Ellen Smallboy: Glimpses of a Cree Woman's Life 9780773565722

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Ellen Smallboy Glimpses of a Cree Woman's Life

Ellen Smallboy's life spanned a period of immense change among the Crees of northern Ontario. Born in about 1853 near James Bay, Smallboy spent most of her life as part of a semi-nomadic group whose existence depended on seasonal hunting. By the time she was an old woman, however, Cree culture was undergoing changes that would dramatically alter it. Regina Flannery draws on her meetings with Smallboy, then aged eighty, to weave together the story of her life. Flannery tells of Smallboy's childhood at Lake Kesagami, the early death of her father and the impact of this tragedy, her marriage to Simon Smallboy and move to French Creek, and her old age at Moose Factory. Through the episodes of Ellen's life, long-vanished aspects of Cree society and Cree culture are captured. A concise history of European contact with James Bay Cree by John Long and a summary of literature on the Cree of Moose Factory and James Bay by Laura Peers place Smallboy's life in historical context. REGINA FLANNERY is emeritus professor of anthropology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

RUPERT'S LAND RECORD SOCIETY SERIES Jennifer S.H. Brown, Editor i The English River Book A North West Company Journal and Account Book of 1786 Harry W. Duckworth 2 A Country So Interesting The Hudson's Bay Company and Two Centuries of Mapping, 1670-1870 Richard I. Ruggles 3 Arctic Artist The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819-1822 Edited by C. Stuart Houston Commentary by I.S. MacLaren 4 Ellen Smallboy Glimpses of a Cree Woman's Life Regina Flannery 5 Voices from Hudson Bay Cree Stories from York Factory Compiled and edited by Flora Beardy and Robert Coutts 6 North of Athabasca Slave Lake and Mackenzie River Documents of the North West Company, 1800-1821 Edited with an Introduction by Lloyd Keith 7 From Barrow to Boothia The Arctic Journal of Chief Factor Peter Warren Dease, 1836-1839 Edited and annotated by William Barr 8 My First Years in the Fur Trade The Journals of 1802-1804 George Nelson Edited by Laura Peers and Theresa Schenck

Ellen Smallboy Glimpses of a Cree Woman's Life REGINA FLANNERY

Historical Context by JOHN s. LONG Literature on the Cree of James Bay Suggestions for Further Reading by LAURA PEERS

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

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1995 ISBN 0-7735-1364-7 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-1369-8 (paper) Bibliotheque Rationale du Quebec Legal deposit fourth quarter 1995 Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. Reprinted in paperback 2002. 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 Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our activities. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Flannery, Regina, 1904Ellen Smallboy: glimpses of a Cree woman's life (Rupert's Land Record Society series; 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1364-7 (bound) ISBN 0-7735-1369-8 (pbk.) i. Smallboy, Ellen, 1853-1941. 2. Cree Indians - James Bay Region (Ont. and Quebec) - Biography. 3. Cree Indians - James Bay Region (Ont. and Quebec) - History 4. Indians of North America - James Bay Region (Ont. and Quebec) - Biography. 5. Indians of North America - James Bay Region (Ont. and Quebec) - History. I. Long, John, 1948- II. Peers, Laura Lynn, 1963III. Title. IV. Series. £99.0885531995 97i.3'i42OO4973O2 095-900656-7 This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in 10.5/13 Palatino.

CONTENTS

Illustrations vi Foreword Laura Peers and John S. Long

ix

Preface xiii

Meeting Ellen 3 Ellen's Early Days at Kesagami 12 Married Life on French Creek 26 Old Age at Moose Factory 47 Perspectives on Ellen's Life 53 Revisiting Moose Factory, 1985 56 Historical Context John Long 65 Literature on the Cree of James Bay Suggestions for Further Reading Laura Peers 77 Afterword Lorraine Le Camp

81

Notes 83 Bibliography 91 Index 99

ILLUSTRATIONS

Ellen Smallboy at her home in Moose Factory, 1932 cover Moose Factory, early 19303 xvi Moose Factory, 1985 xvi Map of Moose Factory region xviii Cradle board model made by Ellen Smallboy for Regina Flannery 6 Ellen Smallboy in rabbit-skin coat, 1933 9 Interior of Hudson's Bay Company store, probably Moose Factory, 1907 16 Family in canoe, Albany River, c. 1905 21 Moose Factory Indian Village, 1907 27 Ellen, with Simon Smallboy, 1933 48 Ruby McLeod at Moose Factory, 1985 58 Regina Flannery and Hannah Loon, 1985 59 FIGURES

i Annual subsistence cycle of the James Bay Cree xiv 2 The families of Ellen and Simon Smallboy 61

To John Montgomery Cooper,

my mentor and friend, who introduced me to the Northern Cree

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FOREWORD

Every once in a long while, those of us who are interested in history come across an object, a document, a photograph, or a book that seems, magically, to bridge the gap between ourselves and a time long ago, to allow us to hear a voice, to see a face, and to know - just a little - a person from past times. This is such a book. In the summers of 1933,1935, and 1937, a young scholar named Regina Flannery interviewed Cree women elders at Moose Factory. One of the women with whom she talked at length was Ellen Smallboy, then in her eighties, who had been born in the 18505. Flannery's objective was to learn as much as possible about the Cree way of life in the James Bay area during the latter half of the nineteenth century - from the woman's point of view. As Flannery notes in the Preface, she had not intended to record life histories, but Ellen's knowledge and the examples she used from her own life were so rich that they suggested the present volume. This book, then, is one of those extraordinary bridges: it presents the life of a woman born in the mid-nineteenth century as she told it to someone who might learn from it. Flannery's reflections on Ellen's words, and her style of retelling Ellen's life, have created a work whose tone is of warmth and immediacy. We sense and hear both women's voices in this

narrative, speaking to each other and to the reader; it is like a conversation across generations. This account is also extraordinary because it shows the human, personal, intimate side of the lives of Ellen and her family, and gives us a sense of how one woman coped with the challenges of a rich and rigorous way of life during a time of rapid change for the Cree. It manages to do so while placing Ellen's life in the broader context of Cree history and culture. The narrative thus gives a personal, individual side to ethnography, to official history, and to other public, mainstream representations of Cree life such as museum collections. Consider, for instance, one juncture of perspectives woven into this story. In 1854 a young Anglican missionary named John Horden sent some samples of Indian handiwork home to England - a cap, a pair of leggings, garters, a breast ornament, a knife case, a belt for a powder horn, a shot pouch, and a fire bag - from Rupert House (Waskaganish), on the southeast corner of James Bay in present-day Quebec. Most of these items, he wrote, were no longer being used on the west side of the Bay at Moose Factory "where the Indians dress as near as they can in the European Style."1 Many Cree women there had discontinued making the distinctive James Bay beaded hoods. A year before he sent his collection to England, Horden baptized Eleanor, the daughter of a Cree couple trading at Moose Factory, Thomas Richard Taniskawapan (or Aniskowap) and his wife Susan.2 Eighty years later Eleanor, then known as Ellen Smallboy, described a woman's beaded cap, such as Horden might have collected, to Regina Flannery (Oberholtzer 1991). Many threads, many eras, many people are brought together in this story. As this unique "conversation" has progressed, many people have joined in. Ellen told her story to Regina Flannery, who, working with her associate Mary Elizabeth Chambers, wove it together from her notes and from decades of reflec-

