The Forest

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Of your discoveries probably one of the most impressive will be that in
the bright lexicon of woodscraft the word "mile" has been entirely left
out. To count by miles is a useless and ornamental elegance of
civilization. Some of us once worked hard all one day only to camp
three miles downstream from our resting-place of the night before. And
the following day we ran nearly sixty with the current. The space of
measured country known as a mile may hold you five minutes or five
hours from your destination. The Indian counts by time, and after a
little you follow his example. "Four miles to Kettle Portage" means
nothing. "Two hours to Kettle Portage" does. Only when an Indian tells
you two hours you would do well to count it as four.

Well, our trip practically amounted to seven days to nowhere; or
perhaps seven days to everywhere would be more accurate. It was all in
the high hills until the last day and a half, and generally in the
hardwood forests. Twice we intersected and followed for short distances
Indian trails, neither of which apparently had been travelled since the
original party that had made them. They led across country for greater
or lesser distances in the direction we wished to travel, and then
turned aside. Three times we blundered on little meadows of
moose-grass. Invariably they were tramped muddy like a cattle-yard
where the great animals had stood as lately as the night before.
Caribou were not uncommon. There were a few deer, but not many, for the
most of the deer country lies to the south of this our district.
Partridge, as we had anticipated, lacked in such high country.

In the course of the five days and a half we were in the hills we
discovered six lakes of various sizes. The smallest was a mere pond;
the largest would measure some three or four miles in diameter. We came
upon that very late one afternoon. A brook of some size crossed our
way, so, as was our habit, we promptly turned upstream to discover its
source. In the high country the head-waters are never more than a few
miles distant; and at the same time the magnitude of this indicated a
lake rather than a spring as the supply. The lake might be Kawágama.

Our packs had grown to be very heavy, for they had already the weight
of nine hours piled on top. And the stream was exceedingly difficult to
follow. It flowed in one of those aggravating little ravines whose
banks are too high and steep and uneven for good footing, and whose
beds are choked with a too abundant growth. In addition, there had
fallen many trees over which one had to climb. We kept at it for
perhaps an hour. The brook continued of the same size, and the country
of the same character. Dick for the first time suggested that it might
be well to camp.

"We've got good water here," he argued, quite justly, "and we can push
on to-morrow just as well as to-night."

We balanced our packs against a prostrate tree-trunk. Billy contributed
his indirect share to the argument.

"I lak' to have the job mak' heem this countree all over," he sighed.
"I mak' heem more level."

"All right," I agreed; "you fellows sit here and rest a minute, and
I'll take a whirl a little ways ahead."

I slipped my tump-line and started on light. After carrying a heavy
pack so long, I seemed to tread on air. The thicket, before so
formidable, amounted to nothing at all. Perhaps the consciousness that
the day's work was in reality over lent a little factitious energy to
my tired legs. At any rate, the projected two hundred feet of my
investigations stretched to a good quarter-mile. At the end of that
space I debouched on a widening of the ravine. The hardwood ran off
into cedars. I pushed through the stiff rods and yielding fans of the
latter, and all at once found myself leaning out over the waters of the
lake.

It was almost an exact oval, and lay in a cup of hills. Three wooded
islands, swimming like ducks in the placid evening waters, added a
touch of diversity. A huge white rock balanced the composition to the
left, and a single white sea-gull, like a snowflake against pines,
brooded on its top.

I looked abroad to where the perfect reflection of the hills confused
the shore line. I looked down through five feet of crystal water to
where pebbles shimmered in refraction. I noted the low rocks jutting
from the wood's shelter whereon one might stand to cast a fly. Then I
turned and yelled and yelled and yelled again at the forest.

Billy came through the brush, crashing in his haste. He looked long and
comprehendingly. Without further speech, we turned back to where Dick
was guarding the packs.

That youth we found profoundly indifferent.

"Kawágama," we cried, "a quarter-mile ahead."

He turned on us a lack-lustre eye.

"You going to camp here?" he inquired dully.

"Course not! We'll go on and camp at the lake."

"All right," he replied.

We resumed our packs, a little stiffly and reluctantly, for we had
tasted of woods-travel without them. At the lake we rested.

"Going to camp here?" inquired Dick.

