Download the full version of the ebook at ebookfinal.

com

The Illustrated History of Canada 25th Anniversary

Edition 2012 Craig Brown (Editor)

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-illustrated-history-of-
canada-25th-anniversary-edition-2012-craig-brown-editor/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookfinal.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Hackers Heroes of the Computer Revolution 25th anniversary

Edition Steven Levy

https://ebookfinal.com/download/hackers-heroes-of-the-computer-
revolution-25th-anniversary-edition-steven-levy/

ebookfinal.com

Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine 25th Anniversary

Edition Gordon M Shepherd

https://ebookfinal.com/download/foundations-of-the-neuron-
doctrine-25th-anniversary-edition-gordon-m-shepherd/

ebookfinal.com

Medicine in China A History of Ideas 25th Anniversary

Edition With a New Preface Paul U. Unschuld

https://ebookfinal.com/download/medicine-in-china-a-history-of-
ideas-25th-anniversary-edition-with-a-new-preface-paul-u-unschuld/

ebookfinal.com

Wings Across Canada An Illustrated History of Canadian

Aviation First Edition Peter Pigott

https://ebookfinal.com/download/wings-across-canada-an-illustrated-
history-of-canadian-aviation-first-edition-peter-pigott/

ebookfinal.com
Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of
Papyrology Ann Arbor July 29 August 4 2007 Traianos Gagos

https://ebookfinal.com/download/proceedings-of-the-25th-international-
congress-of-papyrology-ann-arbor-july-29-august-4-2007-traianos-gagos/

ebookfinal.com

Genes Mind And Culture The Coevolutionary Process 25th

Anniversary Edition Charles J. Lumsden

https://ebookfinal.com/download/genes-mind-and-culture-the-
coevolutionary-process-25th-anniversary-edition-charles-j-lumsden/

ebookfinal.com

Prayers That Avail Much 25th Anniversary Commemorative

Gift Edition Germaine Copeland

https://ebookfinal.com/download/prayers-that-avail-much-25th-
anniversary-commemorative-gift-edition-germaine-copeland/

ebookfinal.com

This Is Not a Pipe 2, 25th Anniversary Edition Michel

Foucault

https://ebookfinal.com/download/this-is-not-a-pipe-2-25th-anniversary-
edition-michel-foucault/

ebookfinal.com

The Lost Symbol Special Illustrated Edition A Novel Dan

Brown [Brown

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-lost-symbol-special-illustrated-
edition-a-novel-dan-brown-brown/

ebookfinal.com
 THE
Illustrated
History of
Canada
 CARLETON LIBRARY SERIES

The Carleton Library Series publishes books about Canadian economics, geography, history, politics, pub-
lic policy, society and culture, and related topics, in the form of leading new scholarship and reprints of
classics in these fields. The series is funded by Carleton University, published by McGill-Queen's Univer-
sity Press, and is under the guidance of the Carleton Library Series Editorial Board, which consists of fac-
ulty members of Carleton University. Suggestions and proposals for manuscripts and new editions of
classic works are welcome and may be directed to the Carleton Library Series Editorial Board, c/o the Li-
brary, Carleton University, Ottawa K1S 5B6, at [email protected], or on the web at www.carleton.ca/cls.

CLS board members: John Clarke, Sheryl Hamilton, Jennifer Henderson, Laura Macdonald, Paul Litt,
Stanley Winer, Barry Wright

211 The Making of the Nations and Cultures of 219 So Vast and Various
the New World Interpreting Canada's Regions in the
An Essay in Comparative History Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Gerard Bouchard Edited by John Warkentin
212 The Quest of the Folk 220 Industrial Organization in Canada
Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Empirical Evidence and Policy Challenges
Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia Edited by Zhiqi Chen and Marc Duhamel
Ian McKay
221 Surveyors of Empire
213 Health Insurance and Canadian Public Policy Samuel Holland, J.EW. Des Barres, and the
The Seven Decisions That Created the Canadian Making of The Atlantic Neptune
Health Insurance System and Their Outcomes Stephen J. Hornsby
Malcolm G. Taylor
222 Peopling the North American City
214 Inventing Canada Montreal, 1840-1900
Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Sherry Olson and Patricia Thornton
Transcontinental Nation
223 Interregional Migration and Public Policy
Suzanne Zeller
in Canada
215 Documents on the Confederation of British North An Empirical Study
America Kathleen M. Day and Stanley L. Winer
G.P. Browne
224 How Schools Worked
216 The Irish in Ontario Public Education in English Canada, 1900-
A Study in Rural History 1940
Donald Harman Akenson R.D. Gidney and W.P.J. Millar
217 The Canadian Economy in the Great Depression 225 A Two-Edged Sword
(Third edition) The Navy as an Instrument of Canadian
A.E. Safarian Foreign Policy
Nicholas Tracy
218 The Ordinary People of Essex
Environment, Culture, and Economy on the 226 The Illustrated History of Canada
Frontier of Upper Canada 25th Anniversary Edition
John Clarke Edited by Craig Brown
 THE
Illustrated
History of
Canada
EDITED BY CRAIG BROWN

25th Anniversary Edition

Carleton Library Series 226

McGill-Queen's University Press

Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen's University Press 2012

ISBN 978-0-7735-4089-7

Legal deposit third quarter 2012

Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our
publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through
the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Excerpts from The Damnation of Vancouver by Earle Birney and "Laurentian Shield" by F.R. Scott are
used by permission of The Canadian Publishers, McClelland and Stewart. Permission to quote from the
poem "The Law of the Yukon," which appears in The Collected Poems of Robert Service, was granted by
Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. The poem "The Planters" from The Journals of Susanna Moodie by Mar-
garet Atwood, © Oxford University Press Canada 1970, is reprinted by permission of the publisher. The
excerpt from Wolf Willow, © 1955 by Wallace Stegner, is used by permission of Macmillan of Canada,
a division of Canada Publishing Corporation.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace ownership of copyright materials. Information enabling
the publisher to rectify any reference or credit in future printings will be welcomed.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

The illustrated history of Canada / edited by Craig Brown. -- 25th anniversary ed.
(Carleton library series ; 226)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7735-4089-7
1. Canada—History. 2. Canada—History—Pictorial works.
I. Brown, Robert Craig, 1935- II. Series: Carleton library series ; 226
FC164.I442012 971 C2012-905045-8

Design: Peter Maher

 Foreword

HE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CANADA is a book about Canadians. It is

T a story of how Canadians have lived and worked, how they have seen them-
selves, how they have thought about each other. It is a history of how
Canadians realized their ambitions in their several communities, across generations
of huge colonial empires and, more recently, as citizens of a nation in the interna-
tional world. In this book six Canadian scholars—historians and historical
geographers—have interpreted the words and illustrations of our past for all readers.
The book begins with Arthur Ray's vivid description of the first Canadians, the
Amerindian and Inuit peoples, at the moment when their world was broken into by
Europeans—fishermen, traders, and explorers who crossed the Atlantic seeking out
the riches of North America. The encounter stretched over nearly three centuries,
from the middle years of the sixteenth to the early decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury, following the paths of the European adventurers from Newfoundland to the
Pacific and into the Arctic. Almost as soon as contact had been made, colonizers and
settlers began to establish their first tentative footholds in North America.
Christopher Moore traces these initial, precarious settlements at Port-Royal and
Quebec, how they grew into a vast continental empire, and how the settlers of New
France founded a way of life that became a permanent influence on our society and
our identity as Canadians.
Great Britain ultimately prevailed over France in the long rivalry of North
American empires. Graeme Wynn takes up the story; British peoples, between 1760
and 1840, braved 4,800 kilometres (3,000 miles) of rolling ocean to develop stable
communities and to establish British institutions and law in the British North
American colonies. The stage was set for consolidation, for political union, for expan-
sion westward, aiming to control the Hudson's Bay territory before Americans got it.
Confederation, the restless ambitions of its creators, and the sometimes desperate
gambles they took to achieve continental nationhood, are the dramatic centrepiece of
Peter Waite's chapter on the remaining years of the nineteenth century.
Canadians began the twentieth century with hearty optimism. A buoyant econ-
omy transformed our society. In his portrait of Canada between 1900 and 1945,
Ramsay Cook sketches the transformation, the growth of cities, the diversification of
industry, the emergence of a vibrant western Canada, the commitment of Canadian
lives and treasure in two world wars, and the despair of the Great Depression.
Unprecedented wealth, a legacy of a wartime economy, Desmond Morton relates,
stimulated even greater changes in Canadian society in the last half of the twentieth
century. Our society became more compassionate than in the past, prepared to use
the instruments of government to protect and enhance the welfare of our citizens. It
became a more tolerant society, more willing to welcome new immigrants, more
conscious and respectful of the distinctive cultures and traditions of all Canadians.
And we are a more confident nation, determined to make a significant contribution
to international amity and well-being.
Each of these authors offers a distinctive view of his subject, and readers will dis-
cover new insights into our past. Familiar themes will be found, but freshly observed,
newly minted.
Canadians regard our multicultural character as a mark of our national identity.
Politicians and editorialists celebrate multiculturalism as a Canadian virtue and pro-
grams at every level of government promote recognition of our several traditions.
The authors of this book remind us that Canadians have always been many peoples.
That was so long before Native Canadians encountered Europeans in the mid-1500s.
At first Europeans, crudely, tended to lump all Amerindians together as "savages." But
Champlain, La Verendrye, Franklin, Hearne, Thompson, Pond, and a host of others
who followed Cartier's quest of exploration, quickly discovered that there were, in
fact, many nations of Native Canadians. Beothuk, Mi'kmaq, Algonquin, Iroquoian,
Chipewyan, Cree, Assiniboine, Babine, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Inuit spoke different
languages and dialects, organized their societies and governments differently, devel-
oped distinctive cultures and economies, and made their own ingenious
accommodations to climate and landscape. Nor were Europeans of one piece either.
Fishermen who put ashore in Newfoundland to cure cod, whalers who penetrated
the Arctic, and explorers who charted the waterways of the continent came from sev-
eral lands, Portugal, Spain, France, and Britain.
Less diverse were the founders of New France. They were mostly Catholic.
Perhaps as many as half of the men, and nearly all of Louis xiv's filles du roi, were
townspeople rather than land-bound peasants. They established an empire that
extended from He Royale through the Great Lakes watershed and down the
Mississippi to Louisiana. More important, they founded a unique society, rich in cus-
tom, tradition, and memory; their language has become a permanent component of
what it means to be a Canadian.
The British victors of 1760 had already established a presence in Nova Scotia
decades before Wolfe challenged Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. After the
Treaty of 1763 their numbers swelled and swelled again in the aftermath of the
American Revolution. Like the French before them, many of the early settlers were
soldiers who took up land after a term of imperial service in the New World. Others,
from the south, created an enduring niche in Canadian mythology as Loyalists,
though an expert witness, Governor Parr of Nova Scotia, skeptically observed that
most were "not much burthened with Loyalty." Others still, a small minority of the
settlers, were state-sponsored emigrants from Britain after the Napoleonic wars.
What attracted all these people, and the thousands of Scots, Irish, English, and
Welsh who came out from Great Britain, was land. British North America was a place
of opportunity, of promise. "The prospects for you here are ten to one above what
they are in the old country," wrote one enthusiastic settler. Land, not free but cheap
and abundant, meant the promise of a farm, of raising a family, of making a go of it
in the new land. Most, albeit modestly, realized their expectations in the several
British North American colonies. By mid-century the farming frontier had pushed
up against the Canadian Shield. It was time to move on. Spokesmen for these rest-
less, acquisitive farmers had already spotted another world to conquer, the great
North-West, the seemingly empty lands of the Hudson's Bay Company. Here was an
empire, said George Brown, waiting to be conquered, developed, controlled.
The filling up of the pre-Confederation colonies had been something of a hap-
hazard process, sometimes assisted, sometimes hindered by the policies of the
imperial government. Conquering the North-West was different. It was an enormous
project of nation building by the new Dominion government. It required promises
of free land and promotion of the North-West as the Land of Opportunity, the Last
Best West. Most of all, it required many more newcomers than ever before. British
settlers were wanted: Americans too—their experience with dry-land farming was an
invaluable asset in the North-West. That was the key, and it prompted a dramatic
new initiative in settlement policy. Long-harboured doubts about whether immi-
grants from continental Europe could "fit in" were cast aside. If these Europeans were
farmers, individually and in groups they were encouraged to come. Men, women,
and children who could endure a prairie winter, who would break the tough prairie
sod, were destined to fulfil the expansionist dreams of the nation builders. The new-
comers came in unprecedented numbers, almost two million of them between 1891
and the Great War, and well over half of them went to the North-West.
The Great War, post-war immigration restrictions, the Depression, and yet
another world war temporarily slowed the flow of immigrants to Canada. But after
1945 Canada again became a land of hope and opportunity for people seeking a new
life in a new country. Two million arrived between 1946 and 1961, another one and
a half million in the next decade. In earlier times the government's appeal to new-
comers had always been preferential and restrictive. Blacks had been pointedly
discouraged, and severe limitations had been applied to immigrants from Asia.
Gradually, after the Second World War, restrictions based on race, colour, and coun-
try of origin were eased, and newcomers formerly unwanted added new dimensions
to the reality of Canada as a nation of many peoples.
Canadians have also had to learn how to live with each other. It has never been
easy; throughout our history that accommodation has been marked by incompre-
hension, suspicion, fear, and prejudice. Native Canadians thought the Europeans
they encountered were intruders. In the early stages of contact between the two
worlds, reciprocal interest in the exploitation of fur-bearing animals created an
unstable but working partnership between them. All too quickly, however, it eroded
into a dependence for the Native Canadians that weakened their societies and ulti-
mately ruined their centuries-old way of life.
French imperial power in North America was destroyed in 1760. French-
Canadian society was not. More out of necessity than liberality, the imperial
government in London promised religious freedom and wrote guarantees for the
French language and the civil code into the Quebec Act of 1774. Subsequent genera-
tions of British officials and British colonists worried about their relationships with
the French Canadians. Some even regarded the work of the Conquest as unfinished.
Lord Durham found "two nations warring in the bosom of a single state"; he rec-
ommended a legislative union of the Canadian colonies that he believed would
swamp and assimilate the French Canadians and assure progress for the colony. A
generation later, George Brown, surveying the Quebec Resolutions that would soon
become the provisions of the British North America Act, crowed to his wife: "... a
complete reform of all the abuses and injustice we have complained of.! Is it not
wonderful? French Canadianism entirely extinguished!" Led by far-sighted and
determined political leaders, the French Canadians stood the expectations of both
Durham and Brown on their heads. But the matter did not end there. John A.
Macdonald's opinion that trying to finish the work of the Conquest "would be
impossible if it were tried, and it would be foolish and wicked if it were possible" did
not represent the views of all of his English-Canadian backbenchers. Like
Macdonald, every prime minister from Sir Wilfrid Laurier to Jean Chretien has had
to learn that the political, economic, social, and cultural adjustments required to
accommodate both French and English Canadians are offered grudgingly.
That is also true of the acceptance of newcomers by the host society. Canadians,
French and English alike, have continually fretted about the presence of too many
Americans in their midst. Lady Aberdeen, the outspoken wife of the Governor
General, summed up that concern in 1895. The "U.S.A. ideas" that American farm-
ers brought to the North-West in their cultural baggage, she said, "must be dealt with
ruthlessly." The brash, populist notions of the Yankees were unsettling. Still more dis-
turbing were the "foreign navvies" who manned the railway construction gangs, the
immigrant labourers in the factories and mines, and the European settlers on the
prairies. Their multiplicity of languages, customs, and traditions threatened, most
Canadians feared, to undo Canadian society altogether. These peoples were
"strangers within the land." English Canadians wanted "to instill in their minds the
principles and ideals of Anglo-Saxon civilization." As one Protestant minister in
Montreal put it, "one of the best ways of Canadianizing, nationalizing, and turning
all into intelligent citizens, is by means of a good English education." The chosen
vehicle on the prairies was the creation of single, state-controlled, secular, "National"
public school systems. But that, in turn, upset existing understandings and rekindled
fear and suspicion in the minds of French Canadians. In the post-war years, and
especially in the last decades of the twentieth century, new fears and suspicions were
kindled by the arrival of newcomers from Asia and Africa as well as Europe and by a
renaissance of confidence and self-determination among Canada's First Nations.
Still, in recent years we have begun to understand that living together, for all
Canadians, is a demanding, subtle, and continuous process of accommodation.
Canadians have also had to learn how to live with their environment. The explor-
ers hoped to find easy treasure and a quick route to the wealth of the East. Instead
they discovered an immense continent, a tough, sometimes unforgiving terrain, and
a severe climate. The journals of the adventurers echo that sentiment again and
again. Survival itself was sometimes in question and the Europeans soon learned that
the Native Canadians were masters at it. Captain John Franklin, astonished at the ele-
gant design and utility of an igloo his Inuit guide had built, wrote that "one might
survey it with feelings somewhat akin to those produced by the contemplation of a
Grecian temple... both are triumphs of art, inimitable in their kinds."
The wealth of Canada is hard come by. Both finding it and extracting it require
ingenuity and technological sophistication. Our history is replete with examples: the
toggled harpoon head of the Inuit hunter, the canoe of the Indian and the voyageur,
the York boat of the Hudson's Bay trader, the notched-log cabin of the pioneer
farmer, the chilled steel plough that cut the prairie sod and the new wheat strains
developed by our agricultural scientists, the bush pilot's Noorduyn Norseman, the
satellite sensors of the modern geologists and foresters. Many of these machines,
tools, and techniques are of Canadian inspiration and design; others have been
imported and adapted to the Canadian environment.
No technological innovation had a more radical and long-lasting impact on
Canadian society and the Canadian economy than the railway. For generations dis-
tance and winter kept Canadians apart in narrow parochial villages and loyalties.
Distance hindered communication. Winter shut down commerce, froze mill-
streams, closed factory doors, and imposed distinctly seasonal lifestyles on
Canadians. Beginning in the 1850s, railways changed the ways Canadians went
about their work, regarded their prospects, thought about each other. When the
iron horse came to town a person's perceptions of space, time, and opportunity
slowly, inexorably, expanded outward. Breaking the bonds of distance and winter,
railways took goods to markets; brought customers from home; delivered newspa-
pers, books, and magazines to readers; carried settlers to homesteads; penetrated the
Shield to tap new resources. Railways inspired daring political ambitions; they built
nations. The Intercolonial, from Montreal to Halifax, was a condition of
Confederation; and only the Canadian Pacific would make a Dominion a mari
usque ad mare a reality.
The idea that there could be a Dominion from sea to sea developed slowly. There
was, and is, a strong sense of self-sufficiency about Canadians. A royal official noted
it among the habitants of New France in the 1750s. They would, he complained, "fol-
low only their own will and fancy." A British officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Gubbins,
observed the same in his travels about New Brunswick in the early 1800s. Self-
sufficiency, of course, was a necessary condition of survival for pioneering societies
and it fostered a vigorous sense of local community and local identity. Lord Durham
was particularly struck by it. "There are many petty local centres," he observed, "the
sentiments and the interests... of which, are distinct and perhaps opposed."
The union of the Canadas that followed Durham's Report, colonial self-
government (itself a reflection of self-sufficiency) achieved in the province and the
other colonies in the 1840s and 1850s, and the prospects created by railways all set
the stage for Confederation. Union, politicians and governors agreed, would raise
British North Americans above the parish squabbles of local politics. Confederation
would enable Canadians to reach outward, realize expansionist ambitions, acquire
and control new lands. Thus could be built a continental nation.
There was little thought of independence, of emulating the American colonies of
1776. The goal of the Confederationists was, rather, to achieve self-sufficiency within
the British Empire. That meant expanding self-government to a widening range of
responsibilities, transforming the imperial relationship into what Macdonald called
a "healthy and cordial alliance." There were dangers in this, as Macdonald and his
successors, Laurier and Borden, all discovered. Each step was accompanied by sharp
debate and often profound disagreement between French and English Canadians.
There were also awful, unanticipated costs. Autonomy within the Empire-
Commonwealth and recognition of Canada's national status were the rewards
Borden demanded for Canadian participation in the Great War of 1914-18.
In the interwar years a few Canadians, like John Dafoe, editor of the Winnipeg
Free Press, argued that Canada's new status was a hollow shell unless Canadians
were prepared to fulfil their responsibilities in the League of Nations. That kind of
argument made politicians nervous. What with tidying up the constitutional
niceties of our new status, dispatching a Canadian minister to Washington, and
looking out for our own interests in relations with foreign states, was there not
enough on our international agenda? Had not the question of Canada's obligations
beyond her own shores always caused more discord among Canadians than any
other issue? If there was another European war, and by 1938 all the signs pointed
in that direction, Mackenzie King knew that there would be an irresistible demand
from Canadians that Canada fight at Britain's side. King was determined to lead a
united nation into the war and to avoid the disastrous policies, like conscription,
that had very nearly torn Canada apart in the First World War. In large measure he
succeeded in doing just that.
A difficult question remained to torment post-war diplomats and political lead-
ers: had not Canadian isolationism, the shunning of responsibilities in the
international community, only served to encourage Hitler's vicious tyranny? Many,
like Lester Pearson, thought so. And if Hitler was gone, another problem, the Soviet
Union, remained, locked in an aggressive imperial rivalry with the United States in
Europe and throughout the world. Canada was caught between them—"the ham in
the Soviet-American sandwich" was the way the Soviet ambassador described the
new geopolitical reality in a Calgary address in the early 1960s. Self-sufficiency in
international affairs was a luxury Canadians could no longer afford.
Involvement and collective security were the bywords of Canadian diplomacy in
the post-war years: involvement at the United Nations, in the Commonwealth, in
the so-called Third World; and collective security through NATO and NORAD. The
confident diplomats of External Affairs boasted of many achievements by their
"quiet diplomacy": recognition of a distinctive role for "middle powers," especially
Canada; imaginative mediation and peace-keeping in international crises; con-
structive contributions to international aid. A heady optimism characterized
Canadian diplomacy in the 1950s and 1960s, a sense of confidence that energetic
involvement in international politics would both assert and enhance the Canadian
identity for Canadians.
That confidence eroded as the twentieth century drew to a close. There was a
growing concern among many Canadians about dependence upon the United
States, the dominant super-power in the world following the collapse of its rival, the
Soviet Union. The concern is very different from the interwar attitude to foreign
affairs when a minimalist perception of Canada's responsibilities to the interna-
tional community preoccupied both diplomats and politicians. Rather, it was how
best to maintain a significant and distinctive Canadian presence in international
affairs. A major contribution was Canada's service in peace-keeping missions
around the globe. At the beginning of the 1990s Canadian men and women were on
fifteen different peace-keeping assignments. By the end of the decade others, includ-
ing Kosovo and Indonesia, had been added to the list. Canadians remain convinced
that they can make valuable contributions to reducing the dangers of war, to less-
ening gross economic disparity between nations and to adapting to change in an
emerging global economy.
Over the centuries since Europeans first encountered Native Canadians on the
Atlantic coast, Canadians have created a transcontinental nation of many peoples.
Learning to live together remains a challenge to all of us. Luck and persistence, inge-
nuity and expertise, have enabled us to convert our resources into wealth. Slowly, but
surely, we have developed an awareness of our national responsibilities to ourselves
and to the international community. These are major themes in our history and of
this book.
The idea of an illustrated history of Canada was suggested by Louise Dennys and
Malcolm Lester of the publishing house Lester & Orpen Dennys. They wanted to
produce a book that would capture in text and illustrations the excitement of our
past, the variety, the richness and the subtlety of our history, and what it means to be
a Canadian. That is what we have tried to do in this book.
Since the first edition was published in 1987, two French editions, Histoire general
du Canada, have been published by Editions du Boreal (1988 and 1990), a Spanish
edition, La Historia Ilustrada de Canada, by Fondo de Cultura Economica of Mexico
(1994) and updated English editions by Lester Publishing Company (1991 and 1996)
and Key Porter Books Limited (1997 and 2000). With the encouragement of Ms.
Anna Porter of Key Porter Books, and especially Ms. Linda Pruessen, our editor, we
have revised The Illustrated History of Canada for this new edition.

