Girls are supposed to be taught till they are married. After a girl is married, she has full control of herself, and may do whatever she thinks best. But it is best to follow the rules forever, to be kind to one’s husband and the people. It is pretty hard to lead a righteous life.
When girls begin to have children they are told to be kind to their children and love them, and not to do anything bad to them. And they are taught that if they live quietly to an old age, they themselves will be the only relations they have.
And before children are well grown, they dare not go any place by themselves. Of course boys are different: they can go any place they please. And girls dare not do so, unless they have a good reason for it. They are taught to always be at home and do the work. They are told: “If you grow to be a young lady, if you walk around and do not do any work, people will not think anything of you. They will always talk about you. They will say that all you are good for, is to walk from place to place. They will say you are looking for a place to get your meals. They will say that you are looking for a place where you can get the finest food. They will say many things about you. They will even say that you are worse than a man. Every time you are on the road they will say, ‘There goes a woman who goes about looking for good meals for herself.’ ” That is the reason why they desire a girl to be able to do things so that she can support herself after she is grown. That is why they tell girls to obey their parents. Their parents have had good experience and know what they are talking about.
And when girls arrive at puberty, they are told not to marry a divorced man. They are told to marry a young man. In the early days, people used to say to each other when girls married divorced men: “It is not natural for a girl to marry a divorced man, nor for a young man to marry a divorced woman.” They told girls that if they married young men, that they would be benefited by getting horses, and so on. And a girl is told to look around and get the right kind of a boy. In the early days, they liked boys who killed game, trapped, sold furs, and so got money; but nowadays they tell girls to look around for boys that have horses, homes, everything they want. They say, “That’s the right kind of a young man to marry—one that can support you.”
Girls are also told: “When you are staying with your father-in-law and with your mother-in-law, you are supposed to help them in their work. When your mother-in-law begins doing anything, you must ask her if you may do it.” A girl is taught this so that she can get along nicely after she is married. Girls are told: “If you don’t do these things, people will talk about you, and say how lazy you are. And people will not like you.” This is the reason why a girl is taught all manner of work.
And all girls are taught the same things. And in this way, they lead themselves the right way.
Truman Michelson
In Montagnais Country
On the shores of a great lake were clustered the buildings of the old Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, where the People of the Interior came every spring with their cargoes of pelts to trade for the articles which the white man made for them. Through the long, cold winters, the factor and his crew passed the time as comfortably as they could, with little to break the monotony of the days, while powerful blasts of cold, often bringing several feet of drifted snow in their wake, beat upon the buildings. In the summer, however, the time went quickly. From the vast, forested hills northward came the returning bands of trappers, bringing the results of their winter’s hunt. From the regions nearer, the People of the Lake, by shorter stages, came in, too, with their peltry. So, with the two bands of nomads camped along the beach and on the grassy terrace between the lake and the forest of the upland, the scene was enlivened each spring by the presence of several hundred hunters, with their families, gaudily dressed and garrulous.
By day, in the heat of the sun, which makes these northern places blossom in acres of green and showy flowers, the newcomers wandered from tent to tent, exchanging gossip, talking, singing, gaming and planning for the coming of winter; and all the time gradually enlarging the store of their annual necessities by an irregular trade with the factor behind his long counter in the Post shop. By night among the tents, grouped in twos and threes, the twinkling lights illuminated scenes of quiet domestic life, where some were asleep on piles of tent litter and furs, while others were engaged in plying the busy needle or in the low conversation which made the early evenings such pleasant times for visiting between those who had not seen each other for many months.
The People of the Interior always came to the Post two or three weeks later than those whose hunting grounds were around the lake. Some of the families from the interior came six hundred miles, driving dogs which dragged their laden sleds, the canoes forming part of the loads, until, coming south to where the snow was giving way to the advance of the spring, they left the sleds and loaded the canoes, finishing their journey by drifting in them with the swollen current down to the great lake. The trading completed, the People of the Interior returned as they had come, by canoe and sled, leaving the Post two or three weeks sooner than the People of the Lake. This had been the procedure for innumerable generations.
The People of the Lake never envied their friends from the interior. Their nearness to the Post they considered a great advantage. They could even make a short journey to the Post in midwinter to enjoy the festivities of Christmas with the factor and his employees, while their friends in the interior were perhaps freezing or starving if the game had failed them.
The People of the Lake had begun to feel themselves wiser and more important than their simple forest neighbors. Often one of them would come back from the metropolis with new and smart-cut clothes, plenty of gin, and some household finery with which to decorate the shelves and tables of the board houses which they had erected on the lake shore, but above all, with glowing accounts of the great and busy city where everything could be had that a Montagnais might covet in his most prodigal dreams. To the People of the Interior, these tales sounded marvelous, yet, much as they loved to hear them told, there was a lingering suspicion in their minds that all was not as fine and grand as it was painted, judging by the strong breath, the fagged condition and the depleted pocket-books of those who had experienced these transitory contacts with the outside world.
A product of the conditions which made the People of the Lake so satisfied with themselves was young Antoine, a stalwart youth, whose knowledge of French and the astute principles of business in general, made him invaluable to the independent fur traders who regularly came to the lake to drive bargains with the returning hunters. Antoine’s clothes showed his advance in the social scale. Peg-top trousers, narrow-waisted jacket, suède-topped, patent leather shoes, blue celluloid collar, ready-made cravat, and a green woolen golf cap marked him at once as a denizen of the back streets of Montreal as much as his brown skin, oblique eyes, and sleek hair proclaimed his origin from the People of the North. In broken French, even in broken English, Antoine could swear in competition with the French-Canadian employees of the honorable Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, and those of Revillon Brothers of Montreal who sought to compete with the great company. Antoine had actually cultivated an urbane swagger, he consumed innumerable packages of paper cigarettes and perfumed his system attentively with draughts of gin and brandy. At times, even, Antoine forgot that he was a Montagnais. It was only when reminded by his own people that it was unbecoming for him to prey upon them to the advantage of the traders, that his vanity was lowered to a point which made him agreeable to the other young men. To the girls he was more attractive, and among the People of the Lake there were few girls he had not sampled. At times his vain heart yearned to extend his conquests to the simple maids who came patiently with their parents on the toilsome journey from the hills and forests of the north.
The head man of the People of the Interior, old Shekapeo, whose name meant “Going Backwards,” was a stern and practical hunter whose annual catch could generally be depended upon to contain the finest and rarest furs. While he was alive to the defects of character which made Antoine in figure and reputation so conspicuous about the Post,