March i8, 1899.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
207 
trees propped up a few feet above the ground, with their 
drooping branches shielding the entrance to the den. 
Then he stood up, threw his body back and extended an 
imaginary gun at ready with his finger on the trigger. 
"Me stand here," he said, placing himself directly in 
front of the opening under the desk, which he charac- 
terized as "all same as hole." "Joshua stand there," and 
he waved his hand in the direction of the swimming pool 
loyds. away. 
"Me go up to hole four time. No see bear. Go close. 
Now bear come out." Nesodaro emitted a snappy growl 
io indicate that the bear wasn't in any better humor than 
■ had been when he shoAved his surly temper by break- 
-.. down the trees. 
■ /fe jtmip back. I t'ink six feet. Bear calch pants, 
cut 'em my pants." The Indian's face grew tense, 
ne pointed his imaginarj^ gun toward the floor in front 
and pulled an imaginary trigger. "No good; no shoot." 
He made the motion of cocking the rifle and pulling the 
trigger again. "No shoot." ApparcnAJy bear and man 
were standing face to face, separated by only the shortest 
interval of space. 
"Joshua take gun." Nesodaro made a slow, clumsy 
motion, as if cocking the rifle, to show the other Indian's 
backwardness in the fight. 
"Pretty soon Joshua shoot. No good shot. No shoot 
a bone." Nesodaro put his finger to the side of the neck 
to show the spot where the bullet hit. Then he growled 
again, and announced that the grizzly retreated. Neso- 
daro had at last succeeded in getting his rifle in working 
order, and as the bear turned tail, he shot at it four times 
in quick succession. The bullets hit the bear in the back 
and came out its shoulders on each side of the neck, but 
did not seriously injure it. Nesodaro called himself 
"bad man" for not placing his bullets to better advantage. 
"I want to shoot you, hear," he said. "I want kill you 
to-day, I say." 
The bear back-tracked toward the spot where the 
Indians had tied their ponies in the timber, and 
Joshua said: 
"T t'ink horses catch 'em." 
The bear did not, however, attempt to molest the 
ponies, and when the Indians came to the place where 
they were tied, they mounted and continued the chase 
on horseback. As for the grizzly, it never swerved from 
its course, and Nesodaro realized that it was going di- 
rectly toward his camp. He Icnew that his wife was in tlic 
immediate neighborhood setting marten traps, and it 
became his turn to be alarmed. 
"Oh. I t'ink my squaw catch 'em," was Nesodaro's 
way of expressing his fear lest the bear should kill the 
woman. 
But the impending tragedy betokened by the serious 
expressfon of the Indian's face passed quickly into farce. 
"Three marten traps finish my squaw. Go more; now, 
away up mountain. 
"'.'E-e-e-e-e— !' " Nesodaro was imitating the shriek 
of his terrified spouse. "Bear no see squaw; my squaw- 
see bear." He grinned. No one need say an Indian 
hasn't a sense of humor. 
"Down mountain come bear. Down mountain come 
squaw. My squaw's tongue come out, I t'ink, six inches." 
Nesodaro bent his head to one side and let his tongue 
loll out, at the same time making a noise in imitation of 
labored- breathing. 
"Squaw scared now." 
"'Go ba.ck home to tepee!' I say. 'Go back home, 
quick!' 
"Little couleee, squaw jomp up; my squaw jomp fast. 
She say, 'Yes, I see pretty big bear, pretty close.' " 
"Pretty" was the Indi9,n's strongest word to qualify 
size and nearness. The woman's expresssion interpreted 
means that she saw a regular mastodon of a bear right 
on top of her. The lady had reason to be alarmed, and 
allowance should be made for the tongue. It was a 
nerve-shattering incident, and Mrs. Nesodaro hadn't been 
educated up to the point of going into hysterics. 
"'Oh, ho!' I say. 'Bring my dog; ask him br-r-r.' " 
Nesodaro made a sound which no doubt was the Indian 
equivalent for "sick 'em." "My dog name Dick. I say, 
'Come on, Dick; come on, Dick; come, Dick. Go now, 
hunt bear.' Pretty soon, 'Wah! wah! wah!' Catch 'em 
dog back leg." 
The dog caught up with the bear and was worrying 
it. The hunters followed on their horses by a rather 
circuitous route, as the bear had taken a path through a 
very thick place. Presently Nesodaro sighted the grizzly 
laboring through the deep snow, bleeding freely and 
panting "haw, haw, haw." 
