Notes of an Egging Expedition to Shoal Lake, West of Lake Winnipeg 4
by Elizabeth CampbellThe expedition began to go downhill for Donald Gunn once they arrived at Lake Manitoba. He developed a skin infection that painfully affected his eyes. On the third day, the group turned south, heading home to the RRS. They were near the south shore of Shoal Lake when the heavens opened, and they were forced to set up camp beneath the carts. The rain was intense, and they feared a lightning strike to the carts, caught as they were on the open plains. Everything, including the specimens, was thoroughly soaked.
At daybreak they hitched up and moved out. By 8 o’clock they had reached the big beach ridge, and the sun had begun to peek through the clouds. But the cart-trail was in bad shape, covered in water in many places. Everyone was worn out from the journey and lack of sleep the previous night, and Gunn was very ill – almost blind and in great pain.
They spent another night on the trail; this time sleep came easily. The rain had missed the area covered in the last stage of their journey and the roads were much better. So was Gunn, after a good night’s sleep.
Gunn concludes his report with more information on the inhabitants of the villages located south of Lake Manitoba: Oak Point, the Bay, and a new village under construction at the time.
These peoples are like the fowls of heaven; they “neither sow nor reap,” nor do they even, as far as I have been able to see, plant potatoes. They possess a few cattle and horses; the latter roam through the woods summer and winter, living independent of their masters’ care. The finest of hay grows within a few yards of their houses, yet I have been informed that many of these people are so indolent as to allow their animals to die in the winter from starvation. There are two or three exceptions to the above rule. The question will naturally arise, how do people so bound down by indolence procure food and clothing? …I said above that the lake abounded with fish. As soon as the thaw commences the fish forsake the deep places to which they resorted as the winter advanced, and swarm towards the shore, and run into the many little creeks that pass out of the marshes into the lake. Here they are taken in nets and by angling from the beginning of April until the breaking up of the ice in the latter end of May, and for some time after continue plentiful until the water in the lake becomes warm, when the fish return again to the deep places. In April the ducks and geese return in great numbers, become plentiful, and feed in numerous flocks in all the marshes fringing the lakes for at least a month and a half….
While the fish and wildfowl can be had these people enjoy a continual feast; and when these fail, [musk]rats, which have been taken in great numbers for some years past are considered desirable articles of food; even when plenty reigns in the land the [musk]rat furnishes them not only with food but with the means of providing themselves with clothing. …When all the wild fowl have taken to their breeding places the people have a hard struggle for dear life against hunger, which compels them to search along all the lakes and marshes for eggs, and for every other eatable that falls in their way; and during the month of July and part of August they suffer much privation of food, unless possessed of means to enable them to draw on the settlement for flour; but when the young ducks begin to take to their wings and the fish begin to approach the shore, they are able again to set hunger at defiance for a time. …Another trait of these people of primative habits and manners is, that, although occupying these villages for a long time, they have neither president, council, nor magistrate, and I never heard of any crime of any kind being committed by any of them except once, and that was a case of manslaughter which arose out of undue provocation.
The agricultural life that was so familiar to inhabitants of the RRS was something very foreign to the First Nations/Métis cultures of the area, although some archaeological evidence exists that shows that some did practice a rudimentary form of agriculture, and others took it up with some success after the settlers arrived. Neither Donald Gunn nor Alexander Ross could get their minds around the cultural difference, and both explained it away as a form of laziness or living for the moment – an incapacity to prepare for the time when food was scarce. Agricultural methods need to be learned, and the time for learning them happened to coincide with the times of plenty – when food in the wild was easy to gather, and must be gathered!
Tags: agriculture, Donald Gunn, First Nations, food supply, hunting, Life at the RRS, Life at the Settlement, Métis, RRS & First Nations relations
