Naza! Naza! Naza!

: The Last Of The Plainsmen

It was a waiting day at Fort Chippewayan. The lonesome, far-northern

Hudson's Bay Trading Post seldom saw such life. Tepees dotted the banks

of the Slave River and lines of blanketed Indians paraded its shores.

Near the boat landing a group of chiefs, grotesque in semi-barbaric,

semicivilized splendor, but black-browed, austere-eyed, stood in savage

dignity with folded arms and high-held heads. Lounging on the grassy

b
nk were white men, traders, trappers and officials of the post.



All eyes were on the distant curve of the river where, as it lost

itself in a fine-fringed bend of dark green, white-glinting waves

danced and fluttered. A June sky lay blue in the majestic stream;

ragged, spear-topped, dense green trees massed down to the water;

beyond rose bold, bald-knobbed hills, in remote purple relief.



A long Indian arm stretched south. The waiting eyes discerned a black

speck on the green, and watched it grow. A flatboat, with a man

standing to the oars, bore down swiftly.



Not a red hand, nor a white one, offered to help the voyager in the

difficult landing. The oblong, clumsy, heavily laden boat surged with

the current and passed the dock despite the boatman's efforts. He swung

his craft in below upon a bar and roped it fast to a tree. The Indians

crowded above him on the bank. The boatman raised his powerful form

erect, lifted a bronzed face which seemed set in craggy hardness, and

cast from narrow eyes a keen, cool glance on those above. The silvery

gleam in his fair hair told of years.



Silence, impressive as it was ominous, broke only to the rattle of

camping paraphernalia, which the voyager threw to a level, grassy bench

on the bank. Evidently this unwelcome visitor had journeyed from afar,

and his boat, sunk deep into the water with its load of barrels, boxes

and bags, indicated that the journey had only begun. Significant, too,

were a couple of long Winchester rifles shining on a tarpaulin.



The cold-faced crowd stirred and parted to permit the passage of a

tall, thin, gray personage of official bearing, in a faded military

coat.



"Are you the musk-ox hunter?" he asked, in tones that contained no

welcome.



The boatman greeted this peremptory interlocutor with a cool laugh--a

strange laugh, in which the muscles of his face appeared not to play.



"Yes, I am the man," he said.



"The chiefs of the Chippewayan and Great Slave tribes have been

apprised of your coming. They have held council and are here to speak

with you."



At a motion from the commandant, the line of chieftains piled down to

the level bench and formed a half-circle before the voyager. To a man

who had stood before grim Sitting Bull and noble Black Thunder of the

Sioux, and faced the falcon-eyed Geronimo, and glanced over the sights

of a rifle at gorgeous-feathered, wild, free Comanches, this

semi-circle of savages--lords of the north--was a sorry comparison.

Bedaubed and betrinketed, slouchy and slovenly, these low-statured

chiefs belied in appearance their scorn-bright eyes and lofty mien.

They made a sad group.



One who spoke in unintelligible language, rolled out a haughty,

sonorous voice over the listening multitude. When he had finished, a

half-breed interpreter, in the dress of a white man, spoke at a signal

from the commandant.



"He says listen to the great orator of the Chippewayan. He has summoned

all the chiefs of the tribes south of Great Slave Lake. He has held

council. The cunning of the pale-face, who comes to take the musk-oxen,

is well known. Let the pale-face hunter return to his own

hunting-grounds; let him turn his face from the north. Never will the

chiefs permit the white man to take musk-oxen alive from their country.

The Ageter, the Musk-ox, is their god. He gives them food and fur. He

will never come back if he is taken away, and the reindeer will follow

him. The chiefs and their people would starve. They command the

pale-face hunter to go back. They cry Naza! Naza! Naza!"



"Say, for a thousand miles I've heard that word Naza!" returned the

hunter, with mingled curiosity and disgust. "At Edmonton Indian runners

started ahead of me, and every village I struck the redskins would

crowd round me and an old chief would harangue at me, and motion me

back, and point north with Naza! Naza! Naza! What does it mean?"



