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The Backwoods of Canada written by Catharine Parr Traill

C >> Catharine Parr Traill >> The Backwoods of Canada




The squaws are most affectionate to their little ones. Gentleness and
good humour appear distinguishing traits in the tempers of the female
Indians; whether this be natural to their characters, the savage state,
or the softening effects of Christianity, I cannot determine. Certainly
in no instance does the Christian religion appear more lovely than when,
untainted by the doubts and infidelity of modern sceptics, it is
displayed in the conduct of the reclaimed Indian breaking down the
strong-holds of idolatry and natural evil, and bringing forth the fruits
of holiness and morality. They may be said to receive the truths of the
Gospel as little children, with simplicity of heart and unclouded faith.

The squaws are very ingenious in many of their handiworks. We find their
birch-bark baskets very convenient for a number of purposes. My bread-
basket, knife-tray, sugar-basket, are all of this humble material. When
ornamented and wrought in patterns with dyed quills, I can assure you,
they are by no means inelegant. They manufacture vessels of birch-bark
so well, that they will serve for many useful household purposes, such
as holding water, milk, broth, or any other liquid; they are sewn or
rather stitched together with the tough roots of the tamarack or larch,
or else with strips of cedar-bark. They also weave very useful sorts of
baskets from the inner rind of the bass-wood and white ash.

Some of these baskets, of a coarse kind, are made use of for gathering
up potatoes, Indian corn, or turnips; the settlers finding them very
good substitutes for the osier baskets used for such purposes in the old
country.

The Indians are acquainted with a variety of dyes, with which they stain
the more elegant fancy-baskets and porcupine-quills. Our parlour is
ornamented with several very pretty specimens of their ingenuity in this
way, which answer the purpose of note and letter-cases, flower-stands,
and work-baskets.

They appear to value the useful rather more highly than the merely
ornamental articles that you may exhibit to them. They are very shrewd
and close in all their bargains, and exhibit a surprising degree of
caution in their dealings. The men are much less difficult to trade with
than the women: they display a singular pertinacity in some instances.
If they have fixed their mind on any one article, they will come to you
day after day, refusing any other you may offer to their notice. One of
the squaws fell in love with a gay chintz dressing-gown belonging to my
husband, and though I resolutely refused to part with it, all the squaws
in the wigwam by turns came to look at "gown," which they pronounced
with their peculiarly plaintive tone of voice; and when I said "no gown
to sell," they uttered a melancholy exclamation of regret, and went
away.

They will seldom make any article you want on purpose for you. If you
express a desire to have baskets of a particular pattern that they do
not happen to have ready made by them, they give you the usual vague
reply of "by-and-by." If the goods you offer them in exchange for theirs
do not answer their expectations, they give a sullen and dogged look or
reply, "_Car-car_" (no, no), or "_Carwinni_," which is a still more
forcible negative. But when the bargain pleases them, they signify their
approbation by several affirmative nods of the head, and a note not much
unlike a grunt; the ducks, fish, venison, or baskets, are placed beside
you, and the articles of exchange transferred to the folds of their
capacious blankets, or deposited in a sort of rushen wallets, not unlike
those straw baskets in which English carpenters carry their tools.

The women imitate the dresses of the whites, and are rather skilful in
converting their purchases. Many of the young girls can sew very neatly.
I often give them bits of silk and velvet, and braid, for which they
appear very thankful.

I am just now very busy with my garden. Some of our vegetable seeds are
in the ground, though I am told we have been premature; there being ten
chances to one but the young plants will be cut off by the late frosts,
which are often felt through May, and even the beginning of June.

Our garden at present has nothing to boast of, being merely a spot of
ground enclosed with a rough unsightly fence of split rails to keep the
cattle from destroying the vegetables. Another spring, I hope to have a
nice fence, and a portion of the ground devoted to flowers. This spring
there is so much pressing work to be done on the land in clearing for
the crops, that I do not like to urge my claims on behalf of a pretty
garden.

The forest-trees are nearly all in leaf. Never did spring burst forth
with greater rapidity than it has done this year. The verdure of the
leaves is most vivid. A thousand lovely flowers are expanding in the
woods and clearings. Nor are our Canadian songsters mute: the cheerful
melody of the robin, the bugle-song of the blackbird and thrush, with
the weak but not unpleasing call of the little bird called _Thitabecec_,
and a wren, whose note is sweet and thrilling, fill our woods.

