Cache Lake Country

by John J. Rowlands

  Our Indians are not what they might be pictured, for there have been many changes in their ways of living in the thirty years since I have known them. They buy many things that once they made for themselves from what they found in the forest. Some use tents and cabins instead of bark and hide tepees, and in the summer the footgear that most of them wear is made in some clanging factory hundreds of miles away. You don’t see the Indian at his best in the summer camp near civilization, for it is in winter as a trapper and hunter that he turns again to the ways of his forefathers. Moccasins take the place of his summer shoes and although most of the canoes that carry the Indian families across the lakes and up the rivers to their winter homes are made by white men, some still cling to the fine birch bark craft, which has served them so well for centuries. To be sure it is not as fast as a manufactured canoe, it is hard to keep watertight, and is cranky in a wind, but a good birch canoe will carry far more freight than one the white man can make. But I’ve come to believe that the canoes made of light thin metal that can be molded into sweet and easy lines come closer to the birch bark craft than any other in weight and carrying capacity.

  I admire the Indians in their respect for all things in nature. To them everything—water, land, trees, and animals—has a spirit and feelings. They hunt and kill game not for the sport, but to live; and they believe that when they shoot a deer or a moose or a bear the animal will understand that it must be so. The Indian believes that the spirit of an Indian chief dwells in the bull moose. He believes, too, that birds can bring him good luck or evil fortune, and that they can understand his language. The Indian mother is confident that if her baby dies very young its spirit will become part of a bird and that in its sweet song she is hearing the voice of her little one. Every Indian boy from the time he turns toward manhood has a guardian spirit or “po-argen.” which is in the form of an animal or bird of which he has dreamed. The Indians have a great respect for the spirit that dwells in the bear which they believe to be very powerful and may harm or help you according to your attitude in approaching the animal if it is to be killed.

  The Indians have a great respect for the spirit that dwells in the bear

  Indians are a warmhearted and generous people and when the Chief and I visit them at their summer camp or go to their winter lodges in the hunting country, the best food they have is cooked for us and the most comfortable sleeping place in the lodge or cabin is offered to us. By the standards of our womenfolk their lodges are not always as clean as they might be, yet their skill in using all the resources of the wilderness in making their homes and in providing food would astonish a white woman from the city. An Indian mother, having established herself in a lodge one day, may be called upon to tear it apart and move a few miles the next for no better reason than to be near the carcass of a bear killed by her menfolk who consider it more convenient to move the home to the bear than carry the bear to camp.

  In his hunting country far from the influences of civilization, the Indian is a shrewd, hard-working and skillful hunter, using his simple and often meager resources to great purpose. For whatever he does, whether it be the hitch on his snowshoes or his method of tracking game, the form of his shelter or the kind of clothes he wears, he has a practical reason which has been tested by time, sometimes by centuries of experience.

  Patience is one of the qualities you must learn if you live with the Indians, who think of time only in terms of useless effort for which there is nothing to show. A successful hunt has meaning only in time. Life in the woods has taught the Indian that he can’t hurry trees and rivers, the rain and the sunshine, or most important of all, the game he hunts and traps. He never rushes in the way we do, though that doesn’t mean he cannot and does not act with astonishing speed when he needs to. But he knows that the longest way round a swamp is often the shortest, for many reasons. He may spend days stalking a moose on which his family depends for life, but he makes sure that when the moment to shoot comes his chances of taking meat home are practically certain. So time to an Indian may be a moose.

  Time is a strange standard of measure, for its value changes so much, depending on what you’re doing and where you are. In the city most folks are slaves of minutes and hours. Time tells them what to do and when to do it. Here in the north woods it is different. It is not the hours or the days, but what happens at various seasons of the year that counts. Time is a snow storm, a downpour of rain, a day in spring, mosquitoes, and black flies. Time may be a dry spell or a forest fire, the freeze-up or the day when the ice goes out. In nature time doesn’t trot right along. Often it stops for a while and sometimes backtracks on its own trail. It loafs along in winter and hustles in the spring and summer.