x • Foreword

tion on Ellen's words and life. Jennifer S.H. Brown, John S. Long, and Laura Peers, all scholars of the histories and ways of life of subarctic peoples, have commented on the original manuscript. For several years now the manuscript has moved back and forth among us, our comments in the margins furthering our conversation. Other voices have joined in as well: members of the family of Ellen and Simon Smallboy, who gave genealogical information; Toby Morantz and Richard Preston, who brought their knowledge of Cree history and culture to the conversation and encouraged the publication of Ellen's story; Cath Oberholtzer, who connected the Reverend Mr. Horden's museum collection with the hood Ellen described to Regina; and C. Douglas Ellis, whose knowledge of Moose Cree language revealed yet further dimensions to this complex and rewarding conversation. Ruby McLeod's voice has been especially important throughout this discussion, as translator and cultural facilitator between Regina and Ellen, and in 1985, when Regina returned to Moose Factory, Ruby provided valuable commentary on changes since the 19305. All of us have found this work so rewarding in part because of its intimate portrayal of a strong, capable woman who might otherwise seem far removed from us in time. As those who have worked on Native history know, reconstructing Native lives from the tiny snippets found in non-Native documents is arduous work, requiring enormous background knowledge to sketch in missing information; it is rather like trying to restore a beaded pattern, and having to reconstruct the pattern as well as to add the missing beads. In this work, Ellen Smallboy and Regina Flannery have provided us with a richly detailed image of a woman's life from an era when such reconstruction might only sketch the outlines of the pattern, leaving out the intricacies of the beadwork. Studies of Cree women's lives of comparable richness and depth have until now only been achieved with women the age of Ellen's

Foreword • xi

children or grandchildren (examples are given in the section on Further Reading). It is extraordinary indeed to be able to create such a full and intimate portrait of a woman born in the 18505. Ellen saw many changes in the James Bay region between her childhood in the 18508 and her death in 1941. By the time that Regina Flannery began to interview her, the Moose River basin was being dammed and the signing of Treaty No. 9 had disrupted the Indians' management of the land, opening up northern Ontario to overharvesting (see Cummins 1991). Change around James Bay has been far more rapid since her death. Her life history offers important glimpses into the lives of Cree women and their families in an era now inaccessible to present-day students of subarctic Canada. It also offers perspectives of interest to current research on cultural change and persistence among the Cree of James Bay and northeastern Ontario. Speaking of her married life on French Creek, Ellen Smallboy told Flannery: "That is where we got our living." On the evening of 4 September 1991, later generations of Moose Cree people delivered the same message to Ontario's visiting Environmental Assessment Board. Since then, Ontario and Canada have recognized the First (Nations' inherent right to selfgovernment. Ontario Hydro has committed itself to a coplanning process in any future hydroelectric developments that affect First Nations, and has entered into negotiations with First Nations in the Moose River basin to resolve past grievances. At this crucial period, when the James Bay Cree are struggling to regain control over their lives and the land's resources, and are reviving many aspects of their culture as a means of survival, Ellen Smallboy still has much to teach us. Laura Peers John S. Long 1995

xii • Foreword

PREFACE

The story that follows pieces together the life of Ellen Smallboy, a Cree woman born about 1853 and raised at Kesagami Lake in what is now northern Ontario. In the 19305, she was living with her husband at Moose Factory, a community on an island near the mouth of the Moose River at the southern tip of James Bay, Ontario, near the small settlement of Moosonee. I arrived in Moose Factory on i August 1933 to begin ethnographic studies of the traditional Cree way of life, with the intent of interviewing older women who could relate their experiences in the latter half of the nineteenth century and those of their elders of still earlier times. I had not intended to record life histories of the women I interviewed, but by the end of nearly three summers of conversations, Ellen had offered a wealth of personal details from her own life - usually as a way of illustrating the "old ways." In the 19305 the Cree in most areas surrounding James Bay were still following a seasonal round of subsistence activities, spending most of the year in the bush and coming to the trading posts for some weeks in summer. (For the general pattern of the annual cycle, see figure i.) Like other anthropologists, such as Frank G. Speck, Alanson Skinner, and A. Irving Hallowell, John M. Cooper, to whom this book is dedicated, had begun studies of the traditional cultures of the

Figure i Annual subsistence cycle of the James Bay Cree

Northern Algonquians in eastern Canada in the 19205 and, when he was at Moose Factory in the summer of 1932, he arranged for me to go there the following year. The i86-mile spur of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) from Cochrane to Moosonee had just been completed and the train, which then ran only once a week, offered a more convenient mode of transportation than a canoe trip, such as Cooper had made down the Albany River into the Bay in 1932. The Moose Factory post of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) was on an island, which could be reached by canoe from the settlement at Moosonee at the end of the railway. The once-flourishing post had been greatly reduced in operations and personnel, following the completion of the railway. Accommodations were available for me at the HBC staff house, which was in easy walking distance of the encampment of the Cree, most of whom would be going off trapping in the fall. At that time few Cree spoke English and I was fortunate to obtain the services of Rubina Ann (Ruby) McLeod as interpreter. Ruby's father was George Carey, an HBC employee of English origin, and her mother was Margaret Linklater, a woman of Orkney-Cree1 ancestry. Ruby married Thomas Hamilton McLeod, the son of William McLeod and Ellen (nee Mark). William McLeod had acted as interpreter for Cooper, and both he and Ruby were completely bilingual. I am extremely grateful to Ellen Smallboy and Ruby McLeod for their patience and good humor during the many hours they spent in instructing me in "the old way of life," and to Lorraine Le Camp for her gracious commentary that gives a perspective of a Cree woman of the next generation after Ruby. The publication of this book would not have been possible without the help of a number of people, including those who read the manuscript and offered editorial suggestions. I extend my thanks to Mary McDougall Maude for her able and meticulous editing and to Paul Hackett and Linda

Preface • xv

Moose Factory, 1985 Photograph courtesy Regina Flannery

Smith for preparing the map and figures, respectively. C. Douglas Ellis was kind enough to supply modern phonemic transcriptions and syllables for the Cree words. I want to thank John Long for providing data which helped establish a more precise chronology than was available from Ellen's reminiscences and for elaborating the historical context in his fine contribution to this volume. To Laura Peers, I express my appreciation for her excellent compilation of materials for further reading on the Cree of James Bay and for carrying out the many time-consuming tasks involved in coordinating the work of the various contributors. I am also grateful to her for taking on the responsibility for arranging for the drawings and photographs and for acting as liaison with McGillQueen's University Press. I am deeply indebted to Mary Elizabeth Chambers for her insights and collaboration throughout every phase of the writing of this book. Finally, very special thanks are due to Jennifer S.H. Brown, editor of the Rupert's Land Record Society Series. She has honored us by publishing our manuscript as number four of that series.

