Weekend voyageurs (page 3)
As for the women at South Branch House, Meyer could only
tell us that there were five or six of them. One was the Assiniboine wife of the post manager (killed with her two
youngest children) and two of the others were Cree. The women
who were abducted likely shared in the fate that befell the
entire Gros Ventre nation: starvation, sickness, and an eventual
straggling retreat south from the Saskatchewan to the Missouri.
BATOCHE AND BEYOND
Getting there Batoche National Historic Site
is roughly halfway between
Saskatoon and Prince Albert.
Take Highway 11 - the Louis
Riel Trail - northeast out of
Saskatoon, turn east onto road
312, then north onto road 225.
You can drive to the site of South
Branch House on the unpaved
road 782.
Staying there For infomation about hotels and
B&Bs in the Saskatoon area, go
to www.tourismsaskatoon.com and click on accommodation.
Playing there
Batoche National Historic Site
includes a visitor centre, with a
museum and multimedia show,
as well as a restored church, rectory
and battle grounds. It is open
from May 8 to Sept. 30. For information,
phone (306) 423-6227
or visit pc.gc.ca/batoche.
For information about
canoe tours on the South
Saskatchewan River, contact
Cliff Speer of CanoeSki Discovery
Company at (306) 653-5693 or
visit www.canoeski.com.
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LIFE IS EASIER ON a full stomach, and Speer pulls out all the
stops to make sure that his voyageurs are happy campers.
Dinner surpasses even its advance billing, with cabbage salad,
two kinds of stew, and the juiciest, flakiest berry pie I've ever
tasted. Yet even after we've eaten and all the dishes are washed,
I still find myself troubled by what I've learned. Everyone else
seems to be doing fine. "I don't get into this stuff the way you
do,” a fellow paddler says. But it occurs to me that there might
be at least one member of the CanoeSki team who understands
how I feel.
Bonnie Hamilton had first caught my eye earlier in the day
with her elegant paddling technique. Then at dinner time, she
had cooked up a batch of fried bannock - toasty and brown despite a shortage of dry wood - to complement the baked variety
that she had made earlier and brought along. She was
clearly at home on the water and in camp, but at South Branch
House, she had become quiet, even withdrawn.
Just before bedtime, we sit together on a little rise overlooking
the camp. It turns out that Hamilton knows the fur trade
from beginning to end.
"I come from one of the last few families that was raised on
the land” in northern Saskatchewan, she says. "The Lower
Foster - that's the map sheet for where I grew up.” The descendant
of a long line of trappers and traders, she speaks with the
authority of experience.
"The fur trade for me isn't a romantic, fiddle-playing-inthe-
fort kind of thing,” she says. "I think of it as work, turmoil,
displacement. Rapid change. It brought technology to aboriginal
people that made their lives easier, but at a great cost.”
On June 24, 1794, that cost was paid in lives. Immediately
after torching South Branch House, the Gros Ventre party
pressed its desperate attack against a neighbouring North West
Company fort. Five Gros Ventre warriors died and nine others
were wounded, bringing the casualty list on that horrific day
to 20. As for the fur traders, the HBC and the Northwesters both
abandoned their South Branch posts and retreated upriver to
Nipawin, never to return.
As Hamilton and I say our goodnights and walk down to our
tents, I untie the sash from around my waist and carefully fold
it. After the visit to South Branch House and everything I've
learned while playing voyageur, I have a newfound respect for
the hardships and sacrifices endured by those affected by the conflicts
of the fur trade era.
Saskatoon-based writer Candace Savage is the author of more than
two dozen books including, mostly recently, Prairie: a Natural History
and Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World.
Photographer Courtney Milne is based in Grandora, Sask.
Online exclusive: Canadian Geographic Photo Club
Join us for an interview with this award-winning photographer and get a behind-the-scenes look into a photo shoot for Canadian Geographic.
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