We looked about, but noted that the ground under the cedars was
hummocky, and that the hardwood grew on a slope. Besides, we wanted to
camp as near the shore as possible. Probably a trifle further along
there would be a point of high land and delightful little
paper-birches.

"No," we answered cheerfully, "this isn't much good. Suppose we push
along a ways and find something better."

"All right," Dick replied.

We walked perhaps a half-mile more to the westward before we discovered
what we wanted, stopping from time to time to discuss the merits of
this or that place. Billy and I were feeling pretty good. After such a
week Kawágama was a tonic. Finally we agreed.

"This'll do," said we.

"Thank God!" said Dick unexpectedly, and dropped his pack to the ground
with a thud, and sat on it.

I looked at him closely. Then I undid my own pack. "Billy," said I,
"start in on grub. Never mind the tent just now."

"A' right," grinned Billy. He had been making his own observations.

"Dick," said I, "let's go down and sit on the rock over the water. We
might fish a little."

"All right," Dick replied.

He stumbled dully after me to the shore.

"Dick," I continued, "you're a kid, and you have high principles, and
your mother wouldn't like it, but I'm going to prescribe for you, and
I'm going to insist on your following the prescription. This flask does
not contain fly-dope--that's in the other flask--it contains whisky. I
have had it in my pack since we started, and it has not been opened. I
don't believe in whisky in the woods; not because I am temperance, but
because a man can't travel on it. But here is where you break your
heaven-born principles. Drink."

Dick hesitated, then he drank. By the time grub was ready his vitality
had come to normal, and so he was able to digest his food and get some
good out of it; otherwise he could not have done so. Thus he furnished
an admirable example of the only real use for whisky in woods-travel.
Also it was the nearest Dick ever came to being completely played out.

That evening was delightful. We sat on the rock and watched the long
North Country twilight steal up like a gray cloud from the east. Two
loons called to each other, now in the shrill maniac laughter, now with
the long, mournful cry. It needed just that one touch to finish the
picture. We were looking, had we but known it, on a lake no white man
had ever visited before. Clement alone had seen Kawágama, so in our
ignorance we attained much the same mental attitude. For I may as well
let you into the secret; this was not the fabled lake after all. We
found that out later from Tawabinisáy. But it was beautiful enough, and
wild enough, and strange enough in its splendid wilderness isolation to
fill the heart of the explorer with a great content.

Having thus, as we thought, attained the primary object of our
explorations, we determined on trying now for the second--that is, the
investigation of the upper reaches of the River. Trout we had not
accomplished at this lake, but the existence of fish of some sort was
attested by the presence of the two loons and the gull, so we laid our
non-success to fisherman's luck. After two false starts we managed to
strike into a good country near enough our direction. The travel was
much the same as before. The second day, however, we came to a
surveyor's base-line cut through the woods. Then we followed that as a
matter of convenience. The base-line, cut the fall before, was the only
evidence of man we saw in the high country. It meant nothing in itself,
but was intended as a starting-point for the township surveys, whenever
the country should become civilized enough to warrant them. That
condition of affairs might not occur for years to come. Therefore the
line was cut out clear for a width of twenty feet.

We continued along it as along a trail until we discovered our last
lake--a body of water possessing many radiating arms. This was the
nearest we came to the real Kawágama. If we had skirted the lake,
mounted the ridge, followed a creek-bed, mounted another ridge, and
descended a slope, we should have made our discovery. Later we did just
that, under the guidance of Tawabinisáy himself. Floating in the birch
canoe we carried with us we looked back at the very spot on which we
stood this morning.

But we turned sharp to the left, and so missed our chance. However, we
were in a happy frame of mind, for we imagined we had really made the
desired discovery.

Nothing of moment happened until we reached the valley of the River.
Then we found we were treed. We had been travelling all the time among
hills and valleys, to be sure, but on a high elevation. Even the bottom
lands, in which lay the lakes, were several hundred feet above
Superior. Now we emerged from the forest to find ourselves on bold
mountains at least seven or eight hundred feet above the main valley.
And in the main valley we could make out the River.