Preface • xvii

Map of Moose Factory region

Ellen Smallboy Glimpses of a Cree Woman's Life

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MEETING ELLEN

The morning after my arrival at Moose Factory, Ruby took me to visit Ellen Smallboy, then a woman of eighty years of age. Her Cree name was Beciguc and her nickname was Lulukecin, "maybe because I was fat," she said.1 She could hobble about with a cane, but was no longer able to travel to winter camp, and was now living year-round in one of the log cabins scattered near the HBC complex with Simon,2 her husband of fifty-eight years, and his widowed sister, Christiana, both of whom were still able-bodied. John M. Cooper had interviewed Simon at some length and had met Ellen the previous summer. They were aware of my interest in the old ways of life, and Ellen was willing to work with me. It was agreed that Ruby and I would come to her home from about nine o'clock to noon and again from two o'clock to five o'clock each day, leaving the interval for the main meal of the day. Ruby had a son, aged sixteen, and three daughters, the youngest of whom was an infant. During Ruby's absences her oldest daughter Alice looked after the baby, Nellie, and kept her eye on the middle daughter, Annie. It was also agreed that I would compensate the women for their time. During his fieldwork in

Moose Factory, John Cooper had paid informants as well as interpreters in cash at the going hourly rate which the HBC paid in credit for interpreters, and I compensated the women at the same rate. Currency, a scarce commodity in the community, was most welcome, since it offered the possibility of ordering items from the T. Eaton Co. department store catalogue more cheaply than purchasing them from the HBC store at Moose Factory. I worked every day except Sunday, but not always with Ellen, though I spent the majority of my time with her. Sometimes it was convenient for Ellen to work only in the morning, and so Ruby and I would have sessions with other women from Moose Factory, such as Ellen Sabatim or Bab Wesley and her elderly mother, who had spent most of their lives on the west coast of James Bay. I also occasionally visited Jane Morrison, the daughter of William Corston, the Orcadian postmaster at Eastmain, and Margaret McKay, who was of mixed ancestry. Jane spoke fluent English, and so when she and I met, Ruby could have this time off to attend to her own affairs. Ellen proved to be an excellent respondent. She was a lively, outgoing person with a splendid memory. Ruby, then in her thirties, had known Ellen all her life and admired her: "a real eenjun woman," as she phrased it. Ellen was obviously comfortable with Ruby and, fortunately for me, I reminded her of her recently deceased only daughter, Maria, of whom she was very fond. There were no tape recorders in those days, so I took all my notes in shorthand, most of which I transcribed after I returned home from Moose Factory. This method of notetaking did not surprise them - though they had not seen it before - since they were familiar with the Cree syllabary, some of the characters of which were not unlike those

4 • Ellen Smallboy

used in Gregg shorthand. They were more interested in the fact that I tried to take Cree words and phrases in phonetic transcription and were willing to confirm or correct me when I read them back, having many a good laugh at my mistakes. I started by asking the Cree words for things. Ellen would give each word and then expand upon it according to her own association of ideas. For instance, at our very first session I asked the word for blueberries. She gave the name, and then told how nowadays her son and his family would go for a week in mid-August to pick them about thirty-five miles up French Creek (a tributary of North French River) on their hunting grounds, and would bring them back to sell. But, she told me, in the old days she dried them in cakes for winter use. After telling me the recipe for blueberry cakes, she gave the names of other berries, the environments in which they could be found, and the time when they were ripe. This reminded her to give the Cree names for the months, the seasons, and several constellations. Ellen had been making a fish net and she told me the name of the needle and gauge and described the netting technique she had learned as a young girl. She then told of an incident in her girlhood when she almost drowned. (Although she did not connect the experience specifically with setting nets, I wondered, but did not ask, if this was the connection in her mind.) In relating that experience she mentioned that all she was wearing was a dress, and we finished the day with names and descriptions of the clothing and coiffure worn in former times. As our first weeks continued with discussions of such activities as fishing and net-making and birchbark basketry, Ellen used to tease me about my ignorance of the

Meeting Ellen . 5

Cradle board model made by Ellen Smallboy for Regina Flannery

most basic subsistence techniques. She would say, "Here you are - a grown woman - and you don't know how to set a rabbit snare which a girl of six can do, or net a snowshoe which my daughter had mastered by the time she was fifteen!" Ellen seemed to enjoy explaining how things were done in the old days. She often thought ahead about what she would tell me and constructed little models, for example, a fish trap and dipping net, or cradle board with a wooden infant in a moss bag laced on, to clarify for me the descriptions she would give the next time we met. Occasionally, she would have full-scale specimens ready. Oi. one occasion we talked about rabbit-skin weaving. The next morning, when she saw Ruby and me coming, Ellen appeared outside her doorway dressed in her rabbit-skin winter coat, to the amusement of a couple of passersby. One of them joked with her: "What are you doing? Do you want to bring the north wind in summertime?" As time went on, Ellen volunteered more and more information on other aspects of culture, and talked increasingly of her own experiences and those of others. This was especially true when I returned to Moose Factory in 1935. Then, as well as in 1937, we took up our relationship as though no time had intervened since our last meeting. Ellen was not at all curious about life outside James Bay, and we started in right away on the old way of life. I continued my method of introducing a topic and letting her proceed with as few interruptions as possible. In this way she volunteered information on subjects about which I would never have asked. Ruby, too, sometimes followed up a point Ellen had made by referring to her own experience or observations, which sometimes led Ellen to comment on the contrasts she saw between the customs of the present and the past.

Meeting Ellen • 7

Ellen's sister-in-law, Christiana, would be working about the house and would come in and out. She was much more reserved than Ellen but sometimes she would sit with us and join in our sessions. One time she described in minute detail the differences between the weaving of rabbit-skin coats and blankets. Once in a while Ellen's sister Harriet or some other woman would drop in. On these occasions, we would pause long enough to have a cigarette. The old ladies usually smoked a pipe but enjoyed the change. Ruby did not smoke, but always took a cigarette when offered, to save for her husband. If Simon happened to be around, he shared in the smoke and might offer a dry comment or two on something Ellen was telling me. Also among the visitors were Ellen's two daughters-in-law, each of whom on different occasions volunteered a story she had heard from her elders about the old days. Ellen was the second of four daughters of Aniskowap, a Kesagami Indian whose hunting territory bordered on Lake Kesagami, about seventy-five kilometres southeast of Moose Factory. Her mother was an Abitibi woman who was related to Old Nocan, a Kesagami hunter. The Moose Factory band in the nineteenth century included speakers of two different dialects of Cree, those of Moose Factory and Kesagami. The Cree whose hunting grounds were around Moose Factory and extended west to the territory of the Fort Albany band, spoke the Moose Factory or "1dialect." Those around Lake Kesagami and north to Hannah Bay spoke the "r-dialect." All of them traded, for the most part, at Moose Factory. They came there for some weeks in summer, but lived the rest of the year in the bush. Ellen spent the first twenty-two years of her life among the "r-dialect" Kesagami people. When she married

8 • Ellen Smallboy

Ellen Smallboy showing off her woven rabbit-skin coat to the amusement of passersby, 1933 Photograph by Regina Flannery