  Anybody who lives in the woods knows how easy it is to lose all trace of time in terms of days and weeks. When I first came here I nailed a calendar on the wall and thought I was all set, but within a month I didn’t know what day it was. When someone came my way I would get straightened out again and begin checking off the days until going on a cruising trip I would once more get out of step with time.

  I remember one Thanksgiving Day when the Chief, Hank, and I celebrated the day with a fine dinner. The only thing wrong was that we were two weeks ahead of the correct date. But what did that matter? The spirit was there. Maybe some day I will build myself a contraption to keep track of the days, but somehow I don’t believe I would use it very much. Sunrise and sunset are close enough to mark off time for me.

  Time has a way of doing strange things to a man who lives in the woods all alone, which is not a healthy thing for anybody. When you live by yourself for a long spell time begins to seem like a pail with a hole in the bottom. You can dip up water with it, but it leaks out before you can make use of it. Going over a portage one summer I met a fine old man who lives up here and helps the Indians. He was going in to see a young fellow who had been trapping for a year all alone, for the Indians had told him the young man was under the influence of a Weendigo, an evil spirit, and that they feared him. When we got to the man’s cabin he was sitting in the doorway talking to himself. He had been there a mite too long and the old man persuaded him to go outside where he’d see his friends. That’s all he needed. No, living alone, be it in the woods or the big city, where you can be as lonely as in any wilderness, is bad business. Men were not meant to live alone.

  Long Nights and Deep Snows

  STARTING a new year is like heading into strange country with no map to show you what’s round the next turn in the trail or what lies behind the hills. It is what happens along the way to the meeting place of next year that makes going on worth all the work. You never know when a storm may break; never can be sure you won’t hit white water round a bend in the river, and the big lakes you thought would be rough and dangerous as often as not turn out to be easy traveling. Best it is that a man not try to look too far along the trail. Have you ever watched a good Indian packer going over a portage with a heavy load? He keeps his eyes on the trail at his feet, looking for the roots and the rocks that might trip him. Generally he gets where he’s going without falling.

  This month was named after Janus, an old-time character, a sort of god. It seems that this fellow had two faces so he could look behind and ahead at the same time. Taking to mind what had happened in the past, it was his job to map out what would go on in the new year. Good enough as long as you keep in mind that things don’t always work out to a plan.

  This is the month the Indians up here call Kushapawasticanum o Pesim—the Moon of Great Cold. It is midwinter the way our cold season runs and the snow is light and dry with about four feet on the level and deep drifts in the hollows.

  January is a season of rest, for this month almost everything in nature is asleep and storing up strength for the job that must be started when spring comes. Many of the animals are dozing away the winter deep in their burrows under rocks, in logs or maybe nests in the trees where the squirrels and deer mice go. A strange and wonderful thing this winter sleep
they call hibernation.

  The plants that grew last summer and scattered their seeds to carry on their kind have died, and now January is shredding the fallen leaves and dead grass with icy knives to make new soil to blend with the earth in the spring and nourish the plants and the living trees. That is the way nature works up her own fertilizer and if she didn’t there wouldn’t be any forests.

  This is a month when, as the Chief says, “the earth is far below the snow”; and it is a good thing, for the snow holds some of the warmth of the earth and protects it from freezing too deep. Without its white blanket the land would lose a lot of moisture by evaporation. In January we generally have a thaw that reminds us of a spell of April weather, which is to make sure that the water is spread around fairly.

  Every so often at this time of the year I go over to see Chief Tibeash at his cabin on Shining Tree Lake. On my last trip I hitched old Wolf to the light sled to bring back my small canoe which had been cached by the lake since the fall. I will want to make some repairs on it one of these days when I’m held home by the storms. I never saw a sled dog that loved his work more than Wolf, the best dog I have ever owned, and a fine leader in a team. He is a big black and white husky, strong and knowing, and as gentle as a doe with those he knows. Just to see him on the trail with his muzzle down and his bushy tail curled over his back is a sight to make any dog driver envy me.

