Facultative Carnivore

The Indians at the mouth of the Taltson River would be well off indeed, were it not for tuberculosis, which plays havoc with them. Their hunting-grounds extend to the east — a wild and heavily wooded stretch of country, well supplied with beaver, muskrat, mink, lynx, fox, and many other varieties of animals. Every few years, too, the caribou migrate south as far as this point, though less frequently now that forest fires have laid waste enormous stretches to the northeast. 

The Taltson River is one of the best fish-streams that flow into Great Slave Lake. At certain times of the year whitefish, conies, and suckers are on their way upstream, and there is almost no limit to the numbers a person can catch. The waters are so teeming with fish during these periods that, by simply rowing back and forth along the net, one may haul in as many as physical strength will permit. In certain smaller streams one can scoop them up with a dip-net, a performance not at all uncommon in these parts. Huge numbers of fish occur throughout the North, in lakes located in the very heart of the Barren Lands, even where glacial gravel prevails and plant life is scarce. They are used to feed man and dog alike, and the importance of this can hardly be underestimated when one considers that here the inhabitants must, for the most part, live on what wild nature yields. 

The most important of the different varieties of fish is the whitefish, whose rich firm flesh makes delicious eating. Presumably there are two distinct variations of the species, each prevailing in a separate region: the smaller and more common variety, which weighs about two pounds, and the larger, whose weight sometimes runs as high as ten pounds. In certain waters it becomes exceedingly fat — " just like meat," as the Indians say. The deeper streams with stony bottoms are rich in trout. Fish of this species weighing as much as fifty pounds have been caught, and a ten- to twenty-pound trout is not at all uncommon. As a rule, they are tender and oozing with fat; their flesh varies in color from white to deep red. Next there is the cony, a kind of salmon, which, strictly speaking, is called inconnu, since at first no one was able to classify it. From a scientific standpoint it is of especial interest, as it is found nowhere save in the streams of the Mackenzie watershed. It resembles in many ways the whitefish, save that it is considerably larger and that it sometimes attains a weight of over thirty pounds. Its meat is not tasty and is used principally as provender for the dogs. 

There are other species of fish as well. The spiked sucker, — which is a close relative of the whitefish — the bluefish, the slimy loach, whose liver alone is edible, and the pike, which spends most of its time preying on smaller fish and grows so immense that I would never venture to guess its maximum weight. Last of all, I mention a freak herring to be found in Great Bear Lake. . . .

We had pitched our tent down by the beach and were enjoying life in front of our fire, when one canoe after another appeared through the darkness, a short distance away from us. Before these reached the shore, the dogs were splashing in the water. When the first canoe grated against the bottom, a man sprang out, and in a moment or two a fire was blazing in among the spruces. Men, women, and children poured out of the canoes and, as if by magic, a whole village of tepees had suddenly sprung up. These were the Indians which inhabited this district — all together about a hundred of them. They had spent the entire summer on the shores of Great Slave Lake and had subsisted entirely on fish. They were now on their way up into the Barrens to meet the caribou herds migrating south from the Arctic into wooded country — for the rest of the winter they would lead a nomad existence on the trail of the herd. Their days of meat-eating were almost at hand. 

During the evening a party of hunters came over to us, a troop of emaciated dogs at their heels. 

"Si tzel-twi (Me tobacco)," was their opening remark, as one of the Indians pointed to our tobacco pouches. We permitted them to fill their pipes, which they first dug out carefully with their knives. We were easy-marks, they certainly must have thought, for one of them immediately stepped forward and asked for a sled. Another pointed to Trofast and demanded him. A third gave the distinct impression that nothing less than our entire outfit would satisfy him, and was highly incensed over the fact that we denied him such a reasonable desire. Later, when they had finished with their begging, we offered them something to eat, and with that they forgave us. A lively conversation ensued: the Indians rattled on in their language, to which we made answer in English. They on their side and we on ours illustrated the meaning of each word with an ingenious gesture, nodded eagerly, smiled understandingly at each other, comprehended not a thing. 

But when the word " e-then " began to occur in the conversation of the Indians, we became immediately aware of what they were talking about. " E-then," we knew, was their word for caribou, the all-important topic of conversation in this part of the world. The fact which interested us most we were soon able to untangle. One of the Indians put his cheek against his hand as though he were asleep, raised four fingers in the air, pointed toward the east, meanwhile repeating over and over: " E-then thle, e-then thle (Many caribou, many caribou)." No one could misunderstand this. The caribou were back on the treeless plains, four days' journey away.

Our chief diet in the past had been fish. We cast out our lines each day, and, as a rule, we were able to catch enough for both ourselves and the dogs. But with boiled fish for breakfast, fried fish for lunch, and boiled fish again for dinner, in the long run meal-time began to lose something of its glamour for us. We never used salt; potatoes belonged to a bygone day. In short, we experienced no pleasure, sitting down to that sooty kettle of ours. It was meat we were longing for. Of course, we could hunt, but that required leisure. So we got along with simply dreaming about meat. 