Craig Brown
Toronto
June, 2002
This page intentionally left blank
 A Note on
the Illustrations

HE PICTURES IN THIS WORK are intended not just as a page-by-page rep-

T resentation of the text, but rather as a parallel commentary. We have tried to

strike a balance between the familiar and the little known: the former
because they are classic images of our heritage, with no comparable substitutes; the
latter because they testify to the extraordinary wealth of our archives, both public
and private. We have attempted not only to represent all sectors of our society and
all regions of our geography, but also to do justice to one of Canada's most precious
resources—her arts.
In the past, historical illustrators and picture editors have too often had to rely on
secondary sources, and to reproduce from copies of copies. The systematic photo-
graphing of collections has at last made it possible for high-definition images to
replace the smudgy woodcuts, engravings, and halftones of earlier days. Also, rela-
tively inexpensive printing and reprographic techniques now allow us to go back to
original works, and thus to minimize distortion and loss of quality.
"A tangible object," proclaimed the dean of Canadian historical artists, C. W.
Jefferys, "cannot lie or equivocate so successfully as a word." But he warned that cer-
tain images are less trustworthy than others. "Official" art, whether portraits,
monuments, murals, wartime propaganda, or political icons, tends to tell us more
about the biases of its propagators than about its purported subjects. If The
Illustrated History of Canada includes relatively few examples of such self-aggrandiz-
ing works, it reflects the modern interest in the lives of ordinary citizens, rather than
military campaigns, heads of state, and individual feats. This shift from the mythic
and heroic to the social and material can be seen in Jefferys' pioneering Picture
Gallery of Canadian History (1942-50): early volumes specialized in "visual recon-
structions" of "dramatic episodes," but later he asserted the primacy of "Old
buildings, early furniture, tools, vehicles, weapons and clothing, contemporary pic-
tures of people, places and events" which "much be examined to fill out the story."
In the spirit of this declaration of faith, we have attempted to fill out our story
with images of people, places, and events as they appeared to their beholders, not as
"interpreted" in later years. The resulting picture gallery reveals that there are as
many visions of Canada as there are versions of what it means to be Canadian.

Robert Stacey
Picture Editor
 Contents

CHAPTER ONE
When Two Worlds Met
Arthur Ray / 1

CHAPTER TWO
Colonization and Conflict:
New France and its Rivals (1600-1760)
Christopher Moore / 95

CHAPTER THREE
On the Margins of Empire (1760-1840)
Graeme Wynn / 181

CHAPTER FOUR
Between Three Oceans:
Challenges of a Continental Destiny (1840-1900)
Peter Waite / 277
CHAPTER FIVE
The Triumph and Trials of Materialism (1900-1945)
Ramsay Cook / 377

CHAPTER SIX
Strains of Affluence (1945-2000)
Desmond Morton / 473

Further Readings / 599

Acknowledgement of Picture Sources / 608

Index/611

Contributors / 633
When Two Worlds Met
ARTHUR RAY

This is one of the first maps to portray the geographic information Cartier
obtained during his first two voyages to Canada. Hochelaga and Stadacona are
located, the mythical Kingdom of the Saguenay is included, and whalers appear
in the coastal waters. The orientation is north-south rather than south-north,
as later became usual. Extract from Pierre Descelliers's world map, 1546
(nineteenth-century copy).
The land should not be called New Land, being composed of stones and horrible
rugged rocks— I did not see one cartload of earth and yet I landed in many places...
there is nothing but moss and short, stunted shrub. I am rather inclined to believe that
this is the land God gave to Cain.

HESE WERE JACQUES CARTIER'S first images of Canada, and they were the

T impressions of a bitterly disappointed explorer. Jacques Cartier had been

commissioned by Francois I to look for gold in the New World and a passage
to Asia. With these goals in mind he had set out from the small port of St-Malo,
France, on April 20, 1534, with two ships and sixty-one men. After navigating his
ships around numerous menacing icebergs off the foggy coast of northern
Newfoundland, Cartier had crossed the Strait of Belle Isle in early June, and probed
the Labrador coast south-westward for a distance of some 200 kilometres (125
miles). Along this coast he met a few "wild and savage folk" who "clothed themselves
in the furs of animals" and wore their hair "tied up on the top of their heads like a
handful of twisted hay, with a nail or something of the sort passed through the mid-
dle... into which they weave a few bird's feathers." What a rude contrast these
Aboriginal people were to the wealthy Asian merchants or the gold- and silver-rich
Aztecs of Mexico Cartier hoped to find! Given his mission and expectations, his ini-
tial disappointment and harsh characterization of Canada and of the people he first
encountered is understandable. The Native world of the early sixteenth century was
far more complex and wealthy than Cartier could have known. And we can only
guess at what the Indians thought of Cartier. What we do know is that they loved
their homeland and had a deep spiritual attachment to it.
Archaeologists believe that the ancestors of Canada's Native peoples migrated
across the Bering landbridge from Siberia more than 12,000 years ago, towards the
end of the ice age. Hunters of prehistoric bison, caribou, elk, mammoth, mastodon,
and other large mammals, they advanced rapidly—an average of about 80 kilome-
tres (50 miles) a generation—until, some 10,500 years ago, they had settled all the
habitable areas of North and South America below the waning ice-sheets. A few
thousand years later the glaciers had retreated far enough that some of the Native
peoples were able to occupy Central Canada, around Hudson Bay and James Bay.
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 3

Despite enduring legends of Carthaginians, Phoenicians, the Irish Saint Brendan

the Navigator, and other wanderers dating from the Bronze Age to late medieval
times, contact between Canada and Europe seems to begin with the Vikings nearly
one thousand years ago. The Norse were an adventurous sea people and they spread
rapidly across the northern Atlantic in the ninth century. Norse sagas describe sev-
eral voyages to North America after they had settled in Greenland late in that
century; the most famous of these heroic stories tells of Leif Ericsson's wintering at
a place he called "Vinland" around the year 1000. The Greenlanders probably made
occasional forays across Davis Strait to Baffin Island, Labrador, and Newfoundland,
and the Norse settlement excavated at L'Anse aux Meadows in northern
Newfoundland must be one of many places where they landed or wintered. The
sagas, and evidence excavated from Native sites, suggest that the Norse explored the
northern coast quite widely, and that there was sporadic contact between them and
the Native peoples of northern North America over many years. There was, however,
little basis for trade or friendly exchange between them, and the Native peoples
appear to have defended their territory effectively against the intruders until the
decline of the Norse colony in Greenland put an end to these encounters in the thir-
teenth century.
These contacts were made during a warm phase in the climate which lasted two
centuries. It was apparently the deterioration in the climate that led the Norse to
abandon the area. It was not until five hundred years after Leif Ericsson, in 1497, that
John Cabot's voyage from Bristol in England reopened European contact with
Canada. Again there are legends and possibilities of prior voyages, but even if Cabot's
was not the first, it was certainly the one with consequence. His voyage was part of
the explosive fifteenth-century maritime expansion that took the Europeans right
around the world by 1520. Cabot (born Giovanni Caboto) understood, like his
Italian contemporary Christopher Columbus, that a direct and possibly shorter route

