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

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.

He and his companion had paddled up the river to visit the white hunters, but when they came to a stretch of rapids two miles long, his companion became discouraged and said it was too much work to visit the camp of these white men. Perhaps they would not find the camp, even if they carried their canoe past the long rapids and the big falls. So they turned back and did not see the white men. The Ininiwacs also told him that there were many beavers on the small lakes and streams in the Michipicoten country. The three white men were trapping beaver and marten and otter, and they had also traded some beaver skins and marten of the Ininiwacs for knives and beads and needles, but they had no blankets and guns to sell and no fire-water. But Roving Hunter, like the other Chippewas, did not know if the white men were still in the Michipicoten country.

When Ganawa told his white sons what he had learned, Ray was much discouraged. "I told you," he said to Bruce when the two had gone to catch trout, "I told you, Bruce, we could never find anybody in this country. Every time we go anywhere, the country and the lake look bigger and wilder to me. We might find a big island, if it is not too far from shore, but how can you find a camp when nobody knows where it is? None of the Indians know where Jack Dutton is now. And perhaps the stories they have told Ganawa are not true; you know not all stories you hear among white people are true."

To one who has never lived in a wild and thinly populated country it would seem that Ray's conclusion was right, but the facts are that it is much more difficult to disappear in a wild country than it is in a big city. There are so few people in a wild country that a stranger, coming in or passing through, is remembered for a long time by everybody who has seen him. In the same way, both whites and Indians who live in these regions know of each other, although their camps or homes may be more than a hundred miles apart and they may seldom or never see each other.

When Bruce told Ganawa of the fears of the young white boy, the old hunter looked at the lad with a serious but friendly smile.

"My little son," he told him, "you must not forget that in the country of the Big Lake there are not as many people as there are in the white man's country. My friends in this camp have told me much, and they have not told me lies. To-morrow or next day, when the wind has gone down, we shall start for the river Michipicoten. If we find some of the Ininiwac people there, they may be able to tell us where your white brother is camping, and it may be that we shall find him very soon."

The wind went down next day, but Ganawa did not say anything of starting north. A hunter had come to camp with some moose meat and the women had caught plenty of fish in their nets; lake trout, pickerel, and some big brook trout, bigger than Ray had ever seen. These brook trout had come into Lake Superior out of the stream. Such brook trout are found along the shores of Lake Superior to this day. They thrive in the cold, clear water along the shore, and in places where there is little or no fishing they are at times very numerous. White fishermen at the present time call them "coasters."

As far as Bruce and Ray could tell, Ganawa and his friends did nothing all day but eat moose meat and visit. "Indians certainly have a good time," remarked Ray to Bruce.

"Yes," admitted Bruce, "playing Indian is not so bad in summer, but it must be a tough life in winter."

At the close of the third day, Ganawa and his friends had eaten up most of the moose meat and Ganawa told his white sons that in the morning they would leave, provided the lake was quiet.

"Bruce, you had better ask our father," Ray whispered to his friend, "to take plenty of meat along. You know we were all starved when we came to this camp, and I heard our father say that it is twenty-five leagues to the place we are going. Twenty-five leagues, that is seventy-five miles, so you see it will take us two or three days."

The next morning Ganawa started at break of day without apparently thinking of eating any breakfast. This was the usual way for Indians to travel, and the voyageurs of the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company adopted the same method of travel.

A very light fog lay over the water of Batchawana Bay when the travellers started, but it had been dispelled by the time they rounded the point which marks the end of the bay. Here the open lake lay before them in all that splendor of a summer day, which one can experience in such perfection nowhere else but along the wild rocky shores of Lake Superior, when waves and wind seem to have gone to sleep for a long time, and when no fog hides the sight of green hills far and near.

White gulls sailed in the air on almost motionless wings, and from the spruces on shore came the clear whistle of the white-throat, one of the hardiest little songsters of the North, whose cheering voice may often be heard through a thick fog, in which one cannot see ten yards ahead.

