Young Alaskans in the Far North by Emerson Hough (ereader android .txt) 📕

“Tuesday, June 24th.—Not quite a month out from Athabasca Landing. Have come 553 miles. Steamboat now for the rest of the way north. She is a side-wheeler, pretty big, with several berths and a dining-room. I think she will be pretty well crowded.

“More dogs here. To-day three or four big huskies ate up a little Lapland dog puppy which one of the men had brought along to take home with him. They broke through the bars of the crate and hauled out the puppy and ate him alive! Don’t like the looks of them after dark.

“There is a mission school here. The Church people are against fur-hunting. I don’t see what else the natives can do. If you wanted to buy any fur here you would have to go to the independents and pay a big price. This place had very little to eat left in it when we got here. Not much fish just now, as the river is too high. The cargo of the mission scows is not over the portage yet. Some people of the Anglican Church go north with us, too, also four Northwest Mounted Police, who go to Fort McPherson and Herschel Island. They relieve others who will go out. Lonesome life, I should think.

“Wednesday, June 25th.—Loaded and got off 3 p.m. They call this the Big Slave, then Mackenzie River, but I can’t see why it isn’t just the same river that starts back in the Rocky Mountains. Passed the little steamboat St. Marie. The bishop of this country is on it, also many Indians. Our boat asked him if the ice was out of Great Slave Lake, and he says yes. Tied up very late at night.

“Thursday, June 26th.—Have seen no game. The banks are low and very monotonous. Not very pretty. Most people are playing cards on the boat. No one to talk to but ourselves. Have to slow up because the head wind is filling the scows with water.

“There is very little darkness now, even at midnight, although there is a sort of sunset even yet.

“Friday, June 27th.—Tied up twelve miles from Resolution, in delta of the Slave River. Low marshes all around. Some men on the boat, traders and others, took canoe and paddled over to the post.

“Saturday, June 28th.—This is my birthday. If I were home might have a cake or something. Other boys and Uncle Dick very nice to me. Went out into the lake, but did not dare to chance the waves, so came back in the channel. Our captain is uneasy because he is afraid the independent traders will get into Resolution before we do. Some competition even here. Wind dropped at 9 p.m. We could have gone on, but the Hudson’s Bay always waits if it gets a chance.

“Sunday, June 29th.—The St. Marie and the Caribou, an independent trading-boat, both sighted. Both probably will beat us in to Resolution.

“Monday, June 30th.—Loafed another day. Other boats passed out at night. We started out late. Pulled the nose out of our sturgeon nose scow and she began to settle. All that the men and three pumps could do to keep her from sinking. Got her in shallow water at last and tried to patch her up. This was the Fort Nelson cargo, and it is ruined. Boat covered with smeared calico and blankets and everything else, hung up to dry. Pretty mess they will have at Fort Nelson—but this is all they’ll have for another year! Nobody seems to care.

“Tuesday, July 1st.—Anchored off Fort Resolution, and went ashore. Indian tepees all over the beach. Hundreds of dogs. Two trading-posts here, a mission school, and a church. Mixed scenes, mostly savage. There is a York boat down from Fort Rae. Says they are starving there. Plenty of fish here. Hudson’s Bay boat lost in this race. Independent goods are now eighty miles farther down the river than we are. Left a Mounted Policeman and a scientist here. No Mounted Policeman ever had a horse up here.

“They say that the damaged cargo in the Fort Nelson boat will lose half its value. Fort Nelson is up the Liard River, and it takes twenty-five days of tracking from the mouth of the Liard in the Mackenzie.

“As we go down the edge of the Great Slave Lake—the big river runs through it—everything is quiet and the sky is bright. Once in a while we see a belt of clear water now. Have been on muddy water ever since we started out at Athabasca Landing. Fort Resolution as we leave it under the morning sun makes a pretty picture.

“All sorts of people on the boat. One Oxford man, an interpreter and Indian agent, and his five breed children. Another ex-Indian agent who is going north with the last of the treaty payments. These old-timers in the north country tell us all kinds of stories. Wish I had time to put them down. People up here get about one mail a year. One winter mail comes across the mountains from Dawson. They say a mail goes into Fort McPherson from Dawson every winter, too. Three years ago four members of the Mounted Police were lost trying to make it across from McPherson to Dawson. Their names were Inspector Fitzgerald, Constables Taylor and Kenny, and Carter, a special constable. They all starved. They are buried at Fort McPherson. Their guide was Carter, and he got lost. The inspector of the Mounted Police who is to go to Fort Herschel was in the Boer War, in Africa, far south of the Equator.