Simon Smallboy, a Moose Factory Cree, she joined him on his father's hunting grounds, which extended about eighty miles up French Creek from near its mouth. (She was speaking the "1-dialect" when I met her.) After her marriage, Ellen's life centred on the Smallboys' hunting territory where Simon hunted with his father, who had in turn hunted with his father in the same locale. She and Simon occasionally visited her older sister, Charlotte, and other friends in the Kesagami Lake region. Many members of both groups attended the Anglican church services when at Moose Factory in summer. Ellen stated that her older sister Charlotte had been christened by the first missionary with permanent headquarters at Moose Factory, Mr George Barnley, a Methodist who served there from 1840 to 1847. Following the establishment of the Anglican mission in 1851, Ellen (in 1853) and her other three sisters were baptized in that denomination. Simon had also been baptized in the Anglican Church in 1854, and both he and Ellen professed to be practising believers. Nevertheless, Ellen did not hesitate to refer to traditional rites and practices she had observed in her youth at Kesagami. When reminiscing along these lines on one occasion, she commented, "Kesagami was more like Rupert House" (on the east coast of James Bay). The implied contrast was with Moose Factory where, during her adult life there, the rituals she remembered from Kesagami were not in evidence.3 When she spoke about them she made sure Simon could not overhear her, as he disapproved of talk of such matters. Sometimes, if he was in the other room, she bent over and whispered to Ruby who would then translate for me in a low voice, both of them seeming to enjoy the conspiracy. Ruby and Ellen worked together beautifully. Ellen would say a few sentences, Ruby would translate, and Ellen

10 • Ellen Smallboy

would continue where she had left off. It was interesting to me that in her translation Ruby conveyed the emotional tone of Ellen's recital. In narrating her own experiences in the bush, for example, Ellen might be quite solemn as she told of some life-threatening situation, then brighten as things seemed to improve, and conclude laughing at a final happy resolution. Then the two would break into laughter as Ellen said, "Wasn't I silly to have been so frightened?" As far as I know, this was the first time either of them had engaged in extended sessions such as ours, although undoubtedly Ruby had occasionally translated for other women on business with the HBC, with missionary personnel, or with Dr Hamilton the Indian agent.

Meeting Ellen • 11

ELLEN'S EARLY DAYS AT KESAGAMI

The year her father died (1868), when Ellen was in her mid-teens, marked a turning point in her life. Her father had become ill after the several families who gathered at Lake Kesagami for the fall fishing had all dispersed to winter quarters. Even her older sister Charlotte and Charlotte's husband Patoosh (who would normally have been with them) had joined another hunting group for the winter. Ellen and her other two sisters and their parents were left alone. Her father decided that they must get to a lake within his hunting territory where they could spend the winter. He was very weak and Ellen's younger sister Harriet, carrying a heavy pack, had to go ahead to break trail and cut poles for the mikiwam (rp-41-; a conical tent), usually a man's job. Harriet was about ten years old. Ellen's mother had to support her husband while Ellen looked after her three-year-old sister and pulled the toboggan piled with equipment, the tent covering, and the supply of dried fish. Progess was slow as they followed the trail, stopping whenever her father "gave out," but they made it to camp. There they spent the winter "without a single person in sight."

Since her father was unable to hunt, Ellen and Harriet shared responsibility with their mother for providing subsistence. Fortunately, starting at an early age, they had been well trained in the tasks that accompanied a woman's role. They could set snares, make and set wooden traps, sew and cook, and make and use fish nets. They had acquired other skills as well, such as fashioning birchbark containers and various kinds of implements. The girls were very competent at setting nets in open water, but setting them under ice was another matter. Their father had to be placed on a toboggan and drawn out on the lake so he could direct them. The arduous procedure included digging four holes at intervals in the thick ice, under which the net would be set. Finally, they had four nets set which they tended in turn. Thus they were able to survive the winter. Ellen said that she was often discouraged and frightened that winter when her father was so ill, but he would tell her: "Don't give up. Keep on going." She was relieved when her sister and brother-in-law finally arrived with their family in the spring when the geese were flying and the ice broke up. Her father died soon after, and they buried him in the deep clay of a small island in Kesagami Lake, leaving his possessions at the grave site. Earlier, Ellen's father had arranged the marriage of his oldest daughter Charlotte to his good friend, Patoosh, and had invited Patoosh to join him on his hunting grounds, since he had no sons to help him. Thus, after her father's death, Patoosh "looked after" the widow and her daughters. But they had their separate household and of necessity had to provide for themselves as much as possible. All the survival skills Ellen had acquired were put to good use, but life was harder, she said, than when her father was alive and well.

Ellen's Early Days at Kesagami • 13

Among Ellen's earliest memories was one of going with her mother to the rabbit snares. By the time she was five or six years old she was able to go alone to set snares for herself. Much of her knowledge of women's tasks was acquired through play in which she tried to imitate what she saw her mother or other adults doing. For instance, she used a piece from an old fish net to catch small fish which she then cooked over her fire in front of the little mikiwam she had put up using three sticks as the foundation. Or sometimes her mother would give her bits of meat or dough to cook and eat. Later on she was trained by her mother to make fish nets, to sew moccasins, and perform other tasks. Other little girls might play with a stick of wood for a baby, but Ellen had pets she was expected to feed and care for. At one time, she had a little red fox which was very like a dog and would come to her when she called. Another time it was an otter - she was so fond of it that she "cried and cried" when it died. She enjoyed caring for her little baby brother, especially in winter when she could pull him around as he lay in his box on a small toboggan. Again, she was very sad when he died during a whooping cough epidemic in 1858, at the age of three. Ellen spoke, too, of simple pleasures, such as how good it felt in summer to go barefoot and wade on the sandy bottom of a lake shore, or to play games with her sisters. One of the games she referred to as the "memory game" involved placing as many as fifteen ordinary objects, such as a bit of rabbit fur, a bit of moss, a piece of string, and the like, in split sticks about eight inches high stuck in the ground in a row. One looked at these objects for a short time and then closed one's eyes and tried to recall the objects in sequence from one end to the other. Ellen was

14 • Ellen Smallboy

often the winner, she said, by being able to recite the complete list. Her father had been a proficient hunter and had provided well for his family. He had a genial disposition, and his family and that of a good friend often spent the winter together on the hunting territory of one or the other, not of necessity but because they enjoyed each other's company. Ellen was sociable like her father, and recalled with pleasure the times when several winter hunting groups gathered in late winter or early spring for a feast, to which each hunter contributed. Some brought caribou meat, others bear grease, and her father always brought large quantities of namestek (o_l K U b ; dried goose meat). In spring, they might stay at a place where the fishing was good for as long as a month or six weeks. Then everyone joined in building a large fish trap, and all shared equally in the catch. For that period they might subsist entirely on fish. Ellen remarked, "If some family had come poor and starving, they soon got fat again. You can't live on rabbit alone or you would starve, but to live on fish alone you can be healthy." On one occasion, when Ellen was perhaps seven or eight, her father caught several large fish and sent her to trade them at the post. It was her first experience in trading, and when the trader gave her only a few items, she recalled, "I thought this was a very little bit for these nice fish." She spoke up, asking, "Is this all we get for these fish?" The trader explained that these items were her bonus (for coming in with country provisions), and then gave her a fair amount of goods in exchange. When she returned home and recounted the story, her father expressed his pleasure that she had had the courage to speak up.

