Canadian Wilds Part 14

But the Indian trapper again uses his judgment and waits till the first violent struggles are over, and the bear somewhat quiet, then the hunter takes careful aim and puts a bullet into his ear, being always at pretty close range. The ball pa.s.ses clear thru the head, killing the bear instantly and making a wound that bleeds profusely, so that when the skinning process takes place, there is no blood in the body. The skin is cut around the throat, skinned towards the body and the head left as it is. However, this is digressing from the subject at issue.

The small animals I have mentioned when caught with snow on the ground, are simply walked on top of by the hunter's snowshoes; once he is pinned down so that he cannot move, the trapper slips his left hand under snowshoes and secures the fox or whatever it is by the neck with a tight grip of the thumb and fingers. Then the snowshoe is withdrawn until it holds the hind quarters only; the hand with the head and neck is elevated until the body is extended to its utmost.

The right hand now feels for the heart just below the bottom rib; it may not be there at once, but it will come. When the animal feels the grip tightening on his throat the sense of strangulation causes the heart to jump down and up in the body in the most violent manner.

This the hunter seizes at one of the downward pumps, catches it between the thumb and fingers of the right hand; then pulling the body in one direction and the heart in the other, the heart-strings snap. The animal gives a convulsive quiver and you chuck him down dead.

Oh yes! it is much better than the brutal way of banging them on the head with the axe handle or a pole, and much more humane because the animal is dead at once, almost as quick as if shocked with electricity. Animals trapped in the late fall, or early snow, cannot be held by the snowshoe, therefore some other means must be taken. It does not do to take any risks of being bitten, for animals after struggling in a trap for some time, become more or less mad, consequently the venom getting into one's blood might cause a very bad wound to heal, especially as the man who hunts cannot avoid the cold getting into the sore, and then should such happen one cannot foretell what the sequel may be.

To avoid therefore all mishaps the hunter draws his belt axe, and cuts a forked young birch or alder, the handle part being about four feet long, at the extremity of which a fork is left with p.r.o.ngs of five or six inches long.

Presenting this to the trapped beast, he snaps at it; the trapper watches his chance and deftly slips the fork over his neck and with a quick downward push, marten, fox or fisher is secured. The left hand is exchanged for the forked stick, the right foot is placed on his hind quarters to keep him from clawing, then go for his heart with the right hand. One trying for the first time may have some little difficulty, but after a few animals have pa.s.sed thru his hands he will as well as I do, know the ART OF PULLING HEARTS.

During my many years as a fur trader, part of the time has been pa.s.sed on the frontier where opposition is keen and hunters, both Indians and whites, are careless in preparing their peltries for market. As long as they are dried in a way to keep, is all sufficient for them. Musquash will be simply drawn over a bent willow and dried in the blazing sun or near the camp fire. The little animal is hastily skinned and considerable fat is left on the skin, which, by being subjected to a quick and great heat, penetrates the skin and it is consequently grease burnt.

The greater number of beaver skins one gets about the Canadian villages are badly gotten up. This, in a great measure, is due to the French custom of buying by weights instead of by the skin, the hunters reasoning that the more meat, grease, flippers, etc., they can leave on, the greater number of pounds gross.

Mink and otter are the two hardest animals we have to skin clean, and the majority we get on the frontier go to the London markets in a shameful state, and must tend towards their decrease in value. I have seen foxes, minks, martens and musquash as taken crumpled like rags from the same bag. It was a great wrench for me after handling skins of every sort positively prime, and as clean as the paper upon which this is printed, for twenty years to find myself on the frontier buying such burnt and crumpled skins, as I found was the rule rather than the exception.

Yes, it was a pleasure to barter the furs hunted by our inland Indians; every skin was brought to the post hair side in. If the Indian had a bear, the two flanks were turned in lengthwise of the skin, then the hide was folded twice, the thick part of the head and shoulders being brought down on top of all as a protection to the thinner parts. Large beaver were folded crosswise of the skin twice, making a kind of portfolio about eighteen inches wide by twenty-eight to thirty inches long. Small beaver were folded once lengthwise of the skin, and these came to us as a rule, two placed inside of each large beaver as they went.

In the interior where the hunters have well defined grounds to trap on they, by self-interest, protect the beaver and kill comparatively few young ones. Our average for the whole year would probably be one small one to two middle or full grown. The martens are tied flat the whole length of the skins in bundles of ten each, with a thin splinter of cedar wood on top and bottom to prevent them from being crumpled in any way. Minks are treated just as carefully. Foxes, fisher and lynx are folded one crosswise and then placed either inside of beaver or bear skins. Thus nothing is exposed from an Indian's pack of furs, either to view or friction, but strong leather. Musquash, like all other skins except bear and beaver, are skinned from the head down and each skin is cased, which makes them clean, flat and nice to handle.