  It was one of those very quiet and cold mornings and the moon was still high and white when I started out, using bear-paw snowshoes to break trail for Wolf. The snow was deep and dry and he needed all the help I could give him. We don’t often use one dog on a sled, consequently I plan to have another dog later on.

  By the time I got to the Chief’s place the sun was just hoisting itself stiffly over the ridge to the eastward of Shining Tree Lake and the tops of the trees, sharp against the pale sky, were as jagged as the teeth on Paul Bunyan’s saw.

  There is never a time, day or night, in the north when you are not welcome to walk in on a man for a meal or a bunk, for a human being and a voice mean a lot, especially in the winter months. So by the time I had slipped off my snowshoes and stuck them in the snow, the Chief was at the door telling me he had breakfast just about ready, which he didn’t have to mention, for the smell of frying bacon and boiling coffee was notice enough. You can always count on having a good breakfast with the Chief, and that morning he had fried oatmeal with plenty of bacon. That is a good way to use up any left-over oatmeal because when it is cold you can cut it in half-inch slices, dust it with flour and fry it brown in bacon fat. As nourishing a thing as you can eat and it stays by you.

  The sun was lost behind gray clouds when the Chief came out with me to get the canoe down from its staging on the shore and he took a couple of sniffs and said, “Kona!” And when the Chief smells snow you pay attention. Wolf and I hadn’t more than got the canoe back to Cache Lake and laid in an extra tier of firewood when the Old Lady of the Clouds got down to business and that night a whining blizzard rode out of the north on the wings of a gale. Winter shows for certain who is master of life in the woods this time of year. On the south side of the cabin one big drift piled up clear to the roof. It keeps out the wind and cold like the insulation that folks in the city have to pay for to keep their houses warm. I got mine delivered by the wind free of charge.

  Did you ever sit and listen to the sounds of a great night storm? From the darkness high overhead comes a deep rumbling. It is not the soughing of the wind in the thrashing pine tops and it is not the sound of the gale beating down on the cabin. I have heard the very same rumble over a great city; I have listened to it on a ship in a storm at sea; and it is the same noise I once heard in a blizzard in flat country where there wasn’t a tree or a rock in sight. It must be the roar of the mighty waves of the wind, tumbling across the cold black sea of night. Chief Tibeash says his people used to call it the war drums of the Manitoupeepagee Din-ens, “the Wind Devil.”

  Every now and then in such a storm there’s a lull. Suddenly the wind stops as if someone had shut a door, and the snow that was streaking across the window, drifts straight down in dead silence for a little time. During a quiet spell in the blizzard that night I heard the scream of the big Canada lynx that lives and hunts in the Great Tamarack Swamp at the lower end of the lake. Once you hear that sound you never forget it. I have been in these woods close to twenty years, but I never hear that wild cry without shivering. Even old Wolf gets uneasy. The hackles on his shoulders rise and he growls and swings his muzzle for the scent.

  After a lull in the storm the wind comes back with a rush as if it had gathered new strength in the few seconds of calm. At the height of our big storms we sometimes have winds of more than fifty miles an hour. You might ask how I know. The answer is a wind gauge which I made last summer, for I am always interested in the weather, especially how hard the wind is blowing.

