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had thus come unbidden and unheralded into their wonderful outlandish world of stillness and whiteness.
We dwelt five days in this strange world, which had been so remote in my studio, and of which I was now a living part. In those five days I came to know all the people, from the chief to the little baby wrapped in its swaddling clothes of moss and bark. I haunted their greasy tents so that I brought home the very odor of their life in my traps when I returned to civilization.
The village was only a temporary one. Here some Cree, Montagnais, and some Indians from the St. Maurice had been living as one family for three or four weeks. It was the time of the New Year’s season, when many of the trappers pack the skins of the fall hunt upon toboggans, journey to the post, make a trade, and return with provisions for the spring hunt. This hap- pened to be a common meeting-place, and here for a few weeks the men lingered to smoke and talk and the squaws to make snow-shoes and the children to set snares for the rabbits. From here the various trails would separate, leading them far apart, black specks in that desolate, unknown Northland.
Down the hill I went next morning with my camera, sketching-pad, and colored chalks toward the village. Back of the tents four or five of the children were coast- ing down the hill on one of the long, narrow toboggans—evidently an old one given to them, for the color had long since changed from the brilliant yellow to a silvery gray and the bow was patched with a strip of birch bark and lashed about many times with strings of caribou. Seeing me with my strange instrument, they stopped their sport and followed me into the camp. I had some mint candies in my pocket, and I gave them each a few; after that we were the best of friends.
Two Indian women, their black hair gath- ered under red handkerchiefs, were chop- ping wood, but upon my approach they immediately went into their tents. Outside the tent, the one nearest the lake, an Indian was packing provisions on a dog-sleigh for a short journey. He was small and very dark —a man about forty. As I and my guides came up he straightened himself and nodded to us. Xavier approached him and asked about a toboggan.
The Edge of the Wilderness
“Yes,” he said, “there was a squaw camping just a little journey over the hill— so”’—he pointed with the stem of his pipe— ‘and she had just made a toboggan.”
‘And would she sell it ?”
“Yes, she might sell it; it was a chance.”
So Xavier left and I spoke to the Indian again through my other guide.
‘Ask him, Skene,” I asked, “if I can go into his tent and make a drawing.”
Skene had to explain very carefully just what I wanted, for the Indian could not understand why one should come so far for such a strange purpose. It was only the traders and an occasional Government sur- veyor who would venture thus in the bitter cold.
“Well, Skene,” Lasked, “‘is it all right for me to go in the tent Ree
) es, mi sieur.,
“And you explained about the drawing ?”’
“Yes; the Indian says he’s going off now for a two days’ journey, but he will wait a little while if you want to draw a portrait of him.”
As I entered the tent I had to step down quite two feet, for the snow had been packed, and the floor, spread deep with balsam boughs, was far below the usuallevel. They all stared at me as I stood inside the canvas walls. The family was lcrge—the squaw, a grown son and daughter, many children, and dogs without number. In the crowded tent home they made a place, the squaw even providing me with a blanket. | I sat down uponit and the floor of balsam boughs. That floor of boughs had at one time been clean and fresh from the trees, but was now dry and covered with the refuse of many days of living and eating and smoking.
The snow just inside the tent-wall had not been packed and upon this little shelf were the blankets, clothing, the provisions —all the personal belongings of the family. Upon little forked sticks hung the cups, the powder-horns, and the beads and crosses of the Church. Just within the door-opening, resting on four green birch posts, was the little sheet-iron stove. The canvas was protected from the red heat of the many-jointed stove-pipe by the rim of an old tin plate. About the stove were the dogs and the cooking utensils.
Such was the interior of an Indian’s win- ter house as I first saw it, and those I came
to know afterward were all of a like sort.