A TALE OF COO-COO-CACHE 



By MARTIN HUNTER 



HAD not been long 

 in charge of "Coo-coo- 

 cache" before I looked 

 about for some one able 

 to tell me the meaning 

 and root of the word 

 "Coo-coo-cache." What- 

 ever the meaning might 

 be, I felt sure the name 

 was an appropriate one, 

 and that possibly a tale 

 hung thereby. Nor was I mistaken, 

 for a few evenings later I got the old 

 chief into the guard-room and by the 

 aid of our interpreter elicited the fol- 

 lowing story ; the old man had heard 

 it from his grandfather, who partici- 

 pated in the fight. 



I found by close questioning that the 

 lives of his grandfather, father and him- 

 self spanned back over one hundred 

 and fifty years, and it was quite possible 

 and probable that the circumstantial re- 

 count was true, and the fight must have 

 taken place between the year 1750 and 

 the taking of Canada by the British. 



About that time and for some years 

 previous the warlike Iroquois had made 

 forays into the north country by most 

 of the rivers falling into the St. Law- 

 rence. In the far interior, where might 

 was right, a band of these marauders 

 would swoop down on a peaceful en- 

 campment of Algonquins, rob them of 

 their winter's hunt, not infrequently 

 maltreating them and often murder was 

 committed. There is no doubt that the 

 French, while not openly sanctioning 

 these raids, at least connived at robbery 

 of the interior Indians. Much of the 

 furs that the Iroquois brought to bar- 

 ter at Quebec and Ville Marie would 

 never have found their way there had 

 these bold freebooters not gone for 

 them. 



But a day of reckoning was coming, 



in which the poor, ill-treated Algon- 

 quins had their revenge. During the 

 winter months the chief sent a courier 

 amongst his scattered tribesmen on 

 their hunting grounds appointing a day 

 for them to meet in council the follow- 

 ing summer, at which assembly plans 

 would be made to give the Iroquois a 

 set-back they would not forget. From 

 Three Rivers, the Iroquois paddled up 

 the St. Maurice as far as the mouth of 

 the Vermillion river, one of the tribu- 

 taries of the St. Maurice. Up the Ver- 

 million they journeyed for a couple of 

 days, then struck northeast over a chain 

 of small lakes which took them out on 

 to the St. Maurice once more. By this 

 route they avoided a long detour of the 

 main river and came out above the nu- 

 merous rapids and falls. Five of these 

 small lakes drained into the Vermillion 

 and the last one, "Coo-coo-cache," into 

 the St. Maurice. 



To drop down into this last lake the 

 portage is a narrow, deep defile, one 

 side of which is a sheer, precipitous 

 rocky mountain some six or seven hun- 

 dred feet high, from the top of which 

 a person can see little Long Lake on one 

 side and "Coo-coo-cache" on the other. 

 It was down along this defile the Al- 

 gonquins waited in ambush while one 

 of their number kept vigilant watch 

 from a solitary spruce tree that crowned 

 the rocky height. The signal the watch- 

 man was to give to apprise his compan- 

 ions of the arrival of the Iroquois at the 

 upper end of the portage was the call of 

 the night owl — 



"Coo-coo-coo-ho." 



As this owl was hidden (cache), the 

 name became after "Coo-coo-cache" 

 (Hidden Owl), and to this day the lake 

 and H. B. Post are known only by that 

 name. This vigilant watch and waiting 

 had to be kept up for several days, as it 



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