FOREST AND STREAM„ 
[Nov. 28, 1896. 
the previous week and was not filling up for the week to 
come. "We naturally talked about the fish, and he told 
me that over by hia wigsvam was a lake with plenty of 
fish; and as our move next day would bring our camp 
near his, he would show me where and how to catcb 
some o-gah. This was a new name, and after drawing 
pictures of fish as well as I could on a piece of birch bark, 
I drew a pike or pickerel and said "K-jn-o-shah;" he said it 
was the same. "O'-gah" I never met before as a name for 
pike; but kenosha, kenoje or kenozha was the more com- 
mon name for the fish. If those who wish to trace the 
derivation of the names of fish as used in popular nomen- 
clature will take down their volumes of Forest and Stream 
and look at the articles on the name of mascalonge, mas- 
kinou j 3, etc. , they will find all that is known of the Indian 
name fronn which the various spellings are derived. See 
Vol. XXVI., paee 149, March 18, 1886; and Vol. XXVI., 
page 368, Oct. 28, 1886. 
From our new camp on the shore of a nameless lake I 
could see the wigwam of my new friend on the other side, 
about half a mile off; and after getting things in shape I 
went over to him. His wigwam was a typical Ojibwa 
residence, made of skins laid over many poles which came 
together at the top, where there was an opening for the 
smoke to go out. It was circular in form, much like 
the cumbrous Sibley tent which some of our troops used 
in 1862, On the outside there were records of hunts or 
tights in black and red pigments, which could bs read by 
those versed in their pictorial histories, but which were a 
huckleberry beyond my persimmon. A skin flap kept 
out the cold, a small fire in the middle diffused all the 
heat it had to spare, and a goodly portion of it went out 
with the smoke. They made small fires of twigs and 
squatted over them, freezing one side while warming the 
other, and said that ours were so hot that a man could not 
get near them to warm himself; but I noticed that many 
nights our big fires were patronized by traveling Indians 
to sleep by, instead of making small ones for themselves. 
Did you ever notice that man is the only animal which lies 
with bis feet to the fire? If you haven't observed this, 
just look at your dog bake bis head under the stove. 
I was invited inside. Besides the flavor of smoke from 
burning wood there were several other perfumes which 
you never smelled in a barber's shop. Mentally I quote a 
couplet from Tennyson's "Maud" as I recall the com- 
bined odors: 
"The woodbine spices are watted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown." 
The family consisted of Mme. Dirty-face and two girls 
of sixteen and eighteen, and three young boys. By a 
most convenient arrangement the parlor, sitting-room, 
bedroom, dining-room and kitchen were all on one floor, 
with no partition nor stairs to climb when the head of 
the house came home with a load. I took this all in at a 
glance— the architectural beauties, I mean — the odors 
came in through a different sense. When I described it 
to Henry Neaville I could only compare it to a flavor met 
in boyhood days when I dug up a nest of young wood- 
chucks. 
■'Yes," said Henry, "I've been in a wigwam in winter, 
but the flavor, as I remember it, was more of an orni- 
thological character and seemed to resemble that of a nest 
of young woodpeckers." 
Dirty -face took down a couple, of spears and an axe, and 
we went up the lake to an open air-hole where it was 
probable that a spring boiled up from the bottom and 
kept the ice from forming over its warmer waters. He 
advanced cautiously and sounded the ice with the poll of 
his axe until it broke; he chipped off the edge which 
would not bear us and we had firm footing at the margin 
of the water. His spears were not like the gig which 
Guyon and I used in sketch XV. , but were, made with a 
single point with two barbs, like an arrow-head; they ap- 
peared to be made from saw blades and were fastened in 
clefts in the handles, which were of some heavy wood. Oar 
ice cutting had scared away any fish which might be near, 
80 we vraited and smoked. The snow on the ice prevented 
our seeing into the water except where it was open, and 
it also shielded us from being seen by the fish. Once I 
stamped a foot and my friend said "Kego," and as the 
word means both "fish' and "don't," it was a caution 
either way. Soon we could see an occasional fish of good 
size in the clear water, but too deep to be reached with a 
spear. 
