Part 21 (2/2)
This is ill.u.s.trated by the forests of the Rockies, by the No-Man's Land south of Hudson Bay and by the Arctics. Wherever the trapper has come destroying grisly and coyote and wolverine, the p.r.o.ng horn and mountain-sheep and mountain-goat and wapiti and moose have increased.
But the trapper stands for something more than a game warden, something more than the most merciful of destroyers. He destroys _animal_ life--a life which is red in tooth and claw with murder and rapine and cruelty--in order that _human_ life may be preserved, may be rendered independent of the elemental powers that wage war against it.
It is a war as old as the human race, this struggle of man against the elements, a struggle alike reflected in Viking song of warriors conquering the sea, and in the Scandinavian myth of pursuing Fenris wolf, and in the Finnish epic of the man-hero wresting secrets of life-bread from the earth, and in Indian folk-lore of a Hiawatha hunting beast and treacherous wind. It is a war in which the trapper stands forth as a conqueror, a creature sprung of earth, trampling all the obstacles that earth can offer to human will under his feet, finding paths through the wilderness for the explorer who was to come after him, opening doors of escape from stifled life in crowded centres of population, preparing a highway for the civilization that was to follow his own wandering trail through the wilds.
APPENDIX
When in Labrador and Newfoundland a few years ago, the writer copied the entries of an old half-breed woman trapper's daily journal of her life.
It is fragmentary and incoherent, but gives a glimpse of the Indian mind. It is written in English. She was seventy-five years old when the diary opened in December, 1893. Her name was Lydia Campbell and she lived at Hamilton Inlet. Having related how she shot a deer, skinning it herself, made her snow-shoes and set her rabbit snares, she closes her first entry with:
”Well, as I sed, I can't write much at a time now, for i am getting blind and some mist rises up before me if i sew, read or write a little while.”
Lydia Campbell's mother was captured by Eskimo. She ran away when she had grown up, to quote her own terse diary, ”crossed a river on drift sticks, wading in shallows, through woods, meeting bears, sleeping under trees--seventy miles flight--saw a French boat--took off skirt and waved it to them--came--took my mother on board--worked for them--with the sealers--camped on the ice.
”As there was no other kind of women to marrie hear, the few English men each took a wife of that sort and they never was sorry that they took them, for they was great workers and so it came to pa.s.s that I was one of the youngest of them.” [Meaning, of course, that she was the daughter of one of these marriages.]
”Our young man pretended to spark the two daughters of Tomas. He was a one-armed man, for he had shot away one arm firing at a large bird....
He double-loaded his gun in his fright, so the por man lost one of his armes,... he was so smart with his gun that he could bring down a bird flying past him, or a deer running past he would be the first to bring it down.”
”They was holden me hand and telling me that I must be his mother now as his own mother is dead and she was a great friend of mine although we could not understand each other's language sometimes, still we could make it out with sins and wonders.”
”April 7, 1894.--Since I last wrote on this book, I have been what people call cruising about here. I have been visiting some of my friends, though scattered far apart, with my snow-shoes and axe on my shoulders. The nearest house to this place is about five miles up a beautiful river, and then through woods, what the french calls a portage--it is what I call pretty. Many is the time that I have been going with dogs and komatick 40 or 50 years ago with my husband and family to N. W. River, to the Hon. Donald A. Smith and family to keep N.
Year or Easter.”
”My dear old sister Hannah Mishlin who is now going on for 80 years old and she is smart yet, she hunts fresh meat and chops holes in the 3 foot ice this very winter and catches trout with her hook, enough for her household, her husband not able to work, he has a bad complaint.”
”You must please excuse my writing and spelling for I have never been to school, neither had I a spelling book in my young day--me a native of this country, Labrador, Hamilton's Inlet, Esquimaux Bay--if you wish to know who I am, I am old Lydia Campbell, formerly Lydia Brooks, then Blake, after Blake, now Campbell. So you see ups and downs has been my life all through, and now I am what I am--prais the Lord.”
”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 was.h.i.+ng 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, G.o.d bless us all and send us prosperity.
”Yours ever true,
”LYDIA CAMPBELL.”
”We are going to have an evening wors.h.i.+p, 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.”
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