He shot three times and only succeeded in breaking- 
one of its forelegs. Joshua came up and shot once, but 
"bear no dead." The poor grizzly made a final rally, 
and standing on its hindlegs faced the hunters. Neso- 
daro ran in close and shot it in the head, and down it 
came, done for at last. 
It was an all-day hunt, and the men were so fatigued 
by their exertions that they barely had strength to regain 
their horses and make their way back to camp. 
Nesodaro Acts the Knight for a Lady in Distress. 
On one occasion, when Nesodaro was in the eastern 
part of British Columbia on a hunting trip, he ran across 
"Shuswap Indian horse, got no man." There was an 
Indian woman w'ith the horse, however, and this woman, 
with the guile of her sex, told Nesodaro that all Stonies 
were good hunters and he among them, and that she 
wanted a proof of his skill. She was "pretty hungry," 
she said, and she intimated that it would be an easy m_at- 
ter for such an accomplished gentleman to take her 
horse and go off and get her some meat. 
So Nesodaro, feeling as if the' whole world was con- 
tained under his old felt hat, mounted the horse, and ac- 
companied by a dog named Jack, which had been given 
to him at Banff Hot Springs, set out in search of game. 
"Pretty soon me see grizzly. Me go quick now. My 
dog smell 'em bear now. I say, 'Go, Jack; quick, now.' " 
The dog turned the bear and it charged the hunter. He 
stood his ground, expecting to get a head shot; but the 
bear kept its mouth open wide and he could see no 
sure place at which to aim. Finally he fired at the neck, 
but the shot did not stop the atlsmah and again Neso- 
darp's "pants" were in dangeti . _ 
The dog came t© his rescue, however, and turned the 
bear, giving the Indian a chance to put a ball through its 
shoulders, which ended its career, After skinning it Nes- 
odaro packed a quarter and the hide on the horse, 
and then mounting himself on top of the load made down 
the mountain to where the Shuswap woman was waiting. 
He gave her half the meat and seemed to think she was 
very well satisfied with the bargain. 
Snaring Bears. 
"We catch bears up in our country Iff three ways," said 
Willie Paulson, the moose hunter from the Temagami 
region on the upper Ottawa. "Sometimes we use steel 
traps, sometimes dead falls, and sometimes snares. For 
making snares we take along with us a kind of hemp 
line imported by the Hudson Bay Company. This line 
has twelve strands, but it is a very small line, no thicker 
than that," and Paulson reached out and caught between 
his fingers an insulated electric wire, connected with an 
incandescent lamp, which was suspended from the roof of 
the make-believe tepee put up for the entertainment of 
the grown-up children in the Madison Square Garden. 
"We select a good place on a bear road for setting the 
snare, where a good stout sapling for a spring pole hap- 
pens to be growing with a fair sized tree nearby, and then 
we cut two poles 8ft. long or so and sharpen each at one 
end. We drive these poles into the ground side by side 
and on a slant so that their upper ends will come one on 
each side the large tree at a place 3 or 4ft. above the 
ground. Then we lash them firmly to the tree, so that 
they will stand the yank of the spring pole, and also the 
struggles of the bear after he is caught. 
"Then we trim the spring pole for 20ft. or wore and lop 
off the head, leaving a crotch. We get other Doles over 
this crotch and bend the spring pole down till the end 
just touches our slanting poles, which were lashed to 
the tree, and then we tie our snare to the spring pole and 
also to a short piece of wood, which we lodge crossways 
under the slanting poles, and that holds the spring pole 
down. A slip noose is made of the rest of the line and 
hung under the slanting poles, fastened to little sticks to 
keep it in shape, and then we take fir boughs and lay 
them against the snare so the bear won't see the line. 
"The snare catches the bear around the neck, and when 
he struggles to get away it releases the short cross piece 
of wood and the spring pole flies' up and draws the bear's 
neck against the slanting poles. That shuts off Mr. Bear's 
wind and he soon chokes himself to death." 
Moose and Caribou. 
"I've done a lot of hunting since I was able to hunt," 
says Paulson. "I began as a little boy, going off on a 
hunting trip with a man by the name of Jimmy Ellis. We 
spent the winter making dead falls for marten and fisher, 
and running moose on the crust, after the snow got deep 
enough. I followed a moose one time all alone, and the 
first thing I knew he got tired of being chased and made 
up his mind to chase me instead. I looked up and there 
he was a-coming, making the snow fly and looking ugly. 
Moose 'aint pretty no time, and when they're mad they 
look like the devil. 