Ellen's Early Days at Kesagami • 15

Interior of Hudson's Bay Company store, probably Moose Factory, with Cree and store manager, 1907 Archives of Ontario 52479

Ellen's comments indicate that her father offered her continued encouragement, expressing pride in her accomplishments; "he told me only good things," she said. Her mother, in contrast, was short-tempered and tended to "cuss her out" if she made mistakes while being trained. Nevertheless, Ellen respected and admired her mother, and said to me, "She was a good worker and always helped my father a lot." Ellen was grateful to her mother, too, for taking her part when she got in trouble with her sister Charlotte after her father died. As an example, she related the following incident: One morning my sister had a big pot of stew. I was very hungry and went over to my sister's tent. They were all eating as much as they wanted but didn't give me any. When they went off to their traps I walked back to our tent. I said to myself: "Why would they think I wouldn't touch it when I am so hungry?" So I went back and took some of the stew but my sister had come back for something and heard the clatter of the lid as I put it on the pot. She was very mad and said, "You are stealing!" But just then my mother came in. She told my sister: "Never mind. Let her eat it." My sister couldn't say anything even when my mother gave me another helping because she [Ellen's mother] had brought in a lot of fish she had just taken from her own net and was bringing them to share with my sister's family. Ellen also recalled times of near-starvation when no game at all could be found and the group was forced to gather lichens to boil and eat. She remarked that this staved off intense hunger for a while, as did caribou dung gathered from the snow and boiled. The availability of

Ellen's Early Days at Kesagami • 17

food was unpredictable throughout the area. Semi-starvation was not uncommon and death from starvation was all too frequent. Fortunately, Ellen had lost none of her relatives that way, but she knew of others who had. One account she gave concerned a family she knew well who were on their hunting territory in winter. The father and several of the children died of starvation; the mother and the youngest child were only able to survive by eating the flesh of the deceased. The Cree, however, were seldom forced to take such extreme measures.4 One of the bright spots at this stage in Ellen's life was the somewhat unusual companionship that developed between her and John Nickoshie, her brother-in-law's son by a previous marriage. She and the boy were about the same age and enjoyed each other's company. Sometimes when they were sent on an errand, such as to visit rabbit snares, they stayed away all day playing, much to her sister's displeasure. Ellen was evidently something of a tomboy and occasionally their romping turned into a wrestling match, in which Ellen might or might not be the victor. She remarked, "Wasn't I a silly thing when I was young? I had always started it by teasing him!" Their companionship continued off and on until Ellen married and was the basis for gossip. "People said there must be 'something going on between us' but there was nothing at all like that," Ellen declared. "We were brought up together and we were just like brother and sister. He never said anything out of the way to me. It is those who live that life that think evil of others." Ellen had a good ear for songs, and sang some for me that she remembered from her young days at Kesagami. One she had heard at a "Shaking Tent" ritual5 was the song sung by M^mekweSiw (~I~MJ"; a spirit-helper who is

18 • Ellen Smallboy

said to dwell in a stone tent).6 The tent shook as he entered and identified himself, singing: In the rock, my mikiwam (repeated 3 times) Touching on the sky, my mikiwam (repeated 3 times) At most Shaking Tent performances, men in the audience could ask the spirits who entered the tent what success they might have in hunting. A spirit then would go out and "look around" and return with an answer. Apparently, however, such performances could also provide an indirect forum for the expression of group disapproval, since Cree individuals themselves tended to avoid direct criticism of those outside the immediate family group. Ellen mentioned an instance when one of the shaman's spirit-helpers refused to answer the inquiries of one man, being displeased with the questioner because he had fathered a child by his stepdaughter (a fact known to all in the audience). Instead of answering about hunting, the spirit sang: I am not going to look around for you, This is what you are doing when you are sleeping with her, You are very fond of people. After translating the song, Ruby explained that the spirit was angry at the man, who put his face to the ground in shame, but that the spirit recognized that the man was indeed fond of the baby. Ellen also sang several men's hunting songs - for caribou, bear, and beaver - which ordinarily were sung at feasts by the owners of the songs. Such songs were never

Ellen's Early Days at Kesagami • 19

repeated by others during a man's active hunting life, but could be sung when the owner was elderly and retired from hunting, or after his death. Another kind of song was a paddling song, and she sang one with great enthusiasm. Ellen spoke of the time when people of various groups she mentioned among others the Mattagami, the Abitibi, and the Obidjuan (Atikamek, formerly known as Tete de Boule) - came to Moose Factory in summer. When a group departed there would be several big bark canoes, with up to eight people paddling in each, all keeping time to the rhythm of the song. In the recitation of an atalohkan ("b°-; legend), songs were sometimes part of the narrative. Ellen sang two such songs, one of Sinkipis (saPA*; a small duck) and the other of Otter, though she did not tell the tales in which they were sung because she could not recall the full text. Finally, she sang the song of an individual she had known. He apparently didn't like the nickname he had received and let it be known through his song: That is not my name that you are calling me. My name is Kasitasaget and this is the name they gave me, Mohkotakanisis ("little crooked knife"). He was always playing with a crooked knife, Ellen explained, but he didn't like to be called that nickname, which was the name of a bird.7 Ellen also mentioned that she had once seen a man "looking in water [scrying] to see what was happening far away" and she was familiar with scapulimancy ("a man would hold the shoulder blade of a deer [caribou] to the fire and how it was burned showed where the hunting

20 • Ellen Smallboy

Joe Carpenter and family in canoe, Albany River, c. 1905 National Archives of Canada PA 59622

was"). She also spoke of the "twitching" omen. When she felt a twitching under her eye, it was a sign that someone was approaching; a twitching in her hand meant that she would soon be working with meat. As Ellen advanced in her teens, she became more independent and carried a gun, taking a greater role in helping to provision the family. Although Ellen spoke of "hunting," this meant shooting whatever game she might come upon by chance, rather than tracking caribou or stalking other large game as a male hunter would do. She also became adept at trapping fur-bearing animals and referred to this as hunting also.8 She traded the pelts and foodstuffs she had gathered at the post, as women frequently did. Ellen and Harriet often went off for a week or more at a time, leaving their mother in camp, and she relished the telling of one of those trips, in this instance along the shore of James Bay: One time in the fall Harriet and I had gathered a hundred pound sack of cranberries to trade for snaring twine and gun powder. We had started off to the post at Hannah Bay but changed our minds and decided to go to Moose Factory. The tide was late and we had to paddle in the dark. We were going along and all of a sudden we saw a big ManicoS (LO- J-), a really big thing swimming in the water. They eat people and no one ever went close to one to see what kind of thing they were!9 So we backed the canoe in order to go around this thing but we were awfully frightened and paddled the canoe on shore. We heard this thing make an awful splash in the water. We ran up into the woods and sat down. But then we thought we saw something walking so we ran

22 . Ellen Smallboy

further in the woods. We had taken only the gun with us from the canoe. We sat deep in the woods and when daylight came we were still sitting like that. Then we were not sure we could find the canoe again, but when we came out of the woods, there it was where we had tied it up. We had not known it but people were camped close to where we were. Had it been moonlight we would have seen them but it was dark. So these people said they had seen two Monicas on the rocks. So we started off in our canoe again and couldn't get to Moose Factory because it was blowing too hard. We had thought we wouldn't sleep on that side where we were but we were so tired we slept there anyway and nothing bothered us. Next day it was calm and we arrived at where Moosonee is now. We went to the Post and arranged to trade our cranberries but when we got back to the canoe we found half of the berries were gone! People living there had taken them, among them being one old woman who filled her water-pail with berries instead of water and that woman was Ruby McLeod's great-grandmother!10 We all, including Ruby, had a good laugh at the conclusion of this account of what had at the time been a very frightening event for Ellen and Harriet. This reminded Ellen of other times in her life when she had experienced great fright off by herself or with her sister or friends, especially incidents in which she nearly drowned. Ellen was obviously competent to handle everyday problems as they arose,11 but a situation such as crossing open water was always potentially dangerous, particularly since the Cree did not learn to swim. One of the most terrifying incidents occurred when she and an old woman and her three grand-

