144 THEOUGH THE MACKEiN'ZIE BASIIST 



of bitter fortune, yet, with prodigious heart, never cease to 

 love the oppressor. 



There was an adjunct of the half-breed camp, however, 

 more interesting than the dogs, namely, Marie Rose Gladu, 

 a half-sister of the Catherine Bisson we met at Lesser Slave 

 Lake, but who declared herself to be older than she by five 

 years. From evidence received she proved to be very old, 

 certainly over a hundred, and perhaps the oldest woman in 

 iN^orthern Canada. She was bom at Lesser Slave Lake, and 

 remembered the wars of her people with the Blackfeet, and 

 the " dancing " of captured scalps. She remembered the buf- 

 falo as plentiful at Calling Lake; that it was then a mixed 

 country, and that their supplies in those old days were brought 

 in by way of Isle a la Cross, Beaver Kiver, and Lac la Biche, 

 as well as by Methy Portage, a statement which I have heard 

 disputed, but which is quite credible for all that. She 

 remembered the old fort at the south-east end of Lesser 

 Slave Lake, and Waupistagwon, "The White Head," as she 

 called him, namely, Mr. Shaw of the famous finger-nail. Her 

 father, whose name was !N^ekehwapiskun — " My wigwam is 

 white " — was a fur company's Chief, and, in his youth, a noted 

 hunter of Kabisca (Chipewyan), whence he came to Lesser 

 Slave Lake. Her ovm Cree name, unmusical for a wonder, 

 was Ochenaskuiuagan — " Having passed many Birthdays." 

 Her hair was gray and black rather than iron-gray, her 

 eyes sunken but bright, her nose well formed, her mouth 

 unshrunken but rather projecting, her cheeks and brow a 

 mass of wrinkles, and her hands, strange to say, not shriv- 

 elled, but soft and delicate as a girl's. The body, however, 

 was nothing but bones and integument ; but, unlike her half- 

 sister, she could walk without assistance. After our long 

 talk through an interpreter she readily consented to be photo- 

 graphed with me, and, seating ourselves on the grass together, 

 she grasped my hand and disposed herself in a jaunty way 

 so as to look her very best. Indeed, she must have been a 

 pretty girl in her youth, and, old as she was, had some of 

 the arts of girlhood in her yet. 



