The Men of the Last Frontier

Grey Owl

Description

“The Men of the Last Frontier” is a 1922 work by Grey Owl. Part memoir, part chronicle of the vanishing Canadian wilderness, and part collection First Nations lore and stories. His first book, “The Men of the Last Frontier” is an impassioned cry for the conservation of the natural world that is as poignent now as when first published. Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (1888–1938), also known as Grey Owl, was a British-born Canadian fur trapper, conservationist, and writer. In life, he pretended to be a First Nations person, but it was later discovered that he was in fact not Indigenous—revelations that greatly tarnished his reputation. Other notable works by this author include: “The Men of the Last Frontier”, “Pilgrims of the Wild”, and “Tales of an Empty Cabin”. This classic work is being republished now in a new edition with specially curated introductory material.

Sujets

• Wildlife conservation
• Conservation biology
• Native Americans in the United States

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 29 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781446547250
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

THE MEN of the LAST FRONTIER
By
GREY OWL

First published in 1932


This edition published by Read Books Ltd. Copyright © 2019 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library


Dedicated As A Tribute To My Aunt
Whom I must thank for such education that enables me to interpret into words the spirit of the forest, beautiful for all its underlying wildness


Contents
Tales of an Empty Cabin
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
PROLOGUE
I THE VANGUARD
II THE LAND OF SHADOWS
III THE TRAIL
IV THE STILL-HUNT
V ON BEING LOST
VI THE FALL OF THE LEAF
VII THE TALE OF THE BEAVER PEOPLE
VIII THE ALTAR OF MAMMON
IX THE HOUSE OF McGINNIS
X THE TRAIL OF TWO SUNSETS
XI EPILOGUE



Illustrations
Grey Owl
Breakfast. A square meal before the day's heavy toil.
When hunters meet. Lighting up and exchanging gossip.
Pretty dry canoeing. Man a "beast of burden."
In the amphitheatre of the dusky hills,where is silence, unbroken and absolute, a hush that has held sway since time began....
And where the figure of a man is dwarfed by the majesty and the immensity of his surroundings.
Dumb cousin to the Beaver, the Porcupine.
Canada Lynx, great grey ghost of the North Land.
Young Elk.These animals have an air of fastidiousness that hascaused them to be considered the aristocrats of the deer tribe.
Deer in velvet.This noble buck could have served as a model for the brush of Landseer.
Noon rest on the trail.
Husky dog team;the sole means of transport in some districts.
The curse of Adam carried out to the letter.
Running Big Pine Rapids.
And as the canoes careen and sidle they plunge their way to safety out into the pool below with its dark ring of silent trees.
The tiny frail canoe seems scarcelyadequate to withstand the power of the river.
Moose, easily taken at water's edge when there is not enough snow to impede progress, are hardly ever caught by the camera after the freeze-up. A long careful still-hunt preceded the taking of this picture.
Stragglers from the main herd dot the prairie, haunted by the great gaunt spectres of the wild lands, Lobo, the buffalo wolves.
Black bear and cubs. Commonly docile,this old lady would fight to the death for her family.
The "Half-way."Trappers' rendezvous on the outbound trail.
Trappers' winter camp above the Height of Land.
Red Squirrel.Mischievous, curious, irascible, this little creature is the lonely traveller's constant companion.
Their mother lost in a forest fire, these two young Moose came out of the woods to a ranger's cabin.
The beaver arrives at the top of the house, with his load, still erect. He places his armful of mud, packing it into the gap with his hands, and forcing the stick into a crevice by the same means. The tail is never used for this or any other purpose save as a support in walking. This beaver house is 22 ft. long, 18 ft. wide and 8 ft. high. Built by two beavers in less than two months.
Two beavers co-operating on a heavy stick.
Beaver swimming with poplar.
A beaver dam.
"The altar of Mammon."Sweeping onwards at railroad speed, leaving in its wake a writhing skeleton forest.
The destruction of a bush settlement by forest fire visits on the survivors all the hardships, the privations and the terrors of war.
Beaver in canoe.Canoe and camp inspection is includedin the daily routine of this beaver.
Beaver cutting down a tree for dam.They fell with almost scientific accuracy, choosing their tree and gnawing so that it falls where they want it.
Overland travel in summer.Note the packs and dogs and muzzle-loading trade-gun.
Where bald, glistening mountains standguard at the head of some mighty river.
Even to-day encampments such as this add a touch of romantic colour to the Frontier.
A Chief of the Sarcee dressed in all theregalia to which his rank entitles him.