Ray was glad to see the lake so quiet, but the feeling that he was travelling along the shore of the ocean came over him again. "My father," he asked timidly, "are we travelling now where the lake is very big?"

"Yes, my son," replied Ganawa, "on our left toward the west the lake is very big, sixty leagues or more; but it is still much bigger, twice as big toward the northwest, toward the large island of Menong and Thunder Bay, where the Sleeping Giant lies on the rocks."

The boy asked no more. He dipped in his light paddle in unison with Ganawa and Bruce, and his fear left him as he came under the spell of the scene which was at the same time beautiful and sublime. Mile after mile they glided along in silence. Some small islands to the northwest had been left behind. Westward the lake stretched out endlessly to the horizon, where the water seemed to rise to blend and unite with the sky. However, the nearness of the shore on their right made the lad feel that they were safe, although the steep brown rocks looked forbidding enough and the forests on the high hills appeared almost black, because the travellers had to look at them against the light of the sun. After a while, the lad grew dull toward the beauty and sublimity of the scene, and his healthy physical nature asserted itself. He had hoped that Ganawa would stop for breakfast at the end of the bay, but the old hunter had not even thought of stopping, to judge from the way he steered out of the bay. The lad was therefore more than glad when Ganawa steered toward a point and remarked, "My sons, we land there to eat."

It seemed to Ray as if it must be almost noon, but Ganawa told him that it was still early in the morning, that they had made about eight leagues and that the place, where by this time they had landed, was called by English traders Coppermine Point. The Indians, he said, had no name for it, because there were too many points like it all along the shore of the Big Lake.

THE WHITE BOY LEARNS

Ganawa seemed now to have plenty of time. He and Bruce lifted the canoe out of the water so that the lapping of the waves would not cause it to chafe on the rocks, for a canoe is very easily injured, and an Indian birch-bark is even more sensitive to rough handling than a white man's canoe.

Much to the surprise of Ray, Ganawa even built a fire, which he did by striking the edge of a piece of flint with a small piece of steel and catching the sparks on a piece of dry soft punk. This method of making fire was an improvement on the bow and fire-stick, which the Indians used before they came into contact with white traders. Steel, flint, and tinder are much more portable than the bow, stick, and block of dry wood used during the Stone Age of the human race, and now revived for an interesting and valuable exercise in woodcraft by the Boy Scouts. It was also easier for a hunter to keep dry a small piece of tinder than to carry or make the older fire-making tools, especially in rainy weather.

Ganawa had another surprise in store for Ray. He produced a small package of tea and a little brown sugar. To have a drink of sweet tea was more of a treat to Ray than a box of the best candy is to a modern boy or girl, and Ray danced and shouted with joy when he saw what Ganawa was doing. Since Bruce and Ray had been with the Indians they had eaten nothing but meat and fish.

Indians were seldom more provident than white boys are in camp. The Indians around Lake Superior knew of only two kinds of vegetable food which they could gather and keep in quantities: wild rice and blueberries. The supplies of both had been exhausted in Winnego's camp and the new crop was not yet ripe.

There was, however, no scarcity of food in camp. Moose meat, venison, grouse, and ducks were all plentiful. With the Indians, there could not be a closed season, because they lived largely on game; but as a general rule, they did not waste any wild meat. If for instance it was too difficult to carry the meat of a moose to camp, the camp was moved to the moose and remained there until the moose was eaten up.

No decent white man or boy, however, should ever kill game in the closed season. The Indian days and the frontier days have passed, and to obey the game laws is as much a duty of a good citizen as to obey other laws. Unless that is done there will soon be no game left to hunt at any time.

One may, however, always hunt with a camera. Animals and birds shot with a camera will keep and be a treasure for a lifetime, and hunting with a camera is a finer and harder sport than hunting with a gun.

As told before, Bruce and Ray did not go hungry, for moose meat or venison, either fresh or dried, is very good food, and there are no better fresh-water fish in the world than the whitefish, lake trout, and brook trout caught in Lake Superior, but Ray often wished for some flour and hominy.