His patience exceeded mine, and it began to be monot- 
onous to see the fish swimming below out of range in the 
clear water, and I said to him: "Kego-de-me," the fish 
are very deep. He grunted an assent and pulled out a. 
thin white stone not unlike a fish in general shape, andi 
tied it to his spear with a few feet of string. This he 
moved gently about and several fish gave it respectful 
attention without being impertinent, and then a large 
lake trout rose and I struck and missed it; its tail was 
toward me, and my spear went on one side. I knew that 
my friend must be more expert, and I took his spear and 
played the lure in the water, drawing it near the surface 
if a fish rose. Soon he plunged his spear into a fish which 
stood broadside and was about to seiza the decoy. The' 
cord ran out rapidly, but the flight was soon checked and 
a fine nay-may-goos lay upon the snow. I spell the 
name as I learned to speak it. Scientists call thet 
lake trout Salvelinus namaycush, softening the orig- 
inal word. Dirty-face insisted that I should try it again 
and I did, for I wanted to learn how to handle this new 
kind of spear; a large pike came up to the lure and I sent 
the steel into it and secured it. We took three more 
fish, and then it was time for me to go to camp to geti 
things in shape for the return of the linemen. I went 
back by way of the wigwam and stopped awhile and gave> 
Mrs. -Dirty- face some tobacco, and she ordered the girls to 
clean the fish for me. I took two — enough for our supper 
with the rice and beans — and would take no more. I 
have always been in doubt whether her action was genu- 
inely generous or not, for the whole party visited me next 
day, and again when we moved to the upper end of the 
lake, and if a balance was struck between those two fish 
(which may have weighed laibs.) and ah unknown quan- 
tity of bread, beans, rice, coffee and sugar— really, I don't, 
know if there would be any balance. 
I have remarked on the absence of game and other ani- 
mal life. The snow which fell in September and had lain 
without addition or melting had become too hard to- 
record the passing of small animals such as mink, rabbits 
or even the heavier coons, but I saw a mink and a fox 
and heard the great gray timber wolf several times. The 
Canada jay and the raven were the most common birds,. 
and I saw the little chickadee and a bird which I did not 
know, but now think might have been the shrike, or 
butcher bird. I never ceased to be surprised at the ab- 
sence of life in this wilderness. 
December came and the cold increased. One morning 
the trees were bursting with a sound like rifles and Gibbs 
thought we were attacked. He and Crosby jumped up 
out of bed before daylight, but soon returned when the 
rest of the party laughed at them, for we knew what the 
noise meant, having heard it before. After reaching 
Crow Wing we learned that the thermometer had been 
40° below zero on several occasions. There was no wind 
in the heavy timber and we were warmly clad and could 
hardly realize how cold it was. Coats were discarded, 
but no man knew how many flannel shirts he had on ; 
and as long as the body part of a pair of trousers held 
together the legs of them were reinforced by cylinders 
made of bed ticking fastened at top and bottom; these 
were not removed when worn out, but other reinforce- 
ments were added outside them until a cross section of a 
leg might have shown half a dozan strata of bed tick 
above the original deposit of trousering. 
We had now reached the northern line of our survey 
at its eastern end, over by Mille-lacs, and were working 
the upper tier of townships toward the Mississippi. One 
day I was out with my rifle in the hope of flndmg game 
when I came across a wigwam by a small stream. I en- 
tered without ceremony, in accordance with Indian eti- 
quette, and found a party of perhaps a dozsn, bucks and 
squaws, seated on the ground around a small fire in the 
center, over which a sheet iron camp kettle was boiling 
and sending forth a savory odor. I was hungry after the 
tramp, although I had bread, pork and beans in plenty, 
but had not eaten. After giving the mixed French and 
Indian salute which they commonly used, I invited my- 
self to sit down, and this was also correct Ojibwa form. 
There was an oppressive silence, oppressive to me at 
least, 
"The silence of the place was like a sleep, 
So full otfeab it seemed; each passing tread 
Was a reverberation from the deep 
Recesses of the ages that are dead." 
How different these people were from a party of white 
men waiting for a feast. There was no chat, jest, song 
or story. For idle men they take life seriously, and yet 
they are like children in many of their moods. I could 
never learn to live their way ; that impassive, self-con- 
tained manner seems to be a continual sort of dress 
parade, so to speak, for they can be roused to enthusiasm 
by war or the hunt. I can't say that I like such people; 
they are not cordial, and seem to be sitting in cold and 
unsympathetic judgment on not only you, but every 
other thing on earth. Daring the winter it had been 
evident that I was not a favorite with the native Ameri- 
can. He-who-tah es-so-much-at- a-mouthf ul evidently pre- 
ferred Gibbs to me, and some others whom I had bounced 
out of camp because of persistent begging had no great 
love for me, and so there was no amount of love lost be- 
tween us. I stood, as the commissary of our party, the 
custodian of its supplies, which would have melted away 
in a week if all comers had been regaled as our friend 
Gibbs would have entertained them. They would have 
stayed by him as long as the provisions lasted; they 
liked Gibbs. 