Ellen's Early Days at Kesagami • 23

children were caught in a storm crossing the mouth of the Harricanaw River at Hannah Bay. It was a nice, sunny day when we started. We had been paddling our canoe a long time when we heard the sound of thunder in the north. I said, "I am sure a thunder storm is coming and there will be a north wind." "Never mind," the old woman said, "keep on paddling." We couldn't turn back because we had already come so far. Then it got worse and worse. The thunder was getting louder and making an awful noise. At last I said, "This is the end of us." We never thought we were going to get through the storm. So we put the canoe side on to the wind in order to go with the wind. "We will go ahead until we swamp." It was very wild and we thought we would swamp any minute. We had a big tub of fish and had to throw that over because it was so heavy. We paddled along for quite a while when a big swell came and went right into the canoe. We had to throw everything out, berries and everything else, even the dog. The dog was crying out hard because he knew he couldn't swim to shore. I looked behind sometimes and saw him coming along behind scratching at the back of the canoe to get in. Finally, we were praying, sure we were going to drown. About three minutes later we fancied we saw just like a path on the water the way we had to go and I wasn't afraid when I saw that path on the water. Up to then we had been sad, especially on account of the dog but now we brightened up a little. We paddled a long time before we could touch bottom with the paddles. So we came to the place where we could get out and pull

24 • Ellen Smallboy

the canoe in, dragging it as we waded a long distance to the shore. All at once I saw the dog running along the shore. I called out, "That is the dog I threw in the water!" I had never expected to see him again. So I fell down and just wanted to sleep, but every time I fell asleep I would jump because I fancied I saw a storm coming up. Ellen recalled another occasion when she almost drowned. She was then about fifteen years old. I was in a canoe with a young man and the canoe turned over in a swift current. The man was drowned trying to save me. Nobody knew how to swim in those days. I kept up [afloat] for about a mile and it seemed as if it was very dark. I washed up on a little dry earth on the shore. I had nothing on but my dress. After I got home I started menstruating. She then went on to explain that menarche occurred "at a later age in the past than it does at present" (that is, in the 19305). Often a girl would be fifteen or sixteen years of age, as she herself was, before experiencing her first menses. "They tell a girl 'your grandmother has come to you/ or 'the fox has bitten you/ " Although she spoke of the isolation of girls at Mattagami during menarche, apparently this was no longer practised at Kesagami or Moose Factory in her youth.12 She was, however, aware of precautions a woman should take, such as not stepping over a man's outstretched legs in the mikiwam lest it bring bad luck to his hunting.

Ellen's Early Days at Kesagami • 25

MARRIED LIFE ON FRENCH CREEK

Ellen married in 1875, when she was twenty-two years old, about seven years after her father died. One afternoon she started telling me about her marriage and went on to discuss those of her sisters and her sister-in-law. When I was young I had the chance to marry two or three men, but I picked the one [Simon] who was a good hunter. Lots of girls were after him, like my sister Harriet, but he wouldn't have them. Harriet didn't want me to marry him when he asked me, but I said: "You are not going to stop me no matter how hard you try." Because when times were hard I was driven by my sister Charlotte and her husband to spend the winter with different people, whoever would look after me, that is why I thought nobody had a right to interfere.13 Just before I married, I killed four otters and ten martens, and when I came in with the fur it was worth $50. Then I went back to my traps and got a couple of beaver. That is why I could get a good husband, because he knew I could help him.14 Harriet, my younger sister, was a good hunter, too, and when she brought furs from Kesagami for our

"Moose Factory Indian Village," 1907, showing ntikiw&ms, drying racks, rabbit-skin blanket hanging on pole (centre), and the spire of the old Anglican Church Archives of Ontario $2509

mother in to the Post at Moose Factory, they treated her just like a man, giving her a pipe of tobacco and a feed. Later on she married [in 1886] the widower of our youngest sister, Rachael. Rachael had married Stephen Sack and she had three daughters by him but she died [iniSS^.1? My oldest sister, Charlotte, didn't have the pick of her husband like I did. Before he died, our father had arranged for her to marry Patoosh. He was a Kesagami man. My father thought a lot of him. My sister was very young and didn't have much sense. She didn't want him at all, but he was a good hunter and was good to her, so at last she liked him. When he was an old man, my sister had to do everything. He would try to trap, but I was with them one time when he let an animal escape, and I pitied him when my sister cussed at him.17 Shortly after I married my old man and was living at his father's hunting ground on French Creek near Moose Factory, Patoosh's son [John Nickoshie], with whom I had grown up, came and asked for Christiana [Simon's sister]. She was about five years younger than me. Christiana had been raised by her father's mother and was a good worker. Another man had also wanted Christiana but her father told her, "That one is not strong. You better have the other one. He will take care of you. But it is up to you." She thought about it awhile and decided her father knew best. She married Patoosh's son one day and then left for Kesagami the next day. Christiana was very sorry to leave her father because she was the only one who looked after him and sewed for him. A man looks for a wife who can make everything. Look at Christiana - she is a good hand at every-

28 . Ellen Smallboy

thing. Her husband had to leave her to go to Charlton Island [for the HBC] and while he was gone she supported herself very well. She netted snowshoes, made moccasins and fish nets, dressed skins. She was a good silkworker [embroiderer], too, as well as good at fishing and snaring. People would give her food in kind for her products. The blacksmith's wife used to get her to silkwork the corners of her quilts. If a woman is lazy and doesn't know how to do things she won't stay married long and will have a very poor life. Ellen indicated that a woman who was recognized as a good worker would be sought after, regardless of her age. Christiana, for instance, was quite old when she was widowed, and she had several offers of marriage, all of which she declined. Ellen noted that a widow, even a young one, "is her own boss" and could therefore decide for herself whether or not she wished to remarry. Then Ellen recalled an incident she witnessed long after she herself was married. It involved an older unmarried sister who didn't want her younger sister to marry. One time we went off from the post in the fall with another family to a big lake. We went in one direction and the other family went another way. There was a man who wanted very much to have the younger of two sisters in that other family. He asked the father for her and he agreed, but said, "ask her mother." He didn't have to ask the girl, and the mother was willing. The girl didn't want to marry that man but at last agreed to do so. I had set up camp some distance from the other family and all at once the two sisters came running. We

