Read Ebook: The gold rock of the Chippewa by Lange D Dietrich Merrill Frank T Illustrator

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Ebook has 670 lines and 44888 words, and 14 pages

rader told us to travel to your camp on the lake through which runs the cold river between the Big Lake and the Lake of the Hurons. We travelled to your camp, you have become our father, and now we pray you that you tell us when and where you saw our brother."

"I saw your brother at the Great Sault at the time of the strawberry moon. It was twelve or more moons ago. He had with him a Canadian, and Hamogeesik and his friends tried to rob him of his goods. But your brother showed a bold heart. He talked to the Indians while he was leaning on his gun and in his belt he showed two pistols and a hunting-knife. He told them if harm came to him and his men and if his goods were taken from him, the English soldiers at Mackinac would hear of it and would punish the guilty. He did not say with words that he would fight for his goods, but he told them with his eyes that he and his man would fight. Hamogeesik is a coward and he and his friends slunk away like dogs.

"During the night the moon stood south of the Big Lake and when a gentle wind sprang up from the east, your brother put all his goods in his boat and he and his man sailed away.

"When the sun rose and the Indians learned that your brother had sailed away, they laughed at Hamogeesik and said: 'Hamogeesik, you are a fool, but the white trader is wise and brave,' and they gave him a new Indian name, which means the Brave White Man. Now I have told you all I know of your brother, but to what part or to which bay or island of the Big Lake your brother and his man sailed away I cannot tell you."

GITCHE GUMEE

Bruce Henley realized that the information Ganawa had just given him was not encouraging; but if he had fully comprehended the size of this inland sea, its sheer endless shore-line, which it would take years to explore and search in detail, he would have been utterly discouraged at the well-meant information of Ganawa.

On the usual small map of a school-book, Lake Superior looks quite commonplace and harmless, but no man can stand on its shore without feeling the overwhelming power and mystery of this sea in the heart of a continent. It is different from every other lake on earth.

The distance a boat must sail from its west end at Duluth to the canals which now pass the Sault Sainte Marie is greater than the distance from St. Paul and Minneapolis to Chicago or from Buffalo to New York. Its shore-line would stretch more than half-way across the continent between New York and San Francisco.

On this shore-line there are great bays, more than fifty miles in length, such as Nipigon Bay and Black Bay, where a canoe or small boat might wind about for a whole summer in a maze of channels and among a world of large and small islands, and bold, rocky headlands.

On the other hand, there are great stretches of more than a hundred miles where the rocks, a hundred feet high, drop sheer into the lake, and where it is difficult for even a canoe or a rowboat to find shelter in a storm.

In area, Lake Superior is about equal to the combined areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Its greatest depth runs close to a thousand feet, and depths of three hundred to seven hundred feet a few miles from shore are very common. The water is so clear that in quiet bays one can see a fish at a depth of twenty feet, and the waves and the white spray have the color and appearance of waves and spray of the ocean.

The water is always ice-cold, except in midsummer within a few feet of the surface and in quiet, sheltered bays. But even in midsummer, the surface temperature does not pass fifty degrees.

The low temperature of the water is the reason that bodies of persons drowned in Lake Superior very rarely rise to the surface or drift ashore. The tradition that Lake Superior never gives up its dead is as old as the navigation of the lake by white men, and it existed among the Indians before the arrival of white men.

The writer has found no records of Indians ever travelling over the middle of the lake. Several of the red tribes were bold and skillful canoeists, but they were not sailors. They did, however, occasionally visit the large islands such as Michipicoten and Isle Royale, and in fair weather they paddled boldly along the shore from the Sault to Grand Portage and Duluth, and in one recorded case the Chippewa woman, Netnoqua, and her adopted white son, John Tanner, beat a trader's sailboat on the voyage from the Sault to Grand Portage at the mouth of the Pigeon River. On this trip Netnoqua's canoe must have travelled nearly five hundred miles.