  Putting the wind gauge together was not much of a job once the idea was worked out, as you will see by Hank’s sketches. The body of the contraption is about the shape and size of a ping-pong bat, which, as a matter of fact, would have served the purpose very well. The vertical lever has a slot in the lower end so that the counterweight can be raised or lowered and then set by a small bolt. The wind vane, which fits on a slot in the top, should be made of a very thin piece of light wood. Thin sheet aluminum would be even better. Once the parts are assembled you have to experiment on adjustment by moving the counterweight up and down and trying various sizes of wind vanes. It is not practical to try to register wind speeds below ten miles an hour and sixty miles was set as the top speed, which is about as high as will ever be needed, and that not very often. The small bubble level must be set carefully so that when the bubble is centered the vertical lever is just balanced against the nail stop. In high winds the velocity often changes quickly, so it is best to take several readings to get a close check on the average speed.

  When the gauge was finished we had to find some way of setting the various speeds on the dial. The only method we could figure out was to tramp out to the settlement where a friend of mine had a car. While he drove up and down the road at various speeds I held the gauge out the window and as he called the speeds I marked them on the dial. We picked a calm day when there was no breeze stirring so the speed of the car would represent actual wind velocity. I don’t claim my gauge is accurate to the mile, but it’s not far off and plenty close enough for my purpose.

  I can’t tell you how much pleasure that wind gauge has given me, for all I have to do when I want to know how fast the wind is blowing is to step outdoors where I get a clean sweep and hold it at arm’s length and the dial swings over to give the answer.

  Mal de raquette, or snowshoe lameness, is something you have to watch out for at this time of year. I had a touch of it a while back after a hard trip out to the settlement, and the only thing to do is to take it easy and keep off your feet as much as you can for a few days. Mal de raquette starts in the tendon that moves the big toe, and creeps up the ankle, making it mighty painful to walk. It is caused by the constant bending of your toes on the snowshoes where the foot dips through the slot.

  I have lots to do these stormbound days and the number one job is making myself two pairs of moccasins from a fine piece of moose hide the Chief brought over. It was the Chief who taught me many years ago how to make moccasins and his are the finest I’ve ever seen. Once you get on to the trick it’s not much of a job. The best way is to make your first pair out of a piece of old blanket or heavy cloth to get the knack of cutting and stitching, and to make sure the size is right. A friend of mine who was just learning got himself one of those pieces of chamois for polishing things that you can buy in the stores. It feels like fine buckskin, but it’s not as strong. Just the thing to practice on though, and chamois moccasins are good over socks in shoepacks or overshoes. Matter of fact we make a special kind of doeskin sock for just that purpose.

  The way to start is to make a drawing of your foot
on a large piece of cardboard. Then draw the cutting lines outside your footprint, leaving enough space so that the toe piece will fold back to about the base of your big toe. The sides should be wide enough to turn in over your foot leaving maybe two inches to fit the vamp in, and just under the ankle bone further back. In drawing the cutting lines on your pattern do not follow the exact shape of your foot. That is the natural thing to do, but it is not the best way, take my word for it. What you want is a well-rounded toe and straight sides to your moccasins. They don’t have to be shaped to the foot like shoes, but can and should be changed from one foot to the other to get even wear. The kind I make is the Cree or Ojibwa moccasin, which to my mind is the best. The high tops wrap around the ankle snugly and keep the snow out. Once you get the hang of puckering the toe and sewing in the vamp, the rest is easy. Take your time, and don’t rush the stitching. Just remember to sew the pieces together with the edges on the outside so that there won’t be any ridges inside to chafe. That is important. With Hank’s sketches you ought to be able to do a fine job.

  I guess maybe you will think the three of us are queer, but not long ago we went on a midwinter picnic. It was Hank’s idea, and the Chief and I fell in with it. It was a cold day and the thermometer showed twenty-three below zero, but here in the north the cold is dry and with the right clothes you don’t feel it half as much as the damp air farther south. We loaded a pack of extra special food on the sled and Wolf did the hauling. We snowshoed northeast, passing to the west of Hunting Wolf Ridge, and then went on up to the beaver works on Little Otter Stream. Beaver dams are the worst places in the world to get around in summer; what with water and down timber and dry-ki the going is hard. But in winter you can just walk right over it all and get a good idea of what they’ve been doing.