Tales of an Empty Cabin
A Brouchure for Grey Owl's Tales of an Empty Cabin 1930
Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin -Grey Owl, as he is known in Canada and elsewhere in the world- lives in a log cabin that stands by a peaceful lake one hundred miles from the railway and the nearest settlement of any size. That little log cabin has become famous throughout the world. Many of you read this brouchure will have seen it on the screen. Shaped plainly and simply in the tradition of settlers' cabins since white men left the city to live in the Wilderness, its reflection, you remember, is mirrored all day in the surface of the calm lake. Everywhere, as far as the eye can see, are trees, reaching tall and spare into the sky; the trees of the north, hard-bitten with their age-long fight against a climate where for more than half the year the whole land is locked firmly in the grip of a fierce tempestuous winter.
As you know, if you have seen the films Beaver Lodge, that the cabin is sharred by Grey Owl with two famous characters: Jelly Roll, who is queen of the Beaver People, and Rawhide, her silent, hard-working and devoted consort. There are many other beaver there now, the progeny of these two parents. And there are other animals who share in the life of the place: the bull moose, the younger deer, a whiskey-jack, a muskrat, and others too numerous to mention. Sometimes now in summer visitors come to Beaver Lodge. The journey can be made, when the lakes are open, by a combination of canoe and motor car, with the emphasis mostly on canoe. But for the greater part of the year Grey Owl is there alone with his many furred and feathered friends. The deepest quiet wraps Beaver Lodge, a quiet broken only by the call of animal to animal, the chattering of the beaver, the shrill and happy cries of the other animals who dwell at peace in this new paradise.
Last year Grey Owl went to England, leaving his beaver under Anahareo's care, wrapped in their winter sleep. He went most unwillingly. The cities of the United Kingdom, in their gloomy and wet winter, were no place for a man who has never worn anything except buckskin, and whose refusal to give up wearing his moccasins when he joined the army created the sort of minor crisis that disciplined sergeant-majors produced even in the war. The story of that tour still remains to be written. For his publishers who arranged it, and for the booksellers who shared in making it known, it was a triumphant progress. But Grey Owl returned to his cabin unspoiled by his contact with the outside world, leaving behind him thousands of people who felt better for having made contact with him.
The next book that he was to write, Tales of an Empty Cabin , was one that had been in Grey Owl's mind all through that winter. He did, in fact, write part of it while he was there. When in close contact with the British people who showed such appreciation for him, his mind often travelled back to the quiet cabin beside the lake, and to earlier scenes than that, when he was just a starving Indian devoting himself, unknown to anyone, to a great ideal.
He remembered often the House of McGinnis, where, as he tells in Pilgrims of the Wild , he had sat before the fire and told Anahareo tales of long ago; stories of his own youth, of the heroism and endurance of their Indian people who are vanishing so swiftly and tragically from the world. When he got back to Canada he had one driving purpose within him: to sum up all his loyalties and to pay tribute to all that he loved, in the pages of this book. That purpose is expressed in the preface to the book, a little of which we quote here, for no transcription of it can equal the vividness of Grey Owl's own words.
"Evenings I gaze upon the glory of the sunset and wait to watch the rising moon; or see an eagle, high above me, flying far, and ponder on the fact that they, the sun and moon, and eagle are free to follow their natural course, as they pass me on their way to unknown destinations. In winter I stand out upon my snow-bound lake, by whose shores my beaver sleep in snug security, and feel with exultation the fury of the blizzard, revel in the harsh embrace of Keewaydin, the North West Wind, Travelling Wind of the Indians, as it sweeps down from the great lone Land I never more may see, passing on to regions I cannot ever go to any more. And at times there comes a little stirring, a flutter of rebellion; but this must be, and is, quickly quenched. I must be true and ever faithful to my Beaver People.
None the less there often comes a lingering regret for the scenes of earlier days; the wild rapids down which we howled and whooped our way triumphantly, or climber with strain and sweat and toil, beating the fierce white water at its own game; the pleasant camping grounds, the merry company of good canoemen gathered on the shore beside a lake or river; the savage battling of snow-storms; and the snug Winter cabins now standing discared, stark and empty in the lonely solitudes, scattered at random over a thousand miles of Wilderness. Some of them, these simple erections of logs that once were homes, have been engulfed, swept out of existence by the inrushing flood of settlement, and where once was peace and the immaculacy of untamed territories, only too often there now is squalor, and meanness, and destruction. On the site of one of them a town has grown, so swiftly moves t