Unfortunately a school-book map cannot tell the story of the Big Lake, but a look at the fine large map of Lake Superior published by the United States Lake Survey suggests at a glance the spell of the Big Lake, of the clear cold water, of calm sunny summer days, of thick gray fogs, and of terrible autumn and winter storms.

Had Bruce and Ray Henley known all these things, their hearts might have failed them and they might never have ventured on the waves of Lake Superior and into the wild forests which, at that time, surrounded the whole of the vast inland sea.

A few days after Bruce and Ganawa had had their talk, the Chippewa suggested that they might travel up the Big Lake a little way.

"My sons," he told his white friends, "we shall learn nothing more of your brother and we shall never find him, if we stay in this camp and fish in the lake and hunt deer in the forest. I have friends who generally make their summer camp on Batchawana Bay. It may be that they can tell us more of your white brother. They may have seen French traders from the Grand Portage or even from a very distant place, which the French call Fond du Lac, which lies many leagues toward the setting sun and means 'the End of the Lake.'

"You must have noticed, my sons," he continued after a pause, "that Hamogeesik and his friends have left our camp. I do not know where they have gone. You should not be afraid of them, although I believe that they are planning some evil, because their tongues are forked and their hearts are black."

A few days later, Ganawa and his two white sons paddled a large birch-bark canoe up-stream. When the water became too swift, Ganawa steered the light craft to a safe landing-place and stepped out into the shallow water.

"My sons," he said, "take our axes, our blankets, and other things and follow me." Then he lifted the canoe on his shoulders and walked away with it on a plain portage trail. After he had walked about a mile he put the canoe in the water again.

"My little son," he said to Ray Henley, "you must now learn to travel in an Indian canoe. Here is a small paddle which I have made for you of cedar wood. It is very light and will not tire your arms."

Then Bruce knelt on a piece of canvas in the bow of the boat. Ray took his place in the middle, while Ganawa knelt in the stern, which is always the place of the steersman.

"My sons," spoke Ganawa, "I shall now steer you over the water of the Big Lake to the beautiful and quiet Bay of Batchawana. You, my little son, must not be frightened if a big wave lifts up our canoe, and you must not put your hands on the sides of the canoe. When your arms are tired you may rest, but you must sit very still, for you know that the water of Gitche Gumee is very cold."

The day was already well advanced when the three travellers started north on the open lake. The sky was clear and there was no wind, but a haze hung on the horizon and made the western shore invisible as Ganawa skirted along the east shore. A broad swell from the north added to the impression that the canoe was headed for the open sea.

"Bruce, I am afraid," Ray whispered. "This lake is so much bigger than Lake George and Lake Champlain in Vermont. It looks like the ocean. I--I am afraid we shall all drown."

"My son, you need have no fear," Ganawa assured the young lad. "The lake is not very big here. If there were no haze in the air you could see the blue forest to the west. I can tell from the sky that no wind is coming, and we are running so close to shore that we could land before the waves grow too big, if a wind did spring up."

They might have been going about three hours, when Ray became more cheerful. "I can see land now," he remarked, "ahead of us to the left."

"You see an island, my son," Ganawa told him. "The French call it Isle Parisienne."

When the sun stood low beyond this island, Ganawa headed the canoe toward a point which is now called Goulais Point. "We sleep here to-night," he said. "It is not good to travel on the Big Lake after dark."

"My father," asked Ray, "I thought you said it was only a little way to that bay where we are going?"

"It is only a little way," Ganawa replied calmly. "After we have slept, we shall soon go to Batchawana Bay."

Ray asked no more questions, but he wondered what distance Ganawa would call a long journey, if he referred to a two-days' trip as "only a little way."

When Ganawa had gone off to gather boughs for the night's camp, Ray could not resist expressing his anxiety to his older brother. "Bruce," he said, "this lake and the country are so big we shall never find anybody. I am not afraid any more to go with you and Ganawa on the lake if you don't go in a storm. But you will see we shall never find Jack Dutton. How can you find anybody here? There are no towns and no farms, just water and woods, and rocks and big hills and islands and a few Indians. Do you think there are wolves and bears in these woods? If there are, I am going to ask Ganawa to let me sleep in the canoe."