“Uncle Dick tells me that the names of the tribes through which we will pass on our big journey are, first, the Crees, who go as far north as McMurray and Chippewyan; then the Great Chippewyan people, scattered here over a big country; then the Dog Ribs, the Yellow Knives, the Slavies, the Mountain Slavies, the Rabbit or Hare people, the Loucheux, and the Eskimos. The Loucheux and the Eskimos lap over along the southern edge of the Arctic. We are among the Dog Ribs here. Their canoes are very small, made out of spruce and birch bark, and so narrow you would not think they could float anything at all. That’s as big as they can get the bark up here.

“Now we begin to see sledges and snow-shoes and meat-racks. They have to put everything up high so the dogs can’t get them. Dried fish everywhere, or what is left of the last winter’s supply. Looks like we were in the North at last. Father Le Fèvre told me that at Chippewyan they put up over a hundred thousand ‘pieces of fish’—that means a whole fish each—every year for the people and the dogs.

“English mission at Hay River has seventy scholars. They are put in red coats. They live on fish and potatoes. We leave at Hay River the wife of the Anglican minister. There are two young ladies stationed there also. The minister’s wife had been gone for two years—outside, as we call it in Alaska. Found a garden here, quite a potato-field, also fresh pie-plant, lettuce, and radishes, all big enough to eat on July 1st. Many fat dogs. Don’t know whether the natives eat these or not. This country under the Arctic Ocean is different from what we thought it was—not so cold, and more civilized in some ways.

“Our ex-Indian agent leaves us here to pay treaty money. A young teacher leaves us also here for the Anglican mission. We find here, much to our wonder, on one of the little mission steamboats which beat us out from Fort Smith word from the two good Sisters with whom we traveled on the scows up to Fort McMurray. One was left at Chippewyan and one at Resolution. Here also is the judicial party which we left back at Fort McMurray. They have come down on the St. Marie. We say good-by here to Father Le Fèvre. Several church dignitaries about here. The Anglican Church seems more prominent here than at most of the posts.

“I went out with an Indian boy here to run his nets, and we took out an awful lot of fish—one lake trout of thirty-three and a half pounds, and one of twenty-five pounds, five fine whitefish, and four fish that I never saw. The boy called them ‘connies.’ Inconnu is the real name for this fish. The first French voyageurs who saw this fish did not know what it was, so they called it ‘unknown.’ It looks something like a salmon and something like a sucker. Its mouth is rather square. Its flesh is something like that of a whitefish, and it is used a great deal as food. We don’t like any fish as well as the whitefish right along. They tell me a lake trout has been caught here weighing forty-four and a half pounds. The boat captain says he has seen one weighing sixty-three pounds.

“Our steamer left at 1 a.m., but when well under way remembered that it had forgotten the mail-bags! So we turned around and went back. If we had not done so the people north of here would not have had any mail this year. The Hudson’s Bay Company has funny ways.

“Wednesday, July 2d.—Off for Fort Providence. Running better, for scows are lighter loaded now. In the morning came into Beaver Lake, which they say is the head of the true Mackenzie, not at Fort Smith. I suppose the lower point is more correct; at least the other map-makers say so, in spite of what John believes. But it’s all one river.

“Many ducks, and this seems a breeding-ground. A great many islands. Shores are broken. The river or lake is about three-quarters of a mile to three miles wide. At 2.40 in the afternoon we got into what they call the Mackenzie River proper. It is only about a half to three-quarters of a mile wide. It is bold and clearer than the other waters we have been traveling on.

“Late in the evening reached the shores of Fort Providence, a very sightly spot. The mission school formed their red-clad girls in a platoon on the bank, waiting for us. Every girl had her hands folded in front of her. The boys were in ranks, too. They wore a gray uniform. The balcony of the building back of them was filled with the older girls and with the Sisters in a dark sort of uniform. All the flags were flying. The