It was a trip to another time, when men survived on fish and moose and bear, whatever they could wrest from the wild.
We were in a remote fishing camp on the northeast edge of Manitoba, 35 miles from Little Churchill Lodge, some 600 miles from Winnipeg. For two years now, men on float planes have intruded to chase lunker northern pike. For previous ages, this had been the sole province of Indians and fur trappers and their prey.
The Cree left shortly after the turn of the century for a reservation at Split Lake, 200 miles away. Still they haunt their ancestral lands, guiding tourists in the summer and running 60-mile trap lines when the snow is deep and the pelts are thick.
Despite modern man`s stringent fish and game regulations, the Indians have trouble yielding traditional ways, as conservation-minded sportsmen saw to their discomfort last spring in Wisconsin.
Indians protected by court-supported treaty rights speared tons of spawning muskies and walleyes while angry sportsmen had to be restrained from turning into vigilantes. Other courts allow Indians to kill endangered species.
Current negotiations hopefully will satisfy both sides and safeguard the precious resources. But as we saw up here, the original American woodsman still has a long way to grow.
It was 6 a.m. on our last day in camp when the shots exploded outside our cabins. There was a roar of an outboard motor, then another shot, then silence.
By the time I`d stumbled from an upper bunk and flung open the door, two Indian guides were tying a rope around the cow moose they`d killed as it swam across the shallow bay.
The Indians were thrilled. This meant a favorite meat for them and their families at Split Lake. The carcass soon was skinned, quartered, butchered, bagged and put upon a float plane for home, each package specifically assigned.
It was the guides` second bonanza in three weeks, since a bear was lured to some garbage strewn behind the camp. That meat still was in camp, buried in the icy permafrost just below the insulating taiga carpet of yellow cushion plants.
During our three days of fishing here, we had seen a lot more than fish. An area around a fish-cleaning shack across the river was littered with planted garbage, including raven carcasses. One guide said they`ll get three or four bears there a year.
He was the same fellow who claimed a personal record of 13 moose in one day on the Nelson River.
The guide who shot the swimming moose also claimed the local record for northern pike. He said he caught a 45-pounder in a net in the Little Churchill River four years ago. He said the fish was as long as a snowmobile with the girth of a strong tree. He said there once had been a lot of fish like that. Now the best on hook and line run less than 30 pounds.
The Little Churchill River briefly was an avenue of commerce for trappers and traders. We saw signs of nameless former encampments on flattened bluffs. We poked among sunken foundations of settlers` homes and learned where five or six tiny cemeteries still boast warped and anonymous gray wooden crosses. Wayfarers over the years–probably Indians–had taken the trouble to lay fallen crosses atop the graves. No names were visible, and the Indians had no idea who might be there.
They escorted us to isolated trappers` cabins, including three on a former Hudson Bay trading post. There were clear signs of an early village on a point where the river splits into a network of creeks and shallow lakes.
The site today is knee-high in weeds, and the bears have extracted some revenge. Three dank, thin-walled log cabins have their doors battered open and the meager furniture upended and smashed.
Soon the trappers will be back with wives and possibly children, replacing stove pipe and sealing the log walls with fresh moss against the rugged winter.
Their old glass coffee cups still hang from nails in neat rows above unpainted workbenches. Boxes of soap and supplies have been smashed and scattered and the bed frames are upside down. Only rolls of thin foam rubber padding remain safely tucked in the rafters. Each cabin holds no more than one broken chair.
”The winters here must be agonizing and frustrating,” a friend observed as we studied a table scarred by repeated blows from a hatchet.
He found an old British Enfield military rifle in one of the cabins and decided it would work. A guide explained that some folks leave inexpensive rifles behind to avoid packing them in. No one steals them. Oil and bullets are brought when they return.
Each cabin contains a large supply of nails for repairs.
Poking through the weeds, one guide found an abandoned, waterlogged pair of shoes–broken-down Hushpuppies–and appropriated them for his own use.
I found a cracked and waterlogged pair of leather trapper`s mittens on a pile of junk outside. They were made of moose skin trimmed with beaver fur and joyously beaded in colorful patterns on the backs of the mitts and the sleeves.
A guide assured me they had been thrown away. So I rescued them to clean and oil and mount them for my den–more significant trophies for a Midwestern city slicker than almost any fish.
We spent some time hiking through muskeg and moss and the deadfalls of old forest fires in search of a path beside some long rapids and the sturgeon that were said to exceed 50 pounds. We didn`t get more than a mile because of rugged country, cumbersome fishing poles and sneakers instead of boots, but we did meet a lot of interesting mosquitoes.
Some companions on the other side of the river ran across a skeleton of a fox and what might have been an 8-year-old northern pike. Eagles and ducks were everywhere.
And the sunsets were terrific at 10:30 p.m. No one should spend all his time fishing on fishing trips like this.