For my part, I see no reason or wisdom in carping at the good we do
possess, because it lacks something of that which we formerly enjoyed. I
am aware it is the fashion for travellers to assert that our feathered
tribes are either mute or give utterance to discordant cries that pierce
the ear, and disgust rather than please. It would be untrue were I to
assert that our singing birds were as numerous or as melodious on the
whole as those of Europe; but I must not suffer prejudice to rob my
adopted country of her rights without one word being spoken in behalf of
her feathered vocalists. Nay, I consider her very frogs have been
belied: if it were not for the monotony of their notes, I really
consider they are not quite unmusical. The green frogs are very
handsome, being marked over with brown oval shields on the most vivid
green coat: they are larger in size than the biggest of our English
frogs, and certainly much handsomer in every respect. Their note
resembles that of a bird, and has nothing of the creek in it.

The bull-frogs are very different from the greens frogs. Instead of
being angry with their comical notes, I can hardly refrain from laughing
when a great fellow pops up his broad brown head from the margin of the
water, and says, "_Williroo, williroo, williroo_," to which another
bull-frog, from a distant part of the swamp, replies, in hoarser
accents, "_Get out, get out, get out_;" and presently a sudden chorus is
heard of old and young, as if each party was desirous of out-croaking
the other.

In my next I shall give you an account of our logging-bee, which will
take place the latter end of this month. I feel some anxiety respecting
the burning of the log-heaps on the fallow round the house, as it
appears to me rather a hazardous matter.

I shall write again very shortly. Farewell, dearest of friends.




LETTER XI

Emigrants suitable for Canada.--Qualities requisite to ensure success.--
Investment of Capital.--Useful Articles to be brought out.--
Qualifications and Occupations of a Settler's Family.--Deficiency of
Patience and Energy in some Females.--Management of the Dairy.--Cheese.
--Indian Corn, and its Cultivation.--Potatoes.--Rates of Wages.

August 9, 1833

WITH respect to the various questions, my dear friend, to which you
request my particular attention, I can only promise that I will do my
best to answer them as explicitly as possible, though at the same time I
must remind you, that brevity in epistolary correspondence is not one of
my excellencies. If I become too diffuse in describing mere matters of
fact, you must bear with mine infirmity, and attribute it to my womanly
propensity of over-much talking; so, for your comfort, if your eyes be
wearied, your ears will at least escape.

I shall take your queries in due rotation; first, then, you ask, "Who
are the persons best adapted for bush-settlers?"

To which I reply without hesitation--the poor hard-working, sober
labourers, who have industrious habits, a large family to provide for,
and a laudable horror of the workhouse and parish-overseers: this will
bear them through the hardships and privations of a first settlement in
the backwoods; and in due time they will realize an honest independence,
and be above want, though not work. Artisans of all crafts are better
paid in village-towns, or long-cleared districts, than as mere bush-
settlers.

"Who are the next best suited for emigration?"

Men of a moderate income or good capital may make money in Canada. If
they have judgment, and can afford to purchase on a large scale, they
will double or treble their capital by judicious purchases and sales.
But it would be easier for me to point out who are not fit for
emigration than who are.

The poor gentleman of delicate and refined habits, who cannot afford to
employ all the labour requisite to carry on the business of clearing on
a tolerable large scale, and is unwilling or incapable of working
himself, is not fitted for Canada, especially if his habits are
expensive. Even the man of small income, unless he can condescend to
take in hand the axe or the chopper, will find, even with prudent and
economical habits, much difficulty in keeping free from debt for the
first two or even three years. Many such have succeeded, but the
struggle has been severe.

But there is another class of persons most unsuited to the woods: these
are the wives and families of those who have once been opulent
tradesmen, accustomed to the daily enjoyment of every luxury that money
could procure or fashion invent; whose ideas of happiness are connected
with a round of amusements, company, and all the novelties of dress and
pleasure that the gay world can offer. Young ladies who have been
brought up at fashionable boarding schools, with a contempt of every
thing useful or economical, make very indifferent settlers' wives.
Nothing can be more unfortunate than the situations in the woods of
Canada of persons so educated: disgusted with the unpleasant change in
their mode of life, wearied and discontented with all the objects around
them, they find every exertion a trouble, and every occupation a
degradation.