"No white man knows; no Indian will tell," answered the interpreter.

"The traders think it means the Great Slave, the North Star, the North

Spirit, the North Wind, the North Lights and the musk-ox god."



"Well, say to the chiefs to tell Ageter I have been four moons on the

way after some of his little Ageters, and I'm going to keep on after

them."



"Hunter, you are most unwise," broke in the commandant, in his

officious voice. "The Indians will never permit you to take a musk-ox

alive from the north. They worship him, pray to him. It is a wonder you

have not been stopped."



"Who'll stop me?"



"The Indians. They will kill you if you do not turn back."



"Faugh! to tell an American plainsman that!" The hunter paused a steady

moment, with his eyelids narrowing over slits of blue fire. "There is

no law to keep me out, nothing but Indian superstition and Naza! And

the greed of the Hudson's Bay people. I am an old fox, not to be fooled

by pretty baits. For years the officers of this fur-trading company

have tried to keep out explorers. Even Sir John Franklin, an

Englishman, could not buy food of them. The policy of the company is to

side with the Indians, to keep out traders and trappers. Why? So they

can keep on cheating the poor savages out of clothing and food by

trading a few trinkets and blankets, a little tobacco and rum for

millions of dollars worth of furs. Have I failed to hire man after man,

Indian after Indian, not to know why I cannot get a helper? Have I, a

plainsman, come a thousand miles alone to be scared by you, or a lot of

craven Indians? Have I been dreaming of musk-oxen for forty years, to

slink south now, when I begin to feel the north? Not I."



Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hissing snake, spat in

the hunter's face. He stood immovable while they perpetrated the

outrage, then calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange, cool voice,

addressed the interpreter.



"Tell them thus they show their true qualities, to insult in council.

Tell them they are not chiefs, but dogs. Tell them they are not even

squaws, only poor, miserable starved dogs. Tell them I turn my back on

them. Tell them the paleface has fought real chiefs, fierce, bold, like

eagles, and he turns his back on dogs. Tell them he is the one who

could teach them to raise the musk-oxen and the reindeer, and to keep

out the cold and the wolf. But they are blinded. Tell them the hunter

goes north."



Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter, as of gathering thunder.



True to his word, the hunter turned his back on them. As he brushed by,

his eye caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat. At the hunter's

stern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run. He had stolen

a parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding its owner but for an

unforeseen obstacle, as striking as it was unexpected.



A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the thief's passage, and

laid two great hands on him. Instantly the parcel flew from the Indian,

and he spun in the air to fall into the river with a sounding splash.

Yells signaled the surprise and alarm caused by this unexpected

incident. The Indian frantically swam to the shore. Whereupon the

champion of the stranger in a strange land lifted a bag, which gave

forth a musical clink of steel, and throwing it with the camp articles

on the grassy bench, he extended a huge, friendly hand.



"My name is Rea," he said, in deep, cavernous tones.



"Mine is Jones," replied the hunter, and right quickly did he grip the

proffered hand. He saw in Rea a giant, of whom he was but a stunted

shadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide shoulders, a

hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, shaggy head rested on a bull

neck. His broad face, with its low forehead, its close-shut mastiff

under jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel as those of a jaguar,

marked him a man of terrible brute force.



"Free-trader!" called the commandant "Better think twice before you

join fortunes with the musk-ox hunter."



"To hell with you an' your rantin', dog-eared redskins!" cried Rea.

"I've run agin a man of my own kind, a man of my own country, an' I'm

goin' with him."



With this he thrust aside some encroaching, gaping Indians so

unconcernedly and ungently that they sprawled upon the grass.



Slowly the crowd mounted and once more lined the bank.