It was rather dizzy work. Three or four times we ventured over the
rounded crest of the hill, only to return after forty or fifty feet
because the slope had become too abrupt. This grew to be monotonous and
aggravating. It looked as though we might have to parallel the River's
course, like scouts watching an army, on the top of the hill. Finally a
little ravine gave us hope. We scrambled down it; ended in a very steep
slant, and finished at a sheer tangle of cedar-roots. The latter we
attempted. Billy went on ahead. I let the packs down to him by means of
a tump-line. He balanced them on roof; until I had climbed below him.
And so on. It was exactly like letting a bucket down a well. If one of
the packs had slipped off the cedar-roots, it would have dropped like a
plummet to the valley, and landed on Heaven knows what. The same might
be said of ourselves. We did this because we were angry all through.

Then we came to the end of the cedar-roots. Right and left offered
nothing; below was a sheer, bare drop. Absolutely nothing remained but
to climb back, heavy packs and all, to the top of the mountain. False
hopes had wasted a good half day and innumerable foot-pounds. Billy and
I saw red. We bowed our heads and snaked those packs to the top of the
mountain at a gait that ordinarily would have tired us out in fifty
feet. Dick did not attempt to keep up. When we reached the top we sat
down to wait for him. After a while he appeared, climbing leisurely. He
gazed on us from behind the mask of his Indian imperturbability. Then
he grinned. That did us good, for we all three laughed aloud, and
buckled down to business in a better frame of mind.

That day we discovered a most beautiful waterfall. A stream about
twenty feet in width, and with a good volume of water, dropped some
three hundred feet or more into the River. It was across the valley
from us, so we had a good view of its beauties. Our estimates of its
height were carefully made on the basis of some standing pine that grew
near its foot.

And then we entered a steep little ravine, and descended it with
misgivings to a cañon, and walked easily down the cañon to a slope that
took us by barely sensible gradations to a wooded plain. At six o'clock
we stood on the banks of the River, and the hills were behind us.

Of our down-stream travel there is little really to be said. We
established a number of facts--that the River dashes most scenically
from rapid to rapid, so that the stagnant pool theory is henceforth
untenable; that the hills get higher and wilder the farther you
penetrate to the interior, and their cliffs and rock-precipices bolder
and more naked; that there are trout in the upper reaches, but not so
large as in the lower pools; and, above all, that travel is not a joy
for ever.

For we could not ford the River above the Falls--it is too deep and
swift. As a consequence, we had often to climb, often to break through
the narrowest thicket strips, and once to feel our way cautiously along
a sunken ledge under a sheer rock cliff. That was Billy's idea. We came
to the sheer rock cliff after a pretty hard scramble, and we were most
loth to do the necessary climbing. Billy suggested that we might be
able to wade. As the pool below the cliff was black water and of
indeterminate depth, we scouted the idea. Billy, however, poked around
with a stick, and, as I have said, discovered a little ledge about a
foot and a half wide and about two feet and a half below the surface.
This was spectacular, but we did it. A slip meant a swim and the loss
of the pack. We did not happen to slip. Shortly after, we came to the
Big Falls, and so after further painful experiment descended joyfully
into known country.

The freshet had gone down, the weather had warmed, the sun shone, we
caught trout for lunch below the Big Falls; everything was lovely. By
three o'clock, after thrice wading the stream, we regained our
canoe--now at least forty feet from the water. We paddled across. Deuce
followed easily, where a week before he had been sucked down and nearly
drowned. We opened the cache and changed our very travel-stained
garments. We cooked ourselves a luxurious meal. We built a
friendship-fire. And at last we stretched our tired bodies full length
on balsam a foot thick, and gazed drowsily at the canvas-blurred moon
before sinking to a dreamless sleep.

XV.

ON WOODS INDIANS.

Far in the North dwell a people practically unknown to any but the
fur-trader and the explorer. Our information as to Mokis, Sioux,
Cheyennes Nez Percés, and indirectly many others, through the pages of
Cooper, Parkman, and allied writers, is varied enough, so that our
ideas of Indians are pretty well established. If we are romantic, we
hark back to the past and invent fairy-tales with ourselves anent the
Noble Red Man who has Passed Away. If we are severely practical, we
take notice of filth, vice, plug-hats, tin cans, and laziness. In fact,
we might divide all Indian concepts into two classes, following these
mental and imaginative bents. Then we should have quite simply and
satisfactorily the Cooper Indian and the Comic Paper Indian. It must be
confessed that the latter is often approximated by reality--and
everybody knows it. That the former is by no means a myth--at least in
many qualities--the average reader might be pardoned for doubting.

