John Tanner - A narrative of the captivity and adventures of John Tanner

Knowing it would be in vain to search for the fifty lodges of Assinneboins, we went in pursuit of the Crees, whom our Naudoway had seen, but we unexpectedly met with another band of the same tribe. These were strangers to us, but inquiring for their chief, we went into his lodge and sat down. The women immediately hung the kettle over the fire, and then took out of a sack a substance which was then new and unknown to all of us, and which excited in our party considerable curiosity. When the food was placed before us, we found it consisted of little fishes, scarce an inch long, and all of the same size. When put into the kettle, they were in large masses, frozen together. These little fishes, with the taking and eating of which we afterwards became familiar, are found in small holes which remain open in the shallow ponds, crowded together in such numbers that one may scoop up hundreds of them at once with the hands. After we had finished our meal, the woman who appeared to be the principal wife of the chief, examined our moccasins, and gave us each a new pair. These people were on a journey and soon left us. We now determined to make a sunjegwun, and deposit such of our property as would impede us in a long journey, and go to the plains in pursuit of buffalo. We accordingly followed the path of the Crees, and overtook them in the Prairie.

It was about the middle of winter when we arrived among them, and soon afterwards our tall Naudoway fell sick. His friends applied to an old medicine man of the Crees, called Muk-kwah, (the bear,) requesting him to do something for his relief. “Give me,” said the old man, “ten beaver skins, and I will use my art to relieve him.” As we had left our peltries behind, and killed but few beaver since we started, we could raise only nine, but we gave him a piece of cloth which was more than equal in value to one beaver, and he consented to begin. He prepared his lodge for the first days’ practice before the patient was admitted. He then being brought in, was seated on a mat near the fire. Old Muk-kwah, who was a ventriloquist of but indifferent powers, and a medicine man of no great fame, imitated, as well as he could, various sounds, and endeavoured to make those standing by believe they proceeded from the breast of the sick man. At length he said he heard the sound of bad fire in the breast of the Naudoway, and putting one hand to his breast, the other and his mouth to the back, he continued for some time blowing and rubbing, when he, as if by accident, dropped a little ball upon the ground. After again blowing and rubbing, alternately dropping the little ball, and rubbing it between his hands, he at length threw it into the fire, where it burned, with a little whizzing noise, like damp powder. This did not surprise me at all, as I saw he had taken the precaution to sprinkle a little powder on that part of the floor of the lodge where the ball fell. Perceiving, probably, that what he had now done was not likely to prove satisfactory to his employers, he pretended that there was a snake in the breast of the sick man which he could not remove till the following day, when with similar preparations, and similar mummeries, he seemed to draw out of the body of the sick man, a small snake. One of his hands he kept for some time on the place from which he pretended to have drawn the snake, as he said the hole could not close immediately. The snake he refused to destroy, but laid it carefully aside for preservation lest, as he said, it should get into somebody else. This ill-conducted imposition did not fail to excite the ridicule of the Naudoways, and had no perceptible effect upon the sick man. They soon learned to imitate his several noises, and made him a subject for sarcasm and ridicule. Some of the more sensible and respectable men among the Crees advised us to have nothing more to say to Muk-kwah, as he was esteemed but a fool among them.

It was about this time that I had some difficulty with a Naudoway Indian who was hunting for the Ojibbeway Way-me-ta-goo-she-wug. He had arrived since I had in the country, and his right to hunt in any part of it was certainly no better than mine. He had, in one or two instances, complained of me for hunting where he said I had no right to hunt. Having now found a gang of beavers, I set my traps for them, and, as usual, left them till the next day. On going next morning I found he had followed my trail, taken up all my traps, thrown them into snow, and set his own in place of them. He had caught but one beaver, which I did not hestiate to carry home as my own, and throwing all his traps in the snow, I set mine again as before. The affair soon became public, but all the band, even his own friends, the Naudoways, sided against him, and assured me they would support me in the course I had taken. In affairs of this kind, the customs of the tribe are as a law to the Indians, and any one who ventures to depart from them, can expect neither support nor countenance. It is rare that oppression or injustice in affairs of private right between man and man, take place among the Indians.

We stayed about one month in the prairie, then returned to the lodge where we had left the old woman, thence to our trading-house on Elk River. Here a lodge of Tus-kwaw-go-mees from Canada came into our neighbourhood. I had now separated from the Naudoways and was living by myself. When I first visited the Tus-kwaw-go-mees, and went into their lodge, I did not know who they were. The man presently went out, brought in my snow-shoes, and placed them by the fire to dry and finding they were a little out of repair, he directed an old man to mend them. He then proposed to go and hunt with me until they should be repaired. He killed, in the course of the day, several beavers, all of which he gave me. The kindness of this family of Tus-kwaw-go-mees continued as long as we remained near them. Their language is like that of the Ojibbeways, differing from it only as the Cree differs from that of the Mus-ke-goes.

When the sugar season arrived, I went to Elk River and made my camp about two miles below the fort. The sugar trees, called by the Indians she-she-ge-ma-winzh, are of the same kind as are commonly found in the bottom lands on the Upper Mississippi, and are called by the whites “river maple.” They are large, but scattered and for this reason we made two camps, one on each side of the river. I remained by myself in one, and in the other were the old woman and the little children. While I was making sugar, I killed plenty of birds, ducks, geese, and beaver. There was near my camp a large brine spring, at which the traders used to make salt. The spring is about thirty feet in diameter, the water is blue, and, with the longest poles, no bottom can be found. It is near the bank of the Elk River, between the Assinneboin and Sas-kow-ja-wun, about twenty days’journey from the trading-house at Lake Winnipeg. There are, in that part of the country, many brine springs and salt lakes, but I have seen no other as large as this.

At this trading post I met a gentleman who took much notice of me, and tried to persuade me to accompany him to England. I was apprehensive he might leave me there, and that I should not be able to reach my friends in the United States, even if any of them were living. I also felt attached to hunting as a business and an amusement; therefore I declined his invitation. Among other Indians who assembled at this trading-house in the spring, came our old companion and friend, Pe-shau-ba, and, as usual, they expended the products of their winter and spring hunts, their sugar, etc. for whiskey. After they had drank all they could purchase, old Net-no-kwa gave them an additional ten gallon keg, which she had hid the year before under the ashes back of the trader’s house. Their long debauch was attended by mischievous quarrels, and followed by hunger and poverty. Some one proposed, as a method of relieving the pressure of hunger, now becoming severe, that a hunting match should be made, to see who, of all those that were assembled, could take, in one day, the greatest number of rabbits. In this strife I surpassed Pe-shau-ba, who had been one of my first instructors in hunting, but he was yet far my superior in taking large animals.