The Essential Writings of James Willard Schultz. James Willard Schultz
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Pitamakan slipped round on the other side of her. As his bow-cord twanged, she dropped her head, and the light almost instantly went out of her eyes. The poor calf met the same fate a moment later. It was cruel work, but as necessary as it was cruel; we killed that we might live.
There remained the two yearlings, and I proposed that we spare them. Pitamakan looked at me with surprise.
"What! Let them go?" he exclaimed. "And many winter moons yet before us? Why, brother, you talk foolishly! Of course we must kill them. Even then we may not have enough meat to last until spring."
So we chased them also out into deep snow, and did as he said. By the time we had one calf skinned we were obliged to go home and gather the night's wood.
The next day we skinned the rest of the animals, cut up the meat, and hung it in trees, whence it could be packed home from time to time. Two of the hides we put to soak in the river, preparatory to graining and tanning them. The others we stretched on frames and allowed to freeze dry, after which we laid them on our couch.
During the short days we tended the deadfalls, skinned and stretched what fur was trapped in them, packed in meat and hung it beside the lodge, and tanned the two hides. Having done the tanning successfully, we went into the tailoring business. Pitamakan cut pieces of proper shape from the big, soft skins, but in the work of sewing I did my share. After three or four evenings' work, we were the proud wearers of new shirts, new leggings, and new mittens.
Our earthen pot fell to pieces the day after we had made glue in it. That was a serious loss, for we had intended to boil meat in it. Roasted meat is good, but does not do so well as a steady diet. The Indians of the North regard boiled meat as we regard bread, that is, as the staff of life. Pitamakan, who craved it more than I, determined, now that we had plenty of hides, to use a part of one for a kettle. From one of the yearling moose hides he cut a large, round piece, soaked it in the river until it was soft, and then sewed the edge in pleats to a birch hoop about two feet in diameter, so as to make a stiff-rimmed bag about as deep as it was wide. With a strip of hide he suspended it from a pole in the lodge roof.
Next he set several clean stones in the fire to heat, and put some rather finely cut meat in the bag with two quarts of water. When the rocks were red-hot, he dropped them one by one into the bag, and pulled them out to reheat as fast as they cooled. In this way the meat was boiled. Such was the ancient way of cooking it before the white traders brought pots and kettle into the North country.
The meat was not cooked long, only long enough, in fact to change its color, and was really more nutritious than it would have been had it been stewed a long time. We enjoyed that first meal of it with keen relish, and thereafter ate more boiled than roasted meat.
As the winter snows settled and hardened, we saw more and more trails of otter along the river, where they traveled from one open hole to another to do their fishing, and one day we began our campaign against them by going fishing ourselves. Our tackle consisted of a sinew cord and loop several feet long, tied to a long, slender pole.
In the first open pool that we looked into there were numerous trout and suckers; of course we tried first to snare the trout. We soon learned, however, that it could not be done, for they would not allow the loop to come nearer than five or six inches to their heads, but always drifted downstream from it in a tantalizing manner.
Next, trying the suckers, big, reddish-black fellows of two pounds' weight, we found them easy to snare. They lay as if they were half dead, their bellies close to the bottom, and never moved when the loop drifted down round their heads, thinking, no doubt, that it was but a piece of passing water-grass. When the noose was just behind the gills, we gave the pole a sharp yank, and up came the fish, wriggling and flapping, helpless in the grip of the tightened cord.
After we caught three of them, we spent the rest of the morning setting a deadfall at each of three pools where the otters were working. But for some time afterward we got no otters; of all animals they are the shyest and most difficult to trap. It was not until all traces of the man scent had died out that one was finally lured by the sucker bait, and was killed by the fall-bar.
As time passed, we set more and more deadfalls up and down the valley, so many that finally we could not make the round of them all in one day. One morning we would attend to those lying east of the lodge, and the next morning visit those to the west of it. The farthest one to the west was at least seven miles away, and for some unknown reason more fur came to it than to any of the others; we seldom visited it without finding a marten or a fisher. Pitamakan called it the nat-o-wap-i kyak-ach-is—medicine-trap, as the words may be freely translated. Nat-o-wap-i really means "of the sun"—"sun-power."
As we approached this deadfall one day, when we had taken nothing from the other traps except a marten that a passing fisher had maliciously torn to shreds, Pitamakan began the coyote prayer song, because, as he said, something had to be done to bring us better luck.
We soon saw the deadfall, noticed that the bar was down, and hurried eagerly forward to see what it held, while my partner sang louder than ever. On coming to it, we found a fine, black, fluffy-furred fisher; whereupon Pitamakan raised his hand and began chanting a prayer of thanks to the gods.
Meanwhile I saw, a little farther on, a trail in the snow which excited my interest, and I impatiently waited for him to finish his devotions to call his attention to it.
"Look! There's the trail of a bear!" I said, although it seemed odd to me that a bear should be wandering round in the dead of winter.
We hurried over to it. What we saw made us stare wildly round with fright, while we quickly strung our bows. It was the trail of a man on long, narrow web shoes—an Indian, of course, and therefore an enemy. The trail was fresh, too, apparently as fresh as our own. And but a moment before, Pitamakan had been singing at the top of his voice!
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