As their hunts are made during the cold months when the animals have their primest coats, and as every particle of flesh or grease is frost sc.r.a.ped, the skin lastly washed on the case and then the pelt dried by the action of frost alone, it can be readily understood with such care as I have tried to explain, that we get the very finest and most pleasing skins that go out of the country. The Indian's business is to hunt and bring the fruits of the chase or traps to his wigwam; it is his wife and daughters' duty to skin and cure the pelts. The Indians have the pride and ambition to vie with their sister matrons of the forest as to who will get up the cleanest, best and "well prepared skins."

CHAPTER XXVI.

DARK FURS.

It is not perhaps generally known that the surroundings of most animals have a primary effect on the color of their hair. Beaver, otter, mink and musquash are dark or light colored according to the water they live in. Clear, cold water lakes produce skins of a deep glossy black, muddy lakes on the other hand, furnis.h.i.+ng light colored fur.

Having studied this in my own hunting and trapping, I have often surprised an Indian when trading his skins by saying: "You trapped this and this skin in a clear water lake," and he has admitted it as true. Another peculiar fact in relation to deep, cold water lakes is that, while the skins they produce are of the finest quality, they are also much smaller in size than those trapped in brown or muddy water, and this applies to all the animals I have mentioned.

Musquash killed in clear water lakes are about two-thirds the size of those trapped in gra.s.sy, sluggish rivers, and it is the same with mink. This rule holds good also with land animals, such as marten, those living in and resorting to black spruce swamps being invariably dark colored, whereas those in mixed pine, birch and balsam hills are larger and lighter in color.

For seven years I trapped on a chain of lakes, five in number. One of these lay off at one side, not over a quarter of a mile from the other four; it was of considerable extent, possibly a mile and a half long by a quarter wide. This lake was very clear and deep, and used to freeze over two weeks later than the others, and open that much earlier in the spring.

On the borders of this lake, which was known as "Clear Water Lake,"

were two beaver lodges, which I preserved with the greatest care, only trapping a few out of each lodge every fall, thus keeping up the supply, and finer and more beautiful skins I never handled. This valley being within a few miles of the post, I got the Indian who owned the lands to make over his rights for a consideration, and I kept these lakes as a home farm or preserve as long as I remained in that district.

It was in the upper one of these lakes that I trapped the most extraordinary beaver of my experience, he having only one hind foot, the other feet having been gnawed or twisted off in traps. The Indian owner of the lands, when selling his good will, told me of this desperate and cunning old animal and I pa.s.sed many a long, solitary evening in my canoe to get a shot when the knowing old card broke water.

I kept two or three traps well set, with a very remote possibility of his putting his only remaining foot therein. Beaver medicine and castorum would not allure him, and the thought occurred to me to try anise seed oil, which I did, and on my next visit had the satisfaction of pulling him up drowned at the end of the chain. The wounds of the cut off legs were so thoroughly healed that when I skinned him there was not even a pucker of the skin in the places where the legs should have been. It is a marvel how he managed to navigate the waters of his native pond, but as the boy said, "I don't know how he did it, but he did."

Another freak that I caught in those same lakes was the only albino beaver that I ever saw. She had a creamy white fur, with pink eyes, pink toe nails and pink scales on her tail. This may not have been phenomenal, but it was a rare skin for all that. At a conservative estimate I must have handled a couple hundred thousand beaver skins in my life, but this is the only instance that I ever saw a white one.

The Clear Water Lake, not to be behind in oddities, produced a dwarf beaver. I caught him late in the fall in a trap set for musquash, the other lakes being frozen over. He was about the size of an ordinary full grown rat, but was fully developed and must have been two years old. At first I thought he might be of a second litter, but I thought this was very improbable, if not quite outside of nature, so I carefully examined the teeth and organs, and found to intents and purposes he was a full grown beaver.

Writing of full grown beaver puts me in mind of those early trapping days, and the logic of a certain Indian. Then we used to pay so much a skin for beaver, and graded the skins as big, middling and small.

In culling this man's skins I threw one into the pile of middling ones and he immediately said: "That's a big one," and I said it was not and compared it with several of the large ones. He, however, stoutly maintained it was a big one and said, "Look at the white men, there are big ones and small ones, but they are men the same." I stood corrected and placed the disputed skin with his better grown and developed relatives, the Indian gave an almost audible smile, and things went on amicably.

On the watershed between the valley of the St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay, marten are prime on the first of October. Beaver, otter and mink are prime on the 25th of October and fox and lynx the 15th of November. I have often seen the question asked in the H-T-T as to the time the several kinds of fur are prime in different localities, and the above dates can be depended upon for the lat.i.tude mentioned.

It pays the trapper to have his trap-houses made and his traps hung up ready to set and bait immediately when the skins are prime. They are easily cleaned and command a much higher average, whereas if the majority of skins in a man's pack are unprimed or staged, it takes away from the value of the few really few good ones.

The buyer, to get these few merchantable skins, has to put some kind of value on the culls to make a buy, but in reality the trader is only paying for the few good ones and the trapper loses the other skins. And who is to blame? Trappers have been told time and again that trapping too early in the season is against their best interests; nevertheless they go blindly on, killing the poor beasts that have little or no value, and then they marvel at the scarcity of the fur-bearing animals and the little return they have to show for a couple of months' hard work.

