Tim Roufs |
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
Maps
/ Atlases extended search A - Z Index |
|||
|
|
When Everybody Called
Me Gah-bay-bi-nayss: a note on tenses
|
|
Timber Days(1)
I have a lot of points to talk about, but lot of them
are just sketches. A lot of them are about places that I was. Others are
about things that talking to others reminds me about. When I talk to other
old timers I know what they're talking about. Then I begin to enjoy it,
because I was through that life. I went through times like the timber days.
I went through the timber days and the logging camps and all that stuff.
That was good. |
|
The White frontier came into our area as loggers. The White frontier came as loggers to log off our area. The logging camps were moving in about 1916, '07, '08. In the meantime, when I was at school,(2) they came in full blast. And they came heavy in 1912, and after World War I. They were moving on Mud Lake, west of Mud Lake, on what we call now National Forestry land and on what we call tribal land of Leech Lake. It was our timber they were going after, but we got a certain percentage of that timber money. The Federal Government gave a percentage to the Indians. So we didn't mind.
In those days they had big logging camps that would hold about a hundred fifty men, a hundred fifty lumberjacks. Lumberjacks in Indian is giis-ka-aa$-kway. "They're cutters," is giis-ka-aa$-kway. giis-ka-aa$-kway I-nI-nii, that's a "cutter, a man" -- a lumberjack. See? Lumbercamp in Ojibwa is gii-ska-aa-kwam, "cutting-timber, and that's a camp." gii-ska-aa-kwan is a building where the cutters stay. "The camps of all the building" is, giis-ka-aa$-kwan. That's camp. That means "they cut timber in there, there's nothing but timber work, and that's where they stay." The camps had big long bunk houses with double bunks made of lumber,(3) and lumberjacks with whiskers -- and tobacco juice running down their whiskers -- worked the whole day. Early in the morning all the lumberjacks got an axe and went rushing off for timber.
When I was a little boy I was standing there watching them. I was wishing I was able, some day, to join them. Every time I'd take hold of some can-hook,(4) or learn how to spin a can-hook and grab a log, I thought that was slick. How they would handle those tools! These loggers weren't all Finlanders.(5) There were French, and some of them were Norwegian. They were cutting Norway and white pine on the high land west of Mud Lake. Then came the Finlanders. Finlanders were pretty good at logging, especially with the cedar. Later on, there were Swedes mostly. Swedes came, about war time, about World War I. Swedes are good too. They're wonderful piece-cutters. All nationalities can learn logging. As I say, anybody can make a practice of it, and can soon learn how to, if they're at all interested when they get in the woods. But the Finlanders have the right act with the timber. They like that. They like timber, really. Finlanders and Indians work together very well. They get along very good. They work together like a team of horses, and they look good in the woods. They have the act.
But I mean to say we were working on a big scale in those days. There were Finlanders and Indians, and Swedes and Norwegians, and a Frenchman here and there. They were all good. They're steady. They're calm.
First of all they always look for safety in the woods. They look how to protect the labor man, how to manage for safety. You can get killed very easy in the woods, if you don't know the woods. And that's what Finlanders and Indians think about. All woodsmans think about that, I don't mean only certain nationalities -- but the Finlanders are really good at it. The frontier loggers were awful good to us, because some of them just came here to work and they didn't know where they were. The Finns came here to settle down. But many of the others just came here to work. Lots of them didn't know where they were -- they were just shipped in here for a job. On the frontier the Whites and Indians worked together. We got a job from the Whites in the logging camps. In the logging camps they hired Indians and Whites both. It didn't make any difference. There was no discrimination. No. All worked together. All worked happily. In the lumber camp you'd live right amongst them there, if you wanted to. When the Indians got a job, some of them camped with the Whites, and the Whites work with the Indians. They were your neighbor. Of course, we had a few drag-alongs that went in with the Whites, but, still, we overlooked that and the Whites thought the Indians were all right. And they get along fine in the logging camp. And then when we went to work, when the Indians wanted to work somewhere, they got their job. And it didn't take too long to learn how to do the job. And finally the Indians became loggers themselves, by learning from the Whites and using their tools. We got along just fine, and we learned how to use tools, how to file our tools, how to sharpen tools, from the White man that was well-equipped up here in the North. The Whites showed us how to use the tools. And that's the way we got along in this state of Minnesota.
