Fur trade -- North America; Northwest, Canadian -- History; Northwestern States -- History; Trapping
"I have been hunting most every day since Easter, and to some of my
rabbit snares and still traps, cat traps and mink traps. I caught 7
rabbits and 1 marten and I got a fix and 4 partridges, about 500 trout
besides household duties--never leave out morning and Evening prayers
and cooking and baking and washing for 5 people--3 motherless little
children--with so much to make for sale out of seal skin and deer skin
shoes, bags and pouches and what not.... You can say well done old
half-breed woman in Hamilton's Inlet. Good night, God bless us all and
send us prosperity.
"Yours ever true,
"LYDIA CAMPBELL."
* * * * *
"We are going to have an evening worship, my poor old man is tired, he
has been a long way to-day and he shot 2 beautyful white partridges. Our
boy heer shot once spruce partridge."
* * * * *
"Caplin so plentiful boats were stopped, whales, walrusses and white
bears."
* * * * *
"Muligan River, May 24, 1894.--They say that once upon a time the world
was drowned and that all the Esquimaux were drownded but one family and
he took his family and dogs and chattels and his seal-skin boat and Kiak
and Komaticks and went on the highest hill that they could see, and
stayed there till the rain was over and when the water dried up they
descended down the river and got down to the plains and when they could
not see any more people, they took off the bottoms of their boots and
took some little white [seal] pups and sent the poor little things off
to sea and they drifted to some islands far away and became white
people. Then they done the same as the others did and the people spread
all over the world. Such was my poor father's thought.... There is up
the main river a large fall, the same that the American and English
gentlemen have been up to see. [Referring to Mr. Bryant, of
Philadelphia, who visited Grand Falls.] Well there is a large whirlpool
or hole at the bottom of the fall. The Indians that frequent the place
say that there is three women--Indians--that lives under that place or
near to it I am told, and at times they can hear them speaking to each
other louder than the roar of the falls." [The Indians always think the
mist of a waterfall signifies the presence of ghosts.]
"I have been the cook of that great Sir D. D. Smith that is in Canada at
this time. [In the days when Lord Strathcona was chief trader at
Hamilton Inlet.] He was then at Rigolet Post, a chief trader only, now
what is he so great! He was seen last winter by one of the women that
belong to this bay. She went up to Canada ... and he is gray headed and
bended, that is Sir D. D. Smith."
* * * * *
"August 1, 1894.--My dear friends, you will please excuse my writing and
spelling--the paper sweems by me, my eyesight is dim now----"
THE END
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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