CHAPTER II 



MY COMPANIONS 



The half-breed I have mentioned was the son of an 

 Englishman by a half-breed woman. His name was 

 Andrew Whitting, and he was married (according to 

 Indian custom) to an Indian woman named Chompel, 

 abbreviated colloquially to " Chom." His daughter, Emma, 

 had been christened a Protestant, and was a charming 

 ghl. She and her father could read and write a little, 

 and were Christians. The Indians, Monchuapiganon 

 (" Deep waters," in the Cree language) and Chuckochil- 

 gegan (" Cunning polecat "), were elderly men about 

 fifty and sixty years old respectively. They were Crees 

 from the shores of Hudson's Bay, and their names being 

 such awkward ones to pronounce, I took the liberty of 

 styling them Tom and Sam, familiar names to which 

 they took kindly enough. These two men were brothers, 

 and Chuckochilgegan, or Sam, was the father of Whit- 

 ting's wife. He had had three squaws, one of whom was 

 drowned in an accident while shooting some rapids ; and 

 another he told me was starved to death in a hard season ; 

 deaths from such causes being not an unusual occurrence, 

 formerly, in the North- West. 



Tom, the younger of the two Indians, had never had 

 a wife ; an unusual circumstance among Red Men. He 

 was a man of very taciturn disposition ; and though he 

 liked to hunt, fish, and wander about the woods in my 

 company, we often spent an entire day together without 

 speaking a dozen sentences. I think he had met with 

 some disappointment, or injury, that had soured him ; 



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