When the lumberjacks came in, as soon as the loggers came in, they gave us lots to do. We had jobs after they came. When a bunch of us Indians would go look for a job somewhere, the loggers would say, "Sure, go to work." They put us all to work, and that's what we liked. We liked to be in a group, just like the Finns. When six and seven Indian boys(6) were in a group, ah! -- that work was playing! We'd think nothing of work when we were in a group. "Well," the logger said, "as long as you do good work, and as long as you know the woods and work and learn how to work just the way I want you to, I'd have you work anytime." He like the Indian you know. "But the Indian won't stay sometime," he said. "They don't know the value of money and how to save it for the winter. As soon's they get money enough, they draw their money, and away they go. They'll be gone for a few days; then they come back." I've talked to the loggers and they say that, but, ya, they couldn't turn the Indian down -- because the White loggers like the Indians' work. I never was turned down. I think there's very few Indians that were turned down in a logging camp -- in my days anyway. They always hired us. We enjoy that. They fed good in the camps. We led a happy life. We were willing to work. We made a play of it, and we were willing to do it right. That's what I've seen. I was in the bunch too. Ya, and that was a good day, those days. And the Indians were happy when they got their money and went to town and bought what they needed for their folks, if they had a family. This was the great life of our days.
We felt that we didn't have to have an education to log with the tools in our hands in those early days, to chop with our strong muscles. Now, everything is in power. You have to know how to run, operate, the machinery. You have to have an education now to keep the machinery a-going. Because education is coming in the loggers now follow the easiest way of life, the press-the-button life. And I think it's much better, much easier, now.
Of course, in the old days, before machinery and power tools, it took a lot of energy to work in the woods. We'd wake up, work out in the woods ten hours a day, and come in. We didn't mind it. And we knew we accomplished a day's work. In a camp we'd play cards. And then in the spring came the log drives. We'd drive the timber down the rivers, down the streams, from lake to lake, and over the rapids.
They always used one another good at the camps. In the camps we were just like brothers, and it didn't make any difference what nationality came in the camp. Some of them stay as high as a month on one job. And when they hit a camp they liked, some of them stay all winter. Some stay as high as all the season, all winter. Then, when the spring break-up comes, some of them draw out their checks. I was shifted around so much from camp to camp in my early days that I was becoming capable to get around amongst the Whites and also the Indians. I can talk English a little bit. I can talk a little Indian. And I know the history of the area. I remember when I was six or seven years old as I rode the canoe over the seas of the great lakes.(7) I knew a lot of that stuff and sometimes went from one camp to another. I asked friends why they would jump from one camp to another. I never liked to do that, jump one camp from another, quit, and then go. But still, I would always be drawn into that camp jumping. Oh, we had a great life! Lumberjacks years ago would come out of the camps just high strung to move the so-many-thousand-feet load of logs. Logs were piled high on the eight-foot bunks -- cross-wood bunks -- of the big heavy sleds.
They moved timber those days! What I'm talking about were loads! There were no truck loads, there were horse-drawed bunks -- good twelve-foot bunks loaded as high as sixteen feet.
They used bunks in those olden logging days. I'm talking about logging days, not these second-crop brush loggers. I'm talking about timber, real timber, the timber they used to have to roll on the bunks and stack up without side stakes.
That's another thing. They took those logs and built them up on those bunks like a wall, straight up in the air. They'd throw just those corner binds, corner binding chains, on the bottom log. They'd just put the corner binds on the bottom log, and then they'd fill up the bunk, building it to a peak as high as eight or twelve feet. It peaked about twelve feet high -- sometimes sixteen feet.
Four-horse teams pulled the sleds, but it took six horses to start that load. Before they started, the teamsters always worried about coming out.(8) They were worried about getting stuck coming out. The lumberjack's the same as a truck driver -- he's afraid he's going to get stuck all the time. Early in the morning, right after breakfast, the old teamster(9) puts on his coat and gets his team out -- a team of four horses -- and hitches them to the sled. He'd stand there looking at the sled, and everybody's come out to see him start that load. If he's any good as a teamster he'd be a good truck driver at this time. They'd come out there, all looking at the load, a wonderful load, and they'd ask him, "Are you gonna get that down?" Sitting there all night the runners of the bunk would freeze down. When all four runners were froze down, they had to be jarred with a heavy maul or post or something to get the load started. And in the morning they'd break them loose from the frost. They build ice-rut roads those days. They brought a tank(10) in and worked all night on icing the ruts. The teamster would be the first one breaking the frost with the sled.
