THE FIRST FROST IN SEPTEMBER—that was when we left Stoney Creek. We packed the wagon with a tent and bedding, with guns and shells, tarps and nets; between these things and our family, the wagon couldn’t hold another thing! Johnny closed the door of our cabin behind him, shouted “Guuph!” to the horses, and as we drove out of the village, we waved goodbye and called out “See you at Christmas!” to the few people left on the reserve.
We were on our way to Johnny’s hereditary hunting grounds at Cluculz Lake, twenty miles east of our village. How Bella and I looked forward to the trip to our hunting grounds! At that time of year, although the mornings were frosty, the sun still held much of its summer warmth, and we loved to feel its heat on our bare arms as we jogged along in the overcrowded wagon, riding through the bush on a narrow trail.
There was so much to see. A moose ran awkwardly in front of our horses for a few minutes before going off into the trees, and there were more deer than we could count grazing along the side of the trail. Mother bears and their cubs looked at us from the edge of the forest before disappearing into the undergrowth. We saw a quick sliding movement, and tried to guess if the shadow we had seen was a fox or a coyote. In the little creeks we passed, we saw beaver dams. The ponds and sloughs had flocks of ducks and Canada geese and all day long birds called from the nearby trees or flew in circles over our heads. The crows, then as now, were everywhere.
When I was a small girl, the land, the rivers and creeks and lakes, were full of life—birds and animals of all kinds were as much a part of the landscape as trees and clouds and sun. Now I can travel five hundred miles in any direction from our village and not see so much as a field mouse. I think with sadness of those trips to the hunting grounds when I was a child and I remember our land as it used to be.
We sometimes camped out one night on our journey to the hunting grounds, and if this happened it was the highlight of the trip. What a rush there was to set up camp! The tent, big pieces of canvas sewn together on a treadle sewing machine, was put up, and spruce boughs were spread on the ground inside the tent to keep the dampness out of the bedding. Mattresses filled with feathers from ducks and geese were placed over the boughs; patchwork quilts, made by my mother and grandmother in the long winter evenings, were our covering at night.
When the tent was up, Johnny went into the woods with his gun; if he was lucky, there would be roast grouse or rabbit stew for supper. Bella and I gathered wood and started the campfire, while my mother dipped into the kitchen box.
That kitchen box—every Native family had one. It was made out of wood, with moose skin hinges and handles, and it went everywhere with us. It held our dishes and pots and pans, and the staples we would need on the road: flour, tea, salt, dried fish, rice. Nowadays, people are cautioned never to leave home without their credit cards. In my day, the last thing we did before we left on a journey was to make sure that our kitchen box was in the wagon with us.
The next day, we set up a more permanent camp on the edge of Cluculz Lake. This was Johnny’s hunting grounds, our home for the next five or six weeks. The tent was put up again and nearby, Johnny built a drying rack. He set up poles and put a tarp over them, and every day when fish were netted and deer and moose were shot, it was under this tarp that the food supply for the coming months was prepared.
Once the camp was liveable, the real work started. Johnny was out every day with his gun, tramping the woods on silent feet, tracking the large animals with the skill which made him one of the best hunters in Central British Columbia. Bella and my mother were never still, drying or canning fish and meat, and working with moose and deer hides. It was these same hides which would be turned into mitts and moccasins and jackets for the family. The soaking and scraping and oiling of the hides—this went on for hours each day.
I was the housekeeper. I looked after Mark, kept the fires going and, young as I was, I helped to prepare the meals. Johnny would come in after a day in the bush and say, “You are a real little mother!” That was reward enough for me.
Every day was the same. The only changes in our lives were the weather, and a shortening in the hours of daylight.
And yet, despite the monotony and the mercury in the thermometer which continued to drop each day, I felt sad to leave our camp on the edge of the lake in early October. Sad, yes, but Bella and I were excited too. We were on our way to our next destination, the trapline at Wedgewood, a few miles from Cluculz Lake. It would be in Wedgewood on the bank of the Nechako River that we would spend the winter, only returning to our village for the Christmas holidays.
To see our log cabin at Wedgewood was like seeing an old friend. It was smaller than our cabin on the reserve—Johnny said it was sixteen by twenty feet—but it had the same kind of furniture, homemade table and beds, and a B.C. stove. Oh, it was snug and warm after those last few nights in the tent at Cluculz Lake!