Married Life on French Creek • 29

asked them, "What is the matter with you?" They said, "A man is after us." About two hours later the girls' brother came to our camp. He was mad that the girls had run away. The man who wanted the younger one had brought a blanket and lots of stuff to give to the girl. So the brother jumped at the younger sister. The elder got into the fight to take up for the younger but she got a beating, too. At last both girls were crying and the brother took all their things and went off. So the girls had to go back to their camp because they didn't have any tools to work with - he had even taken their axe. It was just the older sister who was spoiled [jealous]. The younger girl had already accepted when her sister told her they should run away. When Ellen married Simon and went to live with him on his father's hunting grounds, Simon's father was an active hunter. He was a widower who had not remarried after Simon's mother died, and his elderly mother, Charlotte [nee Lisk], was living with him. She had married Simon's grandfather, Curleyhead, one of five brothers, or probably half-brothers, since their father had had two wives simultaneously. Ellen said that "in the old days" some men had more than one wife; her own grandfather had three, two sisters, and a third not related to the others. Each provided a portion of his meal. One of the wives, Nabesek, was not Ellen's father's mother, but was the one who raised him. Ellen said that Nabesek lived with them when her father was alive and that Ellen found her to be "the nicest old woman she had ever known." Ellen profited by the fact that Simon's grandmother was there and willingly helped her and gave her good advice

30 • Ellen Smallboy

about her children when they began to come along. Ellen, unlike some women she knew, carefully prepared for her confinement when each of her children were born. When in the bush in summer, for instance, she gathered moss of a special kind to line the carrying sack - "that kind that grows on trees, the kind that caribou graze." It made a soft cushion for the infant, was quite absorbent, easily changed, and far more convenient, she thought, than the "new" cloth diapers being used by some young women in the 19305. The baby was kept in the moss bag for about a year; the bag could be conveniently laced onto the cradle board when travelling. It was desirable to have another woman present to assist in childbirth, but in winter it was not always possible.17 Ellen told of when she was expecting her fourth child. She and Simon were away out in the bush in the dead of winter. No other adult was there, so when the pains started she told Simon to heat water and be prepared to catch the infant and cut the cord and tie it. She assumed the usual kneeling position for delivery and pulled on a line looped around the mikiwam pole. Ellen noted that Simon carried out her instructions well, but she washed the baby herself. She added, "There is nothing to it if the woman is strong and healthy and the infant is full term, but if a premature baby is born in the bush there is no way of saving it." Ellen was fortunate that Simon was there; it sometimes happened that no help was available and a woman would have to deliver herself in the bush, as Ruby had done for one of her children. There was always the danger of complications for the mother or baby, and when they arose every effort had to be made to save the mother at the expense of the child. Among the several cases Ellen referred

Married Life on French Creek • 31

to, she pointed especially to the difficulties, even at the HBC post before medical services had reached the area, when decisions had to be made, sometimes by totally inexperienced men or young girls, about saving either the mother or the child. Ellen volunteered the information that infanticide or attempted infanticide did occur, but that it was most often connected with incestuous relationships, usually father or stepfather with daughter, although she mentioned one case each of brother-sister and mother-son incest. A badly deformed baby might also be done away with at birth, but no one spoke to me about infanticide as a means of spacing births. Some women were more adept midwives than others. Ellen's sister Harriet was reckoned an excellent midwife, and her sister-in-law Christiana was another whose services were in demand. Ellen herself, however, never acted in that capacity, claiming that "I would know how, of course, but it made me nervous when anything like that was going on." She did act as a wet-nurse a few times (once when a relative had given birth to twins and was unable to nurse them both), and she knew of others who had nuised infants whose mothers had died in childbirth. Although the birth of twins was relatively frequent, Ellen knew of no cases of triplets born to Cree women. She jokingly remarked, regarding the Dionne quintuplets born near North Bay, Ontario, in 1934, who were much discussed at the time: "It is no wonder there are so many white people!" Simon and Ellen had eight children: Maria (1876-1932), John Harvey (1879-1947), Benjamin Samuel (1881-9), Ellen (dates unknown), David (1884-7), William Henry (1887-94), Simon Jr (1890-1978), and James (1892-?). Look-

32 . Ellen Smallboy

ing back, Ellen thought that the deaths of two of the little boys might have been due to their smoking. She said, "They coughed a lot and they smoked. Nobody knew in those days that it was bad to let children smoke." Being strong and healthy, Ellen was well able to nurse her babies. When they were about seven months old, she would begin gradually to add supplementary food, starting with the liquid in which meat had been cooked. She wanted to have the youngest child weaned before the next was born, since she had observed other women whose unweaned children could be very troublesome when the new infant arrived. Some women, too, allowed the final child they bore to suckle until it was quite large, in some cases as old as six or eight. When her babies were teething, she gave them a piece of sinew or the leg bone of a rabbit from which they could suck shreds of meat without being able to bite through. She kept her infants in the moss bag for a year or so, strapped to the cradle board when it was necessary to carry them about, or in a simple cloth cradle in the mikiwam. Ellen sang for me the cradle lullaby she loved to sing in the mikiwam. The word for cradle or swing is memepison (TW-) and the lullaby consists of the syllables "me-me" repeated over and over to the tune of the song.18 The lullaby then reminded Ellen of another song she would sing as she held her child on her lap while looking for lice in its hair. To prevent a child from getting a head cold, Ellen followed the custom of making a small circular net which, suspended by a cord, rested on the infant's chest. The net was to enmesh the cold before it could reach the child and was used until the child was aged three or so. She also rubbed fish oil on the children as "fly dope" against blackflies, which were bothersome during the summer months.

Married Life on French Creek • 33

Ellen and other family members encouraged her children to walk and talk as soon as they were able. She said that small children had difficulty with words, so she never used "baby talk" to them. When they were a little older, the children were encouraged to learn through play activities. Boys, for instance, were given small bows and blunt arrows so they could shoot small birds, while her daughter was given a piece of cloth as a cover for the miniature mikiwam she would construct of several sticks of wood, and bits of food she could cook at her own little fire, as she herself had done. Older children, whether boys or girls, were supposed to look after younger ones, amusing the infants by swinging the cradle or shaking a rattle at them, and watching the toddlers to be sure they stayed well away from the fire and other dangers. Ellen noted that when she was five or six years old she had enjoyed looking after her little brother, but that not all children took the same degree of interest in younger siblings. The mother, however, bore the ultimate responsibility for the safety of the children. Ellen cited several incidents to illustrate the fact that if anything untoward happened to one of the children, whether through her own carelessness or that of an older sibling caretaker, the mother would be blamed by her husband. Under ordinary conditions, Cree parents like to see their children lively and happy and not unduly fearful of their natural environment. One indication of the last point can be seen in the pleasure Ellen and many other women expressed when they spoke of the affinity of smaller animals for children. When an animal such as a male muskrat would come into camp towards a little girl, or a female animal approached a little boy, they said, "the animal makes

34 • Ellen Smallboy

love to the child" (that is, wants to marry him or her). Such incidents were taken as a portent of good relations with the animal world, and no effort was made to frighten the animal away or remove the child unless the animal showed erratic behaviour. In general, active children were considered healthy children; if a child was too quiet it was thought to be sick. Ellen, however, recognized that children differed naturally in disposition. Her older son, Harvey, for instance, was lively and outgoing, as she herself was, but the younger son, Simon Jr, was more reticent and withdrawn, resembling her sister Harriet in that respect. Ellen said that, in general, it was the woman's job to discipline the children, and although sometimes the husband might speak up, she herself was never prevented from dealing with her sons and daughter as she thought best. She believed that, when children did something wrong, the best way to handle the situation was to talk to them quietly and point out what was right. She mentioned that some women punished their children by striking them about the head, but this only made them worse, in her opinion. When her boys fought each other, she might spank both or pinch their ears, but she "always let them know who was boss." Both Simon's father and his grandmother were most helpful to Ellen in raising the children. The older surviving son, Harvey, spent a lot of time with his grandfather who was interested in teaching him to be a competent hunter and to learn all the other skills men should have. The only daughter, Maria, was taught by her great-grandmother, much as Ellen had been trained by her mother to perform the tasks assigned to women. Life in the bush demandedflexibility- and there was not a sharp division of labour. Ellen said, for example, "I had been taught