He'd stand there . . . thinking. . . . "Well," he said, "I don't think I can move the load. You better get the leaders on there. Get the starters." They had to have a starter on that load, you know. But how the hell, ah, how the heck are you going to put a starter on the four horses? Well, out came the buying boss with a heavy team of horses, and he just eases the extra team up to the load, hooks up to the pole of the four horses, and gives them a start.
Before the teamster starts he reaches in his pocket, with the men talking to him there, and he pulls out a package of Peerless.(11) He takes about pred'near a quarter of a package to chew and shoves it back of his cheek, back of his teeth.
Then he puts that Peerless in his pocket and he reaches over to his other side and gets about a half-a-pound of plug tobacco from his hip pocket. He takes out his jackknife, whittles that plug into chips, and he stuffs the chips into the other side of his jaw. Boy! He looked like a gopher standing there talking! Well, everybody would already think that he's taking quite a chew, but on the top of that he'd pull out that old birch-bark snuff box they used to have, he'd dig his two fingers and a thumb in there, and he'd take a big chew of that snuff and put it in the middle of his mouth between his teeth and lips. He was all tobacco in his mouth, but he'd keep on a-talking and you wouldn't think anything would bother him. That big of a chew was enough to knock anybody out! But it takes quite a lot of tobacco to steady the nerves of that teamster starting a load that big. He'd pick up the line and he'd say, "Sam, Dick, Don." And the leader team, they obeyed. All the horses were trained, and they all got down to the collar and lifted the load just as pretty as they could, and the load was started. And when the load started the guy that was alongside the leaders would unhook the leaders and the four horses would continue that load on their journey. Then the teamster would stand on the roller.(12) Instead of riding the top of the logs he'd stand on the roller back of the horses, the roller of the pole which pulls the runner. It gets pretty cold there sometimes, so cold that the teamster would have to stomp his feet on the road to keep warm. He didn't dare to jump off, and he didn't dare to walk because at times it was going down grade and he had to pull the reigns for the leaders. Otherwise if the sled goes down the hill too fast, the leaders would get excited and probably have a crash in through the timber.(13)
So that was the old history of what I've seen of lumberjacks in the old teamster days. I often wondered how they could stand that much tobacco in their mouth. He didn't chew the whole half-a-pound, but I figured all together it would make a half a pound, with juice and all. And when he spit, he'd hit a dime about eight feet from the road. Boy they were "sharp shooting" that tobacco juice.
I've been in the lumber camps. Sure, I've been out of Bena there, near where we used to live when I was a boy. At Bena, and other camps close to the railroad line, they had locomotives which would switch off railroad cars to the logging area.
And they had big flatcars, and the flatcars were loaded by big teams. These teams had sixteen-hundred-pound horses. Boy these horses had power to pull those sixteen foot logs that would scale a hundred, two hundred feet to a log. The horses were well fed in those big camps. The teams would pull those loads, and the men would walk along beside them hours after hours and day after day, skidding the logs over to the flatcars with their one-bunk drays. On the flatcar, the railroad car, they'd build logs straight up, just like a wall, without the logs slipping out of the load. That's tricky, that top loading. That's what they call "top loading." A man would be there top loading with a jammer, a chain. He is the one called "top-loader."
When I was a boy I often wondered how they'd get them logs up in there like that, but they'd get them there. Later on I saw just how they done it. They pull these logs up with horses, and the top-loader would pull the jammer. That's "cross-hauling." That's how they would load these logs. When they say, "Hold'er," the horses understood and they stopped. "Whoa," the cross-haul man would yell. The top-loader would spot these logs just where he wants them dropped.
The top-loader is the one who says, "Hold'er," and the horses hold 'er. The teamster is just hooking and unhooking the logs, and helping along so there is no disturbment of the horses. Even when the logs are hooked up high in the air all the teamster has to do is tie the lines on the cross-evener(14) so they won't drag on the ground. Then all he does is hang on to that ring where the evener is. They would hook the horses' double-trees,(15) that is where the eveners, the chain, are hooked on as tugs. "Evener" is where they pull on. It is a double tree. Then they hook on the head, the top-loader head, and the cross-haul horses would listen for the top-loader.