Some time ago I desired to increase my knowledge of the Woods Indians
by whatever others had accomplished. Accordingly I wrote to the
Ethnological Department at Washington asking what had been done in
regard to the Ojibways and Wood Crees north of Lake Superior. The
answer was "nothing."

And "nothing" is more nearly a comprehensive answer than at first you
might believe. Visitors at Mackinac, Traverse, Sault Ste. Marie, and
other northern resorts are besought at certain times of the year by
silent calico-dressed squaws to purchase basket and bark work. If the
tourist happens to follow these women for more wholesale examination of
their wares, he will be led to a double-ended Mackinaw-built
sailing-craft with red-dyed sails, half pulled out on the beach. In the
stern sit two or three bucks wearing shirts, jean trousers, and broad
black hats. Some of the oldest men may sport a patched pair of
moccasins or so, but most are conventional enough in clumsy shoes.
After a longer or shorter stay they hoist their red sails and drift
away toward some mysterious destination on the north shore. If the
buyer is curious enough and persistent enough, he may elicit the fact
that they are Ojibways.

Now, if this same tourist happens to possess a mildly venturesome
disposition, a sailing-craft, and a chart of the region, he will sooner
or later blunder across the dwelling-place of his silent vendors. At
the foot of some rarely-frequented bay he will come on a diminutive
village of small whitewashed log houses. It will differ from other
villages in that the houses are arranged with no reference whatever to
one another, but in the haphazard fashion of an encampment. Its
inhabitants are his summer friends. If he is of an insinuating address,
he may get a glimpse of their daily life. Then he will go away firmly
convinced that he knows quite a lot about the North Woods Indian.

And so he does. But this North Woods Indian is the Reservation Indian.
And in the North a Reservation Indian is as different from a Woods
Indian as a negro is from a Chinese.

Suppose, on the other hand, your tourist is unfortunate enough to get
left at some North Woods railway station where he has descended from
the transcontinental to stretch his legs, and suppose him to have
happened on a fur-town like Missináibie at the precise time when the
trappers are in from the wilds. Near the borders of the village he will
come upon a little encampment of conical tepees. At his approach the
women and children will disappear into inner darkness. A dozen
wolf-like dogs will rush out barking. Grave-faced men will respond
silently to his salutation.

These men, he will be interested to observe, wear still the deer or
moose skin moccasin--the lightest and easiest foot-gear for the woods;
bind their long hair with a narrow fillet, and their waists with a red
or striped worsted sash; keep warm under the blanket thickness of a
Hudson Bay capote; and deck their clothes with a variety of barbaric
ornament. He will see about camp weapons whose acquaintance he has made
only in museums, peltries of whose identification he is by no means
sure, and as matters of daily use--snow-shoes, bark canoes, bows and
arrows--what to him have been articles of ornament or curiosity.
To-morrow these people will be gone for another year, carrying with
them the results of the week's barter. Neither he nor his kind will see
them again, unless they too journey far into the Silent Places. But he
has caught a glimpse of the stolid mask of the Woods Indian, concerning
whom officially "nothing" is known.

In many respects the Woods Indian is the legitimate descendant of the
Cooper Indian. His life is led entirely in the forests; his subsistence
is assured by hunting, fishing, and trapping; his dwelling is the
wigwam, and his habitation the wide reaches of the wilderness lying
between Lake Superior and the Hudson Bay; his relation to humanity
confined to intercourse with his own people and acquaintance with the
men who barter for his peltries. So his dependence is not on the world
the white man has brought, but on himself and his natural environment.
Civilization has merely ornamented his ancient manner. It has given him
the convenience of cloth, of firearms, of steel traps, of iron kettles,
of matches; it has accustomed him to the luxuries of white
sugar--though he had always his own maple product--tea, flour, and
white man's tobacco. That is about all. He knows nothing of whisky. The
towns are never visited by him, and the Hudson's Bay Company will sell
him no liquor. His concern with you is not great, for he has little to
gain from you.

This people, then, depending on natural resources for subsistence, has
retained to a great extent the qualities of the early aborigines.