It was so quiet in Wedgewood. The family was alone. The only noises I heard were the wind in the trees and the wild animals snuffling around our cabin in the night—that and the trains. Wedgewood was on a branch line of the Canadian National Railway which ran from Jasper in Alberta to Prince Rupert on the Pacific Ocean. The railway tracks were very close to our cabin and several times a day a train rushed past. I loved the sound of the train. Often at night, I’d go to sleep thinking about the three stations the train had to pass before it reached Vanderhoof. It was fun to imagine the farms and the little railway stations and the towns along the railway tracks, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Then it seemed strange to picture Stoney Creek Reserve, with the log buildings closed, and the chief and the grown-ups and the children sleeping in cabins like ours on their traplines all up and down the Nechako River and along Fraser Lake and Stuart Lake.
Wedgewood was a happy place for me but I knew, young as I was, that it was heavy hard work for my mother and Johnny. Each of them had traplines which stretched across the Nechako river to Saxon Lake and beyond. Every day, what-ever the weather, they had to walk miles, often accompanied by Bella, to look at their traps, and to empty them of coyotes and foxes or, if they were lucky, a lynx. That was only the beginning of their labour. The carcasses, often frozen, had to be brought back to the cabin, skinned, and the pelts scraped and stretched. Each morning, even if the weather was bitter or my parents were tired from their work of the day before, they would have to go out on their rounds again.
I never heard them complain. They were young and tough and had been accustomed to life on the trapline almost from their infancy.
Sometimes a weasel or a muskrat was caught in one of their traps, and when this happened they gave the little animal to me. I watched my mother and Johnny preparing the pelts of bigger animals, and before very long I was able to skin and stretch a pelt of my own. Soon my mother showed me how to set out a trapline around our cabin to catch some of the smaller animals which came exploring or looking for food. On the mornings when I found a weasel in one of my traps, I was happy for the rest of the day.
Even as children we knew that the work at Stoney Creek in the summer and the hunting and fishing in September at Cluculz Lake meant food for the family. The trapline was different. The skins were sold, and it was this money which provided the family with clothing and flour and sugar and tea.
Everything we did, the places in which we lived—all, all were important to the survival of our family. I understood that this was so.
Before I quite knew it, we were preparing to return to the reserve for Christmas. We counted off the days as December 25th approached. We had so many reasons for our excitement. We knew that the villagers would be back in Stoney Creek for the holidays, and that our relatives would be coming from other reserves to celebrate with us. We looked for-ward to the visiting and feasting and dancing. And then there were the pelts—Bella and I had our little parcels of furs for which we would receive money from the fur buyer in Vander-hoof. I wasted hours dreaming about all that I would do with my few dollars. Weasel pelts didn’t bring in much money in those days. I didn’t mind; even a dollar represented a fortune to me.
When the day of our departure finally arrived, Johnny arranged for the horses to be cared for by the section foreman at Wedgewood, the furs were stacked neatly on the station platform waiting for the train to be flagged down—I clutched my own small parcel of furs tightly in my hand—and then we were on the train, on our way to Vanderhoof.
Our first stop in Vanderhoof was to the shop of the fur buyer, where we passed over our pelts and the man behind the counter calculated what he owed us. As soon as Bella and I were paid out, we flew out of the shop and into the general store as fast as our legs would carry us. Candy, gum, a pair of mitts, an undershirt—our small fortunes were soon gone!
We had no Christmas tree, no presents, no turkey or mince pies—these things were not part of our Christmas on the reserve. And yet everyone was happy. Families had returned from their traplines, and relatives from Fort George and Fort St. James and all the reserves around were visiting in every cabin. Our cabin seemed to be always full of people and noise; there was laughter, and talk of the weather and the price of fur and the news about births and weddings and sickness and death. How strange it was to hear so much sound after the quiet of Wedgewood! A few days before, the village had been empty. Now, everyone was back.
On Christmas Eve, I walked with my family through the frosty night to the church. All the villagers and their relatives were there. We had no missionary to say Mass, but the church had been heated and, just before midnight, everyone knelt down and prayed together. The church was so crowded that it seemed there was not room for one more body, and no wonder—in our village it was considered a very bad thing not to be praying in the church on Christmas Eve. My grand-mother told me that there had been other Christmases when a missionary was living on the reserve and then a beautiful Midnight Mass was held.
And what dances Bella and I attended! Every few nights, one or other of the villagers passed the word around that there would be a dance in his cabin that night. All the furniture, the homemade tables and benches and beds, were moved outside in the snow, and to the music of a fiddle everyone danced, even the very old. The cabins were small and crowded but somehow everyone managed to step to the music, even children as young as Bella and me. Sometime during the dance the door would be flung open to cool off over-heated dancers, and the heat of the cabin would form steam when it met the frigid air outside.
That’s what it was like—music and laughter and steam pouring through the open door.
A few days after the new year had begun, the villagers and their visitors scattered back to their traplines across Central British Columbia. Once again we caught the train, this time back to Wedgewood, back to the stillness, the hard work, the sounds of animals and wind and speeding trains in the night.
And once again, our village was silent.