It would seem, at times, as if there
were really some sort of spiritual communication between
people whose physical frames are widely sundered.
For at the very time that the Eskimos,
in their remote home on the ice-encumbered sea, were
informally debating the propriety of making an unprovoked
attack on the Dogrib Indians-whom they facetiously
styled Fire-spouters-the red men were also
holding a very formal and solemn council of war as
to the advisability of making an assault on those
presumptuous Eskimos, or eaters-of-raw-flesh, who ventured
to pay an uncalled-for visit to the Greygoose River-their
ancestral property- every spring.
One of their chiefs, named Nazinred,
had just returned from a visit to the river, and reported
having met and fought with one of the Eskimos.
Immediately on hearing this, the old
or head chief summoned the council of war. The
braves assembled in the council-tent in solemn dignity,
each classically enveloped in his blanket or leathern
robe, and inflated, more or less, with his own importance.
They sat down silently round the council fire with
as much gravity as if the fate of nations depended
on their deliberations,-and so, on a small
scale, it did.
After passing round the pipe-by
way of brightening up their intellects-the
old chief held forth his hand and began in a low voice
and deliberate manner.
“My braves,” said he,
“those filthy eaters-of-raw-flesh have, as you
know, been in the habit of coming to Greygoose River
every spring and trespassing on the borders of our
hunting-grounds.”
He paused and looked round.
“Waugh!” exclaimed his audience, in order
to satisfy him.
With a dark frown the old chief went on.
“This is wrong. It is
not right. It is altogether unbearable, and more
than the Dogribs can stand. They won’t
stand it!”
“Waugh!” again said the
audience, for the old man had delivered the last sentence
with considerable vehemence, and meant that it should
tell.
Being apparently destitute of a flow
of ideas at that time, the speaker had recourse to
a not uncommon device among civilised orators:
he cleared his throat, looked preternaturally wise,
and changed the subject.
“When the sun of spring rises
over the ice-hills of the great salt lake,”
he continued, pointing towards the Pole, “when
it melts the snow, opens the lakes and rivers, and
brings the summer birds to our land, the braves of
the great Dogrib nation take their guns, and bows,
and canoes, and women, and travel nearly as far as
the icy sea, that they may hunt and feed-and-sleep,
and-and-enjoy the land.
Nobody dares to stop us. Nobody dares to hinder
us. Nobody dares even to look at us!”
He paused again, and this flight of
oratory was received with a very decided “ho!”
of assent, as it well might be, for during nearly all
the year there was nobody in that uninhabited land
to attempt any of those violent proceedings.
Dilating his eyes and nostrils with a look of superlative
wisdom, he continued:
“But at last the Eskimos dared
to come and look at our hunting-grounds. We were
peacefully disposed. We warned them not to come
again. They came again, notwithstanding.
We took our guns and swept them away like leaves
that are swept by the winter winds. Are not their
scalps drying in our lodges? What we did then
we will do again. Has not one of our chiefs-Nazinred-been
attacked by one of them? No doubt more will
follow that one. My counsel is to send out a
band of our braves on the war-path. But first
we would like to know something. As the Eskimo
did not take the scalp of Nazinred, how is it that
Nazinred did not bring home the scalp of the Eskimo?”
The old chief ceased, amid many “ho’s!”
and “hoo’s!” with the air of one
who has propounded an unanswerable riddle, and all
eyes were at once turned upon Nazinred. Accepting
the challenge at once he stretched forth his hand:
“My father has spoken,”
he said, “but his words are not the words of
wisdom. Why should we fight the Eskimos again,
and lose some of our best young men, as we lost them
in the last great fight? The Eskimos have come
near our lands, but they have not of late hunted on
them. They have only looked and gone away.
And even if they did hunt, what then? The land
is wide. We cannot use it all. We cannot
kill all the birds and deer, and even if we could
we cannot eat them all. Would it not be wise
to live at peace with the Eskimos? They have
many great teeth of the walrus and skins of the seal.
Might not the white traders, who take our furs and
give us guns and powder, be willing to take these
things too? Thus we could buy from the one and
sell to the other, and fill our lodges with tobacco,
and guns, and beads, and cloth, and powder and ball,
and other good things.”
The Indian stopped at this point to
ascertain the effect of his remarks, but only a few
faint “ho’s!” greeted him.
