Feb. i 6 , 1907 .] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
2 5i 
The Elimination of Matteou. 
. It was three-quarters of an hour from the 
time I hooked the salmon until my guide gaffed 
him. The water was high, my tackle light and 
the river bank was difficult to follow. When 
the coup de grace had been administered, and 
my spring balance had recorded the fact that he 
weighed 22 pounds, odd ounces, we sat down 
on the side of Matteou’s Pool, lit our pipes and 
drank ‘‘success to the fisheries.” Now, the mar¬ 
ket price of salmon at that time was ten cents 
per pound, f. o. b. the Antigonish stage, at any 
point on the route. I had covenanted and agreed 
with my guide to pay him fifteen cents per 
pound for every fish I caught, and in addition to 
pay him a dollar-fifty a day and keep him sup¬ 
plied with a moderate quantity of spirituous or 
fermented liquors. This, and the fact that his 
brother was in jail for spearing salmon, ac¬ 
counted for the fact that salmon were fairly 
plentiful in the lower reaches of St. Mary’s 
River. I had averaged two fish a day, besides 
some noble salmon-trout, and as I was not fish¬ 
ing for market, I was satisfied. 
Now, I believe my bump of curiosity is ab¬ 
normally developed, and in my comings and 
goings I always like to find out the reason why 
certain places have received certain names. 
Who was Matteou, and why was the pool 
christened after him? I asked my guide the 
question, and this is the story he told me: 
“It’s over thirty years since Matteou left 
these parts, and this was the last pool he 
speared. He came here from no one knows 
where. He wasn’t a Micmac, nor was he a 
Millicete, but he was a halfbreed Indian of 
some kind, and a most poisonous bad one at 
that. He came here four years before the mines 
broke out. He would be a man of about thirty. 
He soon learned the other Indians’ talk, and be¬ 
cause he could read and write, they thought he 
was a great man. The Indians used to come 
here from all over creation in those days. 
There was no law against spearing salmon, and 
no law on the moose. Every spring there would 
be twenty or thirty camps of them strung along 
the river, catching salmon, and every fall there 
were about the same number scattered through 
the woods between here and Sheet Harbor hunt¬ 
ing moose and caribou. Matteou married old 
man Grigwell’s daughter. They had one boy 
and one girl. About five years after Matteou 
came down here, the new law against spearing 
salmon and dogging moose came in. There was 
a lot of kicking about it at first, but the fish 
warden fined three of four white men, and put 
old Grigwell in jail for spearing and sweeping, 
and the game wardens got after the doggers and 
fined several of them. If it hadn’t been for that 
law, we wouldn’t have a moose left between 
; Canso and Cape Sable. 
“Well, Grigwell and all the other Indians, ex¬ 
cept Matteou, concluded the game was up; some 
of them went to Truro, others to Shubenacadie, 
and the rest went back to their reserve at 
Pomquette. Matteou stayed on, and said he’d 
do just as he chose, and that he wasn’t afraid of 
any white man in St. Mary’s. Before this law 
came in he used to go guide for Old Man 
Viddler. We called him ‘Old Man,’ but he 
wasn’t over forty then. Viddler had stacks of 
money. We all thought he was crazy when he 
came here and built the log house on the Viddler 
field. Half the money he spent in building it 
: and clearing up the few acres round it would 
have bought him a fairly good farm. He was 
1 a short man, but I wish you could see the arms 
• and the chest of him. He was as strong as a 
j bear, and I never saw the likes of him in the 
| water. Water was his cure for everything. 
| I’ve seen that man go in ‘bare buff,’ when the 
ice-cakes .were floating down the river in 
! December. 
“Matteou stood over six feet in his moccasins, 
■ and was a big-built Indian at that. Viddler was 
not over five feet six, but lie was just like that 
1 bulldog in the picture ‘What we have, we hold.’ 
Viddler was kind of careless how he dressed. 
Just as often as not he’d go to town in an 
old ragged pair of pants, with brogans or larri- 
gans on his feet, an old faded out blue jumper 
I on his back, and a ragged old cap on an Indian 
LUNCH HOUR IN THE 
wouldn’t have worn. His wife was just the op¬ 
posite. She always dressed like a lady, and she 
always acted like one, too. The Lord only 
knows how many women in this part of the 
world owed their lives to her. You see, we had 
no doctor here in those days, and no telegraph, 
either. It was fifty miles to the nearest doctor, 
and cost thirty dollars to get him. More than 
once that woman drove the fifty miles, fetched 
the doctor and paid him out of her own pocket. 
When we first had the sore throat [diphtheria] 
round these parts, she had no more fear of it 
that she had of the measles. She’s been dead 
these many years, God rest her soul. 