To begin with, it is distinctly nomadic. The great rolls of birch bark
to cover the pointed tepees are easily transported in the bottoms of
canoes, and the poles are quickly cut and put in place. As a
consequence, the Ojibway family is always on the move. It searches out
new trapping-grounds, new fisheries, it pays visits, it seems even to
enjoy travel for the sake of exploration. In winter a tepee of double
wall is built, whose hollow is stuffed with moss to keep out the cold;
but even that approximation of permanence cannot stand against the
slightest convenience. When an Indian kills, often he does not
transport his game to camp, but moves his camp to the vicinity of the
carcass. There are of these woods dwellers no villages, no permanent
clearings. The vicinity of a Hudson's Bay post is sometimes occupied
for a month or so during the summer, but that is all.

An obvious corollary of this is that tribal life does not consistently
obtain. Throughout the summer months, when game and fur are at their
poorest, the bands assemble, probably at the times of barter with the
traders. Then for the short period of the idling season they drift
together up and down the North Country streams, or camp for big
pow-wows and conjuring near some pleasant conflux of rivers. But when
the first frosts nip the leaves, the families separate to their
allotted trapping districts, there to spend the winter in pursuit of
the real business of life.

The tribe is thus split into many groups, ranging in numbers from
the solitary trapper, eager to win enough fur to buy him a wife, to a
compact little group of three or four families closely related in
blood. The most striking consequence is that, unlike other Indian
bodies politic, there are no regularly constituted and acknowledged
chiefs. Certain individuals gain a remarkable reputation and an equally
remarkable respect for wisdom, or hunting skill, or power of woodcraft,
or travel. These men are the so-called "old men" often mentioned in
Indian manifestoes, though age has nothing to do with the deference
accorded them. Tawabinisáy is not more than thirty-five years old;
Peter, our Hudson Bay Indian, is hardly more than a boy. Yet both are
obeyed implicitly by whomever they happen to be with; both lead the way
by river or trail; and both, where question arises, are sought in
advice by men old enough to be their fathers. Perhaps this is as good a
democracy as another.

The life so briefly hinted at in the foregoing lines inevitably
develops and fosters an expertness of woodcraft almost beyond belief.
The Ojibway knows his environment. The forest is to him so familiar in
each and every one of its numerous and subtle aspects that the
slightest departure from the normal strikes his attention at once. A
patch of brown shadow where green shadow should fall, a shimmering of
leaves where should be merely a gentle waving, a cross-light where the
usual forest growth should adumbrate, a flash of wings at a time of day
when feathered creatures ordinarily rest quiet--these, and hundreds of
others which you and I should never even guess at, force themselves as
glaringly on an Indian's notice as a brass band in a city street. A
white man _looks_ for game; an Indian sees it because it differs
from the forest.

That is, of course, a matter of long experience and lifetime habit.
Were it a question merely of this, the white man might also in time
attain the same skill. But the Indian is a better animal. His senses
are appreciably sharper than our own.

In journeying down the Kapúskasíng River, our Indians--who had come
from the woods to guide us--always saw game long before we did. They
would never point it out to us. The bow of the canoe would swing
silently in its direction, there to rest motionless until we indicated
we had seen something.

"Where is it, Peter?" I would whisper.

But Peter always remained contemptuously silent.

One evening we paddled directly into the eye of the setting sun
across a shallow little lake filled with hardly sunken boulders. There
was no current, and no breath of wind to stir the water into betraying
riffles. But invariably those Indians twisted the canoe into a new
course ten feet before we reached one of the obstructions, whose
existence our dazzled vision could not attest until they were actually
below us. They _saw_ those rocks, through the shimmer of the
surface glare.

Another time I discovered a small black animal lying flat on a point of
shale. Its head was concealed behind a boulder, and it was so far away
that I was inclined to congratulate myself on having differentiated it
from the shadow.

"What is it, Peter?" I asked.

Peter hardly glanced at it.

"Ninny-moósh" (dog), he replied.

Now we were a hundred miles south of the Hudson's Bay post, and two
weeks north of any other settlement. Saving a horse, a dog would be
about the last thing to occur to one in guessing at the identity of any
strange animal. This looked like a little black blotch, without form.
Yet Peter knew it. It was a dog, lost from some Indian hunting-party,
and mightily glad to see us.

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