The councillors did not feel quite sure of their own
minds. His remarks about peace and war were not
palatable, and his suggestions about trade were a novelty.
Evidently Nazinred was born much in advance of his
time.
“It is true,” he continued,
“that I had a struggle with a young Eskimo;
but he was very strong, and so was I. Before I could
kill him he caught hold of my gun, but he could not
force it from me, and I could not force it from him.
As we strove we looked into each other’s eyes
and we each saw peace and good-will there! So
we ceased to fight. We kindled a fire and sat
down and fed together. As the light slowly increases
while the sun rises, so light came into my mind.
The Dogribs have always talked of the Eskimos as
if they were fools. I found that this young
man was not a fool-that he was wise-wiser
than some of our own braves. His mind was deep
and wide. He did not talk only of food and sleep
and hunting. He spoke of things past and present
and future, and of the Great Spirit, and the world
to come. Also of peace and war; and we both
agreed that peace was good and war hateful. More
than that, we found that it was foolish. Then
we parted. He went, I suppose, to his people
on the sea of ice, and I came home.
“He told me that none of his
people were with him-that he was alone.
There is therefore no occasion for the young men to
look fierce or go on the war-path.”
Having thus tried to throw oil on
the troubled waters Nazinred came to an abrupt pause.
Instantly one of the younger councillors,
named Magadar, sprang to his feet. He was unusually
excitable for an Indian. Indeed, he differed
a good deal from his companions in other respects,
being passionate, impulsive, hasty, and matter-of-fact;
in his speech-making too he scorned the use of symbol
and metaphor, but went straight to the point at once
in the simplest and most forcible language at his command.
“Braves,” he said, looking
at the previous speaker with a dark frown, “the
Dogribs know nothing of those strange and stupid notions
that have just come out of the lips of Nazinred.
He says that this dirty Eskimo is a deep thinker
and a man who loves peace. How does he know that
one of that sort may not think so deeply as to deceive
him? How does he know that the young man is
not a liar-that many of his warriors may
not be in our hunting-grounds even at this moment,
though he says there are none? As for his talk
about the Great Spirit and the future, what does he
know about either the one or the other? Is he
wiser than the Dogribs? Does his attack on Nazinred
look like a lover of peace? His leaving off
when he found that Nazinred was his match seems to
me more like sly wisdom than the hatred of war.
My advice is not to trust these dirty men of the
ice, but to take our guns at once and drive them from
the land.”
It was quite evident from the way
in which this speech was received that the war-party
was in the ascendant, and there is no doubt that Magadar’s
advice would have prevailed, and a war-party been organised
forthwith, but for the arrival of a band of successful
hunters, who had been out for some time in quest of
food.
For a considerable part of that winter
those Indians had been in a condition of semi-starvation.
They had managed with difficulty to sustain themselves
and families on rabbits, which were scarce that year.
With the return of spring and the wild-fowl, however,
things had begun to improve, and the hunting party
above referred to was the first of the season that
had returned to camp heavily laden with geese, ducks,
plover, and other supplies of food, so that the half-famished
people gave themselves up to feasting, and had no
time to think further of war.
Thus many days were passed without
any reference being made to a fight with the Eskimos,
and Nazinred, believing that the fancy to go on the
war-path had passed away, set off on what was to be
a long hunting expedition with three of his comrades
who were like-minded with himself. Among other
plans, this party intended to visit the establishment
of the fur-traders on Great Bear Lake.
Thus when the belligerent party of
Eskimos arrived at the mouth of Greygoose, or Whale,
River, they found the place, as they had been accustomed
to find it, a complete solitude.
At first they expected to overtake
their comrade Cheenbuk there, but he was not found,
having gone a considerable way inland in pursuit of
game. Being aware of his peaceful proclivities,
however, the Eskimos were not sorry to miss him, and
they set about making an encampment on the shore at
the mouth of the river, intending to leave the women
there while they should be engaged in hunting and
in searching for the Fire-spouters.
Meanwhile these Fire-spouters, having
eaten and slept, and eaten and slept again, to the
extent of their capacities, began to experience a
revival of the war-spirit.
In front of one of the lodges or leather
tents, one morning early, there sat two squaws
engaged in ornamenting moccasins and discussing the
news of their little world.
