A canoe is to Grey Owl what a horse is to a cowpuncher or a good vessel to a sailor. Prior to his becoming so deeply interested in what has turned out to be his life work, namely the preservation of the Little People, his days were spent in guiding, exploration, and transportation of supplies up and down and across and about the north country. He trapped every winter, and for a few summers served as a forest ranger for the Ontario government. He was singularly successful, and his ability to penetrate easily through unexplored territory gained for him a roving commission. The war stopped his activities for three years. He returned from it pronounced unfit from wounds in 1917. As soon as he was able he resumed his former manner of living, and his speed and endurance and extraordinarily intimate knowledge gained for him the post of assistant chief ranger over a large area in the Mississauga Forest reserve. After a few years during which he came to know every nook and cranny of this region to his own satisfaction a ranger’s life became monotonous and far-off horizons beckoned. He closed his old trapping camp on the Spanish River, threw together a light outfit, and set out on new wanderings, hiring out, canoe and man, wherever guiding, packing, and the like provided means of renewing supplies. He tramped over a new hunting ground every winter.
He tells his own story in the present book.You learn how he came to realize that our wildlife was becoming scarcer and scarcer so that in certain areas native game was almost extinct. This was particularly true of beaver. In 1928 he gave up trapping altogether and devoted, indeed consecrated, his life to conservation of game generally and beaver in particular.
I have spoken of him as being almost missionary in his quality. He is. The cause of preservation and conservation of the Wilderness and its folk is his lifework, and he feels himself as surely called to it as a man of the cloth is called. He might paraphrase John Wesley and say, “The Wilderness is my parish.” In Grey Owl’s own words, “Give me a good canoe, a pair of Ojibway snowshoes, my beaver, my family, and ten thousand square miles of wilderness and I am happy.” He does not add, but I may for him, that he has in ample measure another requisite for happiness: he is a happy man because he has learned to help others to happiness, and amongst those others not the least, his friends the Little People.
Hugh Eayrs
Toronto
October 1934
This is primarily an animal story; it is also the story of two people, and their struggle to emerge from the chaos into which the failure of the fur trade, and the breaking down of the old proprietary system of hunting grounds, plunged the Indian people, and not a few Whites, during the last two decades. Their means of livelihood destroyed by fire and the invasion by hordes of transient trappers and cheap fur buyers, these two, a man and a woman, newly married and with no prospects, broke loose from their surroundings taking with them all that was left to them of the once vast heritage of their people — their equipment and two small animals as pets.
Outcasts in their own country, wandering in what amounted to a foreign land, they tried desperately to fit somewhere into this new picture. Their devotion to these creatures that represented to them the very soul of their lost environment, eventually proved to be their salvation.
All the places are actual, the story known to not a few; characters are real, and if named receive, save in one instance, their proper appellations.
In order to properly grasp the spirit in which this book is written, it is necessary to remember that though it is not altogether an Indian story, it has an Indian background. The considering attitude towards all nature which appears throughout the work, is best explained by a quotation from John G. Gifford’s Story of the Seminole War.
“The meaning of sovereignty is not very clear to primitive peoples, especially to the Indian. He rarely dominated the things around him; he was a part of nature and not its boss.” Hewitt says of the Indian:
In his own country … he is a harmonious element in a landscape that is incomparable in its nobility of colour and mass and feeling of the Unchangeable. He never dominates it as does the European his environment, but belongs there as do the mesas, skies, sunshine, spaces and the other living creatures. He takes his part in it with the clouds, winds, rocks, plants, birds and beasts, with drum beat and chant and symbolic gesture, keeping time with the seasons, moving in orderly procession with nature, holding to the unity of life in all things, seeking no superior place for himself but merely a state of harmony with all created things … the most rhythmic life … that is lived among the races of men.
This viewpoint is not peculiar to people of native blood but is often found in those of other races who have resided for many years in the wilderness.
The idea of domination and submission, though now passing out of date in nearly every walk of life, is hard to disassociate, in the minds of some, from the contact between civilized man and beings in a state of nature. This was forcibly illustrated in a late radio broadcast during which, in a play dealing with frontier conditions, an actor who portrayed the part of Indian guide was heard to address the head (not the leader, as is generally supposed, the guide being of necessity in that capacity) of the party, in an awed voice, as “Master.” But the more tolerant and unaspiring, though perhaps less ambitious view-point of the Indian must be taken into consideration, if the reader is to fully appreciate the rather unusual tenor of the narrative.
Interpretations of the more obscure mental processes of the animal characters that run through the story, are of necessity comparative; such attempts at delineation are difficult, and often inadequate, without some parallel to draw them by; but the great majority of the descriptions of animal psychology are very clear and positive. Those manifestations that were at the time inexplicable have been construed in the light of later investigation and experience, so as to preserve the unity of impression of the narrative.
In the rather ill-considered rush we have been in to exploit our natural resources, we have taken little trouble to examine into the capabilities and possibilities of the wild creatures involved in it, save in so far as the findings were of commercial value. Therefore much that is interesting has been overlooked. The kinship between the human race and the rest of our natural fauna becomes very apparent to those of us who sojourn among the latter for any length of time; alarmingly so to those whose attitude has hitherto been governed by the well-worn and much abused phrase that “Man shall have dominion over all.” However I do not draw comparisons between man and beast, save in a few instances which are too remarkable to be overlooked. Nor do I ascribe human attributes to animals. If any of their qualities are found to closely approximate some of our own, it is because they have, unknown to us, always possessed them, and the fault lies in our not having discovered sooner that these characteristics were not after all exclusively human, any more than are a number of others to which we have by long usage become accustomed.
My fingers, well toasted at many an open fire, and stiffened a little by the paddle and the pull of a loaded toboggan, are ill-suited for the task I set them to. In this writing game I find myself in the dangerous situation of a man who has played his first game of poker and won a small jackpot, and who is now sitting in on another round having rather disastrous possibilities. To each his craft and calling, nor should we grudge another his ability; nonetheless, did I have the power to expertly carry out what I have here attempted, or had another, more skilled in letters and who knew this story well, have undertaken it, it would have been better done.
To me the rifle has ever been mightier than the pen. The feel of a canoe gunnel at the thigh, the splash of flying spray in the face, the rhythm of the snowshoe trail, the beckoning of far-off hills and valleys, the majesty of the tempest, the calm and silent presence of the trees that seem to muse and ponder in their silence; the trust and confidence of small living creatures, the company of simple men; these have been my inspiration and my guide. Without them I am nothing. To these and to my teachers, men of a type that is rapidly passing from the face of the earth, belongs the credit for whatever there may be that is worthy in this work of mine.
And should