L'Anse aux Meadows, Epaves

Bay, on the north-east tip of
Newfoundland: the first Norse
settlement found so far in
North America. Here eight
Viking house-sites and four
boatsheds dating from c. 1000
AD were excavated, between
1961 and 1968, by seven
archaeological expeditions.
4 Arthur Ray

Carrier rencontre les Indiens de Stadacona. This romanticized image of Cartier's first encounter with
the Stadacona shows the explorer making a bold approach to shy, retiring Indians; in fact, Cartier's
own accounts indicate that the roles were reversed. Most often the newcomers were welcomed. This
1907 oil painting is by Marc-Aurele De Foy Suzor-Cote.

to the spice trades of the Far East might be found by sailing west. Finding backers in
England for a reconnaissance on a more northerly latitude than Columbus's, he
probably landed in northern Newfoundland, spent a month sailing this new coast,
and returned to Bristol to acclaim and a royal pension.
Cabot's reconnaissance, and ones that followed by Joao Fernandes (1500), the
Corte-Real brothers (1500), Joao Alvares Fagundes (1520-25), and Giovanni da
Verrazano (1524—28), showed that no easy westward route to the Indies existed.
Cabot, however, had on his return announced a different kind of wealth: cod. Already
there was a strong market in Europe for these fish—Europeans had been catching
cod in the North Sea and off Iceland for generations. Soon after Cabot's voyage, fish-
ermen from Portugal, France, and Britain began to fish for cod on the banks of
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. By the 1550s the Newfoundland cod trade
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 5

employed hundreds of ships and thousands of men travelling annually between

European ports and the new fishing grounds.
Along with the fishermen came whalers, particularly Basques from northern
Spain and south-western France. They focused on the Strait of Belle Isle where the
narrow waters facilitated their hunt. In the 1560s and 1570s more than a thousand
whaling men were summering—and sometimes wintering—there every year. The
fishermen and whalers were more interested in Canadian waters than Canadian land,
but they gradually developed a third trade through contact with the Native peoples.
There was a luxury market for furs and pelts in Europe, which the fishermen could
tap once they entered into amicable exchanges with the Natives. By the latter half of
the sixteenth century, voyages were being organized specifically for this trade.
In 1534, when Jacques Cartier explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he not only
encountered fishing boats and visited harbours already named by Basque whalers,
but also traded furs at Chaleur Bay with the Mi'kmaq (Micmac). Cartier, however,
had a different agenda. By then it was clear that Columbus's westward search had dis-
covered not the Indies but a new continent, which was already being called America.
A route through this continent was still hoped for, but the Spanish experience in
Mexico and Peru had established a new motive for exploration. By Cartier's time, the
conquistadores had conquered Aztec Mexico and Inca Peru and seized treasure troves
as valuable as the riches of the Far East. Accordingly, the King of France's commis-
sion to Cartier authorized him to discover "certain isles and countries where it is said
there must be great quantities of gold and other riches."
Although Cartier's initial disappointment with Canada proved unfounded, his
assessment was accurate in one fundamental respect. By comparison to most of west-
ern Europe, Canada is a harsh land. Except for the prairies and the Pacific coast, the
Canadian climate north of the 49th parallel is like that of Europe north of the 60th
parallel: Norway, central Sweden, and Finland. In other words, Canada is primarily a
northern country. South of the 49th parallel, in southern Ontario, the St. Lawrence
valley, and on the prairies, the climate is like that of eastern central Europe and the
western Soviet Union. Only coastal British Columbia and the Maritimes, with the
exception of Newfoundland, are comparable to France and the British Isles. Only
southern British Columbia, the prairies, southern Ontario, the St. Lawrence valley,
and the southern Maritimes have growing seasons in excess of 160 days, enough to
make large-scale agriculture possible. As a result, most of what is now Canada was
better suited to the lifestyles of Native hunters and fishermen than it was to the
6 Arthur Ray

Captain Cook's Ships Moored in Resolution Cove, Nootka Sound. Vancouver Island. March 1778. The
trade between the British and the Nootka was, in James Cook's words, "carried on with the strictest
honesty on both sides." After completing his trading and repairing his ships, the great explorer sailed
on to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), where he was killed in a dispute with the Natives. Watercolour
by M.B. Messer after John Webber.

European peasant farmers who followed in the footsteps of the early explorers.
This fundamental fact of Canadian geography greatly influenced the course of
the relationship between the Native peoples and the European intruders. In contrast
to the land that was to become the United States, few areas of this northern world
were suitable for farming. This meant that the conflict between them over possession
of land was substantially less in the early days than it was in the United States, where
the climate and geography made an agricultural way of life possible, and had led the
Aboriginal people to clear and settle some of the best land; there, conflict was
inevitable when the newcomers took it over for their own use. In Canada, until the
nineteenth century, Europeans mostly prized the rich fishing they found along the
Atlantic coast and the wealth that the Native people harvested from the forests.
The scramble for the wealth of the forests began slightly more than half a century
after Cartier cast disapproving eyes on the Montagnais of the Labrador coast. In 1588
two of his nephews sought and obtained from Henry in of France a short-lived
monopoly on trade with the Montagnais and other Natives. This signalled the begin-
ning of a fight for control of the fur trade that was to last until the middle of this
Native Canada at the time of early European contact. This map illustrates the distribution of Native
groups in relationship to language areas. The incomplete records of the period and the high mobility
of the Native peoples make the establishment of precise historical boundaries difficult to determine;
many are disputed to this day.

century—a contest which quickly became enmeshed in the imperial struggle

between France and England for control of the northern half of the continent. It was
one of the driving forces behind the European invasion, and its outcome influenced
the shape of the modern political map of North America. The fur trade itself would
disrupt the Native world by fostering conflicts between groups who jockeyed to con-
trol the supply of furs to the Europeans and the trading routes to the interior, by
spreading epidemic diseases, by stimulating the migration of whole populations, and
by introducing iron-age technologies into stone-age economies, and drawing Native
people into an international commodity marketing system in the process. These
developments did not have the same impact on all of Canada's Native peoples. Native
Canada, on the eve of contact by the Europeans, was too rich and complex a world
for that—both geographically and culturally. Nevertheless, the coming of the
Europeans would change it forever.
8 Arthur Ray

Before the Intruders: The Face of the Land

Canada is nearly as big as Europe; it is some thirteen times larger than the combined
territories of the country's two founding nations, France and England. Indeed, size is
a basic fact of Canada. Those who wanted to tap the resources of this vast territory
and those who later wanted to weld it into a nation had to meet the challenge of
developing long-distance transportation and communications systems. From the
beginning to the present day, this has been an extraordinary achievement—as well as
a very costly undertaking.
Canada's vast size and northern climate provide an extremely varied landscape.
The mossy, shrub-covered land that Cartier observed on the Labrador coast is typical
of a large part of Canada north of the treeline: the wind-swept Arctic tundra of north-
ern Labrador, Ungava, most of the Northwest Territories, and the Arctic islands.
Although the land had a barren look to it, game was not scarce. The northern forest,
where it meets the tundra, was home—as it still is today—to the muskox and once
abundant barren-ground caribou, a small, tough, deerlike animal. The herds summer
north of the treeline and, unlike the thick-coated muskox, they retreat south to the
woods in winter. Here, the arctic hare, arctic fox, wolf, and wolverine are the most
important fur-bearing animals. Lake trout, whitefish, pike, and arctic char abound in
the coastal rivers. The northern coastal waters are the home of the ringed and bearded
seal, walrus (except in the western Arctic), narwhal, beluga whale, and polar bear.
South of the treeline, most of Canada east of Lake Winnipeg and the Mackenzie
valley is part of the Canadian Shield, where thousands of years ago large rocky areas
were scraped bare of soil by massive continental ice sheets. Between these barren
regions the land is covered with an evergreen forest of pine, spruce, and tamarack,
known as the "boreal" or northern forest. In the twentieth century Canada's Group of
Seven attempted to capture the essence of this landscape on canvas. Theirs are roman-
tic images. European explorers and early fur traders saw it much differently—they
had to come to grips with its harsh reality in order to survive. The great nineteenth-
century explorer, geographer, and fur trader David Thompson put it succinctly:

I have called [it] the Stoney Region— It is little else than rocks with innumerable Lakes
and Rivers— The summer is from five to six months, or more properly the open season,
with frequent frosts, and heats, but always tormented with Musketoes and other flies... even
the timid Moose Deer on some days is so distressed with the flies, as to be careless of life,
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 9

and the hunters have shot them in this state, and the cloud of flies about them so great, and
dense, that they did not dare to go to the animal for several minutes.

In the eighteenth century, the Hudson's Bay Company men regarded this wooded
Shield country as a "food desert"; they believed game was too scarce there to support
a string of trading establishments.
In the heart of the Shield country, Hudson Bay and James Bay provide one of the
great water entries into the North American continent. From the Nelson River on the
west to the Rupert River on the south-east a vast swampland borders these bays and
extends inland for distances up to several hundred miles. In the nineteenth century,
this insect-infested swamp was dubbed the "land of fog and bog" by Hudson's Bay
trader James Hargrave. Aptly named, it would be the Hudson's Bay Company's
Canadian base for its first two centuries of operation after 1670. What a shocking and
hostile place it must have seemed to men coming from the temperate British Isles.
James Isham, a trader for the Hudson's Bay Company in the early eighteenth century,
graphically described the dangerous realities of winter on the bay:

abt the Last of august... the No. Wt. [north-west] and Nn winds begins to sett in, with
unsufferable Cold weather, with hard snow, & great Drifts for 8 month's togeather,... itt
oft'n happens we shall have fine moderate weather, in a winter morning w'n before night
approches, a sudden gale will spring up with Drift & snow to that Degree, that if men
happen's to be out, and drest for warm weather, they Run a great Resque of their Lives,—
Several having perrishd, by such sudden Storm— I'have known men to stand at the saw for
only 20 minuets when their face & hands has been froze so, they have been obligh'd to
Retire to the Surgeon to have Such Cur'd or Cutt off &c.

Around Hudson Bay, the traders, like the Native peoples, would have found
browsing deer, woodland caribou, and moose which David Thompson described as
the "pride of the forest." Other animals important to them for both food and fur
included bear and fox, beaver, muskrat, marten, land otter, lynx, rabbit, and hare—
animals that still abound there today. Among the many varieties of fish were lake
trout, whitefish, sturgeon, and pike. Ducks and geese could be found in plenty in
spring and autumn. The early accounts of fur traders make it clear that large barren-
ground caribou roamed the Hudson Bay lowland as far east as James Bay. In season,
Hudson and James bays are the nesting places of millions of snow geese and Canada
10 Arthur Ray

geese. Far inland, between the lower Saskatchewan River and Lake of the Woods, was
one of the greatest muskrat-producing areas in the world.
The northern forest merges into an area of mixed deciduous trees that extends all
the way into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It was here that the canoe birch, prized
by Native people for its bark, reached its greatest size—fifteen centimetres (6 inches) or
more in diameter. Wild rice, a nutritious food for the Indians as well as the Europeans,
still grows here, particularly along the Rainy River to Lake of the Woods, while the Gulf
of St. Lawrence was rich in cod, mackerel, seal, eel, whale, porpoise, and shellfish.
Where the Canadian Shield and the plains of the western interior meet, there is a
string of large, fish-rich lakes, the most famous being Lake of the Woods, Lake
Winnipeg, Lake Athabasca, Great Slave Lake, and Great Bear Lake. The plains reach
from the United States border to the Mackenzie River delta and westward from the
Shield to the Rocky Mountains. This is gently rolling country rising in two distinc-
tive steps, one in western Manitoba—the Manitoba escarpment—and the other, the
Missouri Coteau, in central Saskatchewan. Parts of the region, most notably the Red
River valley, are extremely flat. In fact, this valley is one of the flattest plains in North
America. Formerly the bed of an ancient lake, it is prone to floods on an enormous
scale whenever ice blocks the lower Red River during spring runoff—a disaster that
happens frequently, because the headwaters of this north-flowing river thaw before
the lower reaches do. Early European settlers learned of this hazard the hard way.
Beyond the North Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan rivers, the boreal forest
extends as far as the Rocky Mountains and the Yukon. In this wooded region, the
Peace River valley was one of the richest in game. "On either side of the river, though
invisible from it," observed the explorer and trader Alexander Mackenzie, "are exten-
sive plains, which abound in [wood] buffaloes, elkes, wolves, foxes, and bears."
Impressed with its pastoral quality, Mackenzie called the Peace River valley one of the
prettiest countries he had ever seen. South of the North Saskatchewan and
Saskatchewan rivers the forests gradually yield to open grasslands—picturesquely
described by the early fur traders as "islands of trees in a sea of grass." This
borderland between forest and plain was known as the parklands, and also—with the
grasslands beyond—as the "fire country" because immense prairie fires were com-
monplace. The parklands and prairies teemed with game, especially the grassland
buffalo, the largest North American terrestrial animal, weighing up to 900 kilograms
(2,000 pounds). The buffalo massed on the grasslands in the summer during the rut-
ting season and retreated to the bordering woods in the autumn when there was a
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 11

Pictographs—paintings on
cliffs and cave walls, using
natural materials such as
ochre—are one of the oldest
surviving Native art forms.
This pictograph illustrates
an Ojibwa legend involving
the horned creature
Misshipeshu, Great King of
the fishes, the Snake
Manitou, and a canoe pad-
dled by five men. Agawa
Site, north shore of Lake
Superior.

winter chill in the air. By all accounts the summer buffalo herds were truly enor-
mous. "I saw more buffalo than I had ever dreamed of before," recounted one prairie
resident, in July of 1865, when he encountered a herd in the Battle River country of
eastern Alberta. "The woods and plains were full of them. During the afternoon we
came to a large round plain, perhaps ten miles across, and as I sat on my horse on the
summit of a knoll overlooking this plain, it did not seem possible to pack another
buffalo into the space. The whole prairie was one dense mass...." The effect these
huge herds had on the prairies was like that of a swarm of locusts; they stripped the
grasslands bare as they passed, and bordering woodlands were trampled flat.
In the woods there were moose, elk or wapiti, pronghorn antelope, and mule
deer. Beaver thrived on the aspen trees and large packs of wolves preyed on the buf-
falo herds, killing the young, aged, and infirm. To the west, the Rocky Mountains
tower over the plains, extending down to what is now coastal British Columbia.
Movement through this dramatically beautiful region of mountains, plateaux, and
forests in the days of canoe travel was very hazardous. Most rivers include reaches
where water plunges in torrents through narrow, steep-sided canyons, as at Hell's
Gate on the lower Fraser River. Foot passage around these barriers was often highly
risky, sometimes impossible. "[At] the place where we made our landing," wrote
Alexander Mackenzie of the Peace River canyon, "the river is not more than fifty
12 Arthur Ray

yards wide, and flows between stupendous rocks, from whence huge fragments
sometimes tumble down, and falling from such an height, dash into small stones,
with sharp points no alternative was left us... but the passage of the mountain
over which we were to carry the canoe as well as the baggage—"
Partly because of its rugged character, British Columbia exhibits more geograph-
ical diversity than any other region of Canada. Some of the country's wettest and
driest climates are found here. The mountains along the coast, exposed to moisture-
laden westerly winds, are blanketed by dense rainforest, while the high windward
slopes of the Rocky Mountains are clad in evergreen forests of spruce, fir, and pine.
In contrast, the plateaux leeward of the coast ranges are more sparsely covered with
grass and sagebrush. Nearly all the wildlife found east of the Rocky Mountains was
also found here, except for the prairie buffalo, but the mountain goat, sea lion, and
sea otter were, and still are, distinct to British Columbia. Whales and seals were found
in plenty along the coast, and during the spawning season all the major coastal rivers
swarmed with salmon, and with great runs of candlefish, or eulachon, a species of
smelt, every spring.
In the early years, the land and its animals were very new to the Europeans. Their
exploration of Canada was like a guided tour conducted by Native people who were
very much at home in their own land. In a similar way, Europeans were educated by
the original inhabitants in the uses of the different animals, fish, and plants they found
in the vast land they called the New World. Trade in furs may have been paramount
to the intruders, but the means and methods of survival were just as important.