It was one of those bright genial
mornings in spring peculiar to Arctic lands, in which
Warmth comes out with a burst victorious, and Cold
shrinks away discomfited. Everything looked as
if a great revival of Nature were at hand-as
in truth it was, for the long Arctic winter is always
driven away with a rush by the vigour, if not the violence,
of the brief Arctic spring.
One of the women was young and pretty-yes,
we might almost say beautiful. It is quite a
mistake to suppose that all savages are coarse, rough,
and ugly. Many of them, no doubt-perhaps
most of them- are plain enough, but not
a few of the Indian squaws are fairly good-looking,
and this one, as we have said at the risk of being
doubted, was beautiful; at all events she had a fine
oval face, a smooth warm-coloured skin, a neat little
nose, a well-formed mouth, and jet-black hair, with
large lustrous eyes, to say nothing of her teeth,
which, like the teeth of most Indians, were regular
and brilliantly white. Her name was Adolay-that
being the Indian name for Summer.
The other squaw was her mother.
She was usually styled Isquay-which means
woman-by her husband when he was at home,
but, being a great hunter, he was not often at home.
Poor Isquay might have been good-looking in her youth,
but, alas! hard work, occasional starvation, and a
rough life, had prematurely dissipated her beauty,
whatever it might have been; yet these conditions
could not put to flight the lines and dimples of kindliness
which played about her weatherworn eyes and cheeks.
You see, she had a gentle, indulgent husband, and
that made her happy and kept her so.
“Magadar is stirring up the
young men again to go on the war-path,” said
the younger woman, without looking up from the embroidered
moccasin with which she was engaged.
“Yes, I know it. I heard
him as he passed our tent talking to Alizay.
I don’t like Alizay; he is like gunpowder:
the least thing sets him off, and he flashes up horribly.”
“But many of our other braves
have no desire to quarrel with the Eskimos,”
said Adolay; “indeed, some are even fond of them.
And some of the men of the ice are very handsome.
Don’t you remember that one, mother, that we
met when we went last spring with some of our men to
shoot at the Greygoose River? He was a fine man-big
and strong, and active and kind-almost
good enough to be a Dogrib.”
“I remember him well,”
returned Isquay, “for he saved my life.
Have you forgotten that already?”
“No, I have not forgotten it,”
answered the girl, with a slight smile. “Did
I not stand on the riverbank with my heart choking
me when I saw the ice rushing down with the flood
and closing on your canoe-for I could do
nothing to help you, and none of our men were near!
And did I not see the brave man of the ice, when
he heard my cry, come running like the deer and jump
into the river and swim like the otter till he got
to you, and then he scrambled on a big bit of ice and
lifted you and the canoe out of the water as if he
had the strength of a moose-deer, after which he guided
the ice-lump to the bank with one of your paddles!
Forget it! no. I only wish the brave Eskimo was
an Indian.”
“I think you would be offering
to be his squaw if he was,” said the mother
with a short laugh.
“Perhaps I would. But
he’s only an eater-of-raw-flesh!” Adolay
sighed as gently as if she had been a civilised girl!
“But he has gone away to the great ice lake,
so I suppose we shall never see him again.”
“Unless,” said Isquay,
“he comes back this spring with his people, and
our braves have a fight with them-then you
would be likely to see his scalp again, if not himself.”
Adolay made no reply to this; neither
did she seem shocked at the suggestion. Indeed,
Indian women are too much accustomed to real shocking
to be much troubled with shocks of the imagination.
Holding out her moccasin at arm’s-length, the
better to note the effect of her work, she expressed
regret that her father had gone off with the hunters,
for she felt sure he would have been able to allay
the war-fever among the young braves if he had remained
at home.
“Ay, he would easily have put
down Alizay and Magadar; but the old chief can do
nothing, he is growing too old. The young men
don’t mind him now. Besides, he is warlike
as well as they.”
While they were conversing thus, the
young men referred to had finally decided to go on
the war-path-to search for the Eskimo who
had fought with their chief Nazinred, find him and
kill him, and then continue the search for his companions;
for they had set him down as a liar, believing that
no Eskimo had the courage to visit their hunting-grounds
by himself.
To resolve and to act were almost
simultaneous proceedings with those energetic savages.
In a very short time between twenty and thirty of
them left the village in single file, armed with the
deadly gun, besides tomahawks and scalping-knives,
and took their way to a neighbouring creek on the
banks of which their canoes were lying.