“Well, just as soon as the law against spear¬ 
ing and dogging came out, Old Man Viddler 
closed right down on both of them. He burnt 
the torches he had made, for kindling, and he 
broke up his spears. And he was just a dandy 
with a spear; no Indian could better him. He 
had a brindled bulldog that would stop the 
biggest moose in our woods; he kept him round 
the house, but he wouldn’t use him or loan him. 
He was one of the gentlest dogs that ever 
walked, was old Pickwick—until Viddler said 
‘Soo boy’ to him. 
“Matteou was camped between Viddler’s place 
and the town—it wasn’t a town in those days, 
only about ten families lived there. Indian 
fashion, he was everlastingly hanging round the 
house, and begging. One day father and Viddler 
were working in the garden and Matteou came 
to the house to borrow some torches. Viddler 
told him he had broken all his torches up and 
used them to light fires with. Then he asked 
for the lend of Viddler’s canoe, saying that his 
own was leaking, and he had no time to fix her. 
‘Neither you nor any other man’s going to get 
my canoe to spear salmon out of,’ says Viddler. 
‘I’ve gone out of that business myself, and if I 
can’t spear or dog, I don’t want to see any one 
else doing it. Besides that, I don’t want Ranald 
McCallum to chop her in two, like he did Grig- 
well’s canoe. She’s too good a little bit of 
bark for that.’ Matteou blazed right up at this. 
He swore that Ranald would live to be sorry 
for it before the year was out; then he slung 
some lip at Viddler. He stood for a while, but 
at last he got tired of it. Says he very quiet¬ 
like to father. ‘John, take Pickwick and shut 
him up in the barn; he’s in the way.’ Father did 
as he was told, and no sooner was the door 
shut- on the dog, than Viddler made a rush, 
grabbed the Indian round the waist and threw 
him clean over his shoulders on to the soft 
earth. Father said he never saw a prettier throw 
in all his life. ‘Now,’ says Viddler, ‘you pick 
yourself up and keep a civil tongue in your head 
when you speak to me. I can argue with a white 
man, but I won’t take back talk from an Indian 
or a nigger.’ Matteou ’d never been handled 
like that since he came to St. Mary’s. There 
were lots of white men who would have knocked 
NORTH CAROLINA WOODS. 
the stuffing out of him in a fight, but they were 
afraid of his ill-will, and they had cattle running 
in the woods all the summer, and meadow hay 
cut and stacked miles from home. A man like 
Matteou can square up an old grude mighty 
cheap. 
"Well, Matteou gathered himself up, and 
looked mighty small over the matter. That 
night he stole old Squire Mackintosh’s canoe 
and went torching in her. Ranald McCallum 
happened on him, and took the canoe and six 
salmon, but Matteou got away from him before 
he could swear to him. All that fall he laid 
round the woods, shooting moose and selling 
the meat to the miners. (That was the first 
year the mines broke out.) As the weather 
grew colder, he moved further back and set up 
his traps. There never was a man who could 
travel these woods like Matteou. He knew 
every by-path and tote-road, and he had a little 
light canoe he could carry on his back all day 
and never feel the weight of her. She would 
hold one man comfortably, and two at a pinch. 
He could do his four miles an hour across the 
portages with her on his shoulders. There 
wasn’t his beat for skating in the province. 
“Along in December he camped near old 
Deacon Mclnnis’s place, near Trafalgar. The 
Deacon would sooner have had a skunk den in 
his cellar than Matteou camping near his house, 
but he didn’t order Matteou off. for the same 
reason he would have let a skunk alone. One 
bitter cold morning, just before Christmas, 
Matteou and his squaw came to the Deacon’s 
place, and asked for leave to grind a tomahawk 
and the loan of a tin kettle. He said he wanted 
to ’tend his traps, and his own kettle was 
leaking. Fie had another one out in the woods, 
and would return the borrowed one next day. 
Mclnnis loaned him a kettle, never thinking he’d 
see it again; and the squaw took some warm 
water to the grindstone, and they sharpened the 
tomahawk and went off to their camp. Next 
morning the Deacon was going to the woods to 
cut some cordwood, and he got up early. Just 
as he was sitting down to breakfast, Matteou 
walked in with the kettle and a big chunk of 
moose steak. He thanked the Deacon very 
kindly for the lend of the kettle, and told him 
he’d brought him the moose steak for a Christ¬ 
mas present. Well, the old Deacon had a little 
jug of rum, hidden down in his cellar for 
medicine, and he went down and drew off a 
vial for Matteou. I guess he wished he’d given 
him the price of a bottle instead; the Indian 
downed the whole business at once, and in ten 
minutes he was loaded for bears. It wasn’t 
safe to leave him alone with Mrs. Mclnnis, so 
the Deacon got him into a little room off the 
eating room and wrapped him up in some old 
quilts and let him sleep off his drunk. It took 
him a precious long while, for the rum was over 
proof and he had ‘downed’ the best part of a 
