The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2004, Blaðsíða 18

112
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 58 #3
Following the trail which led from the
houses to the Icelandic Settlement, about
three miles distant, on the White Mud
River, we found the Indians, - the few that
were left of them, encamped in Birch Bark
Tents on the South side of the River - a
Band of fifty or sixty, reduced to seven-
teen.8
Lynch spent the remainder of the win-
ter visiting other afflicted native communi-
ties, guided by John Ramsay. In his lengthy
report to Provencher, Lynch puts forward
Ramsay’s complaint:
On leaving the Settlement I promised
Ramsay that I would represent to you what
he regards, and what seems to me a case of
great hardship.
He has lived on the point at Sandy Bar
for twenty-five years, and was bom on Big
Island (later called Hecla Island, after the
famous Icelandic volcano), only a few miles
distant. He and his band have been hunters,
fishers and farmers. The Bar is the fishing
Station where their houses were, in which
they lived during the winters.
But Ramsay had a farm, where he had
tilled several acres for twenty years, on the
North side of the River. There was a good
house on it, in which he and his family
always lived in summer, returning to their
winter house in the wood at the Bar only
when the winter was approaching and the
fishing season began.
Although he was quite aware that he
was not living on an Indian Reserve, he
believed that the farm was his, and that it
could not be taken from him. I think he
understood this to be one of the conditions
of his Treaty, but the Icelanders have taken
his farm and are living in his house, and to
his remonstrances have told him that he has
no right to it whatever, that it is an
Icelandic Reserve, and he must leave the
neighbourhood altogether.
Not knowing how far I might assure
him of his being allowed to remain a tenant
on what certainly seems to be his land, I
have only told him that I would represent
the case to you. He has never before had an
opportunity of having his case heard. I can
vouch for the truth of much of his state-
ment, and believe it to be wholly as stated,
in every particular.9
Ramsay contracted smallpox. He and
his daughter named Mary or Maria, sur-
vived the epidemic, but his wife and four
other children did not. Although no later
accounts repeat his statement, Fridrik
Sveinsson states that Betsey was buried
with two of her children. She died in
September, at the beginning of the epidem-
ic and well before John Taylor notified
authorities about its outbreak. Kristjanson
(52) glosses Lynch’s charges without men-
tion of the Saulteaux, and presents a rebut-
tal:
The medical officers believed that the
people showed apathy in the face of their
experiences, but Sigtryggur Jonasson chal-
lenges their opinion, stating that the people
kept up a remarkably good spirit during
their great calamity, “which many who
don’t know their general disposition nor
understand their language call indiffer-
ence.”
Given my own years of living in
Iceland and familiarity with their reserved
demeanour, I find it believable that the
doctors would not perceive the nuances of
their concern even when it was felt.
The medical officer Young reported on
diarrhoea and scurvy afflicting the settle-
ment, and how the settlers were attempting
to clean the “filth and noxious matter”
from around their homes. Young suggested
that some of the worst houses be burned
since cleaning and disinfecting them would
be impossible.10
Native contexts
By 1875 the Saulteaux, Cree and
Ojibwa of Manitoba had generations of
experience interacting with Europeans in
connection with the fur trade. This region
was part of Rupert’s Land, granted as sov-
ereign territory to the Hudson’s Bay
Company in 1670. During the eighteenth
century, the lake was a major crossroads
for the rivers along which the fur trade
moved, although the archaeological record
indicates that travel along these waterways
was frequent before then. Native peoples
were aware of the increasing number of set-
tlers entering the west; they were also
aware of changes occurring to the ecology