The Long Labrador Trail | Page 6

five hundred yards east of Mr. Cotter's house is an old, abandoned mission chapel, and behind it an Indian burying ground. The cleared space of level ground between the house and chapel was, for a century or more, the camping ground of the Mountaineer Indians who come to the Post each spring to barter or sell their furs. In the olden time there were nearly a hundred families of them, whose hunting ground was that section of country between Hamilton Inlet and the Upper George River.
These people now, for the most part, hunt south of the inlet and trade at the St. Lawrence Posts. The chapel was erected about 1872, but ten years ago the Jesuit missionary was withdrawn, and since then the building has fallen into decay and ruin, and the crosses that marked the graves in the old burying grounds have been broken down by the heavy winter snows. It was this withdrawal of the missionary that turned the Indians to the southward, where priests are more easily found. The Mountaineer Indian, unlike the Nascaupee, is very religious, and must, at least once a year, meet his father confessor. The camping ground since the abandonment of the mission, has lain lonely and deserted, save for three or four families who, occasionally in the summer season, come back again to pitch their tents where their forefathers camped and held their annual feasts in the old days.
Competition between the trading companies at this point has raised the price of furs to such an extent that the few families of Indians that trade at this Post are well-to-do and very independent. There were two tents of them here when we arrived--five men and several women and children. I found two of my old friends there--John and William Ahsini. They expressed pleasure in meeting me again, and a lively interest in our trip. With Mr. Cotter acting as interpreter, John made for me a map of the old Indian trail from Grand Lake to Seal Lake, and William a map to Lake Michikamau and over the height of land to the George River, indicating the portages and principal intervening lakes as they remembered them.
Seal Lake is a large lake expansion of the Nascaupee River, which river, it should be explained, is the outlet of Lake Michikamau and discharges its waters into Grand Lake and through Grand Lake into Groswater Bay. Lake Michikamau, next to Lake Mistasinni, is the larg- est lake in the Labrador peninsula, and approximately from eighty to ninety miles in length. Neither John nor William had been to Lake Michikamau by this route since they were young lads, but they told us that the Indians, when traveling very light without their families, used to make the journey in twenty-three days.
During my previous stay in Labrador one Indian told me it could be done in ten days, while another said that Indians traveling very fast would require about thirty days. It is difficult to base calculations upon information of this kind. But I was sure that, with our com- paratively heavy outfit, and the fact that we would have to find the trail for ourselves, we should require at least twice the time of the Indians, who know every foot of the way as we know our familiar city streets at home.
They expressed their belief that the old trail could be easily found, and assured us that each portage, as we asked about it in detail, was a "miam potagan" (good portage), but at the same time expressed their doubts as to our ability to cross the country safely.
In fact, it has always been the Indians' boast, and I have heard it many times, that no white man could go from Groswater Bay to Ungava alive without Indians to help him through. "Pete" was a Lake Superior Indian and had never run a rapid in his life. He was to spend the night with Tom Blake and his family in their snug little log cabin, and be ready for an early start up Grand Lake on the morrow. It was Tom that headed the little party sent by me up the Susan Valley to bring to the Post Hubbard's body in March, 1904; and it was through his perseverance, loyalty and hard work at the time that I finally succeeded in recovering the body. Tom's daughter, Lillie, was Mackenzie's little housekeeper, who showed me so many kindnesses then. The whole family, in fact, were very good to me during those trying days, and I count them among my true and loyal friends.
We had supper with Cotter, who sang some Hudson's Bay songs, Richards sang a jolly college song or two, Stanton a "classic," and then all who could sing joined in "Auld Lang Syne."
My thoughts were of that other day,