The teamster don't have to say a word; the horses just listen to the top-loader back there. It's natural. You'd think that they'd listen to the teamster. At times they do, but at certain times they're listening to the top-loader way up there on the pile. "Huui," he'd say, and the horses would tighten up and raise the timber higher. They were well trained. It was natural. They practice that. Some of the best cross-haul teams that you could ever get understood the top-loader. Gee, that is a trick, heh? You'd think the teamsters start them off that way. Sure, the teamsters would start them off, but after the horsesget a-goin' they would listen to the top-loader. Any team could come there and calm down and work down this way. They know what to do when the top-loader hollers. When he said, "Hold'er," they'd tighten up and hold that load up in the air while the top-loader straightens the logs the way he want them to be dropped. They'd hold the logs way up there on the railroad cars. The lumberjack has the knack of handling those tools, and they were quick about it. You have to be quick because you have to keep up. Sometimes you had to catch a log on the fly, while it's rolling, and they would snub those logs on top and flick them ajar. You were supposed to "hold Canada" on them or slow them down with the point before you got them with the can-hook. I don't know how they do it, but it's well done. A lot of them knew how to do it. A lot of them can even load these flatcars from the ground. When the top-loader is ready and well positioned with the logs, he hollers, "Down!," and those logs are dropped down to where he wants them set. When he says, "down" and the teamster unhooks the trip, and down comes the logs. And when the top-loader says "down easy," they'd even put the logs down easy. When the top-loader said, "Come back down." Or, "down," the logs are dropped. Just as soon as they are dropped, the teamster unhooks that chain from the cross haul team. When the cross haul team hears that chain drop on the ground they turn right around naturally, and come back. They're trained for that. They'd make a turn right around and spot themselves ready for another hook. If they didn't re-spot themselves on their own, the top-loader says, "come back," and those horses would swing right around and come right back and wait for another hook. And they would come back just that quick too. Sometimes the fast ones would run back. Soon as the horses start running the teamster just runs right with them. I've seen that. Everything was just like it was automatic. He's ready when they set themselves again, and he grabs that chain hook end and hollers, "Ahead!" Sometimes the horses would get so used to that work that one of them maybe would fall asleep a little bit. Then maybe teamster would call 'em, "Tim, Jerry, or Dick." He'd holler, "Dick": and Dick would back right up -- because he knows there's somebody watching him. But all the while he's still listening. While they are working they're blind. They have blinds on their eyes. That's how they loaded those flatcars. They loaded cars after cars. Logs ten, twelve tier high were stacked and tied and shipped many miles to lumber mills in the olden days. They were big logs too. The railroads would stand full with those loads.
It's fun to stand there and watch them. You wonder how these horses are trained, how these logs move. Now-a-days they have jammers. There are big chains there again. Now-a-days it takes a lot of the logs to make a thousand feet. Now-a-days it takes three, four logs to make a hundred feet -- maybe even five or six. Really! They're just like match sticks now. When I'm talking about cross hauling with horses, those logs were timber, the first saw-logs that came up. These trees would run the scale. Sometimes we had, and we still have, timber standing in the forestry lands that runs a thousand feet to a tree. So that's plenty of wood in there. And there were lots of them big trees, years ago.
Pretty near every tree held a thousand feet. Why it didn't take long to fit a million feet out. A million feet of logs, you know, that's quite a bit, quite a bit of timber. After awhile the trees come to seventy-five thousand and eighty-thousand feet a load. The scale of the trees kept cutting down because the original timber was running out. There then came a time when it was difficult to get a thousand feet out cause it takes so much of the overall timber to make a thousand feet. Timber was well-scaled years ago. It was beautiful timber. It was fun logging.
The most fun was going on the spring drives. The cold winter appeared and dissolved, and then the logging drives came in the spring and summer. That helped. In the winter -- if they weren't hauling logs on bunks or flatcars -- lumberjacks would land their timber right on the ice. When the ice went away all they had to do was take the logs in to what mill they wanted to take them.
If they operated on a big scale, with so many thousand feet, so many million feet, and if they wanted to take them to Grand Rapids, these logs were stamped "Canaday Clemet" (XXX??) Initials were carved on the side of a log. All the logs were carved.(16) There was a man at the landing with a hatchet just carving "Canaday Clemet." (XXX??) That's how all of them put stamps on their logs, and you wouldn't touch a log that had an initial on it. Each company put their own initial on logs by cutting them in with a chisel or hatchet. Those logs were cut by the company that owned the logs, and the company hired a man to carve little initials into each one. All the man had to do was to carve initials on the side of the log to show that it belonged to that company. "Canada & Clement," "Simpson Logs," and all that was initialed on the logs. In the spring there came a drive, a breakup. In the spring, when the ice was breaking up, we all got ready for a drive. The children, the mother and children, stayed home and took care of the place while the men-folks went on the drives. Some lumberjacks, of course, stayed in camp all winter. As soon as the stream opened up, the logs would be ready to move, and the lumberjacks were all ready to move the logs down the stream. A lot of Indians and White people liked to drive logs.