For persons of this description (and there are such to be met with in
the colonies), Canada is the worst country in the world. And I would
urge any one, so unfitted by habit and inclination, under no
consideration to cross the Atlantic; for miserable, and poor, and
wretched they will become.

The emigrant, if he would succeed in this country, must possess the
following qualities: perseverance, patience, industry, ingenuity,
moderation, self-denial; and if he be a gentleman, a small income is
almost indispensable; a good one is still more desirable.

The outlay for buying and clearing land, building, buying stock, and
maintaining a family, paying servants' wages, with many other
unavoidable expenses, cannot be done without some pecuniary means; and
as the return from the land is but little for the first two or three
years, it would be advisable for a settler to bring out some hundreds to
enable him to carry on the farm and clear the above-mentioned expenses,
or he will soon find himself involved in great difficulties.

Now, to your third query, "What will be the most profitable way of
employing money, if a settler brought out capital more than was required
for his own expenditure?"

On this head, I am not of course competent to give advice. My husband
and friends, conversant with the affairs of the colonies, say, lend it
on mortgage, on good landed securities, and at a high rate of interest.
The purchase of land is often a good speculation, but not always so
certain as mortgage, as it pays no interest; and though it may at some
future time make great returns, it is not always so easy to dispose of
it to an advantage when you happen to need it. A man possessing many
thousand acres in different townships, may be distressed for twenty
pounds if suddenly called upon for it when he is unprepared, if he
invests all his capital in property of this kind.

It would be difficult for me to enumerate the many opportunities of
turning ready money to account. There is so little money in circulation
that those persons who are fortunate enough to have it at command can do
almost any thing with it they please.

"What are the most useful articles for a settler to bring out?"

Tools, a good stock of wearing-apparel, and shoes, good bedding,
especially warm blankets; as you pay high for them here, and they are
not so good as you would supply yourself with at a much lower rate at
home. A selection of good garden-seeds, as those you buy at the stores
are sad trash; moreover, they are pasted up in packets not to be opened
till paid for, and you may, as we have done, pay for little better than
chaff, and empty husks, or old and worm-eaten seeds. This, I am sorry to
say, is a Yankee trick; though I doubt not but John Bull would do the
same if he had the opportunity, as there are rogues in all countries
under the sun.

With respect to furniture and heavy goods of any kind, I would recommend
little to be brought. Articles of hardware are not much more expensive
here than at home, if at all, and often of a kind more suitable to the
country than those you are at the trouble of bringing; besides, all
land-carriage is dear.

We lost a large package of tools that have never been recovered from the
forwarders, though their carriage was paid beforehand to Prescott. It is
safest and best to ensure your goods, when the forwarders are
accountable for them.

You ask, "If groceries and articles of household consumption are dear or
cheap?"

They vary according to circumstances and situation. In towns situated in
old cleared parts of the country, and near the rivers and navigable
waters, they are cheaper than at home; but in newly-settled townships,
where the water-communication is distant, and where the roads are bad,
and the transport of goods difficult, they are nearly double the price.
Where the supply of produce is inadequate to the demand owing to the
influx of emigrants in thinly-settled places, or other causes, then all
articles of provisions are sold at a high price, and not to be procured
without difficulty; but these are merely temporary evils, which soon
cease.

Competition is lowering prices in Canadian towns, as it does in British
ones, and you may now buy goods of all kinds nearly as cheap as in
England.

Where prices depend on local circumstances, it is impossible to give any
just standard; as what may do for one town would not for another, and a
continual change is going on in all the unsettled or half-settled
townships. In like manner the prices of cattle vary: they are cheaper in
old settled townships, and still more so on the American side the river
or lakes, than in the Canadas*.

[* The duties on goods imported to the Canadas are exceedingly small,
which will explain the circumstance of many articles of consumption
being cheaper in places where there are facilities of transit than at
home; while in the Backwoods, where roads are scarcely yet formed, there
must be taken into the account the cost of carriage, and increased
number of agents; the greater value of capital, and consequent increased
rate of local profit, &c.--items which will diminish in amount as the
country becomes settled and cleared.--Ed.]

