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Updated: June 21, 2025
And once I was witness of a feat of Tawabinisay, when that wily savage portaged a pack of fifty pounds and a two-man canoe through a hill country for four hours and ten minutes without a rest. Tawabinisay is even smaller than Peter. So much for the qualities developed by the woods life. Let us now examine what may be described as the inherent characteristics of the people.
To me the selection seemed most judicious. It answered the needs of Tawabinisay's habitual experiences, and so the red man was a good and consistent convert. Irresistibly I was led to contemplate the idea of any one trying to get Tawabinisay to live in a house, to cut cordwood with an axe, to roost on a hard bench under a tin steeple, to wear stiff shoes, and to quit forest roaming.
It needed just that one touch to finish the picture. We were looking, had we but known it, on a lake no white man had ever visited before. Clement alone had seen Kawagama, so in our ignorance we attained much the same mental attitude. For I may as well let you into the secret; this was not the fabled lake after all. We found that out later from Tawabinisay.
Billy, Johnnie Challan, and Buckshot squatted in a semi-circle, and drew diagrams in the soft dirt with a stick. Tawabinisay sat on a log and overlooked the proceedings. Finally he spoke. "He called Black Beaver Lake." "Ask him if he'll take us to Kawagama," I requested. Tawabinisay looked very doubtful. "Come on, Tawab," urged Doc, nodding at him vigorously. "Don't be a clam.
Briefly indicated, our way led first through the big trees and up the hills, then behind a great cliff knob into a creek valley, through a quarter-mile of bottom-land thicket, then by an open strip to the first little lake. This we ferried by means of the bark canoe carried on the shoulders of Tawabinisay. In the course of the morning we thus passed four lakes.
Utensils and tools he knows exactly where to find. His job is neat and workmanlike, whether it is a bark receptacle water-tight or not a pair of snow-shoes, the repairing of a badly-smashed canoe, the construction of a shelter, or the fashioning of a paddle. About noon one day Tawabinisay broke his axe-helve square off. This to us would have been a serious affair.
In fact, an Indian named Tawabinisay, after seeing it perform, once borrowed it to kill a moose. "I shootum in eye," said he. By way of cooking utensils, buy aluminium. It is expensive, but so light and so easily cleaned that it is well worth all you may have to pay. If you are alone you will not want to carry much hardware.
He drank in eagerly the brief remarks of his "old man," and detailed them to us with solemnity, prefaced always by his "Tawabinisay tell me." Buckshot is of the better class of Indian himself, but occasionally he is puzzled by the woods-noises. Tawabinisay never. As we cooked lunch, we heard the sound of steady footsteps in the forest pat; then a pause; then pat; just like a deer browsing.
To make sure I inquired of Buckshot. "What is it?" Buckshot listened a moment. "Deer," said he decisively; then, not because he doubted his own judgment, but from habitual deference, he turned to where Tawabinisay was frying things. "Qwaw?" he inquired. Tawabinisay never even looked up. We looked at each other incredulously. It sounded like a deer. It did not sound in the least like a squirrel.
With these were Indians. Buckshot, a little Indian with a good knowledge of English; Johnnie Challan, a half-breed Indian, ugly, furtive, an efficient man about camp; and Tawabinisay himself. This was an honour due to the presence of Doc. Tawabinisay approved of Doc. That was all there was to say about it. After a few days, inevitably the question of Kawagama came up.
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