Married Life on French Creek • 35

to make fish nets when I was about ten. Boys were not taught that but grown men could make them and often repaired them!" It seems that children observed much of what was expected of the opposite sex, and could, over time, perform most of the tasks, or at least knew how they should be done. Ellen was happy that Simon's grandmother was there and could help with the care of the children. As a result, Ellen was freer to help with trapping and other subsistence tasks. Ellen's workload was particularly heavy in the fall when supplies of food were accumulated for winter consumption. During the migration of wildfowl, when Simon and his father could shoot large numbers of waveys (lesser snow and blue geese), Ellen was very busy plucking, butchering, and preparing the flesh of the birds for drying. Later in the season, on their way from the coast to winter quarters, several winter hunting groups would stop for fishing. Ellen's time was then taken up with tending nets and cleaning and drying quantities of fish to be stored in birchbark containers. When a new net was put down, Ellen followed the custom of pulling the fins from the first fish taken and throwing them in the water to ensure luck in catching many fish in the net. After settling in at winter camp, she helped harvest beaver by watching the net that had been placed at an opening between stakes downstream from the beaver lodge. She then netted and killed the individual animals as they emerged from the lodge after Simon had awakened them. After the hunt Ellen processed the beaver, using whichever method was appropriate to the several sizes of beaver.19 Another time of the year when processing of food for future use was important was in deep winter, when cari-

36 • Ellen Smallboy

bou were sought. According to custom, if several men hunted together the kill would be divided among them according to the size of their respective households, regardless of who had actually shot the caribou. Ellen mentioned one occasion when fifteen animals were killed, nine of which were shot by Simon who, as leader of the hunt, shared them with the others, keeping five of the fifteen for himself. Each man's wife then assumed control of the disposal of her husband's share. Ellen said, "It is up to the wife to decide because she knows best how much her family needs." She herself always tried to see to it that the children were well fed before sharing with others whatever surplus might result. One of her stories of sharing out also suggests that Moose Factory and eastern James Bay groups differed somewhat in traditional hunting observances in the latter part of the nineteenth century. On this occasion they were visiting at Hannah Bay, and Ellen had a quantity of caribou meat that Simon had brought in shortly before. At the time of their visit, the camp at Hannah Bay was holding a caribou feast. Ellen felt sorry for the wives, who, following Hannah Bay norms, were proscribed from eating the choice parts (head and foreparts) which apparently Ellen was not constrained from enjoying. So she invited the women to her tent, giving them "a good feed" of all parts of the caribou. The Hannah Bay men thought this was quite amusing because, as Ellen put it, "It wasn't their hunt." Ellen spoke a number of times about the Cree ethic of sharing food and of how the norm was sometimes disregarded. She mentioned that there were some families she had known in which the parents "gorged themselves" when food was plentiful and let their children go hungry.

Married Life on French Creek • 37

To be greedy was a grave fault. Ellen told of one man whom she and Simon had taken in as a boy and kept for a year after his father died. As an adult, he had a reputation for greediness, although he was recognized as a good hunter. He was married to one of her nieces and, when visiting her one time, Ellen said she "saw for herself" that he ate the greatest portion of what he brought in, without allowing his wife to apportion it fairly to herself, their children, and the visitors. The last was a serious breach of hospitality. It was not always possible for the family group to stay together in winter, and Ellen often remarked how she admired her sister-in-law Christiana's ability to sustain herself and her children alone in the bush when her husband was away from camp. Especially in lean years, a woman might be left alone in camp for some days to cope as best she could. Ellen described one such winter when game was extremely scarce and she and Simon and their young children had parted from the others, shifting camp to another part of their hunting grounds in hopes of finding game. They found none, and Simon had finally to leave them to obtain food at the Moose Factory post. There was nothing to eat and all that was there was some dried tea. My old man was going off to the Post, leaving me and the children to be gone five nights. He was very thin and poor, so the night before he left I made him a rabbit-skin blanket. He would never have made it without that. He would lie on the rabbit-skin next to the fire and would be afraid to sleep too long because he might freeze to death. We had nothing to eat the morning he left. The two boys were not old enough to be useful to me and the

38 • Ellen Smallboy

baby was less than a month old. I took the baby in the cradle board on my back when I went the next day to the snares and left the two boys at the tent. I gave them a certain number of billets of wood and none to spare so they couldn't make too big a fire. I didn't have to tie them because they understood they shouldn't go out of the camp when I wasn't there. I got a few rabbits and we ate them. The next day I went to the snares but there was nothing there. The next day after that I thought, "I will go to our old camp from where we shifted, I left some snares there." So I left the two boys again with enough wood for the fire and went off with the baby and the toboggan. When I reached the old camp I found two old beaver oil sacs hanging there.201 built a fire and roasted the oil sacs against it. I had a drink of tea after I ate them and nursed the baby. I left the toboggan there and went to the snare-patch. I had found three rabbits near the camp and seven more at the patch, so I had ten rabbits [weighing between three and four pounds each] to carry as well as my baby. After I put them on the toboggan I went down another rabbit path and found two more and started for home. It was far from the old camp to the other one and before I got there the baby was crying. When I went in there was nothing but ashes in the fireplace in the centre of the mikiwam. The older of the two boys, Harvey, had killed a whiskeyjack [Canada Jay] and they had cooked and eaten it. They were disappointed when they saw me come in without carrying anything except the baby. But after I had fixed the fire and nursed the baby I told the boys to go look at the toboggan. They were surprised and very happy. Harvey called out: "Oh! Lots of rabbits!"

Married Life on French Creek • 39

The next day I thought I would go to the beaver trap my old man had set before he left. It was not very far and I found a young beaver caught there. He was very fat but I couldn't eat much of him. It made me feel a little sick because I hadn't had any good [that is, fat] meat for so long a time. You can't live on rabbits alone - you will starve. The boys had a good feed and enjoyed it very much. My old man was supposed to be away one more day. So before he got back I killed three martens and had the beaver too. There were lots of martens in those days. The martens used to eat the rabbits out of the snares. Adults had to leave young children alone for many reasons, such as to go some distance to attend their traps or fish nets, or to participate in a caribou hunt. In the latter case it might be necessary for the women and older children to accompany the hunters and to be gone for many hours. Ellen explained that she thought the best way to prepare the children to look after themselves was to "explain everything to them, telling them there was someone up above who would take care of them, so they shouldn't be afraid." She expressed satisfaction that her children were never afraid of staying alone in camp, even after dark, remembering how miserable and frightened she had been as a child when adults would tell the children, "Don't go out from the camp because the Wihtikow (.A»n