In this party in the wigwam I recognized Dirty-face 
and others who had been at our camp and had eaten of 
our pork, their great dainty which they called koo-koosh; 
but there was no cordial handshake, only a nod and a 
grunt, which is their limit of welcome. A squaw arose, 
thrust a stick into the kettle and brought up meat; she 
was satisfied that it was sufficiently cooked, and took the 
kettle from the fire and went outside with it. I had 
curiosity enough to get up and follow. She put the ket- 
tle in the snow and scraped up snow about it to cool it. I 
asked her what meat she was about to serve to her guests, 
at the same time giving her what pork I had. We were 
friends! Pork was good, and she had only muskrat to 
offer. Muskrat was not fat like pork and bear meat, but 
it was warm and she hoped I would like it. 
Away back in the fourth article of this series I told of 
Bill Fairchild's experience with the muskrat as food, as 
he related it at a seance in Port Tyler's cabin, in Green- 
hush. If you remember. Bill could follow the Fr^ch- 
man's advice— could "skin da mus'rat, bile him a leetle, 
den fry a-heem an' eat him, an' oh I" Also that Bill said 
he could come it all but the "oh! ' Eight here I wish to 
record my first experience with the musquash as an epi- 
curean dish. I ate it years afterward from choice while 
camping with Mort. Locke, John Fish and Wm. Downey 
on Cayuga Lake, N, Y, , as the two last named, now liv- 
ing at Honeoye Falls, N. Y, , will testify, if they have 
any regard for the truth; but that is another story, and 
there's no use telling how we played it on one of the 
party for something else in the way of game. 
When the contents of the camp kettle were cool, the 
squaw brought it in and a group formed around it on one 
side of the fire. I was not only hungry, but was curious 
to taste muskrat, which is a very clean feeder; but some- 
how the cook and the surroundings were not conducive 
to much appetite, but they asked me to join and I joined. 
They dipped their hands in the kettle, and it is doubtful 
if they had been manicured recently. Dirty-face handed 
me a piece, and I wondered if any in the party might be 
named Dirty-hand. I wasn't hungry now and said so, 
but felt a delicacy about refusing to eat with these 
friendly folk, and also felt a delicacy about eating food 
served in this manner. They omitted napkins and finger 
bowls, and somehow didn't seem to miss them. I ate a 
little, very little, said it was good, but I wasn't hungry 
.just then and went out. The air outside was excellent. 
I could have said with Petruohio: 
"Where is the rascal cook? 
How dg.rst you, villains, bring it from the dresser, 
And serve it thus to me that love it not?" 
Gratiano, in "The Merchant of Venice," asks a question 
to which he evidently expects no answer: 
"Who riseth from a feast 
With that keen appetite that he alts downf" 
I pungled off and ate my little cold luncheon beside a 
ispring on the lake side. There were no napkins nor finger 
bowls there, but there was that satisfying knowledge that 
the hands which handled the food had been bathed sinca 
they skinned the last muskrat. On relating this to Henry 
Neaville he remarked: 
"I don't care what any of these writers on health say 
about too frequent bathing being injurious, I believe that 
a man ought to wash his hands once a month, whether 
they need it or not." 
Our surveys were nearly finished and nothing was left 
to be done but to meander the river and figure the frac- 
tional sections which it cut, and co do a lir-tle work around 
Crow Wing. Henry Neaville and I were to pack up and 
get back to the trading post and meet the party there. 
An Indian, a stranger, came to camp and begged for 
whisky. I told him we had none, but he saw the molasses 
keg and kept on begging until Henry said: "Give him 
some pepper sauce." I had put the liquor from several 
of the bottles into one and had thrown away the peppers, 
and taking up the bottle Henry and I pretended to drink, 
and then he was wild for some. I showed him with my 
thumb on the bottle how much or how little he must 
drink, and he grunted assent, seized the bottle with both 
hands, and such swallows as he took before it burned him 
I never saw. If one swallow doesn't make a summer, 
those he took made it hot enough for him. He drew a 
long breath and snorted "woof," like a bear, and started 
for the river. Three times he stopped and snorted and 
then ran out of sight. Henry roared, rolled over and 
roared. When he got his speech he said, between 
spasms: "Golly, but that Injun thinks there was more 
fire than water in that 'scutah-wawba; oh, dear! he's 
gone for a doctor; he thinks you've poisoned him. Oh, if 
Gibbs was only here to tell you how Mr. Lo will remem- 
ber that drink!" 
