CHAPTER XXIII
THE DOGS OF FORT RESOLUTION
It sounds like the opening of an epic poem but it is not.
The Chipewyan calender is divided in two seasons - dog season and
canoe season. What the horse is to the Arab, what the Reindeer is
to the Lap and the Yak to the Thibetan, the dog is to the Chipewyan
for at least one-half of the year, until it is displaced by the
canoe.
During dog season the canoes are piled away somewhat carelessly or
guarded only from the sun. During canoe season the dogs are treated
atrociously. Let us remember, first, that these are dogs in every
doggy sense, the worshipping servants of man, asking nothing but
a poor living in return for abject love and tireless service, as
well as the relinquishment of all family ties and natural life. In
winter, because they cannot serve without good food, they are well
fed on fish that is hung on scaffolds in the fall in time to be
frozen before wholly spoiled. The journeys they will make and the
devoted service they render at this time is none too strongly set
forth in Butler's "Cerf Vola" and London's "Call of the Wild." It
is, indeed, the dog alone that makes life possible during the white
half-year of the boreal calender. One cannot be many days in the
north without hearing tales of dog prowess, devotion, and heroism.
A typical incident was related as follows by Thomas Anderson:
Over thirty years ago, Chief Factor George McTavish and his driver,
Jack Harvey, were travelling from East Main to Rupert's House (65
miles) in a blizzard so thick and fierce that they could scarcely
see the leading dog. He was a splendid, vigorous creature, but all
at once he lay down and refused to go. The driver struck him, but
the factor reproved the man, as this dog had never needed the whip.
The driver then went ahead and found open water only a few feet
from the dogs, though out of sight. After that they gave the leader
free rein, surrendered themselves to his guidance, and in spite of
the blinding blizzard they struck the flagpole of Rupert's between
11 and 12 that night, only a little behind time.
Many of the wild Wolf traits still remain with them. They commonly
pair; they bury surplus food; the mothers disgorge food for the
young; they rally to defend one of their own clan against a stranger;
and they punish failure with death.
A thousand incidents might be adduced to show that in the north
there is little possibility of winter travel without dogs and little
possibility of life without winter travel.
But April comes with melting snows and May with open rivers and
brown earth everywhere; then, indeed, the reign of the dog is over.
The long yellow-birch canoe is taken down from the shanty roof or
from a sheltered scaffold, stitched, gummed, and launched; and the
dogs are turned loose to fend for themselves. Gratitude for past
services or future does not enter into the owner's thoughts to
secure a fair allowance of food. All their training and instinct
prompts them to hang about camp, where, kicked, stoned, beaten,
and starved, they steal and hunt as best they may, until the sad
season of summer is worn away and merry winter with its toil and
good food is back once more.
From leaving Fort MacMurray we saw daily the starving dog, and
I fed them when I could. At Smith Landing the daily dog became a
daily fifty. One big fellow annexed us. "I found them first," he
seemed to say, and no other dog came about our camp without a fight.
Of course he fared well on our scraps, but many a time it made my
heart ache and my food-store suffer to see the gaunt skeletons in
the bushes, just beyond his sphere of influence, watching for a
chance to rush in and secure a mouthful of - anything to stay the
devastating pang. My journal of the time sets forth in full detail
the diversity of their diet, not only every possible scrap of
fish and meat or whatsoever smelled of fish or meat, but rawhide,
leather, old boots, flour-bags, potato-peelings, soap, wooden
fragments of meat-boxes, rags that have had enough animal contact
to be odorous. An ancient dishcloth, succulent with active service,
was considered a treat to be bolted whole; and when in due course
the cloth was returned to earth, it was intact, bleached, purged, and
purified as by chemic fires and ready for a new round of benevolences.
In some seasons the dogs catch Rabbits enough to keep them up. But
this year the Rabbits were gone. They are very clever at robbing
fish-nets at times, but these were far from the fort. Reduced
to such desperate straits for food, what wonder that cannibalism
should be common! Not only the dead, but the sick or disabled of
their own kind are torn to pieces and devoured. I was told of one
case where a brutal driver disabled one of his dogs with heavy blows;
its companions did not wait till it was dead before they feasted.
It is hard to raise pups because the mothers so often devour their
own young; and this is a charge I never heard laid to the Wolf,
the ancestor of these dogs, which shows how sadly the creature has
been deteriorated by contact with man. There seems no length to
which they will not go for food. Politeness forbids my mentioning
the final diet for which they scramble around the camp.
