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Updated: May 14, 2025
The Hudson's Bay Company, however, never allows its men to shoot rapids with fur-laden canoes; so it was on that wild stretch of our trip that the skill of the voyageur was tested most. At the head of one of the great rapids Oo-koo-hoo, seeing that I mated well with one of his crew, invited me to take a paddle and help them through.
First, there was the fur-laden keel boat in which we travelled, gone forever now from Western navigation. It had its rude square sail to take advantage of the river winds, its mast strongly braced to hold the long tow-ropes. But tow-ropes were for the endless up-river journey, when a numerous crew strained day after day along the bank, chanting the voyageurs' songs.
And if he was to return with the many scow-loads of supplies for Chloe Elliston's store before the water-way became ice-locked, he had not a day nor an hour to lose. At Point Brule he overtook the fur-laden scows, and at Smith Landing an Indian runner reported the result of the fight, and the escape of MacNair.
Then, too, could be seen the building of stages on which to place the valuable fur-laden sleds out of reach of the destructive dogs; the gathering of evergreen brush; the unhitching of dogs and the hanging up of their harness in the surrounding trees; the unloading of sleds; the placing of frozen whitefish to thaw for the dogs; the baking of bannocks, the frying of pork, and the infusing of tea.
They were just entering upon a stretch of water dreaded of old by the rivermen that had sometimes plied down the stream in their fur-laden canoes, a place of jagged rocks and crags and bowlders that were all but submerged by the waters. To be hurled against their sharp edges meant death, certain and speedily. He knew that his mortal strength couldn't avail against them.
Straggling bands of Indians, hauling fur-laden toboggans, began to arrive during the week, and the bartering in the stores was brisk, and to me exceedingly interesting. Money at Fort Chimo is unknown. Values are reckoned in "skins" that is, a "skin" is the unit of value.
First, there was the fur-laden keel boat in which we travelled, gone forever now from Western navigation. It had its rude square sail to take advantage of the river winds, its mast strongly braced to hold the long tow-ropes. But tow-ropes were for the endless up-river journey, when a numerous crew strained day after day along the bank, chanting the voyageurs' songs.
Indians lounged about the fort, the stores, and the houses, begging, or gazing stolidly at the troops as they drilled, at the creaking carts from the outlying farms as they plied through the streets, at the driving to and fro from pasture of the horses and milch cows, or at the arrival of a vessel from Niagara or a brigade of fur-laden bateaux from the upper lakes. The Indians.
The English dashed for hiding inside the fort, and d'Iberville gaily mounted to the decks of the fur-laden ship, raised sail, and steered off for Quebec. Meeting the incoming fleet of English vessels, he threw them off guard by hoisting an English flag, and sailed on in safety.
The Pawnees had died in their cold tepees by the fifties, the soldiers lay dead in the trenches without the fort, and many a gay French voyageur, who had thought to go singing down the Missouri on his fur-laden raft in the springtime, would never again see the lights of St. Louis, or the coin of the mighty Choteau company. It had been a winter of tragedies.
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