Slave River

“ McConnell reported the western arm of Great Slave lake “bordered all around by a flat wooded country, which has been proved to be adapted to cultivation of barley, and of potatoes and other vegetables. The soil is usually a loam, but in the ridges is often sandy, and in low places passes into a clay. The alluvial lands along Slave river and the grassy plains on Little Buffalo river are the best sections of the district, and deserve the first attention. At Fort Resolution a few acres of land are farmed every year with good results by the Hudson’s Bay Company. ”

“ It is about 300 miles in length; its banks in many parts are well wooded, and its course in the lower part lies through a fertile alluvial region. With the exception of 13 miles of falls and rapids near Fort Smith, it is navigable for river and sea-going steamers. ”

“ John now noted on his map that this river, the outlet of Lake Athabasca, which received the combined floods of the Peace and the Athabasca, was known as the Slave River, or sometimes the Little Slave River.
As had been the Athabasca all the way down, this river was very much discolored and stained by the high waters of the spring.
“Now, young men,” said Uncle Dick to his charges as they stood on the fore deck of the steamer in the hot sun of midafternoon, “you can say that you are getting into the real wilderness. It runs every way you can look—west, north, south, and east. ”

“ Behold the May-flower anchored at Plymouth Rock, the slave-ship in James River. Each a parent, one of the prosperous, labour-honouring, law-sustaining institutions of the North; the other the mother of slavery, idleness, lynch-law, ignorance, unpaid labour, poverty, and duelling, despotism, the ceaseless swing of the whip, and the peculiar institutions of the South. These ships are the representation of good and evil in the New World, even to our day. When shall one of those parallel lines come to an end?
The origin of American slavery is not lost in the obscurity of by-gone ages. ”

“ It will be a relief to turn away for a moment from the contemplation of violence and crime, of wretchedness and despair — the foul exhalations of the reeking slave-deck, the charnel house of corruption, disease, and death.
"As the traveler along the coast turns the prow of his canoe through the surf, and crosses the angry bar that guards the mouth of an African river, he suddenly finds himself moving calmly onward between sedgy shores, buried in mangroves. Presently the scene expands in the unruffled mirror of a deep majestic stream. ”

“ Chapter II Lesser Slave River And Lesser Slave Lake Lesser Slave River—Its proper name—Migration of the great Algic race—Bishop Grouard's service in the wilderness—Returning Klondikers—The rapids; poling—Accident to Peokus—Celebration of Père Lacombe's fiftieth year of missionary labors—Arrival of half-breed trackers from Lesser Slave Lake—Great hay meadows on the Lesser Slave River—The island in Lesser Slave Lake—Trackers' gambling games—Swan River—A dangerous squall—Chief Factor Shaw—A free-traders' village. ”

“ To the westward of this arm, or bay of the lake, there is another deep bay that receives the waters of a river which communicates with Great Marten Lake where the North-West Company had once a post established. The eastern shores of the Great Slave Lake are very imperfectly known: none of the traders have visited them and the Indians give such loose and unsatisfactory accounts that no estimation can be formed of its extent in that direction. These men say there is a communication from its eastern extremity by a chain of lakes with a shallow river which discharges its waters into the sea. ”

“ Here pause was made at a camp of Dog Ribs, who took the bottom from the courage of Mackenzie's comrades by gruesome predictions that old age would come upon the voyageurs before they reached salt water. There were impassable falls ahead. The river flowed through a land of famine peopled by a monstrous race of hostiles who massacred all Indians from the South. The effect of these cheerful prophecies was that the Slave Lake guide refused to go on. English Chief bodily put the recalcitrant into a canoe and forced him ahead at the end of a paddle. Snow-capped mountains loomed to the west. ”

“ The native slave-dealer was too practical a man to burden himself with mouths to fill that he could not immediately turn into cloth, rum, gunpowder or coral, so oftener than otherwise he would simply tell his own niggers to drop their canoe astern of the slave ship, cut the rejected slaves heads off, and cast their bodies into the river to feed the sharks, this often taking place within sight of the European slaver. ”

“ Day after day they journeyed, suffered from myriads of mosquitoes, passed the steep mountain portage, and, undergoing many hardships, reached Slave Lake in nine days.
Skirting the lake, they departed north by an unknown river. This was the object of Mackenzie's search. Floating down the stream, the Horn Mountains were seen, portage after portage was crossed, the mouth of the foaming Great Slave Lake River was passed, the snowy mountains came in view in the distance, and the party, undeterred, pressed forward on their voyage of discovery. ”

“ At present they remain there, not because the white men will not allow them to come lower down, but because they are in the center of such a rich field, and they know that by coming down the river they must rely entirely on their canoes, as roads in the interior are few and far between, owing to the swampy nature of the land. ”

“ Long ago, before the coming of the white men, they had lived in another country far to the north and east, about Lesser Slave Lake, ranging between Peace River and the Saskatchewan, and having for their neighbors on the north the Beaver Indians. ”

“ From Banana Point to Stanley Pool slavery does exist, but of such a mild character that when operations are actually begun Stanley Pool should be the starting point. If half a dozen fast boats were placed on the river at Stanley Pool, each armed with twenty black soldiers, officered by two or three Europeans who had proved by their past services that they were capable of dealing with the question, and if such a force had the recognition of the civilized powers and was allowed to strike a blow at the evil, thousands of human lives would be saved. ”

“ Captain Hall says, in Old Calabar river there are two towns, Old Town and New Town. A rival ship in trade produced a jealousy between the towns; so that, through fear of each other, for a considerable time, no canoe would leave their towns to go up the river for slaves. ”