"I stood my ground and never stirred, and when the 
moose got up to 20ft., I shot him square in the forehead, 
and he dropped in his tracks. I had a rifle. Some In- 
dians who use smooth bore shotguns and bullets, say the 
ball won't go through a moose's head. I don't know 
about that ; I know a rifle ball will. 
"It used to be that long ago the further north j^ou went 
the more caribou you'd stril<e. It is not so now. I had a 
friend who went there last winter who said there were 
not many caribou. Where I live there are a great many. 
I used to see them come out on the lake every day to eat 
slush. This was Barier Lake, up toward Abittibi. All 
through the winter the ice cracks and water comes up 
through and melts the snow. Caribou like to eat that, and 
that is the reason they come on the lakes." 
A Bear Murderer and Csnibal. 
"Jimmy Ellis was following the track of a bear one 
fall when he seen where it killed and ate another bear. 
It was a big lean bear, and it found where a little fat 
bear had denned up, and it pulled the little fat one out 
of its hole and ate it. 
"The big bear commenced to eat the other bear along 
the breast bone, and he ate him all up, just like a bear 
turns over a porcupine and eats him out of his skin. 
"Jimmy Ellis' chum was with him. and he said 'I'm 
going to take this skin and stretch it,' and the lad took 
it home and got $10 for it. 
"They followed the big bear up for a whole day, but 
they couldn't ketch him. They runned him with dogs, and 
camped out at night, but he traveled faster than they 
could. They only had their dinners with them, and they 
were pretty hungry when they got home." 
Bear Character and Habits. 
"Young bears come out in the spring sooner than the 
old ones. They're not so used to starving as the old ones, 
and they ain't got so much sense. You see the old bear 
knows a good deal ; his tracks will be seen in the snow. 
"The bears come out pretty fat, but they get poor in 
about a month. There ain't much feed for them in the 
spring, as early as April. They eat bark off the trees be- 
fore the leaves come out. Don't know the kind of trees 
you call them ; they grow along the shore. I think it a 
icind of willow. Then they eat these ants on the trees, and 
a kind of grass that looks like the Scotch thistle, only it 
has no thorns. That comes up through the snow and 
keeps green all winter. They eat it. right down to the 
roots. Some bears that are hungry come out all through 
the winter to look for something to eat. 
"Jimmy MacDonald saw a bear catch a young moose. 
He saw the bear sitting on a side hill, lying beside the 
trail for the mpose. Pretty soon the moose come along 
and the bear jumped and caught him by the top of the 
neck, and dragged to pull him over. The moose ju-st 
kicked once, no more, and he broke the bear's back, and 
that bear didn't try to catch any more moose. 
"Bears bite trees all through the summer. I think 
they do that to see who is the tallest one. Only he bears 
bite trees. They bite them along their roads, and the 
one that makes the tallest mark feosses the road. After 
you kill the big one you don't see another he bear for :^ 
long time on that roa.d. S^e .beafs pass any time." 
Opinions of a Courier des Bois. 
Alfred, or Fred, Lavoie is a short thick-set little French- 
man, with a swarthy complexion, black hair and eyes, 
and a chronic good humor. I asked him if he ever knew 
of one bear eating anotherj and he rephed: 
"Oh, Lord, yes. See that a good many times, where 
a bear was caught in a trap. They catch 'em in a heavy 
deadfall; heavy as ten loads a man Avould carry, Yuthcr 
bears come along and eat 'em out. 
"Mink '11 eat other mink, too." 
LaA-^oie says that when bears come out of theit' dens in 
the spring for the first two or three weeks their diet con- 
sists^chiefly of "grass balls" from the swamps or rocks, 
and "bugs," and also the sweet sap of the balsam, obtained 
by stripping the bark from the tree and licking' the sap 
from the trunk with their tongues, "Bear lak' sweet, 
sucar," he added. "Dey peel de spruce, and yellow and 
black birch, too. Var' fond, sucar." 
He says that in spring the bears follaW the fivers, and 
in the fall, "go everywhere." 
Lavoie was a dog driver for the Hudson Bay Company 
thirteen years. He has driven as many as fifteen huskies 
in one train. The leader when in harness was 45ft, away, 
and to reach him Lavoie carried a sealskin whip between 
35 and 40ft. in length. This whip had a handle T5in. in 
length, and beyond that where the whip proper began, it 
was iKin. in diameter. Lavoie always rode with liis dog 
team. He laughed at the idea of -running behind as the 
Mackenzie drivers do a good part of the time. 