No. If there is any line that wants protection and a cast iron union between the men connected with the industry, it is the fur trade. All are, or ought to be, interested in the keeping up of the supply and quality, the trapper, wholesale man and manufacturer alike. Let the last two unite and not buy unprime skins, and the former for want of a market would very soon hunt in season only.

In this northern country fur-bearing animals continue prime much longer than elsewhere. The trappers and hunters (Indians) only come down from the interior from the tenth of June, and all the way down to the end of the month. Thus the month of June is the fur buying month.

Prior to the Paris Exposition a fair and legitimate trade was possible, the Indians got a fair and reasonable price for their skins, and as a rule were reasonably honest. But that year marked the demoralization of the fur trade on this coast. Opposition became keen and fur buyers from Quebec, Boston, New York and Paris, came to the different places of resort of the Indians, bidding up raw furs to prices out of all reason. The consequence of which were, and are, that the Indian did not pay his furnisher, but kept up his finest furs to sell to these parties for high cash prices.

Other traders followed the fur buyers, and sold the Indians useless trashy articles. The result is the Indians have to leave for the bush ill supplied with warm clothings, provisions, etc.--what he actually requires. A large portion of his hunt has been sold for abnormal prices, but the proceeds has done him no perceptible good. On the contrary, his lot is much worse than it was before. Seeing his advances have not been paid, the resident trader will not supply these men again.

I take about the Post of Seven Islands as perhaps being the place where the highest prices have been paid for three years, 1899, 1900 and 1901, and give the readers of Hunter-Trader-Trapper the figures.

They are as follows:

Bears, large, black from $15.00 to $25.00 Bears, small, black, from 6.00 to 12.00 Beaver per lb. 3.50 to 4.50 Fisher, from 6.00 to 10.00 Fox, red, from 3.50 to 5.50 Fox, cross, from 4.00 to 25.00 Fox, silver, from 100.00 to 335.00 Lynx, from 4.00 to 7.00 Marten, from 10.00 to 20.00 Minks, from 2.50 to 4.00 Otters, land, from 15.00 to 22.00 Wolverine, from 4.00 to 6.00

These are the princ.i.p.al furs we have on the Coast and will show what absurd prices were paid. We know that furs realized good prices at the last London sales, and some few, very few, bought were no doubt well worth these high prices.

The part where the most harm was done the trade was the anxiety of some of these buyers to get the furs at almost any price. Almost any kind of a marten would be paid $10 for. Such martens that the writer of this article has bought a few years ago for $1.25, a very choice marten, large, dark and well furred, one we will say out of two or three hundred, such a one as we ordinarily paid $7 for, has brought $18 to $20. Martens and otters especially, they seem to have gone perfectly crazy to get.

Two years ago a man, further down the Coast paid $720 for what I was told was a very ordinary Silver Fox. He went to Paris during the Exposition with the fox to sell. I never heard if he got his money back. Had he paid $150, he would have got the fox just the same for this was the price being paid along the Coast during that year.

The rivers are the highways of the Indians and the mouths of most of the big ones are the summer camping grounds. At these places are trading posts where they barter and sell their winter's catch, get new supplies for another year, and load their canoes again in September for another nine or ten months in the Far North Wilds.

When the reaction comes, as it must come, it will be pretty hard to convince the Indians that their martens are only worth $5 or $6. The bottom is bound to fall out, and many of these men, who are paying the present prices, must go to the wall. With unlimited money, any fool can buy skins. But it requires a judge and careful man to buy with discretion.

CHAPTER XXVII.

INDIANS ARE POOR SHOTS.

During a residence of many years among four different tribes of Indians, I found, with very few exceptions, they were poor shots, either with the gun or rifle.

When one considers that from young boyhood they have been in the habit of using a gun almost daily, and their very living depends, in great manner, on accurate shooting, their poor marksmans.h.i.+p is to be wondered at, nevertheless such is the case. A good wing shot is a rarity among the Indians.

The Montagnais of the Labrador and North Sh.o.r.e of the Gulf of St.

Lawrence, are no exception, and this in a country where most of the wild fowl are killed flying. It is admitted they kill wild geese and ducks while on their pa.s.sage north and south, but this is only possible from the immense numbers of birds and a lavish expenditure of ammunition.

It is a common thing for an Indian getting his spring outfit to go among the islands to take from the trader one hundred pounds of shot, a keg of twenty-five pounds of powder and two thousand five hundred percussion caps (they use muzzleloaders). They always take about 20 per cent. more caps than are necessary to fire the powder, as they explain, to make up for what they drop.

The Indians are very partial to loon; but, as a rule, it is the most expensive food they eat. A great number alight on Lake Ka-ke-bon-ga on their way north in the spring. This happens about the time the Indians arrive at the Post to trade their winter catch of furs.