Canadian Wilds: Tells About the Hudson's Bay Company, Northern Indians and Their Modes of Hunting, Trapping, Etc.Hunter, Martin
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Canadian Wilds: Tells About the Hudson's Bay Company, Northern Indians and Their Modes of Hunting, Trapping, Etc.
Hunter, Martin
Hudson's Bay Company; Hunting -- Canada
We crossed the country some years ago between St. Maurice and Lake
St. John. It was at the very best time of the year to see game, being
in the month of May, when every living thing is full of life and
moving about. The trip took us seven days going; coming back by
another route we gained one day. On the whole of that journey through
bush, lakes and rivers we only fired two cartridges, whereas our
small gill-net gave us splendid fish each camping place.
Another trip I remember, this time in the winter, accompanying the
men who carried the winter despatches between Pic River and
Michipecoten, a distance of 120 miles each way. I was prevailed upon
to take a rifle, as the route went over a very high mountain where
deer (caribou) were seen every year by the men. Well, I suppose they
told the truth; but I carried that gun 240 miles without firing a
shot. No, as a possible help to stave off starvation, commend me to a
net and snare in preference to a gun.
In my younger days in the Hudson's Bay Company's service I put in
many years in what we call the Moose Belt in Quebec--that is, from
the St. Maurice River on the east to Lake Nipissing on the west from
the Kepewa on the south to near the height of land on the north. All
inside these boundaries was teeming with moose. They were killed in
the most wanton manner by Algonquin Indians and the lumbermen, in
many instances only the hide being taken, and the meat left. Our own
Indians, who lived year in and year out in the country, never wasted
a particle of meat. If they killed more than the family could consume
during the winter months, before the warm days of April set in, it
was carefully collected, cut in strips and smoke dried for summer
use. While attending to the curing of the meat, the thrifty squaw
dressed the hides. These were cut up and made into moccasins and
traded at our store during their stay about the post in summer. An
ordinary sized hide would cut up into about twenty-two pairs of shoes
(without tops) and commanded $1.50 per pair, we selling them for the
same price in cash to lumber concerns, making our profit on the goods
bartered.
The young Indian the year prior to getting married always exerted
himself to show how many moose he could kill. This was their boast
and pride to show they were good providers of food. The Indian nature
to kill would manifest itself at this time, and the numbers killed by
some of the young slips is hardly to be credited. Older men with
families never killed for the sake of killing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Canadian Wilds: Tells About the Hudson's Bay Company, Northern Indians and Their Modes of Hunting, Trapping, Etc. — John Shaqi
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