He has been to Big Lake Mistassini, and made sev&n 
or eight trips to Pludson Bay bv all the common routes. 
He saj's there are few moose and caribou in the neighbor- 
hood of James Bay, but plenty of grizzly bears and white 
bears. _ "The Esquimaux kill the bears with spears. 
Bazile Maurice is a man of the same general type a,s 
Lavoie, except that his complexion is ruddy and not 
swarthy. Lavoie speaks of him as "Bozzle," and scratches 
his head in a puzzled Avay when anyone asks for "Ba- 
zeel," with the accent on the' last sjdlalsle. Bazile Maurice 
has been in Egypt in the capacitv of expert riverman for 
General Wolseley's Nile expedition. He has seen hippo- 
potami, and other wonders of the ancient river. When he 
told of the hippopotamus, he described such a remarkable 
and formless aggregation of flesh, that I somehow got it 
in my head that the thing was quite spherical and floated 
on the water, and as Bazile couldn't for the life of him 
think of the English equivalent for what he called 'ie 
pourpatin" (spelling not guaranteed), it was some time 
before we understood each other, and advanced to the 
cdtisideration of other strange beasts, such as "leezard" 
and "black snake." 
The "Kroomans," who are "regular niggers what we 
hired to work for us," eat crocodiles and fish, but the 
• white men abstained from both. Bazile says the fish didn't 
look right and tasted muddy. On one occasion he saw 
some great creature oass in front of his boat that he 
thought was a crocodile. The natives said, however, that 
it was a fish. Bazile leaped overboard into the shallow 
water with an axe and succeeded in killing it. The fish 
was similar in shape to a whitefish, but very much larger. 
It weighed Ti2lbs. There are a great many ducks of all 
kinds in the Nile. Bazile says that in the middle of 
winter thev buried eggs in the hot sand and cookecl them 
in six minutes. He is not certain but that since he left 
the birds have progressed to the point of laying hard- 
boiled eggs ready for the table. At any rate, the sand 
was so hot that the first portage they made it burned the 
voyageur's red leather moccasins till they broke like dry 
sticks when bent. 
The Quebec Elk Herd. 
Bazile has been in the Grand Lake Victoria country,, 
where the only wild herd of Eastern elk, of which any- 
thing is known, exists. He says it is a good hunting 
country, with open woods, through which a man may 
easily see game at distances of 500 or 600ft. The timber 
is spnice, birch, white and red ; red pine and balsam. He 
has seen elk there, but never killed them, because he never 
happened to be there in the proper season. 
The Time when Indians Don't Care to Meet Bears, 
"Bears mate in June," said Mr. C. C. Farr, who was 
fifteen years with the Hudson Bay Company. "June is 
the only time Indians don't care to meet bears in the 
woods unarmed. They run in strings of seven or eight 
at a time, sometimes, and they're ugly. The Indians are'nt 
afraid of old shes with cubs^ but in the mating season 
they're pretty careful how they go around without 
weapons. When an Indian sees a bear Ijang down m a 
trap, he is pretty careful about not going too close till 
he is sure the animal isn't only making believe to be 
dead. Some of them get into awkward situations at 
times, and some of them carry scars. to show for their ad- 
ventures. 
"I never knew of but one Indian that was- killed by a 
bear. That was one of the McDougalls--— strange name 
for an Indian, but he was one all right enough, and pufe 
blooded. This McDougall went out to watch for bears 
when they were going on 1 the rocks for berries. It was' 
just before sunset, the best time for the bears to come out. 
He paddled across a lake in his canoe with his boy, and 
when he got to the place he left the boy behind and went 
out on the rocks. He had a single-barrel shotgun, loaded 
with ball. 
"The rocks were burned and he could see a way oft', and 
there was a bear feeding on the berries. The Indian got 
up close to the bear and fired. It fell right over, and very 
foolishly McDougall didn't stop to load, but ran in with 
only his axe in his hand. The bear wasn't dead, and when 
McDougall got close enough it clinched with him, and 
they had a terrible fight. The Indian killed the bear in^ 
the end, but he was so desperately lacerated He Could 
hardly walk. 
"He was thirsty after a fight like that, but tfiere was no 
living water on top of the rocks, and all he could find 
was stagnant, but he tore right in and drank the nasty 
rotten stuff and filled up with it. After that he went 
back to camp and died._ I think it -was th*? water 
killed him mush as anythittg. 
