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Updated: May 16, 2025
As they possessed only a single green blanket each, they had to make the most of their coverings, by rolling them tightly around their bodies, and doubling the ends down under their feet and over their heads; so that they resembled a row of green bolsters, all their feet being presented towards the fire, and all their heads resting on their folded capotes.
Everywhere was gay sound the fiddle, the laugh, the song; everywhere was gay color the red sashes of the voyageurs, the beaded moccasins and leggings of the metis, the capotes of the brigade, the variegated costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the wild roses around the edge of the muskegs, this brief flowering of the year passed.
A few with capotes off were sitting close to the fires, and flipping into the air the browning flap-jacks that were to be eaten the following day.
Among them were a dozen studies of just such capotes as I had seen, some in profile, completely screening the wearer, others disclosing women's faces, old or young. He seemed to wish to put them away, however, when I came in. Really, the plot seemed to thicken; and it was a little provoking to understand it no better, when all the materials seemed close to one's hands.
For days they suffered the doleful rigors and retchings of sea-sickness, lurking below in their berths in squalid state, or emerging now and then like spectres from the hatchways, in capotes and blankets, with dirty nightcaps, grizzly beard, lantern visage and unhappy eye, shivering about the deck, and ever and anon crawling to the sides of the vessel, and offering up their tributes to the windward, to infinite annoyance of the captain.
The troopers found accommodation in the kitchen and in the spacious hall, where great fires of pine logs were piled up for their comfort; and for the remainder of the day they abode there in various states of nakedness, relieved by blankets and straw capotes, what time the house was filled with the steam and stench of their drying garments.
On the left, heavily barred windows gave on the corridor, as did here and there the massive oaken doors, with their gigantic hinges and bolts, on the steps of which squatted groups of soldiers wrapped in their cloaks, with wild, suspicious eyes beneath their capotes, peering at the midnight visitor as he passed. There was no thought of silence here.
Beautiful white blanket overcoats, with warm capotes or hoods, had already been made for each of the boys. They were to be worn over the deerskin suits when they stopped to rest in the heavy trail, and also while the boys were riding over the long stretches of icy roads where it was possible for the dogs to easily draw them.
Here is contained that which makes the red man's life enjoyable; that which causes his heart to leap, and induces him to toil for months and months together in the heat of summer and amid the frost and snow of winter; that which actually accomplishes, what music is said to achieve, the "soothing of the savage breast:" in short, here are stored up blankets, guns, powder, shot, kettles, axes, and knives; twine for nets, vermilion for war-paint, fishhooks and scalping- knives, capotes, cloth, beads, needles, and a host of miscellaneous articles, much too numerous to mention.
The men and boys are drest in knee-breeches, the women in bodices, and both sexes wear capotes with pointed hoods, and felt hats with conical crowns; they carry long staves in their hands, and their arms are loaded with kids and lambs too young to keep pace with their mothers. The selection here given was written in 1834.
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