The Native World: Capturing an Image

Like Europe, Native Canada was a complex cultural mosaic. The Native people spoke
twelve major languages and many more dialects. Probably numbering some three
hundred thousand individuals, they inhabited all areas of present-day Canada but
they were very unevenly scattered across the land. The majority lived in semi-
permanent villages along the rivers and bays of coastal British Columbia, in southern
Ontario, and in the St. Lawrence valley. Otherwise the country was thinly peopled by
small groups who led highly mobile lives.
Native societies ranged in character from the highly stratified ones of the west
coast to the bands of the northern forest and tundra regions where people lived
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 13

together in small kinship groups. The village-dwellers of the Pacific coast were pri-
marily fishermen; those of southern Ontario and the St. Lawrence valley depended
heavily on the produce of their gardens for food, supplemented by fish and venison
from the hunt, while the remaining groups relied on the chase. Generally speaking,
for all Native people religion stressed their close relationship with a natural world
infused with supernatural power. Most people believed in a great spirit, who had
given the land to them, and a host of lesser spirits from whom they sought assistance,
guidance, and protection, although the ways in which these beliefs were expressed
and the ceremonies practised varied a great deal.
It is not easy to obtain a clear picture of aboriginal Canada on the eve of colonial
expansion. Native societies were non-literate, and so have not left us the kinds of
written records historians ordinarily rely on. We must turn to archaeology, Native
oral traditions, and the documents of the early European intruders—all sources that
have their limitations—to form a coherent picture of life.
Archaeology gives us a very
incomplete image of this time.
Potsherds, stone implements, and
most of the other materials archae-
ologists have unearthed say nothing
directly about the ways people
organized their lives or what they
thought about their world. From
these we can only draw inferences,
based on similar features of our own
contemporary cultural traditions.

Kutchin Warrior and his Wife. The tradi-

tional dress is similar to that found among
other Athapaskan-speaking people such as
the Chipewyan. The tunics are pointed in
the back, following the shape of the skins.
The only article of European manufacture
here is the kettle. This 1851 lithograph is
after a drawing by A. H. Murray.
14 Arthur Ray

And many elements are missing in archaeological excavations, because organic

remains do not survive for very long periods, except in waterlogged bog soils, in per-
mafrost, and in the semi-arid regions of the prairies. Often we have little to draw on
for information about the lives of the early Native peoples, other than a small sam-
ple of stone implements or a few ceramic remains in places where pottery was made.
Most groups had well-developed oral histories, traditions, and legends, and they
provide revealing glimpses of life before the European intrusion. Unfortunately,
however, many of these accounts were not recorded until long after the first contact
with the newcomers, and, as a result, they are fragmented and sometimes blend expe-
riences from both before and after contact. In spite of these difficulties many of the
histories, traditions, and legends offer us crucial images of belief systems, world
views, and the experiences of a few individuals and groups.
Given that so little is available to us, we must, wherever possible, draw on the
accounts of the first explorers, traders, and missionaries. But here, too, we face diffi-
culties because virtually all records of initial encounters were kept by men, most of
whom were isolated from their families and from European women for long periods.
The kind of information they recorded and the ways they interpreted what they saw
were strongly coloured by their own immediate social situation, their cultural back-
ground, and the purpose of their visit. The duration of the visit was also critical. It
was necessary, in order to truly understand a community, to live with it for a lengthy
period of time. But most of the early explorers had only brief encounters as they
pushed on in search of mineral riches, new sources of furs, and the elusive western
sea. Even those who spent long periods with the Native people found there were bar-
riers that prevented them from completely understanding many aspects of their life,
particularly religion. "I must remark," David Thompson wrote, "that whatever other
people may write as the creed of these natives, I have always found it very difficult to
learn their real opinion on what may be termed religious subjects. Asking them ques-
tions on this head, is to no purpose, they will give the answer best adapted to avoid
other questions, and please the enquirer."
The season of the year and the place where Europeans first met Native groups
similarly had an important bearing on the idea they formed of the Native world.
Most of their overland exploration was by river between late spring and early
autumn. Generally they were looking for a water passage to Asia, or they were seek-
ing new trading partners. For these reasons our first pictures of the interior of the
country are essentially riverine views and our first maps are route maps. Given that
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 15

Keskarmh a Copper Indian

Guide and his Daughter Green
Stockings; both appear to be
wearing caribou-hide robes.
Note their "Europeanized"
faces. An 1823 coloured litho-
graph after a drawing by
Lieutenant Robert Hood.

many Native groups

moved up to several hun-
dred miles on their
annual rounds and often depended upon very different resources as the seasons
changed, a summer glimpse alone, or a winter one for that matter, provided an
unbalanced picture. Today, this has sometimes led to conflicting conclusions about
where many Native groups lived and on what resources they depended. No longer are
debates on these points merely of academic interest; Aboriginal and treaty rights
claims often hinge on interpretations of these early records.
Even more confusing is the fact that away from the coastal regions, the European
presence in North America began to affect Native life long before Europeans and
Natives actually met, primarily as a consequence of different tribes trading European
goods among themselves, and the spread of European diseases. The fact that changes
were taking place long before any actual contact with the intruders means that many
of the earliest first-hand accounts do not give us an accurate idea of Aboriginal
Canada in its undisturbed state, because the Native societies were already in transi-
tion. When Alexander Mackenzie made the first European trek across British
Columbia in 1793, he met Indians in the upper Eraser River area who had European
goods, even though Mackenzie was the first white man they had ever seen.
European drawings, paintings, and, later, photographs often provide important
depictions of life in early times. But many are impressions made by artists who drew
their own interpretations from the accounts of others. Even when artists actually vis-
ited the Native peoples, their drawings and paintings were strongly influenced by
their own attitudes towards their subjects, their artistic training, and current fashion.
Photographs too can be very misleading. A good example is the work of Edward
16 Arthur Ray

Kutchin Winter Lodges; these semi-subterranean, wood-framed, earth-covered dwellings provided

warmth under the most extreme conditions. They were similar in many respects to the winter houses
of the Inuit of the Mackenzie Delta and Labrador. An 1851 lithograph after a drawing by A. H. Murray.

Curtis, the famous photographer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
who set out to record Native culture before it disappeared. To accomplish this, Curtis
took with him into the field a collection of Native artefacts and clothing that he used
to stage many of his poses. He also "doctored" some of his negatives so that the
resulting prints would not feature articles of European origin in any prominent way.
Although Curtis's photographs are recognized works of art, they are not a reliable
record of Native life.
Clearly, capturing a reasonably accurate image of Native Canada is no easy task;
we must consider many types of evidence drawn from many sources, from the later
precontact era through the first century after contact.

Hunters of the Northern Forest

The boreal forest is vast. It stretches westward from the Labrador coast over three
thousand miles to the lower Mackenzie River and the Yukon. Within this northern
forest, people spoke different dialects of two major languages: Athapaskan
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 17

(north-west of the Churchill River) and Algonquian (to the south and east of the
Churchill). Despite their inability to understand one another, Athapaskan- and
Algonquian-speakers faced similar environmental challenges and found similar solu-
tions, and so shared many aspects of everyday life. These forest people adapted well
to their environment. Tools, weapons, clothing, and ceremonial objects were
fashioned from locally available materials rather than secured by long-distance trade.
Life was organized around commonly learned skills and highly portable tools and
equipment. Weapons for taking large and small game consisted of bows and stone-
tipped arrows, stone-tipped lances, deadfall traps, and snares.
Snares were particularly effective. In the late eighteenth century, on his epic over-
land trip from the Churchill River to the Coppermine River, the explorer and fur
trader Samuel Hearne described their use by the Chipewyan for hunting barren-
ground caribou:

When the Indians design to impound deer, they look out for one of the paths in which a
number of them have trod and which is observed to be still frequented by them The
pound is built by making a strong fence with brushy trees... the inside is so crowded with
small counter-hedges as very much to resemble a maze; in every small opening of which
they set a snare, made with thongs of parchment deer-skins... amazingly strong

Lured or driven into the pound and caught in the snares, the caribou were then
speared or shot with arrows. Hearne added that this was such a successful hunting
method that Chipewyan bands could often spend most of the winter at just one or
two locations. In a similar fashion, the Cree took caribou by building "deer hedges"
across pathways, and placing snares in openings left in these barriers. Smaller game,
hare and rabbit, were taken by the same means, while fish were caught with hook and
line, dip nets, and weirs, or fences stretched across the rivers.
Men fashioned most of the weapons, although women made the snares and traps
for small animals. Women also made most of the household equipment, including
stone knives, bone or wooden scrapers for processing hides and pelts, stone burns to
etch bone and wood, bone needles, wood and bark containers, and, among the
Algonquians, pottery. Vessels generally were of poor quality so it was not possible to
cook in them over an open fire. Most food was therefore either boiled by placing hot
stones in water or roasted on sticks or spits. With obvious relish Samuel Hearne
described Chipewyan cooking methods as consisting
18 Arthur Ray

... chiefly in boiling, broiling, and roasting: but of all the dishes... a beeatee, as it is called in
their language, is certainly the most delicious, at least for a change, that can be prepared
from a deer only, without any other ingredient. It is a kind of haggis, made with the blood,
a good quantity of fat shred small, some of the tenderest of the flesh, together with the
heart and lungs cut, or more commonly torn into small shivers; all which is put into the
stomach, and roasted, by being suspended before the fire by a string. Care must be taken
that it does not get too much heat at first, as the bag would thereby be liable to be burnt,
and the contents be let out—

The women also fashioned the clothing, from hides and pelts, and decorated it with
porcupine quills, moose hair, and perhaps painting. Tailoring involved a minimal
amount of cutting, relying instead on the natural shape of the hides; "Chipewyan" in
fact means "pointed skins," referring to the animal tails left on the clothing. For most
of the year, outerwear consisted of a long shirt or tunic worn by men and women
alike, along with leggings and moccasins. Underneath, men wore breech-cloths and
women culottes. Winter wear included a warm, durable beaver coat worn with the
fur side inward and used for two or three years before it wore out. Towards the
Mackenzie valley, women commonly made coats from strips of rabbit skin. For bed-
ding, these Native people used deer and moose hides, hare blankets, and bear skins.
Women usually made lodge coverings from moose or deer hides, bark, or brush,
arranged over a conical framework of poles. Up to fifteen people could be accom-
modated in one of these dwellings.
Probably the best-known article of Native culture is the bark canoe—light in
weight, of shallow draft, and easy to repair. It was these craft that made it possible for
Europeans to explore the northern half of the continent so swiftly, because they were
easy to portage over difficult terrain and to navigate over unexpected rapids and
along the rivers. Although there were some minor variations in design between tribal
groups, traditional northern Indian canoes were able to carry only two adults, one or
two children, and a cargo of 115 to 135 kilograms (250 to 300 pounds).
In winter, snowshoes, dogsleds, and toboggans were all essential for moving over
deep snow. Wherever possible, people travelled over river ice on leeward shorelines
to avoid rough terrain and wind. Dogsleds were usually pulled by only one or two
dogs, because hunters were rarely able to feed more. As a result, the northern
Aboriginal people, particularly the women, carried many of their possessions on
their backs when moving from one hunting ground to another. Such dependence on
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 19

human and dog power meant it was impossible to accumulate possessions, given the
mobile lives of these northern hunters. It also discouraged acquisitive behaviour and
wanton exploitation of the environment.
Northern Native groups had what anthropologists call "small-scale" societies, in
which daily contacts are ordinarily limited to close kin. The smallest group was the
winter band, which usually consisted of a few closely related families. Its size was
controlled by two factors, safety and efficiency. Moose and caribou, the primary win-
ter game, were not herd animals and so were most effectively taken by hunters
working in pairs or in small parties. Hunting and living in kinship groups also
increased the chances of survival. If the male head of a family sickened or died, star-
vation could still be avoided, because the family would be supported by the band.
Marriages took place with little fanfare and, when necessary, were easily dissolved.
Of this aspect of Cree life, the explorer David Thompson observed:

Nothing is requisite but the consent of the parties, and Parents: the riches of a man consists
solely in his ability as a Hunter, and the portion of the woman is good health, and a

This 1880 oil painting by Thomas Mower Martin, Encampment of Woodland Indians, shows the blend-
ing of European and Indian cultures. The women are wearing European dresses and are using a trade
kettle, but the lodges and canoes are still made of birchbark.
20 Arthur Ray

willingness to relieve her husband from all domestic duties— When contrariety of
disposition prevails, so that they cannot live peaceably together, they separate with as little
ceremony as they came together... without any stain on their characters—

Native people clearly did not have the same double standard about marital and pre-
marital sexual relations as the European males who left us their accounts. Chastity
was not considered an essential virtue, though Thompson reported that "sometimes
it was found to a high degree." Samuel Hearne, speaking of the Cree, said that "no
accomplishment whatever in a man, is sufficient to conciliate the affections, or pre-
serve the chastity of a southern Indian woman." Hearne's remark reveals his sexism:
it says nothing about the traders who often encouraged debauchery. Indeed, by
Hearne's own account, traders were not averse to using force to win sexual favours.
He noted that the Hudson's Bay Company trader Moses Norton, himself the son of
a mixed marriage, kept several wives and a box of poison. The latter was employed
against Indian men who refused him their wives or daughters.
Another Aboriginal social custom which many newcomers saw as scandalous was
that of spouse exchange. Here Hearne exhibited more understanding:

I should acknowledge that it is a very common custom among the men of this country to
exchange a night's lodging with each other's wives. But this is so far from being considered
as an act which is criminal, that it is esteemed by them as one of the strongest ties of
friendship between two families; and in case of the death of either man, the other considers
himself bound to support the children of the deceased. Those people are so far from
viewing this engagement as a mere ceremony, like most of our Christian god-fathers
and god-mothers, who, notwithstanding their vows... scarcely ever afterward remember
what they have promised, that there is not an instance of a Northern Indian having once
neglected the duty which he is supposed to have taken upon himself to perform.

