Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North Part 17

"What do you mean?"

"Listen, and you shall hear.

"Last year, we had fox furs--very many and very fine. We had risked our lives: we had starved and frozen to get them. All over Ungava we had tracked and trapped in the wilderness.

"Then--see what happened. A trader came among us. He had much money.

It was not like any money we had seen before, but he said it was a new kind of money. And he would give us more of it for our furs than any man had given us before.

"He gave us much to drink. We had a feast, and dancing. The trader gave handsome presents to our wives. Beads and bright cloth for dresses. He gave us tobacco, and whiskey.

"When we did not know what we were doing, he bought our furs. He bought them all. He gave us this new, strange money and much of it.

Then he went away. We fired guns in the air to honor him. We shook hands with him. We thought he was our friend. We promised to be friends with him as long as sun and moon endured.

"He smiled, and waved, and went away--and we, we had nothing of him but the money. It was paper, all of it, very bright and new and green, with printed marks on it we could not read.

"Some shook their heads when he had gone, and said, 'No, no, brothers.

We should not have taken this green paper and given him those furs.'

"But others said, 'Look what he has paid us! We are all rich men. The price is better than we ever had before!'

"The old, wise men said, 'How do you know that it is more, when you do not know how much it is?'

"So, night and day, there was talking to and fro--along the trail by day, around the camp-fire when the sun had set.

"It soon came time for us to send men down to Rigolet, on Hamilton Inlet, there to buy at the Hudson's Bay store the things that we would need in the winter time.

"We sent twelve of the strong young men in their canoes to get the things and bring them home to our tents. We were happy when we thought of all the guns and tobacco, all the flour and the fine clothes so much money would buy.

"They went: and they were gone many days, while we waited in one fixed place for them, and in our minds spent the money many times over."

Then the Indian paused. He was squatting on his haunches, and puffing at his pipe. Mr. Cabot's leg was giving him much pain, but he was too proud to ask the Indian to do anything for him.

The Indian's face grew very stern as he remembered. His tone became as hard as the expression of his face. He looked at Mr. Cabot and clenched his fist. "When our men came to the storekeeper, they walked all about the store. 'I'll take that fine dress,' said one. 'Give me that shotgun,' said another. 'I will have this bag of tobacco,' said a third. Some took flour, and some chose bright ornaments for their wives, and others took candy, and one man got a talking-machine. Some chose the best clothes in the store. They also took much food of every kind, and ammunition for the guns.

"They made great piles of the things on the floor, to take them to the canoes.

"Then they brought out their money to pay for all these things.

"'What is that stuff?' said the storekeeper.

"'That? It is our money. It is what a trader paid us for our furs.'

"'What was his name?'

"'That we do not know. We did not ask. We do not care who buys from us; all we care is that he buys. One man's money is as good as another's.'

"Then the storekeeper laughed in their faces. And he said: 'You have been fooled. You have been fooled as easily as little children. Do you know what this "money" is that you have given me?'

"'No,' they said.

"'It is not money at all,' he told them. 'It is nothing but labels from beer bottles. You cannot have those things you have piled up on the floor. I will take them back and keep them here until you bring me real money for them.'

"Then they said to him, 'But it is all we have. We cannot go back to our people with nothing.'

"He said: 'I cannot help that. It is no fault of mine.'

"They wanted to fight--but it would do no good to kill the agent or drive him away. There would be no one from whom to get things another year.

"'You ought to have brought your furs to me. I would have given you real money for them,' said the agent.

"They went away very sorrowful. After many days they came back to us again. We were very glad when we saw them coming--but we wondered that their canoes were not piled high with the things we had told them to buy.

"When we heard their story we were very sorrowful. We talked about it a great deal. We said, 'What shall we do?'

"Then we made up our minds. This is what we decided. We said: 'The next white man that comes among us we shall hold. We shall not let him go until he pays to us a sum of money, seven hundred dollars, equal to that which we have lost. Since he is a white man he or his friends must make up to us that which we have lost at the hands of a white man.'

"So now you see--you are the man. And it is you that must pay back to us the money."

"But I haven't seven hundred dollars."

"Then you must promise that you will pay it, or get your friends to pay it. These many years you have come here among us. We will trust you for that. It is much that we should trust you--when it is one of your own people who brought such suffering and loss upon us."

"But this is an outrage!" said Mr. Cabot. "I never did anything to you but good. You know that."

"Yes, we know that," said the Indian, gravely. "But we shall leave you here unless you pay. You cannot find your way out alone--even if you could stand and walk upon your broken leg. We shall not carry you from here unless you pay the money. Is that not so?"

He turned to the others, who had not said one word all this while: they had been merely looking on and listening.

"Yes," they said. "He has spoken for us all. As he has said, we shall do. You shall be left here, if you do not pay."

"The Great Spirit has given you into our hands," the Chief declared.

"When you came to us this summer again, we said among ourselves that he had sent you. We did not know that he would cause you to break your leg. We were going to keep you even if this had not happened. Now the Great Spirit has caused this hurt to happen to you. We see, by this, that we were not mistaken. He sent you to us as surely as he sends the fish or the deer when we have need of food. It is for you to choose, if you will pay, and go on with us to the coast--or refuse to pay and be left here in the wilderness to die."

So Cabot had to sign a promise to pay them the $700 for a great rascal whose name neither he nor those Indians will ever know.

They made a stretcher and put him on it, and carried him with them out to the coast.

If they had not done so--his white bones would now be bleaching beside the cold embers of a camp-fire in the desolate interior of Labrador.

Do you blame those Indians for wanting to "take it out" of the first member they met, of a race that bred such a rogue as the man who cheated them?

Dr. Grenfell tells us that for about two hundred years the Eskimo of the interior and the Indians of the coast were at war with one another. There was a battle, long, long ago, in which Indians killed a thousand Eskimo.

But nowadays when the Eskimo and Indians come together they have no quarrel.

There was such a meeting at Nain in 1910. It was the first time the Eskimo had ever seen Indians in that tiny fis.h.i.+ng-village, and they "ran about in circles" in their excitement.

It was on a Sunday afternoon when the Indians appeared. They had come down a stream from the interior, and when they rounded the bend in their boats--of a kind that was strange to the Eskimo--the latter set up a cackle like that of a barnyard when a hawk appears.