We stopped a couple of days at Crow Wing, and I be- 
came acquainted with the brothers who kept the trading 
post. I think their name was McDonald, but am not sure, 
and Mr. Davies isn't. They told of an Indian who died 
there some winters before when the ground was frozen 
too hard to bury him, and how they stood him up all win- 
ter against the north side of the house and buried him in 
the spring, and some other cheerful stories of dead In- 
dians, A Mr. Morrison lived there, one of the leading 
men of northern Minnesota, for whom the county below 
Crow Wing is named. He had married an Ojibwa woman 
and had two grown-up daughters, who had been educated 
in St. Louis, and they played the piano for us and our 
visit was an event in Crow Wing life. Bishop McElvaney 
was there and preached on the birth of Christ in Morri- 
son's house, while Davies and others sang. I didn't sing; 
when 1 sing the police always pull the house, thinking 
there must be a dog fight in the back room. 
I went up to see Hole-in-the-day and he showed me a 
Colt's rifle, made like a revolver, inlaid with gold, which 
was given him by President Franklin Peirce a year or two 
before. I understood that it was taken from the Patent 
Office by consent of Col. Colt. He talked about trading it 
for my rifle, if I added enough dollars to suit him. He 
was poor, or pretended to be, and I wanted that rifle very 
much, but thought best to consult with the brothers at the 
post. One of them said : "It's against the law to trade with 
these people without a license, and if you trade with him 
for the gun he can send a man after it, and you will lose 
both rifles and all you've paid, and then may have some 
trouble with the law." That settled the trading, but 
when I saw the old chief again he wanted to know, in 
confidence, if we had any whisky left. I doubt if a single 
Indian believed that six white men who had so many 
things they thought to be luxuries spent half the winter 
in the woods without whisky. To them it seemed an ab- 
surd proposition. The Indiana who hung around trad- 
ing posts were not of the best class, and had readily copied 
all the vices of the white man from a class whose virtues 
were not so apparent. They had not then adopted the 
white man's dress except the calico or the flannel shirt. 
The wore the breech-clout and leggings, a shirt and the 
invariable blanket. 
When we were up along the river we were near the 
great northern trail from the Red River of the North, and 
Henry said that the mail was due in a day or two, so he 
had heard from a half-breed. "This mail," said he, 
"comes down in a dog sledge, and if we can put out some 
pieces of pork in the snow you'll see some fun." 
That did seem the proper thing to do, and in fact it was 
the only way possible to extract any fun out of a dog 
train, and we planted pieces of pork at intervals of 100ft,, 
more or less, and waited. It was next morning before 
we heard the driver calling to his dogs a long way off, 
for sound travels far in the cold and over snow. On he 
came, with five wolfish-looking dogs harnessed tandem, 
with rawhide traces and soft collars, to a flat- bottomed 
sled make of thin birch boards turned up in front and 
lashed together with thongs and covered with a skin tied 
over all, and without runners. The driver ran beside the 
team, touching a dog hsre and there with a long lash 
fastened to a handle about 1ft. long. The leader struck a 
piece of pork, and in a moment four dogs were on him 
fighting for it and the harness was all tied up. Hp plied 
the whip and made appropriate remarks while doing it. 
Some dog bolted the meat, for the fighting stopped and 
there was no pork in sight. The half-breed muttered 
something, evidently not a prayer, while he put each dog 
in its place and on he went in no pleasant mood, and the 
scene was soon repeated. He was near us this time and 
we could see that the second dog won the prize, while 
the rest had to be contented with a bite of or from his 
neighbor. It was fun for the dogs and for us, but from 
what the half-breed said I doubt if he enjoyed it. If he 
had seen us he might have indulged in more oratory, but 
he had to waste his eloquence on the dogs. It was fun to 
do this at that time, because we thought it fun. To-day 
we wouldn't do it, because there would be no fun in it. 
Thus we view things at different periods of life. The 
fire-crackers we shot off half a century ago don't sound 
as joyful as they did and we go into the country to avoid 
them; so we go. 
McBride sold our provisions — I think there were two 
barrels of flour and one of pork left — and if memory 
serves he got about |20 per barrel for the flour, and twice 
that for the pork. Long prices; but transportation from 
St. Paul over 100 miles away over a winter road, and no 
way of getting from St. Louis to St, Paul except by teams 
when the river was frozen, made things come high. The 
wagon was sold and a bob sleigh bought, the box filled 
with straw and blankets, and on Dec. 22 we started for 
home. Two days later we stopped just outside St. Paul. 
It did seem good to get in a bed again, but we couldn't 
stand a room with windows closed. We had slept in the 
pure, cold air too long for that. We left the river at Red 
Wing and took the west side, avoiding the hotels in the 
large towns, stopping at country taverns, and we hadv 