Then one day our dream became reality. We were paddling along a narrow stream which joined two lakes together. Wild ducks were splashing about in the water, and as I came paddling along behind Dale, I took a pot-shot at them. I brought down two, but to find them was not an easy task, for the reeds were so thick that the canoe could hardly move. I was pawing around in search of my game and had just found one mangled duck, when two shots echoed across the water. The only thing which occurred to me was that Dale, impatient over the delay, had fired his gun as a signal for me to hurry along. So I picked up my paddle and moved on. 

Reaching the lake, I caught sight of his canoe way off under the opposite bank. What under Heaven was he doing way over there? As I approached, my astonishment increased to see him splashing about in water up to his knees. Peevish because Dale's uncalled-for behavior had obliged me to abandon that other duck of mine, I halted some distance away and asked disagreeably just what he had meant by it. "Come on and help me skin this moose!" cried Dale. — It lay where he had shot it, in three feet of water. 

We began by devouring the heart. To be on the safe side, we took care of the tongue and kidneys in the same manner. After this we quartered the moose and loaded the meat into our already overladen canoe. In the bow we found a place for the head, with its mighty crown of antlers. The effect was decorative indeed. Then we paddled on till we found an attractive camp-site at the edge of a small river, and, with a sense of inner well-being, we spent the remainder of the evening puffing on our pipes and discussing the unbelievable good fortune which had suddenly come our way. But we didn't see Lion, Nagger, and Spike(the dogs) again until the following morning. At the place where the moose had been slain, they had stuffed themselves so full of meat that they had been unable to budge from the spot. 

It was not difficult for us to wait with patience the three days necessary to make dried meat of the carcass. Since leaving Slave Lake we had scarcely paused for breath, and all our clothes were badly in need of repairing before it would be too late. We cut the meat into large slices and hung it from a tripod, under which we kept a low smoky fire burning constantly. On striking camp we were able to crowd most of the smoked meat into four dog-packs, so greatly had it shrunk during the drying process.

Directly across the lake from our cabin was "Cranberry Hill." There berries grew in red profusion, simply begging to be plucked. I lost no time in paddling across to gather a bucketful so that we might have a bit of jam to eat during the winter. One day I was walking along deep in thought, as I shoveled up handfuls of berries and threw them into the pail. Suddenly I heard a rustle back in the brush and looked up. At the same time another pair of eyes looked up. They belonged to a bear. It stood behind a rise of ground and blinked stupidly at me. It would be difficult to determine which one of us was the more amazed. We glared at each other for several moments, no doubt each thinking much the same thought: " What the devil are you doing here in my berry patch? " At length the bear turned on his heel and slowly shuffled off among the trees. From that day on, I never went berry-picking without my rifle.

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Note by Travis: Berries are discussed in many Arctic texts, but it never seems to be a necessary component of the diet - for instance to ward off scurvy or other deficiency diseases. It's a local food source that's easy to collect and thus makes for a great "spice" to be added to other foods to increase their palatability.

There was good fishing right outside our door, but we needed a cache, or scaffold, from which we could hang what we caught so that it would be safe from thieving animals. Bears, wolves, wolverines, minks, and martens were constantly prowling about and they would make short work of any food left within reach of their claws. 

We selected four trees and cut them off about ten feet from the ground. On top of these stumps we placed a framework of heavy timbers, across which, in turn, we put down a platform of logs with room enough between each to hang our fish in strings of ten. In one corner of the cache we built a little gabled storehouse covered with the canvas which we had ripped from one of the canoes. In it, as a measure of precaution, lest an accident should happen and our cabin burn down, we stored a part of our provisions. In it, too, we would store our supply of meat later on with the arrival of the caribou. The stumps which supported our cache were stripped of bark and carefully covered with tin. Now let the bear try his claws on that! 

This done, we set to work fishing in earnest. Now was the proper time for it, these last few weeks before the waters should freeze. When fish are hung up to dry without first being cleaned, they have a pretty strong taste, but these do well enough for the dogs, who even seem to prefer their fish when they are slightly odoriferous. We needed several thousand fish, for we had eight dogs to keep over the winter, and it was uncertain when the caribou would come. Each dog was to be rationed two whitefish a day. 

It was astonishing that in the course of a good day's fishing, even in such a shallow little pond as Moose Lake, our ten small nets would yield us as many as two hundred fish. Most of these were whitefish of maximum size, but occasionally there was a giant pike among them. It required time to fish, and the work was not always pleasant, especially when, on cold raw days, snowflakes floated in the air, and, out on the lake, we had to sit hauling in our catch with bare hands. But gradually our cache began to fill up with fish, and, with that, a sense of security began to take root in our minds. Before we were finished, we would have upwards of fifteen hundred fish, to say nothing of the several hundred we had cleaned and smoked for ourselves, so that we would have enough to keep the wolf from the door up until Christmas, at least, even were all else to fail.