Perhaps reflecting the male perspective of the time, Hearne does not tell us whether
Indian men had to seek the consent of their wives for these arrangements. Similarly,
he does not consider the possibility that sometimes women may have initiated these
bonds. It is clear from the commentary of other European observers that Indian
women were not deferential to men.
Political organization was very flexible. The people tended to follow natural lead-
ers. Usually, the headman of a winter band was a superior hunter, married, and a
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 21

Here the Indian is presented as a menacing savage

armed with a traditional war club, a trade axe,
and a musket. More puzzling are the undersized
snowshoes the traveller is wearing with his sum-
mer dress. Iroquois allant a la decouverte: etching
by J. Laroque after a drawing by J. Grasset de St.
Sauveur (Paris: 1796).

skilled orator. The headman of the sum-

mer band was generally the most
respected individual from among the
leaders of the smaller winter bands. In
contrast to European political organiza-
tions, these men held no power simply by
virtue of their offices, and major eco-
nomic and political decisions were made
collectively. Nothing was done until a
consensus was reached. Headmen oper-
ated by persuasion, not coercion. When dealing with the outside world, they were
expected to be good spokesmen on behalf of their followers, and they were chosen in
part because of their abilities as traditional orators.
One of the basic problems for Native peoples living in the northern forest was the
periodic scarcity of game after forest fires, or from diseases and the normal fluctua-
tions of animal populations. Generally these shortages were localized and of short
duration. To cope with them, the Native peoples developed a number of effective
strategies. Within bands, close kin felt obliged to help each other in times of need,
sharing surpluses with their relatives without receiving an immediate return. "Those
acts that pass between man and man for generous charity and kind compassion in
civilized society," remarked David Thompson approvingly of the Cree, "are no more
than what is every day practised by these Savages, as acts of common duty...."
Because sharing was considered a duty, the hoarding of personal wealth was regarded
as antisocial, and leaders were expected to exhibit great generosity. In direct contrast
to the Europeans, a northern Native person gained status by giving rather than by
accumulating. Sharing also took place between groups. If moose or caribou hunts
22 Arthur Ray

failed in a band's territory, permission was normally granted to hunt on the range of
neighbouring bands. Sometimes food shortages could be alleviated through trade,
particularly for northern bands who lived adjacent to the Iroquoian area of southern
Ontario. Generally, however, northern-forest people did not engage in extensive
inter-tribal trade, simply because the forests lacked sufficient resources to make it
practicable.
Individually through vision quests, and collectively through special feasts and rit-
uals such as drumming, the peoples of the boreal forest sought the good will and
assistance of the spirit world. Thompson, who exhibited great sympathy with
Aboriginal religious beliefs, described those of the Cree:

They believe in the self existence of the Keeche Keeche Manito (The Great, great Spirit)...
He is the master of life— He leaves the human race to their own conduct, but has placed
all other living things under the care of Manitos (or inferior Angels) all of whom are
responsible to Him... each Manito has a separate command and care, as one has the Bison,
another the Deer.... On this account the Indians, as much as possible, neither say, nor do
anything to offend them, and the religious hunter, at the death of each animal, says, or does
something, as thanks to the Manito of the species for being permitted to kill it.

Religion was a highly personal affair, but individuals who were thought to have spe-
cial powers to commune with the spirit world became shamans. One important
ceremonial rite that these visionaries performed among the Algonquian was that of
the shaking-tent, in which the shaman conversed with the spirit world in a lodge spe-
cially constructed for the purpose. Among the Ojibwa, whom Thompson described
as the "Great Religionists," these Native spiritual leaders formed a fraternity, the
midewiwin or Grand Medicine Society, which was the most important religious
institution in their traditional culture. Sacred symbols of the society were preserved
on birchbark scrolls as mnemonic aids for its members.
Native people living in the maritime region of eastern Canada developed similar
ways of life. The principal difference was that the Beothuk, Mi'kmaq, and Malecite
inhabited both the seashore and the inland forests. And it was because they lived
along the coast in the summer that they were the first to come in contact with
European explorers and fishermen. Eventually the latter took control of marine
resources and marginalized aboriginal people in the emerging commercial fishery.
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 23

Farmers of the North

Native societies elsewhere were substantially different. Two major groups dominated
eastern Canada. The Iroquoian-speaking people who lived in what is now southern
Ontario and around the St. Lawrence had well-developed farming methods that
enabled thousands of people to live together in small areas and to develop complex
political systems. The Iroquoians spoke various dialects and formed several separate
and often mutually hostile nations, including the Five Nations or "Iroquois
Confederacy" (consisting of the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and Mohawk)
and the Huron, the Erie, and the Neutral. These nations dealt with each other
through networks of kinship, rivalry, war, and trade. The northern Iroquoians
exchanged their surplus corn for the products of the Algonquians' hunting. The
amounts were small, but the routes and methods of trade were well established, and
goods and information were exchanged along them long before the Europeans and
their goods entered the scene.
In sharp contrast to their Algonquian-speaking neighbours to the north and east,
who had no permanent settlements and moved constantly from one hunting ground
to the next, the Iroquoians were village dwellers who depended on the produce of
their carefully tended fields. The Huron, for example, obtained as much as 75 per
cent of their food by farming; they ate primarily corn, beans, squash, and sunflow-
ers—supplemented with fish, particularly whitefish, and game, mostly venison.
Before the arrival of the Europeans the Iroquoian-speaking Huron, Hochelagans,
and Stadaconans were the northernmost farmers in North America, living as they
did at the outer climatic limits of agriculture.
Iroquoian villages contained as many as two thousand inhabitants and were
located close to the fields. A new village site was sought only when all the conve-
niently accessible land had been used up in the course of field rotation—a farming
practice made necessary by the slash-and-burn method they used, best described in
the first-hand account of Recollet lay brother Gabriel Sagard:

Clearing is very troublesome for [the Huron], since they have no proper tools. [The men]
cut down the trees at the height of two or three feet from the ground, then they strip off all
the branches, which they burn at the stump of the same trees in order to kill them, and in
the course of time they remove the roots. Then the women clean up the ground between
the trees thoroughly, and at distances a pace apart dig round holes or pits. In each of these
24 Arthur Ray

they sow nine or ten grains of maize, which they have first picked out, sorted, and soaked in
water for a few days, and so they keep on until they have sown enough to provide food for
two or three years, either for fear that some bad season may visit them or else in order to
trade it to other nations for furs and other things they need; and every year they sow their
corn thus in the same holes and spots, which they freshen with their little wooden spade,
shaped like an ear with a handle at the end. The rest of the land is not tilled, but only
cleansed of noxious weeds, so that it seems as if it were all paths, so careful are they to keep
it quite clean; and this made me, as I went alone sometimes from one village to another,
lose my way usually in these corn-fields more than in the meadows and forests.

Fishing and hunting were largely male activities—fishing the more significant because
fish provided the major source of protein. For the Huron, who occupied what is now
northern Simcoe County in Ontario, the major fishing expedition was the month-
long autumn one to Georgian Bay to obtain spawning whitefish. The Stadacona, who
lived near present-day Quebec City, took mackerel, seal, eel, and porpoise from the
Gulf of St. Lawrence. They differed from the other Iroquoians in that they developed
a strong connection with the sea. Between planting and harvest they would venture as
far as the Gaspe peninsula and the Strait of Belle Isle on fishing, sealing, and other
food-collecting expeditions. Unlike the male-dominated autumn fishing trips of the
Huron, men, women, and children all joined in these summer voyages.
Although the hunt provided less food than farming or fishing, it was important
because hides and pelts were needed for clothing. Given the relatively close popula-
tions in the settled areas of Iroquoian territory, game and fur were in short supply, so
hunting parties were forced to travel considerable distances in search of their prey.
The Huron, for example, mounted autumn and late-winter deer-hunting expeditions,
usually of several hundred men, that took them on lengthy journeys south or east of
their homes. Taking advantage of the fact that white-tailed deer gathered in herds in
these seasons, the Huron men built V-shaped deer hedges 2.7 metres (9 feet) high and
about half a mile long. Driven up against the hedges, the deer were slaughtered in con-
siderable numbers. During the late-winter hunt, a few women would accompany the
men to assist with the butchering and preparation of hides. Because venison did not
preserve well (some was smoke-dried), most of the meat obtained on the deer hunts
was eaten immediately. But the fat and the hides were brought home to the villages.
Indeed, in order to stockpile provisions, the Iroquoians had developed various means
of food preparation and storage. Women dried the produce of the fields and stored it
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 25

in porches or hung it from the ceilings of their dwellings. They either sun-dried or
smoked their fish and then packed them in bark containers.
Probably the most striking difference between the northern hunters and the more
southerly farmers was the type of dwelling the Iroquoians lived in, for they were the
people of the longhouses. A typical Huron house was up to 30 metres (100 feet) long
and 7.5 to 9 metres (25 to 30 feet) wide. It was constructed on a frame of poles sunk
into the ground around the outer perimeter, bent and tied together in the centre, and
covered with bark, usually cedar. Enclosed porches were built at one or both ends of
the longhouse to store food and firewood, and inside a raised platform was built
around the walls. Near the centre, storage racks were lashed to large poles, and here
the inhabitants placed pots, clothing, and other possessions. Also down the centre
was a row of hearths about 6 metres (20 feet) apart. In the larger villages, the houses
were surrounded by palisades of interwoven stakes for defence.
Besides building larger and more permanent dwellings than the northern hunters,
the Iroquoians constructed more substantial canoes for trade, war, and fishing—craft
capable of transporting five or six men and their possessions over the rough, deep
waters of Georgian Bay and the larger rivers. It appears that such Iroquoian-speaking
people as the Huron engaged in regular trade with their neighbours before the
European intrusion. There was a solid basis for such exchange, because they produced
sizeable surpluses of corn but fur and game were in short supply in the immediate
vicinity of their villages. Their northern neighbours prized corn and usually had furs
to exchange—pelts which were superior because of the harsher climate of the

In the lower centre of La Terra

de Hochelaga nella Nova
Francia (1556), by Giovanni
Battista Ramusio, Jacques
Cartier and his men are being
welcomed at the entrance of
the Iroquois village of
Hochelaga (Montreal) at the
beginning of October 1535.
The village is portrayed imagi-
natively. Iroquoian settlements
lacked this geometric regularity.
26 Arthur Ray

northern forests. So it is not surprising that by the time the Europeans arrived among
them a lively trade was already being conducted. Corn, tobacco, and nets figured
prominently in the outbound traffic from Huronia, situated on the southern shores
of Georgian Bay; furs, dried fish, meat, and winter clothing made their way in.
The Huron were also interested in trade for other reasons. They gathered around
them more possessions than their Algonquian neighbours—partly as a result of
their more sedentary lives—and although they discouraged acquisitive behaviour
by individuals, each kinship group sought possessions collectively in order to main-
tain or elevate its status. This was done by redistributing wealth—obtained
primarily through trade—to other members of the society at large. Understandably,
such trading connections were jealously guarded by the kinsmen who had either
developed or inherited them. Generally, the group whose members first developed
a given trading route held the rights to it, but they could lease these rights or trans-
fer them to other groups.
The longhouse society was complex and highly organized compared to the
nuclear family of the Algonquian- and Athapaskan-speaking peoples. In the long-
house lived an extended family which consisted of a woman and her daughters, or a
group of sisters, together with their husbands and their children. Descent was traced
on the female side, and the family usually chose to remain in the mother's house.
Political life was organized around the clan, which was made up of all those
extended families in a village who claimed descent from a common female ancestor.
Depending upon the size
of the village, one or

Huron Deer Hunt. Although

the deer hedge is portrayed as
it might look if a European
farmer had built it, the engrav-
ing does indicate how the deer
were killed with spears and
snares near the opening of the
hedge. After a drawing by
Samuel de Champlain
(Paris, 1632).
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 27

several different lineages might be present, and each lineage bore the name of one of
the tribe's clans: Bear, Hawk, Turtle, etc. In the larger villages longhouses belonging
to families of the same clan tended to be clustered together. Even people living in dif-
ferent villages but bearing the same clan name recognized a symbolic affinity towards
each other, although marriage between clan members was prohibited.
Each clan had two headmen—a civil leader and a war leader. Of the two, the civil
leader was considered the more important, and he dealt with all aspects of daily life.
The war leader, or war chief, was held in high regard only in times of conflict. It was
then his responsibility to organize raiding parties in the blood feuding that was com-
mon with villagers beyond Huronia to the south, particularly those living south of
Lake Ontario. Generally, war parties made up of the fellows of fallen kinsmen would
raid opposing villages to seek revenge. Conflict was more or less continuous, but rel-
atively few deaths resulted from the fighting. Instead men, women, and children were
taken captive, and the tendency was to torture the men and adopt the women and
children to replace members from the captors' ranks. Certainly, annihilation of vil-
lages and groups was not normally the objective before the Europeans appeared.
Village councils made up of the civil heads of the various clans managed the daily
affairs of the settlements. One of these councillors acted as the village spokesman but
all the civil leaders were of equal rank, and they did not have to accept the decisions of
their fellow councillors. Village administration was accomplished through consensus
politics; besides civil leaders, old men who were respected for their wisdom attended
village council meetings and took part in discussions. Councils arranged public func-
tions, co-ordinated community building projects, and adjudicated disputes.
Each Huron village belonged to one of five different tribes, which together
formed the Huron Confederacy. Each tribe controlled a portion of Huron territory,
administered by a tribal council of civil leaders from the villages in that area. As with
village councils, all tribal councillors were of equal rank, but only one acted as a
spokesman for the group. Each tribal councillor had certain hereditary responsibili-
ties, such as protecting the trade routes of his lineage. Tribal councils were chiefly
concerned with inter-village and inter-tribal affairs. Overarching the tribal councils
was the Confederacy, which apparently included all the members of the respective
tribal councils. The Huron Confederacy attempted to maintain friendly relations
among its five tribes, and co-ordinated trade and military affairs. Such diplomatic
and political negotiations cannot have been easy, but clearly the organization of the
Huron enabled them successfully to manage the affairs of a substantial population—
28 Arthur Ray

These two watercolours—Dance for the Recovery of the Sick and Calumet Dance—are from a series of
sketches of Iroquoian dances and ceremonies by George Heriot, a Quebec-based painter, author, and
postmaster (1766-1844). A calumet is a peace pipe.
 WHEN Two WORLDS MET 29

some twenty-five thousand in the early seventeenth century—before Europeans

caused extraordinary disruptions with which they were unable to cope.
Huron life was filled with public and private celebrations. The largest feasts were
held at the time of the annual meeting of the Confederacy council and at the investi-
ture of new leaders. Men and women also organized feasts to commemorate a variety
of important personal events, and in general celebrations were a lively time of danc-
ing, games, and eating. The most important of all Huron ceremonies was the Feast
of the Dead, ten days of pomp and feasting held whenever a village changed location.
Brother Sagard recorded this ceremony in great detail, though it is evident from the
list of goods put into the common grave that European influence had already
changed Huron life:

The other neighbouring tribes are notified in order that those persons who have chosen
that town to be the burying place may bring [their dead] thither, and others who wish to
come out of respect may honour the festival with their presence. For all are made welcome
and feasted during the days that the ceremony lasts—
The grave is dug outside the town, very large and deep, capable of containing all the
bodies, furniture, and skins offered for the dead. A high scaffolding is erected along the
edge, to which all the bags containing bones are carried; then the grave is draped
throughout, both the bottom and the sides, with new beaver skins and robes; then they lay
in it a bed of tomahawks; next kettles, beads, necklaces, and bracelets of wampum, and
other things given by the relations and friends. When this has been done the chiefs, from
the top of the scaffold, empty and turn out all the bones from the bags into the grave upon
the goods, and they cover them again with other new skins, then with tree-bark, and after
that they put back the earth on top, and big pieces of wood Then they have a feast again,
and take leave of one another, and return to the places whence they came, with great joy
and satisfaction at having provided the souls of their relatives and friends with something
that day to plunder and wherewith to become rich in the other life.