Ganawa gave his white sons about an hour to eat and rest at Coppermine Point. Then he steered the canoe almost straight north and he told them that for the night he intended to make camp at the mouth of the Agawa River.

"That is a long river," he told his sons, "and it runs through a deep and beautiful canyon, where the trout live, those that are colored like the rainbow. My little son should be able to catch some big ones at the mouth of the Agawa," he added with a friendly smile.

"How big are they?" asked Ray.

"That big," answered Ganawa, holding his hands about two feet apart, "and they should weigh five or six pounds, and maybe more than that."

"What big ones!" exclaimed Ray. "I never saw such big ones. I am going after them;" and involuntarily he made a jump and swung his arms so as to rock the canoe.

"My little son," Ganawa reminded him, "we are not in a white man's rowboat. You know the water of Gitche Gumee is very cold for swimming."

"I forgot, Father, I forgot," Ray apologized. "I'll sit still. I know a birch-bark canoe is very cranky, and I don't wish to swim again in this cold water," and Ray started in to paddle as if he alone had to take the canoe to the mouth of the Agawa; until Bruce brought him up short, saying:

"Ray, what are you trying to do? Please keep time with us. You will be tired enough by the time we get to camp. It is nearly thirty miles to the mouth of the Agawa."

There was very little conversation after this. Once or twice Ray asked how deep the lake was along this coast, to which Ganawa could only reply that it was very deep, because in those days no survey of the lake had been made. Modern surveys have shown that the lake is indeed very deep along that shore, in some places dropping to a depth of four hundred and even six hundred feet close to shore, but there are a few shoals, where in still weather one can see the bottom, for they are covered with only seven to fifteen feet of water.

The three kept steadily on their course, and about noon an island became visible just above the horizon straight ahead. On their right, the wooded hills of the shore, rising about a thousand feet above the lake, were constantly in sight a few miles off; but on their left toward the west and the northwest there was nothing but the open lake which to the eyes of the travellers looked as endless as the ocean.

The day had turned very warm and as the sun passed the noon line, the air above the gentle glassy swells of the lake became filled with a hazy vapor.

The island began to look larger as the travellers approached, and Bruce judged that it might be a mile, perhaps two miles in diameter.

"My father," he asked when he noticed that Ganawa was not steering for the channel between the island and the lake, "are we going to camp on the island?"

"My son," replied Ganawa, "do you see that the air is no longer clear on the water, but only high up in the sky? I am afraid we may run into a fog and then we might not be able to find the mouth of the Agawa. The fogs on this lake are very thick."

Ganawa's fear was realized all too soon. In about half an hour the shore disappeared, and then even the island, which a little while ago had seemed to be very close, straight ahead of them, disappeared completely from sight.

For some little time all kept paddling in silence, and Ganawa steered against the cold breeze that had come with the fog. But soon after the breeze had failed Ganawa stopped paddling.

"Wait, my sons," he spoke, "we must make sure that we are going right. It is very dangerous to be lost in a fog on the Big Lake." And then he suddenly uttered a deep rolling yell: "Hoah--hoah!"

"Hoah--hoah," a faint echo came from their right.

"We were headed for the open lake, my sons," remarked Ganawa. "Now paddle carefully straight ahead to our right. We must not miss the island."

Within a few minutes Ray gave a yell, but no echo returned from his weaker and more highly-pitched voice.

Then Bruce tried it and back came the voice: "Oh--hoh!" but not very strong.

"I hear the scream of some gulls," remarked Ganawa. "I think they are sitting on the rocks near shore. We must go slow."

Then Ray tried it again and back came the echo quickly and clearly: "Hi-yi, hi-yi!" and a few minutes later a rather low wooded island suddenly rose out of the fog as if it had just come up from the bottom of the lake.

"Thank God," Bruce said in a low voice. "I knew we were close to the island, but it seemed as if we should never reach it. Thank God we found it. It is the best-looking island I ever saw."

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