"What are necessary qualifications of a settler's wife; and the usual
occupations of the female part of a settler's family?" are your next
questions.

To the first clause, I reply, a settler's wife should be active,
industrious, ingenious, cheerful, not above putting her hand to whatever
is necessary to be done in her household, nor too proud to profit by the
advice and experience of older portions of the community, from whom she
may learn many excellent lessons of practical wisdom.

Like that pattern of all good housewives described by the prudent mother
of King Lemuel, it should be said of the emigrant's wife, "She layeth
her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." "She seeketh
wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands." "She looketh well
to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness."

Nothing argues a greater degree of good sense and good feeling than a
cheerful conformity to circumstances, adverse though they be compared
with a former lot; surely none that felt as they ought to feel, would
ever despise a woman, however delicately brought up, for doing her duty
in the state of life unto which it may have pleased God to call her.
Since I came to this country, I have seen the accomplished daughters and
wives of men holding no inconsiderable rank as officers, both naval and
military, milking their own cows, making their own butter, and
performing tasks of household work that few of our farmers' wives would
now condescend to take part in. Instead of despising these useful arts,
an emigrant's family rather pride themselves on their skill in these
matters. The less silly pride and the more practical knowledge the
female emigrant brings out with her, so much greater is the chance for
domestic happiness and prosperity.

I am sorry to observe, that in many cases the women that come hither
give way to melancholy regrets, and destroy the harmony of their fire-
side, and deaden the energies of their husbands and brothers by constant
and useless repining. Having once made up their minds to follow their
husbands or friends to this country, it would be wiser and better to
conform with a good grace, and do their part to make the burden of
emigration more bearable.

One poor woman that was lamenting the miseries of this country was
obliged to acknowledge that her prospects were far better than they ever
had or could have been at home. What, then, was the cause of her
continual regrets and discontent? I could hardly forbear smiling, when
she replied, "She could not go to shop of a Saturday night to lay out
her husband's earnings, and have a little chat with her _naibors_, while
the shopman was serving the customers,--_for why?_ there were no shops
in the bush, and she was just dead-alive. If Mrs. Such-a-one (with whom,
by the way, she was always quarrelling when they lived under the same
roof) was near her she might not feel quite so lonesome." And so for the
sake of a dish of gossip, while lolling her elbows on the counter of a
village-shop, this foolish woman would have forgone the advantages, real
solid advantages, of having land and cattle, and poultry and food, and
firing and clothing, and all for a few years' hard work, which, her
husband wisely observed, must have been exerted at home, with no other
end in view than an old age of poverty or a refuge from starvation in a
parish workhouse.

The female of the middling or better class, in her turn, pines for the
society of the circle of friends she has quitted, probably for ever. She
sighs for those little domestic comforts, that display of the
refinements and elegancies of life, that she had been accustomed to see
around her. She has little time now for those pursuits that were ever
her business as well as amusement. The accomplishments she has now to
acquire are of a different order: she must become skilled in the arts of
sugar-boiling, candle and soap making, the making and baking of huge
loaves, cooked in the bake-kettle, unless she be the fortunate mistress
of a stone or clay oven. She must know how to manufacture _hop-rising_
or _salt-rising_ for leavening her bread; salting meat and fish,
knitting stockings and mittens and comforters, spinning yarn in the big
wheel (the French Canadian spinning-wheel), and dyeing the yarn when
spun to have manufactured into cloth and coloured flannels, to clothe
her husband and children, making clothes for herself, her husband and
children;--for there are no tailors nor mantua-makers in the bush.

The management of poultry and the dairy must not be omitted; for in this
country most persons adopt the Irish and Scotch method, that of churning
the _milk_, a practice that in our part of England was not known. For my
own part I am inclined to prefer the butter churned from cream, as being
most economical, unless you chance to have Irish or Scotch servants who
prefer buttermilk to new or sweet skimmed milk.

There is something to be said in favour of both plans, no doubt. The
management of the calves differs here very much. Some persons wean the
calf from the mother from its birth, never allowing it to suck at all:
the little creature is kept fasting the first twenty-four hours; it is
then fed with the finger with new milk, which it soon learns to take
readily. I have seen fine cattle thus reared, and am disposed to adopt
the plan as the least troublesome one.