Sagard also grasped the fact that the Feast of the Dead played an important role in
Huron society: "by means of these ceremonies and gatherings they contract new friend-
ships and unions amongst themselves, saying that, just as the bones of their deceased
relatives and friends are gathered together and united in one place, so also they them-
selves ought during their lives to live all together in the same unity and harmony."
A rich spiritual world infused life. Uppermost in the Huron pantheon was the sky
30 Arthur Ray

spirit who controlled the weather and helped human beings when they were in need;
lesser spirits, the Old, had the power to influence human beings. All Iroquoians
called on this spirit world to assist them in their economic and military endeavours,
but they were also very concerned with obtaining spiritual help to combat illness.
The Huron, for example, believed there were three major reasons for sickness—nat-
ural causes, witchcraft, and the unfulfilled desires of a person's soul—and they
turned to spiritual healers and curing societies to deal with these problems. Since
dreams were regarded as the language of the soul, the shamans paid particular atten-
tion to them when treating patients—by taking appropriate ritual action, they were
able to deal effectively with common emotional problems. The healing ceremonies
were often, in essence, a kind of individual and group psychotherapy.

The Plains Buffalo Hunters

Probably none of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada has captured the popular imag-
ination more than the nineteenth-century armed equestrian nomads of the prairies
and bordering woodlands. These Native peoples, and their southern neighbours in
what is now the United States, were a formidable military force in their short-lived
heyday, and for many they symbolize the Canadian Native of historic times. But the
lives of the Plains people were distinctively different from those of Aboriginal people
elsewhere. Furthermore, the horse and the gun, which became an essential part of
nineteenth-century Plains culture, were obtained from Europeans. Even today, it is
hard to tell whether these two European elements fundamentally transformed Plains
people's lives or simply intensified their older traditions.
Long before they had obtained horses and firearms, the Plains people were
remarkable hunters and had devised various efficient means to pursue buffalo—to
the near exclusion, indeed, of the other large game abundant in the region. The task
of the hunters was made relatively easy by the fact that the buffalo gathered at the
same winter and summer ranges every year and moved back and forth between them
along well-established pathways. If the pattern changed, it was usually the result of a
readily identifiable cause, such as an autumn fire that destroyed the forage for the
ensuing winter, or unusually mild winter weather which encouraged the herds to
remain out in the open prairies. In most instances, the Indians had forewarning and
could take counter-measures to ward off food shortages.
A Buffalo Rift, an 1867 watercolour by Alfred Jacob Miller, shows the cliff-driving technique of slaugh-
tering buffalo which was commonly used in the summer. Before the Indians obtained horses, they
often used fire to help drive the herd forward.

The hunters had different strategies for taking large numbers of the summer and
winter herds. In summer, the most effective was the cliff drive. This involved a large
party of Native people, usually including women and older children, working
together to stampede a herd over a drop-off; the height did not have to be great, just
enough to cripple the animals in the plunge. The drovers fanned out in a V-shaped
formation around the kill site. For protection, they often stood behind natural or
man-made shelters of brush or stone. The most skilled hunters came up behind the
herd and set it in motion towards the cliff, while those on the flanks created enough
noise to keep the animals moving forward. The prairie grass was often set alight to
drive the buffalo to their deaths, which is one reason fires were commonplace. Fire
drives were efficient, but the hunters were unable to control the number of animals
slain, and waste was the result.
Precontact cliff drive sites, known as buffalo jumps, are found widely scattered
over the prairies. The reliability of these sites is graphically pointed out by archae-
ological evidence suggesting they were used repeatedly over thousands of years.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
redressa vite: il fallait que cela fût plus royal et plus absurde; il fallait
une surprise plus stupéfiante et une plus vraie satisfaction et une
plus digne justification de son amour.
Elle vida de leurs fleurs l'antichambre et le salon. Toutes les
grâces printanières furent semées sur le lit funèbre: lilas et roses,
muguets et mimosas, toute la chevelure odorante d'un jardin de fée!
Alors, elle se sentit presque contente et un peu ivre.
Debout, les doigts crispés, l'haleine rapide, elle regardait
l'amoncellement fou des fleurs et la pâle tête presque enfouie sous
les roses,—mais tout à coup, sentant qu'une chaotique armée de
réflexions allait prendre d'assaut sa cervelle démantelée, elle se mit
à ranger les fleurs—artistement!
Elle ne voulait pas réfléchir, ni songer à l'instant d'avant, ni à
l'instant d'après: être brave, seulement; dépasser une bravoure de
femme: être héroïque—imprudemment; oui, faire son devoir de belle
et de bonne adultère,—puis se coucher sous la colère qui allait
éclater comme un tonnerre dans cette chambre insolente, sur le
calme insolent de la mort, sur l'insolente paix de l'orgueilleuse
amante.
Les lumières?
Ce soin dernier fut décisif et chassa définitivement l'armée des
chaotiques réflexions.
Elle alluma les candélabres de la cheminée, et, posés au chevet
du lit sur une table, ils eurent l'apparence de deux buissons ardents,
de flammes inextinguibles et solennelles. Mais, sous l'avalanche de la
lumière, le mort devenait hideux: la tête pâle éclatait d'une
blancheur plus blême que le drap, plus blême que la batiste de
l'oreiller, et des trous d'ombre se creusaient sous les yeux, et le nez
s'allongeait vilainement, et la bouche sembla méchante,—sa bouche
si douce!
Il fallut mettre tout cela au point, organiser le jeu des lueurs,
maintenir la tête pure en une pâleur juste, combiner les ombres en
vue du calme et de la beauté: un des candélabres resta au chevet,
l'autre se dressa au pied du lit.
 Et le cierge?
Elle le retrouva dans un tiroir, entamé à peine, n'ayant pleuré que
quelques larmes, cierge pascal, cierge de gloire qu'il lui avait plu
d'acquérir un jour,—cierge adultère et de blasphème, car il avait
éclairé, en pleurant, les premiers baisers de l'Amie et de l'Adoré.
Ce cierge! Ah! que ce fut dur pour elle, la vue de ce flambeau
d'amour, tout incrusté de grains d'encens, ce flambeau de
consolation et de ressouvenir qu'ils ne devaient allumer qu'aux
anniversaires, destiné à leur mesurer des années de joie,—et qui
allait donner au mort sa dernière lueur, pleurer sur le mort ses
suprêmes larmes.
L'amertume du péché, en cette minute, lui contracta la gorge et
lui troubla le cœur.
Le cierge adultère! En l'achetant, en le profanant, en faisant
surgir de la cire sacrée une flamme sacrilège, en l'érigeant témoin
des mauvaises amours,—elle avait acheté la mort, la condamnation
de l'adoré et la sienne; car, n'était-elle pas condamnée, elle aussi, et
ne savait-elle pas exactement ce qui allait se passer, tout ce qui allait
se passer, quand la tremblante clef aurait ouvert à son seigneur la
porte de la maison adultère?
Mais elle ne voulait pas réfléchir, pas encore, jamais! Sa bravoure
était en actes et non en pensées.
Elle alluma le cierge adultère et s'agenouilla, droite, les mains
jointes et un peu écartées du corps, et—sans un mouvement que
celui de sa poitrine effarée,—elle attendit l'heure de son maître, la
belle, la bonne, la brave, la glorieuse Adultère.
 LA ROBE

Ce jour-là, il la rencontra,—la robe nouvelle!

Elle s'avançait, lente et fière, avec la souriante et mystérieuse
majesté qui convient aux réalisations esthétiques de la dernière
heure, avec la grâce irritante de l'inédit.
C'était bien elle, c'était bien la robe nouvelle.
Depuis une semaine, il la guettait au coin des rues, des rues
larges et claires où elle peut s'éployer, livrer à l'œil toute sa gloire
inconnue, volter, s'arrêter, repartir et filer comme une mouette au-
dessus de la grève. Les toilettes «pour aller en voiture» ne
l'amusaient pas; il n'aimait que «la robe qui marche», et il ne l'aimait
qu'une fois, la première fois qu'il la voyait.
La robe nouvelle, la robe de printemps, était pour lui le grand et
périodique événement de l'année; il en rêvait des mois à l'avance,
s'inquiétant des pronostics de l'Observatoire, espérant de précoces
chaleurs, faisant, comme un Parsi, sa prière au soleil.
Dans l'universel renouveau, rajeunissement de la chair et de la
feuille, de la fleur et de l'herbe, rien ne l'intéressait—que la robe, et
la robe seule.
Ce qu'il pouvait y avoir dedans, quelle nuance et quel grain de
peau; quels seins et de quelle forme, le calice ou la coupe, hauts ou
bas, unis ou frères ennemis; quelles épaules et si elles étaient
doucement tombantes; quels reins, quelles jambes: tout cela
n'occupait pas un instant son imagination. Il lui suffisait que la robe
fût nouvelle, bien faite et bien portée. Qu'elle pût, artificieusement,
voiler de graves défauts corporels, c'était la dernière de ses craintes
et le dernier de ses soucis.
Sans doute, son amour de la robe nouvelle n'était pas
exclusivement platonique, ni exclusivement l'amour de quelques
chiffons agréablement assemblés sur un mannequin. Il n'était pas de
ces fous qui s'éprennent d'une sydonie, ni même d'un corset, ou
même d'une paire de souliers, ou qui s'arrêtent contemplatifs à la
vitrine du grand magasin où s'exhibe, de pied en cap, une nouvelle
mariée, moitié pudique et moitié tape-à-l'œil. Non, mais quoique la
femme l'intéressât moins que la robe, le vin moins que le flacon, il
ne séparait pas la robe de la femme,—ou plutôt, ce qui est un peu
différent et donne bien l'explication des goûts de notre étrange ami,
il ne séparait pas la femme de la robe.
Une femme nue lui paraissait une absurdité, une anomalie,
quelque chose comme une perruche chauve ou un poulet plumé;
cette vue lui inspirait un étonnement plutôt douloureux, et, en de
certaines hospitalières maisons, où sa jeunesse imprudente l'avait
conduit, jadis, il avait eu la sensation, avouait-il, de s'être trouvé
plutôt dans une rôtisserie dahoméenne que dans un lieu de plaisir.
Les Vénus grecques, non moins que les modernes, lui semblaient
des aberrations coupables, et il n'admettait que la statuaire qui
respecte assez la femme pour lui conserver, au moins dans le
marbre, la forme et les lignes de ses indispensables plumes.
Ce jour-là, il la rencontra,—la robe nouvelle.
Elle était de très claire soie mauve en forme de cône que
tronquait la ceinture, et vers le bas, adornée de trois rangs de
rubans noirs dont le dernier, rasant le sol, semblait le minuscule
piédestal de la jolie et captieuse statuette. La taille était fine, cerclée
de noir aussi, et les épaules et les bras se couvraient d'une pèlerine
à trois collets, d'un mauve plus sombre, d'où sortait, fleur pâle et
blonde, la tête fine.
 Costume qui bientôt nous irritera, car bientôt nous l'aurons trop
vu, mais dont l'apparition première charme, en effet, les yeux
contents de la chute des manteaux et des fourrures, contents de la
floraison imprévue de l'arbrisseau féminin.
Ayant rencontré la robe nouvelle, il en devint aussitôt amoureux.
Son cœur battit très fort, un étourdissement soudain le fit chanceler:
son rêve passait, sa joie se promenait. Oh! si cette robe voulait se
laisser aimer! Si elle n'était pas de ces robes insolentes qui
bousculent, dédaigneuses, les désirs les plus purs et les plus
sincères!
«O robe, ne sois pas farouche!»
La robe ne fut pas farouche. Comme beaucoup de ses pareilles,
elle se laissa suivre en musant le long des étalages, puis elle tourna
discrètement au coin d'une rue dénuée de promeneurs et, sous une
porte, disparut.
C'était une chambre comme d'autres, peu séduisante, trop
parfumée et gâtée par un divan trop large et trop précis,—mais la
robe était là, sous ses yeux, sous ses mains: il la contemplait, il la
baisait, il la respirait avec ivresse.
A genoux devant la chère robe qui se dressait rigide et
inquiétante, il semblait prier, maintenant, disant de folles et douces
paroles et même des sottises.
«Dès que je t'ai vue, je t'ai aimée… Oh! un désir fou… J'aurais
donné je ne sais quoi… Comme tu es bonne!…»
La joie cependant ne le faisait pas délirer au point qu'il ne sût la
qualité de sa conquête, et quel genre d'âme animait cette robe si
exquise. Il s'arracha à son extase pour interroger sa bourse, et avant
d'avoir entendu les odieuses paroles du marchandage, il avait
comblé les désirs qui attendaient, muets, et payé la robe, la jolie
robe nouvelle, probablement ce qu'elle valait.
Ensuite, il recommença ses adorations et l'autre le laissait faire,
habituée à de plus singulières et même à de plus dangereuses
fantaisies. Seulement, en dedans, elle s'impatientait un peu,
trouvant bien longs ces prolégomènes, et bien ridicules. D'ordinaire,
elle menait ses clients plus rondement et, devinant leurs goûts, les
rassasiait avec art et avec promptitude; mais celui-ci était bizarre.
Elle le toléra encore pendant quelques minutes, se laissant admirer,
croyait-elle, flattée aussi de ces manières délicates, et, enfin, n'y
tenant plus, rêvant à ce qu'il y avait dans l'air, dans le soleil, dans les
rues, d'amour à cueillir et quelle merveilleuse pierre philosophale
était sa «robe nouvelle», elle se dégagea et demanda avec un
sourire qu'on la laissât au moins ôter sa pèlerine.
«Non, non! La robe tout entière! Je veux la robe tout entière!»
Et il l'entraînait vers le divan, l'étreignant déjà furieusement.
Elle comprit et cria:
«Avec ma robe? Jamais!»
Elle put se redresser et elle dégrafait sa ceinture quand elle sentit
deux mains lui serrer le cou sans pitié. La tête renversée, elle tomba
inerte sur le divan, et, inconscient de son crime, ignorant la mort de
la chair à laquelle il allait joindre sa chair, l'amoureux des robes
apaisa son désir.
 LE FAUNE

