the redskins were to climb up to the cliff-top, carrying a tow line, and the remaining one was to stay behind and steer.

Barnes and Colton were for accompanying the Indians; but when he came to face the six-foot leap over that roaring torrent, the clergyman, who was no longer young or very active, felt that in his case it would be sheer suicide to attempt the jump; and he stayed behind with the steersman. In so doing he well knew that he was not choosing the safer course. For, the moment the mooring rope was removed, the boat began to kick frightfully, and water was soon streaming over her bows. He caught up a copper pot and began baling for dear life, till the sweat ran out of him and his arms grew weary, and till the water had ceased to flow in. Then he looked up at the other men; 315 there they were, fifty or sixty feet above him, straining like horses going uphill, in their effort to fight the current below. What wonder that he looked almost despairingly at the tow-line—a wretched contrivance hastily rigged up by joining together all the ropes and thongs that the canoe contained? How long was it going to stand the mere strain, let alone the sawing and chafing that it must get from every abutting rock? At such a time a man can do no more than keep a stiff upper lip, and humbly leave his fate in the Hands that, for wise purposes, made Nature at once as beautiful and as terrible as she is.

Suddenly the rector was aroused by the chief’s voice.

“Can paddle! Yes! You see!”

The men at the top had paused for breath, but the line was no longer so horribly taut, and the fact that the chief was beginning to propel the boat at least sufficiently to cause the rope very soon to sag, showed that the worst was over. In due time she was towed as far as the low bank and the six men were taken aboard; but Mr. Colton never again trusted himself down a strange river with canoemen who knew no more about it than he.