“ After a journey of thirteen hundred miles to the west he found the Coppermine River and the Great Slave Lake, and he traced the river to its mouth and emerged on the northern shore, being the first known white man to see the Arctic Ocean between the Boothia Peninsula and Bering Strait. ”

“ After they have opened this noble river to the knowledge of Europe, frightened by the sacrifice of a few lives, instead of using it themselves for the benefit of the nations of the interior, they have allowed it to fall into the hands of the American slave-dealers, who have opened a regular annual slave-trade with those very regions, while the English seem not to have even the slightest idea of such a traffic going on. ”

“ She was about three miles ahead of us when the breeze reached her, and I felt very curious to see where she would finally come to an anchor. The only safe anchorage is in Banana Creek, and though slavers constantly resort to the numerous other creeks and inlets higher up the river no captain of a man-of-war would think for a moment of risking his ship in any of them unless the emergency happened to be very pressing, nor even then unless his vessel happened to be of exceedingly light draught. If therefore the brig anchored in Banana Creek I should accept it as a point in favour of her honesty ”

“ Soon the steamer left the wharf, and the slave-catcher and his officers, who had been watching the boat since her arrival, went away, satisfied that their slave had not escaped by the North America, and returned to guard the house of the abolitionist. After the boat had got out of port, and fairly on her way to Buffalo, I showed the tall lady to her state-room. The next morning, the fugitive, dressed in his plantation suit, bade farewell to his native land, crossed the Niagara River, and took up his abode in Canada. ”

“ Slave labor has ever been found wasteful and exhaustive of the soil from which it has taken the crops. Therefore, it used to be a common saying, “the Southern planter needs all the lands that join his estate.”314 Ample as was the territory of that portion of the United States in which slavery was established, the “barons of the South” early looked beyond their borders for new acquisitions of land. Partly to gratify their cupidity, the immense tract of land between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the valley of the Columbia River, was purchased by our Federal Government in 1803. ”

“ And now, what does the slave maker do? He abolishes this mighty power of the intellect, and uses only the weak, degraded, and half-animated forces of the human limbs. A thousand slaves may stand by a river, [Pg 41] and to them it is only an object of fear or of superstition. An educated man surpasses the ancient idea of a river god; he stands by the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Merrimack, or the Connecticut; he commands each of them to do more work than could be performed by a hundred thousand men,—to saw timber, to make cloth, to grind corn,—and they obey. ”

“ We returned to the salt works the morning after leaving Mobile. Boss remained two days in Mobile, and then started for Panola, the home of his father-in-law; but, on his way, he was taken sick, having contracted a heavy cold which ran into pneumonia, and he lasted only a short time, dying on New Year's day. He had taken cold in bringing the slaves from Bolivar over the river on barges. The river was overflowed about fifty miles out, and the only way he could get the slaves across was by using large barges made of logs. ”

“ We were in a swamp between the two roads, gradually working our way through to the river, as we could not go on either of the roads for fear of detection. At the bridges, where these roads crossed the river, there were rebel camps, and it was useless for us to think of crossing either. We, therefore, worked our way carefully through the thicket that we were in until we came within sight of the river. Then Uncle Alfred went ahead, creeping a few steps, then stopping to see if the river was clear of soldiers. ”

“ Here also, was deposited in a tin box, a letter containing an outline of our proceedings, the latitude and longitude of the principal places, and the course we intended to pursue towards Slave Lake.
Embarking at eight A.M. we proceeded up the river which is full of sandy shoals, but sufficiently [Pg 246] deep for canoes in the channels. It is from one hundred to two hundred yards wide, and is bounded by high and steep banks of clay. We encamped at a cascade of eighteen or twenty feet high, which is produced by a ridge of rock crossing the river, and the nets were set. ”

“ This, however, proves the capabilities of the Slave to reason. One very cold winter's night, I was suddenly aroused by a rapid knock at my door. My neighbour had eight Slaves with two horses and a wagon, which was the entire family. The Ohio river was frozen over. They brought the horses and wagon across on the ice, it being quite near to the river. It was impossible for them to travel with the horses and wagon. I concealed the fugatives. The next day the owner was on the look out in the town. ”

“ My narrative is at an end. I have no comments to make upon the subject of Slavery. Those who read this book may form their own opinions of the "peculiar institution." What it may be in other States, I do not profess to know; what it is in the region of Red River, is truly and faithfully delineated in these pages. This is no fiction, no exaggeration. If I have failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader too prominently the bright side of the picture. I doubt not hundreds have been as unfortunate as myself; ”

“ Through this broad street, restless ever, Ebbs and flows a human tide, Wave on wave a living river; Wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide. ”

“ Though the sail did the work of the paddles, it gave the voyageurs no respite. Cramped and rain-soaked, they had to bail out water to keep the canoe afloat. In this fashion the boats entered Slave Lake, a large body of water with one horn pointing west, the other east. Out of both horns led unknown rivers. Which way should Mackenzie go? Low-lying marshlands—beaver meadows where the wattled houses of the beaver had stopped up the current of streams till moss overgrew the swamps and the land became quaking muskeg—lay along the shores of the lake. ”

“ The girl also seized an oar, and the canoe—the King's own canoe—came on like a swallow.
"But the tribe was after them in fifty canoes, some coming straight along, some spreading out to close in later. It was no equal game, for these people were so deft and strong with the oars, and they were a hundred or more to two. There could be but one end. It was what the Great Slave had looked for: to fight till the last breath. And here he could fight for the woman who had risked all for him—just a common woman of the North, but it seemed good to die for her, and she would be happy to die with him. ”