Jones realized that by some late-turning stroke of fortune, he had

fallen in with one of the few free-traders of the province. These

free-traders, from the very nature of their calling, which was to defy

the fur company, and to trap and trade on their own account--were a

hardy and intrepid class of men. Rea's worth to Jones exceeded that of

a dozen ordinary men. He knew the ways of the north, the language of

the tribes, the habits of animals, the handling of dogs, the uses of

food and fuel. Moreover, it soon appeared that he was a carpenter and

blacksmith.



"There's my kit," he said, dumping the contents of his bag. It

consisted of a bunch of steel traps, some tools, a broken ax, a box of

miscellaneous things such as trappers used, and a few articles of

flannel. "Thievin' redskins," he added, in explanation of his poverty.

"Not much of an outfit. But I'm the man for you. Besides, I had a pal

onct who knew you on the plains, called you 'Buff' Jones. Old Jim Bent

he was."



"I recollect Jim," said Jones. "He went down in Custer's last charge.

So you were Jim's pal. That'd be a recommendation if you needed one.

But the way you chucked the Indian overboard got me."



Rea soon manifested himself as a man of few words and much action. With

the planks Jones had on board he heightened the stern and bow of the

boat to keep out the beating waves in the rapids; he fashioned a

steering-gear and a less awkward set of oars, and shifted the cargo so

as to make more room in the craft.



"Buff, we're in for a storm. Set up a tarpaulin an' make a fire. We'll

pretend to camp to-night. These Indians won't dream we'd try to run the

river after dark, and we'll slip by under cover."



The sun glazed over; clouds moved up from the north; a cold wind swept

the tips of the spruces, and rain commenced to drive in gusts. By the

time it was dark not an Indian showed himself. They were housed from

the storm. Lights twinkled in the teepees and the big log cabins of the

trading company. Jones scouted round till pitchy black night, when a

freezing, pouring blast sent him back to the protection of the

tarpaulin. When he got there he found that Rea had taken it down and

awaited him. "Off!" said the free-trader; and with no more noise than a

drifting feather the boat swung into the current and glided down till

the twinkling fires no longer accentuated the darkness.



By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, had a sullen

voice, and murmured its hurry, its restraint, its menace, its meaning.

The two boat-men, one at the steering gear, one at the oars, faced the

pelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of trees. The craft slid

noiselessly onward into the gloom.



And into Jones's ears, above the storm, poured another sound, a steady,

muffled rumble, like the roll of giant chariot wheels. It had come to

be a familiar roar to him, and the only thing which, in his long life

of hazard, had ever sent the cold, prickling, tight shudder over his

warm skin. Many times on the Athabasca that rumble had presaged the

dangerous and dreaded rapids.



"Hell Bend Rapids!" shouted Rea. "Bad water, but no rocks."



The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom that charged the air

with heaviness, with a dreamy burr. The whole indistinct world appeared

to be moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of rain, to the roar of

the river. The boat shot down and sailed aloft, met shock on shock,

breasted leaping dim white waves, and in a hollow, unearthly blend of

watery sounds, rode on and on, buffeted, tossed, pitched into a black

chaos that yet gleamed with obscure shrouds of light. Then the

convulsive stream shrieked out a last defiance, changed its course

abruptly to slow down and drown the sound of rapids in muffling

distance. Once more the craft swept on smoothly, to the drive of the

wind and the rush of the rain.



By midnight the storm cleared. Murky cloud split to show shining,

blue-white stars and a fitful moon, that silvered the crests of the

spruces and sometimes hid like a gleaming, black-threaded peak behind

the dark branches.



Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched the moon-blanched

water. He saw it shade and darken under shadowy walls of granite, where

it swelled with hollow song and gurgle. He heard again the far-off

rumble, faint on the night. High cliff banks appeared, walled out the

mellow, light, and the river suddenly narrowed. Yawning holes,

whirlpools of a second, opened with a gurgling suck and raced with the

boat.



On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining plane of jumping

frosted waves played dark and white with the moonbeams. The Slave

plunged to his freedom, down his riven, stone-spiked bed, knowing no

patient eddy, and white-wreathed his dark shiny rocks in spume and

spray.



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