The Long Labrador Trail | Page 6

help us pack over the first portage and to bring back letters.
He expressed a wish to visit his father at Kenemish before starting into
the country, but promised to be back the next evening ready for the
start on Monday morning, the twenty-sixth, and I consented. I knew
hard work was before us, and as I wished all hands to be well rested
and fresh at the outset, I felt that a couple of days' idleness would do us
no harm.
Some 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years ago the Jesuit missionary was withdrawn, and since then the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