Just then Ganawa returned with an armful of boughs, but Ray could not quite muster enough courage to ask him about the danger from wolves and bears.

After a supper of venison, roasted on a fire of driftwood, Ray soon slipped under the blankets on the bed of balsam boughs, and long before Ganawa and Bruce stopped talking he was fast asleep after the many new impressions and the fears and anxieties of the day.

The sun had just risen when Bruce called his young bedfellow. "Come, Ray," he said, gently shaking the lad, "Ganawa is waiting for us. He is afraid the lake will get rough toward noon. There are clouds in the west."

The drowsy lad arose, quickly put on his clothes and walked to the canoe with Bruce, and by the time Ganawa had pushed off, the sharp, cool air of Lake Superior had fully waked up the sleepy boy, who was not accustomed to start on a journey without breakfast.

However, they had started none too early. Before they reached the entrance to the bay, the waves began to roll uncomfortably high. The travellers, including Ray, plied a paddle with short quick strokes, and although the young lad for a while suffered greater fear than the day before, he did not say a word, but paddled hard, with his eyes fixed on the quiet glistening bay ahead.

The sun indicated the approach of noon when they reached the north end of the bay, where they stopped at a small Indian camp near the mouth of the Batchawana River.

The thing that interested Ray most about this camp was a kettle of meat hanging over the fire in front of one of the tepees, for by this time the lad was ravenously hungry.

VAGUE NEWS

Ray had learned at Ganawa's camp that the Indians had no set time for meals, but ate when they were hungry, provided there was something to eat in camp. There was no set time for anything. The women, indeed, did go in the afternoon to cut and bring in the firewood, but as it was now midsummer and no fire was needed in the tepees at night, they were not very regular in attending to this duty; although they were busy at some kind of work all day long.

The men had no such regular hours for anything as a white man must observe for his work. Their duty in times of peace was to provide the camp with meat, and to secure enough fur or dried meat so they could buy of the white traders whatever the family needed: blankets, knives, needles, steel axes, traps, and especially guns and ammunition. There were in an Indian camp, just as there are in a white man's town, men and families who were thrifty, and those who were shiftless and always in trouble.

All trade was carried on by barter, no money circulated in the Indian country, but a beaver skin was the standard of value.

Ray was much pleased when one of the women handed to each of the three visitors a birch-bark dish and a wooden spoon and told them to help themselves to meat in a large kettle in front of her tepee.

The ideas of Indians concerning things that are clean often differed from those of white men. The kettle contained venison and two wild ducks all boiling together; and the Indian woman had not been very careful about picking the birds.

"I can't eat that mess," Ray said to Bruce when he saw Ganawa help himself to a liberal portion. Ganawa smiled at this remark of the white boy. "My little son, our friends offer us good meat," he encouraged the white lad. "Ducks keep their feathers very clean. Fill your dish and eat, for I know you must be very hungry."

Ray was indeed very hungry, and as he began to eat he found that the meat was good, although it had been boiled without salt or other seasoning.

Ganawa learned from the men in this camp that the brave young trader of last spring had sailed his wooden boat along the eastern shore of the Big Lake, that he had reached Michipicoten Bay, which is sheltered from all winds except those that come from the southwest. They had also heard that he had paddled up the Michipicoten River as far as the rapids below the big falls. Whether he had made a camp at that place and remained there during the winter they did not know.

A young man, however, who was known by the name of Roving Hunter, told that about twelve moons ago he and a companion had met a family of Wood-Indians, called by the Chippewas Oppimittish Ininiwac. These Wood-Indians had told him that two white men had made a camp on the Michipicoten River, nine or ten leagues above the big falls. They had also a camp on one of the big lakes of that country. He thought from the account of the Ininiwacs that they meant Lake Anjigami. But he could not understand the language of the Ininiwacs very well, and they might have referred to some other lake, because the Michipicoten carries the water of many lakes down to Gitche Gumee.

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