Owindia | Page 4

down and eaten with the dried meat; while the
steaming tea, sipped out of small tin cups, and taken without sugar or
milk, was the "loving cup" of that dark-visaged company. And far into
the morning hours they sat sipping their favourite beverage, and
discussing the last tidings from the woods. Every item of news is
interesting, whether from hunter's camp, or trapper's wigwam. There
are births, marriages, and deaths, to be pondered over and commented
upon; the Indian has his chief, to whom he owes deference and vows
allegiance; he has his party badge, both in religion and politics; what
wonder then that even the long winter night of the North, seemed far
too short for all the important knotty points which had to be discussed
and settled!
"You have had good times at the little Lake," said Peter, a brother of
Michel's, who was deliberately chewing a piece of dried meat held tight
between his teeth, while with his pocketknife he severed its connection
with the piece in his hand, to the imminent peril of his nose.
"I wish I were a freedman: I should soon be off to the Lake myself! I
am sick of working for the Company. I did not mind it when they set
me to haul meat from the hunters, or to trap furs for them, but now they
make me saw wood, or help the blacksmith at his dirty forge: what has
a 'Tene Jua' to do with such things as these?"
"And I am sick of starving!" said another. "This is the third winter that
something has failed us,--first the rabbits, then the fish ran short; and
now we hear that the deer are gone into a new track, and there is not a
sign of one for ten miles round the Fort. And the meat is so low" added
the last speaker, "that the 'big Master' says he has but fifty pounds of
dried meat in the store, and if Indians don't come in by Sunday, we are

to be sent off to hunt for ourselves and the wives and children are to go
to Little Lake where they may live on fish."
"We have plenty of fish, it is true," said Accomba; "we dried a good
number last Fall, besides having one net in the lake all the winter; but I
would not leave the Company, Peter, if I were you,--you are better off
here, man, in spite of your 'starving times!' You do get your game every
day, come what may, and a taste of flour every week, and a little barley
and potatoes. I call that living like a 'big master.'"
"I had rather be a free man and hunt for myself," put in another speaker;
"the meat does not taste half so good when another hand than your own
has killed it; and as for flour and barley and potatoes, well, our
forefathers got on well enough without them before the white man
came into our country, I suppose we should learn to do without them
again? For my part, I like a roe cake as well as any white man's bread."
"But the times are harder than they used to be for the Tene Jua (Indian
men) in the woods," said Accomba with a sigh; "the deer and the
moose go off the track more than they used to do; it is only at Fort Rae,
on the Big Lake, that meat never seems to fail; for us poor Mackenzie
River people there is hardly a winter that we are far from starvation."
"But you can always pick up something at the Forts:" replied a former
speaker; "the masters are not such bad men if we are really starving,
and then there is the Mission: we are not often turned away from the
Mission without a taste of something."
"All very good for you," said Michel's wife; "who like the white man
and know how to take him, but my man will have nothing to say to him.
The very sight of a pale face makes him feel bad, and sends him into
one of his fits of rage and madness. Oh, it has been dreadful, dreadful,"
continued the poor woman, while her voice melted into a truly Indian
wail, "for my children I kept alive, or else I would have thrown myself
into the river many a time last year."
"Bah," said Peter, who being the brother of Michel, would, with true
Indian pertinacity, take part with him whatever were his offences; and,
moreover, looking with his native instinct upon woman as the
"creature" of society, whose duty it was to endure uncomplaining,
whatever her masters laid upon her. "Bah; you women are always
grumbling and bewailing yourselves; for my part, if I have to