The old settlers pursue an opposite mode of treatment, allowing the calf
to suck till it is neatly half a year old, under the idea that it
ensures the daily return of the cow; as, under ordinary circumstances,
she is apt to ramble sometimes for days together, when the herbage grows
scarce in the woods near the homesteads, and you not only lose the use
of the milk, but often, from distention of the udder, the cow is
materially injured, at least for the remainder of the milking season. I
am disposed to think that were care taken to give the cattle regular
supplies of salt, and a small portion of food, if ever so little, near
the milking-place, they would seldom stay long away. A few refuse
potatoes, the leaves of the garden vegetables daily in use, set aside
for them, with the green shoots of the Indian corn that are stripped off
to strengthen the plant, will ensure their attendance. In the fall and
winter, pumpkins, corn, straw, and any other fodder you may have, with
the browse they get during the chopping and underbrushing season, will
keep them well.

The weanling calves should be given skimmed milk or buttermilk, with the
leafy boughs of basswood and maple, of which they are extremely fond. A
warm shed or fenced yard is very necessary for the cattle during the
intense winter frosts: this is too often disregarded, especially in new
settlements, which is the cause that many persons have the mortification
of losing their stock, either with disease or cold. Naturally the
Canadian cattle are very hardy, and when taken moderate care of, endure
the severest winters well; but owing to the difficulties that attend a
first settlement in the bush, they suffer every privation of cold and
hunger, which brings on a complaint generally fatal, called the "_hollow
horn_;" this originates in the spine, or extends to it, and is cured or
palliated by boring the horn and inserting turpentine, pepper, or other
heating substances.

When a new comer has not winter food for his cattle, it is wise to sell
them in the fall and buy others in the spring: though at a seeming loss,
it is perhaps less loss in reality than losing the cattle altogether.
This was the plan my husband adopted, and we found it decidedly the
better one, besides saving much care, trouble, and vexation.

I have seen some good specimens of native cheese, that I thought very
respectable, considering that the grass is by no means equal to our
British pastures. I purpose trying my skill next summer: who knows but
that I may inspire some Canadian bard to celebrate the produce of my
dairy as Bloomfield did the Suffolk cheese, yclept "Bang." You remember
the passage,--for Bloomfield is your countryman as well as mine,--it
begins:

"Unrivalled stands thy county cheese, O Giles," &c.

I have dwelt on the dairy information; as I know you were desirous of
imparting all you could collect to your friends.

You wish to know something of the culture of Indian corn, and if it be a
useful and profitable crop.

The cultivation of Indian corn on newly cleared lands is very easy, and
attended with but little labour; on old farms it requires more. The
earth is just raised with a broad hoe, and three or four corns dropped
in with a pumpkin-seed, in about every third or fourth hole, and in
every alternate row; the seed are set several feet apart. The pumpkins
and the corn grow very amicably together, the broad leaves of the former
shading the young plants and preventing the too great evaporation of the
moisture from the ground; the roots strike little way, so that they rob
the corn of a very small portion of nourishment. The one crop trails to
an amazing length along the ground, while the other shoots up to the
height of several feet above it. When the corn is beginning to branch,
the ground should be hoed once over, to draw the earth a little to the
roots, and cut down any weeds that might injure it. This is all that is
done till the cob is beginning to form, when the blind and weak shoots
are broken off, leaving four or five of the finest bearing shoots. The
feather, when it begins to turn brown and dead, should also be taken
off; that the plant may have all the nourishment to the corn.

We had a remarkable instance of smut in our corn last summer. The
diseased cobs had large white bladders as big as a small puff-ball, or
very large nuts, and these on being broken were full of an inky black
liquid. On the same plants might be observed a sort of false
fructification, the cob being deficient in kernels, which by some
strange accident were transposed to the top feather or male blossoms. I
leave botanists to explain the cause of this singular anomaly; I only
state facts. I could not learn that the smut was a disease common to
Indian corn, but last year smut or dust bran, as it is called by some,
was very prevalent in the oat, barley and wheat crops. In this country
especially, new lands are very subject to the disease.