Elle s'était retirée de bonne heure après dîner, se croyant

souffrante et n'étant que triste, lassée du rire trop innocent des
petits enfants, de la benoîte jovialité des parents pauvres émus d'un
peu de fête, du pitoyable gala voulu par les calendriers.
Surtout elle s'affligeait et presque s'indignait de l'hypocrite
tendresse qui luisait dans l'œil terne de son mari, quand il y avait du
monde: elle eût préféré, comme d'autres femmes, être battue en
public, être aimée en secret.
Remerciant sa femme de chambre, elle tira le verrou et, alors, se
sentant bien seule, se sentit libre et moins malheureuse.
Se dévêtir lentement, avec des poses, des regards à la psyché,
de feintes langueurs, comme pour tomber adroitement en de chers
bras, se dire des douceurs, offrir un compliment subtil à son épaule
et même à son genou et s'avouer qu'on a une belle âme et une belle
peau,—elle s'amusa à tout cela, sans penser à rien de mal, avec la
sécurité d'une femme qui ne craint pas les surprises de l'imagination.
Son impudeur ingénue était limitée par la délicatesse. Elle savait
l'étiage où doit s'arrêter la robe retroussée, l'étiage des temps secs
et l'étiage des temps de pluie, et volontiers, ainsi qu'Arlette, quand
Robert le Diable la favorisa de son intimité, elle eût déchiré sa
chemise au lieu de la relever. Il arriva donc qu'elle eut un peu honte,
et, enfouie dans une fourrure, elle s'agenouilla fort chastement
devant le feu.
 Elle tisonna, elle ordonna des architectures incandescentes, elle
se brûla la figure, elle s'ennuya.
«N'aurait-elle pas mieux fait de répondre aux hypocrites
tendresses de son mari? Avec quelques agaceries, elle était
maîtresse de lui et la soirée s'achevait en des exercices plutôt
calmants,—tandis que, troublée, énervée, fâchée, elle était capable
de se mélancoliser jusqu'aux larmes, jusqu'aux solitaires sanglots
que nul n'apaise et qui tordent le cœur et qui le secouent comme
une épave!»
Ah! vraiment, la triste et stupide nuit de Noël! Y aurait-il donc des
dates, des jours magiques où c'est un crime d'être seul, où des
contacts humains sont nécessaires sous peine de souffrance et
presque de remords? Une telle idée s'esquissa un instant dans sa
faible et mobile cervelle, mais bientôt, de tout ce dessin trop
compliqué un seul mot resta visible à ses yeux et sensible à son
imagination,—Noël!
La voilà redevenue toute petite fille qui s'en va à la messe
blanche—dans son lit, qui s'endort en rêvant aux gâteries de l'Enfant
Jésus…
… Non, c'est banal! Tout le monde a de ces visions d'antan, de
ces attendrissements annuels! Ames peu distinguées, qui ne savez
pas évoquer d'autres songes que ceux qui rôdent partout, à la merci
des plus vulgaires désirs,—songes dociles et lamentables!
Révoltée contre la pureté des blancs souvenirs, elle sombra dans
l'idéisme sensuel. La chaleur du foyer aux bûches encore flambantes
la chatouillait vilainement: elle s'y complut,—elle crut que des
baisers singuliers allaient descendre par la cheminée sous la forme
de petits anges sans ailes, mais plus brûlants et plus agiles que les
feux follets qui jouaient, agréables démons, parmi les charbons.
Elle rêva d'une fornication somptueuse, d'un stupre inattendu
dont elle serait la complaisante victime, au coin du feu, sur cette
bonne fourrure; oui, avec la complicité de cette bonne bête, de cette
chèvre aimable et dévouée…
 L'incube épars dans la chambre tiède rassemblait ses atomes et
se matérialisait… Une ombre, comme d'un faune éphèbe, obscurcit
la glace de la cheminée et un souffle lui troubla les cheveux et lui
chauffa la nuque.
Elle avait peur, mais elle désirait avoir encore plus peur; pourtant,
elle n'osa ni se retourner, ni lever les yeux vers la glace. Ce qu'elle
avait senti était douloureusement doux; ce qu'elle avait vu était
inquiétant, étrange, curieusement absurde: une tête blonde et dure,
aux yeux dévorants, à la bouche large et presque obscène, à la
barbe pointue… Elle frissonna: il devait être beau et grand, très fort,
cet être qui allait l'aimer! Comme elle tremblerait dans ses bras! Mais
elle tremblait déjà, déjà possédée, déjà la proie du monstre
amoureux qui la guettait et la convoitait.
La fourrure lui glissa des épaules et aussitôt un violent baiser
stigmatisa sa chair nue,—oui, un baiser si violent et si ardent que la
marque lui en resterait, sans aucun doute, comme d'un fer rouge.
Elle voulut, geste de femme qu'on déshabille, relever son manteau
et s'envelopper d'une dernière pudeur, mais l'Etre s'y opposa et de
ses deux mains lui agrippa les deux bras. Cette violence ne déplut
pas à la vaincue: elle s'y attendait comme à un hommage; son dos
et ses épaules étaient faits pour être vus, et, recevoir obligeamment
des baisers, n'était-ce pas leur devoir en même temps que leur
volupté?
Cependant l'attaque se précipitait et l'incube haletant soufflait à
peu près comme un soufflet de forge, ce qui la fit légèrement rire.
«Que de mal il se donne! songeait-elle. Il est bien malhabile… Je
vais le regarder, du coin de l'œil…»
Comme elle tournait la tête, le masque de la bête s'avança et sa
bouche large et presque obscène s'écrasa sur ses lèvres.
Elle avait fermé les yeux, mais trop tard; elle avait vu le monstre
face à face, et non plus selon les complaisants reflets d'une glace
identique à son rêve; elle l'avait vu, non plus façonné par le désir,
mais déformé selon la réalité la plus étroite: il était si laid, avec sa
face de bouc cruel, si laid et si bestial et ivre d'une volonté si précise
et si basse,—qu'elle s'indigna et se redressa.
… Elle se vit nue dans la grande psyché, au fond de la chambre,
toute nue et toute seule dans la chambre morne.
 DANAETTE

Comme elle s'habillait après déjeuner, toilette spéciale et même

mystérieuse, la neige se mit à tomber.
Sous les rideaux d'apparence de vitrail, relevés et épinglés pour
un peu de lumière, elle la voyait tomber, la belle neige, tomber,
tomber toujours,—et c'était solennel et triste; cela donnait l'idée d'on
ne sait quelle puissance occulte et ironique, d'on ne sait quelle âme
divine, terrible et froide qui aurait épandu d'en haut la cristallisation
légère de son dédain pour la niaiserie humaine qui analyse tout et
ne comprend rien.
—Il y a une grande bataille dans le ciel, lui dit sa vieille Bretonne
de femme de chambre. Les anges s'arrachent les plumes des ailes,—
et voilà pourquoi il neige. Madame le sait bien.
C'était péremptoire. Madame n'émit aucune contradiction. Tous
les ans, d'ailleurs, et souvent plusieurs fois par hiver, la Bretonne
articulait cette même confidence, terminée par un «Madame le sait
bien» irréfutable et presque menaçant. Sur toutes choses, la vieille
servante avait ainsi toutes prêtes, brèves et nettes, des explications
charmantes et d'une manifeste évidence.
Madame ne répondit donc rien, mais, dès que sa coiffure fut
achevée, elle congédia la Bretonne.
Elle voulait être seule—avec la Neige.
 Sa toilette n'était qu'à moitié, elle n'y songeait plus, et, assise sur
un divan, près du feu, elle regardait, fascinée, le vol incessant et
lumineux des plumes neigeuses et angéliques.
Sa toilette! Oh! quel ennui, deux ou trois fois par semaine!
L'adultère est agréable certainement, les premiers jours; on va vers
l'inconnu, on se tend comme une voile au souffle impérieux et doux
qui vous pousse à des baisers nouveaux, on est gonflée de curiosité,
on ne pense à rien qu'au plaisir d'une initiation nouvelle et plus
complète: le péché apparaît tel qu'un baptême à l'ingénuité relative
de la pécheresse. Mais si intense que soit pour les petites
détraquées cette sensation du renouveau par le mensonge, elle est
brève et traîne après elle un détestable frère jumeau nommé Ennui.
Quel ennui! Il faut penser à tant de choses, et l'expérience est là
qui vous pousse du coude et vous suggère mille précautions
humiliantes et décourageantes.
«Ainsi, songeait-elle (sans perdre de vue la neige), je dois,
malgré le froid, mettre des souliers et non des bottines. Lui-même
me l'insinua. La première fois, il me les reboutonna innocemment,
pieusement, en serrant ma jambe sur ses genoux; la seconde fois, il
tira de sa poche un tire-bouton et me le mit dans la main; la
troisième fois, il n'avait même pas pensé à apporter cela, et je fus
très malheureuse.
«Pour le corset, la robe, c'est la même chose. Monsieur est
impatient; il arrache les agrafes, il emmêle les cordons. J'ai dû faire
faire un corsage spécial qui se déboutonne tout d'un trait, et je
remplace le corset, ces jours-là, par une sorte de brassière comme
on en met aux bébés: cela se déboutonne selon le même système
que le corsage. En un clin d'œil, je suis nue, ou peu s'en faut.
Oui, nue, car il a imaginé de m'imposer des chemises qui
ressemblent à des soutanes et qui s'ouvrent comme des rideaux, dès
qu'on a fait sauter les minuscules boutons qui les closent,—et ce
costume influe sur mes mœurs.
«Allons! Il faut mettre la brassière et enfermer mon corset sous
clef, pour que la Bretonne ne me dise pas, d'un air scandalisé,
devant mon mari, quand je rentrerai tantôt: «Madame est sortie
sans corset. Madame le sait bien.»
«Ah! la belle neige!…»
Elles tombaient toujours, les douces, les fines, les blanches
plumes d'anges. La rebelle adultère devint naïve; la fascination de
cette subtile et monotone neige, de neige perpétuelle et qui semblait
infinie, agissait sur sa sensibilité. La péremptoire sottise de la
Bretonne lui revint à l'esprit, et elle eut pitié des anges déplumés!
Cela devait être singulier, un ange aux ailes nues, pareil à ces
oies déduvetées qu'on aperçoit en Normandie dans les cours de
ferme, ces pauvres oies qui ont donné leur vêture pour faire des
oreillers aux frileuses adultères.
Image ridiculement enfantine, mais, enfin, les anges déplumés
sont encore des anges,—et les anges sont de fort belles créatures.
La neige tombait toujours, et même plus tassée, si épaisse que
l'air semblait maintenant s'être condensé en un polaire océan
d'étoiles blanches, ou en un immaculé vol de mouettes, qu'un souffle
parfois troublait et jetait, effarées, contre les vitres.
Oubliant son rendez-vous de classique adultère, la petite chérie
s'intéressait énormément à ces tourbillons imprévus, mais sa joie
était plus amusée encore, quand le nuage constellé s'écroulait
lentement, majestueusement, avec le calme absolu de la certitude.
Ses yeux pourtant se fermaient, lassés, et elle ne les ouvrait plus
qu'à grand'peine, entêtée, résolue à ne pas céder, à regarder tomber
la neige, tant que tomberait la neige.
Elle fut vaincue: ses yeux se fermèrent et ne se rouvrirent plus
qu'après un long demi-sommeil. Mais, en ses yeux clos, la neige
tombait toujours: les vitres maintenant n'arrêtaient plus le vol des
candides étoiles. Il neigeait dans sa chambre, sur les meubles, sur
les tapis, partout; il neigeait sur le divan où elle s'était couchée,
domptée par la fatigue. Une des fraîches étoiles tomba sur sa main;
une autre sur sa joue; une autre sur sa gorge un peu découverte: et
ce furent, la dernière surtout, d'exquises et inédites caresses.
 D'autres étoiles tombèrent: sa robe de pâle vert s'illuminait
comme un pré d'une floraison de marguerites ingénues; ses mains
et son cou en furent bientôt tout couverts, et ses cheveux et ses
seins. Cette irréelle neige ne fondait pas à la chaleur du corps, ni à
la chaleur du foyer: elle demeurait purement fleurie, telle qu'une
parure.
Délicieusement glacés, les baisers de la neige traversèrent ses
vêtements, allèrent, malgré toutes défenses, chercher la peau et se
blottir, dans les plis: c'était merveilleusement doux et d'une qualité
de volupté assurément inconnue!
En vérité, la Neige la violait et la possédait,—et Danaette se
laissait faire, curieuse de cet adultère nouveau, toute livrée au plaisir
ineffable—et presque effroyable—d'être l'amoureuse proie d'un divin
caprice et l'amante élue par le rêve de quelques anges devenus
soudain pervers.
La neige tombait toujours et pénétrait si profondément en son
corps pâmé qu'elle n'avait plus aucune autre sensation que celle de
mourir ensevelie sous les adorables baisers de la neige, embaumée
dans la neige,—et de partir, emportée par un tourbillon dernier, vers
la région des éternelles neiges, les infinies et fabuleuses montagnes
où les chères petites adultères, toujours aimées, se pâment sans
repos aux impérieuses caresses des anges pervers.
 CONVERSATION DU SOIR

L'une était jeune fille et l'autre jeune femme, et lui, venait dans
la maison faire la cour à la jeune fille, mais il aimait bien aussi la
jeune femme.
Ida avait épousé un gentilhomme qui s'occupait à dresser des
chevaux pour les courses; il revêtait un habit rouge, sonnait de la
trompe mieux qu'un piqueur et goûtait la conversation des
palefreniers, parce qu'elle est instructive. Sa femme lui servait peu,
si ce n'est de décor et de parfum: parfois, il l'entourait de regards
attendris, la flattait ainsi qu'une pouliche et lui donnait à manger
dans le creux de sa main un diamant ou un rang de perles; parfois
aussi, il la respirait en fermant les yeux, après l'avoir vaporisée de
foin nouvellement coupé, qu'il appelait dans sa langue «new mown
hay». De tout cela, Ida était fort satisfaite, car il ne lui manquait
rien, aucun plaisir essentiel. Les plaisirs essentiels, pour Ida, étaient:
se lever à midi, mettre de belles robes, faire de la musique et, le soir,
aux lumières, parer son torse pur de plus de joyaux que n'en portait
Aline, reine de Golconde. Elle savait qu'il est des êtres nommés
«amants» et qui ont pour les femmes le goût que son mari avait
pour les chevaux, mais elle n'eut jamais envie d'en attacher un à sa
personne: ces grands scarabées, à son avis, n'étaient agréables
qu'en troupe, quand ils évoluaient avec discrétion dans un salon bien
tenu; et lorsqu'on lui disait que de tels insectes inspirent souvent, à
des femmes, des passions folles, elle riait si fort que ses diamants
émus faisaient le bruit d'une rivière qui se brise sur des pierres.
Pourtant, le scarabée qui courtisait sa sœur Mora n'était pas trop
bête ni trop laid, même seul et vu de près, et il ne déplaisait ni à
Mora, ni à Ida. Mora voulait bien l'épouser et Ida voulait bien être
aimable et ne pas décourager le plaisir de ces enfants, le plaisir de
se marier, de faire comme tout le monde. Il s'appelait Donald et sa
voix un peu chantante était douce, de celles qu'on entend le soir
dans les gorges pâmées des montagnes. Son geste enveloppant
suggérait l'abandon; ne le craignant pas, rassurées par le bleu pâle
de ses yeux et le rose doux de ses joues, les femmes allaient à lui
comme à une sœur, et s'il disait son adresse à manier la rame, elles
s'affligeaient d'un si rude exercice pour une grâce si adolescente.
Assises côte à côte au piano, Ida et Mora déliraient de joie;
ceintes d'un multicolore réseau d'harmonie qui les séparait du reste
du monde, elles s'enivraient sans honte, troublées mais insatisfaites,
cherchant l'extase, n'arrivant qu'à un délicieux énervement, à cause
sans doute du discord de leurs désirs: Mora jouait pour le plaisir des
bruits agréables, pour l'excès de vibration que la musique importe
dans les cellules cérébrales, pour l'intensité et l'activité que le
rythme donne aux battements du cœur et à la circulation du sang;
Ida jouait pour broder un accompagnement à ses rêves et, pendant
que la musique se dessinait en vives arabesques devant ses yeux
éblouis, elle perdait quasiment la conscience de son être; allégée et
simplifiée, elle sortait d'elle-même, elle montait, mais pour
redescendre bientôt, surprise et un peu suffoquée. Cette illusion
était plus sûre encore lorsque, au lieu de jouer elle-même, elle
écoutait sa sœur qui avait le génie des interprétations rythmiques.
Donald entra. Sans l'avoir vu ni entendu, elles eurent la
divination qu'il était là et, charmantes en la spontanéité de leur
résignation, elles se levèrent, laissant une phrase inachevée, et
s'avancèrent pour l'accueillir.
Donald baisa la main d'Ida et le front de Mora.
 Il apportait toujours des fleurs, non pas certes des bouquets,
mais de vraies fleurs libres sur leur tige intacte; il en apportait trois
seulement, choisies entre les plus parfaites et les plus pures,
d'immaculées roses blanches, couleur de neige qui tombe, de
fragiles et somptueux magnolias, empreints de sang, d'une seule
marque de sang au centre même de leur beauté et qui semblaient
des sacrés-cœurs ou, comme disait Mora, de fières et blanches
dominicaines qui ont taché d'amour et de pourpre leur sein vierge,
en buvant au calice de la Passion. Il savait trouver de simples
violettes d'un azur si profond et si délicat que les chimères se
réjouiraient d'élever de tels yeux vers l'infini, et des cyclamens d'un
rose si charnel et si vivant que leur sourire impressionnait comme un
baiser.
Ce jour-là, il avait à la main trois divines pâquerettes, trois astres
de rêve, trois symboliques soleils d'or étoilés d'argent lunaire, fleurs
de résurrection; Mora et Ida en mirent une, chacune, à leur corsage
et, comme toujours, la troisième fut déposée, dans un verre de
Venise irisé d'espoir, aux pieds de l'Inconnue, aux pieds de celle qui
allait devenir, aux pieds de la Femme que l'Amour était en train de
créer et de modeler dans l'ombre.
On causa de choses futiles, exprès, pour ne livrer que peu à peu,
avec modération et avec pudeur, le nu de son âme à l'amoureuse
curiosité de l'âme inquiète et attentive. Ensuite Ida s'informa si les
émeraudes étaient seyantes à son teint, si on pouvait les mêler aux
perles et aux diamants, si leur vert, un peu de prairie, n'effarait pas,
par son absolu, la blancheur des épaules: on décida qu'une peau
très candide et veinée de bleu s'accommodait mal des émeraudes,
mais elles pouvaient agréer aux chairs un peu dorées.
«Je suis contente que vous permettiez cela, Donald; je pourrai
donc mettre mon collier d'émeraudes, car je suis dorée comme une
idole»,—et Ida, relevant sa manche, fit miroiter sur sa peau de
brune, les joyaux smaragdins, dernier présent de son mari. Ensuite,
Mora s'informa de l'accord imposé par une robe violette: il fallait
évidemment des doublures et des retroussis soufre et, comme
bijoux, peut-être des opales, peut-être des perles teintées. Mora
compara cet accord à «celui-ci, tenez»,—et elle trouvait sur le piano
un accord clairement soufre et violet, mais d'un soufre un peu vif et
d'un violet un peu sombre. «Il faudrait la harpe», dit-elle, mais elle
chercha encore et bientôt ce fut une étrange improvisation en
rythme brisé où passaient, éclatantes ou mourantes, apaisées ou
exaltées, toutes les nuances du violet, et, brodées en arabesque,
toutes les nuances du jaune.
Elle joua longtemps, peut-être une heure, sans s'arrêter, sans
prendre garde à la tombante nuit, ni au trouble divin qui s'épandait,
par ses doigts, dans l'air.
Ida et Donald étaient assis sur le divan. D'abord, n'écoutant que
d'une oreille la fantaisie de Mora, ils avaient continué leur causerie,
mais les paroles s'en allèrent. Sans voix, ils songeaient et ils
frémissaient comme l'air lui-même empli de captieuses sonorités et
de vibrantes ondes. Un espace très étroit les séparait; un sursaut le
combla, Donald, excité, s'étant incliné à droite, Ida, oppressée,
s'étant inclinée à gauche. Leurs épaules d'abord, puis leurs genoux
se touchèrent, puis leurs mains se trouvèrent et un double courant
de fluides charnels les pénétrait, les amollissait et, alternativement,
activait leur inconsciente vie. Les fleurs, les émeraudes, les épaules,
le bras nu montré, le corsage soufre et violet emprisonnant en rêve
le beau buste de Mora, tout cela et les conseils de la musique, et la
tombante nuit avait dirigé vers le paysage sensuel la promenade de
leurs rêves,—si bien que, sans le savoir, se croyant toujours dans le
monde du désir, ignorants de leurs tangibles réalités, plongés dans
l'incertitude du songe, insoupçonneux de la véracité de leurs actes,
ils se baisèrent doucement sur la bouche. Le prélude fut impératif:
Ida se renversa, les yeux clos, comme couchée sur un lit de nuages
et elle reçut Donald dans ses bras, avec une grâce toute nuptiale.
Quand ils revinrent à eux, ils n'eurent pas à rougir; ils ne
savaient pas ce qu'ils avaient fait et ils ne le surent jamais: le
souvenir leur resta seulement de minutes exquises, d'un voyage
dans le ciel, d'un plaisir à la fois aigu et doux, infiniment pur et
infiniment surhumain.
 Pourtant, quand Ida rajusta instinctivement sa toilette, elle
s'aperçut que la pâquerette penchait à son corsage, tout écrasée, sa
tête d'or étoilée d'argent: alors, elle alla prendre celle qui avait été
déposée aux pieds de l'Inconnue, et elle la piqua sur son sein, sur le
sein de la Femme qui était devenue, de la femme que l'Amour venait
de créer et de modeler dans l'ombre.
A ce moment, Mora, qui jouait toujours, sentit un terrible frisson
passer dans ses moelles.
 STRATAGÈMES

A Octave Mirbeau.

Amères flâneries parmi des femmes successives.

Lointaine et première souvenance. Elle vient à moi: gaucheries
d'une fille grandelette dans le sarrau d'école. Au sarrau, des taches
d'encre; au nez, des taches de son. Les yeux couleur de mûres; les
dents comme des noisettes:—mûres mangées ensemble, noisettes
croquées le long des haies, par les chemins creux, et dans les
herbes, les rosées, les fleurs fraîches.
Ensuite… Oh! celle-ci fut vraiment la vraie. Près d'elle, à lui
parler, à rire, à rougir, il y avait une joie toute neuve, une joie de
floraison. Les cheveux frisaient joliment sur le front.
Chloé chantait, lavandière à la rivière. Ah! fille de roi! Ah! vieil
Homère! Je crus que c'était Nausicaa.

Il mit la main dans mon estomac.

Je lui ai dit: mettez-la plus bas,
Je lui ai dit: mettez-la plus bas!

Chloé chantait, lavandière à la rivière.

Après?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 C'est tout ce que j'en sais.
Après? Les stores baissés: passent les poteaux, les arbres, les
maisonnettes. Sur les plaques tournantes, les roues grondent.
L'ombre est violette. Le roulis roule le fugace enlacis… Par la
portière, adieu! Jamais plus? Jamais plus. Ton nom? Ta demeure?
Les baisers ont pris toutes les lèvres, les lèvres n'ont pas remué pour
des paroles. Ah! ce train qui va, qui va! Ah! ma vie qui va, qui va!
Après? Rencontres. Non. Non plus. Oui. Pourquoi ne pas revivre
une minute ceci: l'agréable rêveuse sur mon épaule pleurait son exil.
Elle avait peur, la nuit, dormant seule…
Petite bourgeoise du petit bourgeois, très avenante dans
l'attifage économique d'une femme d'ordre: «Pas de cadeaux, disait
sa voix ferme et discrète, une ligne nouvelle, plutôt, sur mon livret.
Comme cela, mon mari est content, il m'appelle sa fourmi. Quand le
mille est complet, cela fait de la rente, de la bonne rente, mon
mimi.» Elle était charmante, vraiment, dans ses silences.
A pas muets sur le parquet criant. La porte se pousse, à l'heure
dite déverrouillée. De l'imprudente lumière, mais le plaisir, en
l'ombre, s'alanguit trop. Pourtant, il y a des yeux au bout des doigts,
des yeux de chat faits pour les ténèbres… La lumière, parfois je la
souffle. J'aime mieux ton cœur que la couronne brodée sur ton
cœur,—et tu n'aimes pas les distractions. Les feuilles tombèrent. A
Paris? Là, elle avait ses habitudes et l'imprévu.
Je me souviens qu'elle n'aimait pas les distractions.
Vraiment, cela vaut-il la peine? La peine qu'on se donne?

Adieu, mon pucelage,

Ha! Tu vas me quitter!

Disait la petite pucelotte… Vraiment, cela vaut-il la peine?

La Suédoise m'aima et nous eûmes de jolies chevauchées
frileuses vers le bleu pâle des nuits polaires. Ah! comme elle pleura,
un jour, et comme je fus mauvais pour celle qui était si bonne!
 Telle est la fin, et je n'ai trouvé rien depuis le bleu frileux des
chevauchées polaires…
… Mettre de l'esprit dans la saveur, de l'âme dans le parfum, du
sentiment dans le toucher…
Désirs, grenades pleines de rubis prisonniers dont un coup de
dent fait ruisseler l'éblouissance,—un coup de dent de femme.
Des femmes, au bon endroit, savent mordre. Elles ne doivent pas
être méprisées, ces conservatrices des traditions milésiennes,—mais
c'est bien monotone et les artistes sont rares.
… Faut-il reprendre l'amère flânerie parmi des femmes
successives?…
Au Louvre, devant la Mater Dolorosa dont les yeux sont deux
gouttes de sang,

(O quam tristis et afflicta!)

une femme en extase (je le crus,—mais elle s'ennuyait, tout

simplement), qui, du coup, m'intéressa, quand elle eut tourné la tête
vers l'indiscret accoudé, par la froideur éteinte de son regard, l'ironie
vague d'un sourire gelé… Le blond de la chevelure allait au roux
clair, sous le chapeau noir, que fermaient, vers les oreilles perlées
d'améthystes (assez équitablement assorties au violet mourant des
prunelles), des brides épinglées d'une argenterie ancienne.
Je me provoquai à des riens qu'elle répéta…
Quand elle marcha, m'ayant d'un cillement—presque doux—
permis de l'accompagner, la lenteur ondulée des mouvements
décelait un corps développé selon l'esthétique orientale, avec des os
minces, une flexible charpente, la chair tassée,—non sans une
tendance à rompre un peu la proportion.
Nous sortîmes par les Mantegna. De brèves paroles,—et devant
les symboles nous demeurions des instants, perplexes, de nous-
mêmes… Elle voulut bien, excitée par telles énigmes, et d'une voix
pareille à l'indolente procession de son allure, dévoiler un peu de sa
spiritualité: alors, je la vis inavouée et imprécise, appelée, sans
conscience de ses tendances secrètes, par celui qui dirait: «Voici ce
que tu veux.»
En descendant l'escalier vers Ariane, au milieu elle s'arrêta,
remonta quelques degrés, comme saluant d'un adieu la Victoire.
Mais je compris que c'était la moitié d'une ruse, car elle se retourna
très brusquement: elle voulait me voir sans prendre l'air de me
regarder.
«A demain!» dis-je avec une certaine ferveur.
Elle daigne rire un peu, baissant sa voilette, mimant un peut-être
pas trop problématique,—puis s'en va.

Je la retrouve gravissant l'escalier. Nous laissons la robe de

pourpre frissonner aux vents glorieux de l'Archipel, et, d'un accord
muet, nous gagnons la porte,—amis déjà, à ce qu'il paraît.
Entendre les doléances nécessaires: nul homme, plus d'une
seconde, n'a séduit son désir… Elle eut le mari qui échoit
pareillement à chacune, initiateur de tous les à peu près… Il est
mort… C'était un personnage occupé à gravir avec élégance et
décision les bâtons de perroquet du perchoir social…
Je n'écoute pas. Que m'importe ce qu'elle est, fille ou marquise,
ou les deux? Et je songe: voici un compagnon pour le jeu des
sensations élémentaires, une chair malléable aux expériences du
presque et une âme qui s'ennuie assez pour accepter des
navigations vers l'île où les Chimères jouissent d'être chimères…
«—… Riche…»
A ce mot de conversation, j'interromps pour dire:
«—Le seul parfum d'un brin de réséda peut mener très loin, et
toutes les véracités de l'opulence sont dépassées par le simple
froissis d'un morceau de soie ancienne…»
La Seine franchie, nous atteignons les déserts de l'avenue de
Breteuil (où s'est réfugiée sa Solitude), pendant que, apprivoisée,
elle me questionne avec une désespérance qui flatte mon rôle choisi
de consolateur extravagant:
«—De combien un très perspicace esprit peut-il pénétrer en tel
autre?
—De très peu.
—Qu'est-ce donc que l'intimité?
—Le troc des volontés.»
Je réponds cela.—et pourquoi pas?
Elle me congédie. Nous nous séparons, toujours inconnus. C'est
imprudent, mais quand j'y pense, il est trop tard. «Puis, que
m'importe, redis-je encore, le baptême de son essence,—et de moi,
si je te fais agréablement souffrir, quels comptes subsidiaires
exigeras-tu, à moins d'être insensée?»

Elle vient chez moi.

«—Un moine en scapulaire chante des antiphones à la Vierge, qui
pleure de terreur et d'amour…
—Où?
—Là, sur ce parchemin rayé de rouge et ponctué de noir, ne vois-
tu pas?—et cet autre qui, à la flamme d'une lampe de fer (plus
tordue qu'une viourne), amollit la cire-vierge des sceaux de l'Abbaye,
ne le vois-tu pas?—et cet autre qui arrose les flambes sacrés du
jardin des rêves, ne le vois-tu pas?…
—C'est toi!
—Elle commence à comprendre.»

«—Daphné! Vois comme le Laurier leurra l'Apollon nimbé d'or.

Elle eut, la méchante, l'ironie de s'investir d'écorce,—et les boutons
de pourpre de ses seins imbaisés fleurissent entre les cornes d'or de
la Diane jalouse. Nulle chèvre n'a brouté les lichens axillaires de ses
branches nues, et le Faune ivre a délaissé pour la fente des frênes
pervers l'hiatus impollué de son sexe gemmé d'ambres et de
topazes… Apollon t'aurait plu, à toi? Vois comme il est beau, et plus
amoureux qu'un thyrse turgescent, qu'un chaton cambré d'où
pleurent des larmes de pollen…
—Oui, mais ce nimbe?»

«Oh! je t'aimerai! je t'aimerai,—lorsque le Dragon vert aura

perdu ses cornes!»
«—Qui a parlé, chère, est-ce moi, ou toi?
—Oh! moi quand je parle, c'est pour dire des choses à la portée
de tout le monde.»
Pareil à cet Almindor que poudra Eisen, je m'étends un peu sur
l'herbe des coussins et je lui fais compliment de son teint très blanc.
Un coup d'éventail sur les doigts me répond:
«Sommes-nous pas embarqués pour Cythère?
—Nulle brise ne gonfle les voiles de soie mauve et nous n'avons
point de rameurs.
—Je vous l'affirme, je ramerai, charmante Acine,—et vous régirez
le gouvernail.
—Ho! Je suis si peureuse. Une distraction…
—N'en attendez pas de ma part!
—Ho! je ne m'y risquerai!»

Chez elle.
Pendant que me troublent les enchantements de la Sonate que le
hasard de mon doigt lui a désignée, je m'assieds, loin d'elle, sur le
sofa, les yeux fermés.
«—… Ah! Ce sont donc mes propres désirs qui t'ont déchiré?
Voilà le premier trait, le premier cri, le premier sourire, le premier
pleur, le premier doute… Elle fuit! Reviens, reviens! Reviens, la
pourpre de ta robe ensanglante mes yeux, je vois le néant rouge où