We had big drives in through the rivers. We had drives along the current of the river. The drives were log drives along the rivers. There was timber booming(17) those days. They'd boom the logs across the Winnibigosh(18) with a boat, then they'd bring them into the river, the Mississippi. These logs would jam up there because they'd put a boom down stream until they got all the logs on the tailend ready to move. When they were ready, they opened the boom and moved on down the river.
As the boom flowed down the river, the logs would float down, and the lumberjacks kept the logs a-going. The lumberjacks would walk the river banks and push these logs out. Down the river they'd go. They went along all day long like that. Ya, they'd do that all day long.
When I came home from Tower school my folks were gardening on Leech and Mississippi Forks.(19) When we were gardening in the spring we'd see the logs a-going down the river. Then big log drives would come by. In spring the big drives would come through here, past my house. Sometimes the river was jammed up clear down to the forks. You couldn't get through with a boat, hardly. They'd block it up, oh, for miles. There'd be five-, six-mile jams. The river would plug up there. After it plugged up with logs, you'd see the drivers coming through to move them on.
One thing of pollution in those days was the thousands and thousands of logs that went down the river. On a hot day the pitch would come out of them. The pitch would drip down in the water, ya. The shoreline was polluted with pitch. It was not too heavy to notice, to bother you, but it was heavy enough to pollute the shoreline. There's turpentine in the pine you know. And that's where we began to see the crop getting shorter.(20)
These logs, I remember, went to Deer Lake. They would put another boom across the main channel and shoot them into Deer Lake. There was a big sawmill at Deer River and that's where they'd tear them up. I remember when right down to the point was nothing but pine sawdust. That was at Deer River Landing.
As I heard, some of them logs went clean through to Grand Rapids. And maybe even further on down the line. Quite a ways down there were different lumber companies buying. But geez, there were a lot of logs went through there.
As they drove the logs down the river along the Mississippi a lot of lumberjacks, a lot of timbermen, would walk on the bank of the river. There was a regular trail along the bank of the river. They all had pike poles which they used to shove the logs away from the shore. And they had a camp floating down the river. This camp was built in a great-big flat-bottom boat they called wah-ni-gan.
Wah-ni-gan, or ah-quah-ni-gan, that's camp "shelter," a "shedding from the water." QIs-Kah-Oh-ga-mIg that's "camp home," too -- like a logging camp. They always had wah-ni-gans, or cook-rafts, on the drives as they were pushing the timber to the mills. The wah-ni-gIn was ahead in the drive. They had a cook in there and each lumberjack had a sleeping place in the camp. They had two cooks in there at times. And they had men cooks in the camps too. You had this sleeping place in the camp, in the wah-ni-gan, and you had plenty to eat at that time: bacon and eggs, baked beans -- anything that lumberjacks should eat.
They have good cooking, by somebody who knows how to prepare food for a labor man. They cook whatever the lumberjack wants to eat, and they give them plenty to eat. And we got all we wanted to eat in logging camps. And they give them coffee time too. You could go in the wah-ni-gan and help yourself to cookies, cake, pie, or anything you want. By the time a lumberjack's able to work in the woods, he's able to wear it off, and he's a man because he's eating good. Because they eat the proper food, they can stand the work. They have food that's rich enough and heavy enough for the lumberjacks. That's what kept them up without catching colds.
They also had woolen clothes which kept them warm. They all had short pants, but they were dressed in wool to keep warm. Oftentimes they'd work in the cold water. They'd jump in the water, they'd jump out, but it didn't bother them because they had substantial food to strengthen their blood and body. They had power enough to work, and they weren't run down. And they'd breathe that fresh air and they're out in the cold.
At the end of the day they know they've done something for their health and they know they're going to be well paid for it. There was good money in driving, and they were fed good in the wah-ni-gans, in the houseboats. They slept in there too. They would eat and sleep in the houseboat, in the wah-ni-gan.
The lumberjacks were quick as a cat on a log, floating on along the river. They stood on one log and rolled it. They'd jump from one log to another, just to keep the logs a-going, with a pike pole on their shoulder. When they would cross the river on those logs all they had to balance with was a pike pole or a can-hook. They would balance with that. They could walk across anywhere on a log, on that "tree-in-the-water" -- as we called them in Indian. Once in a while they would roll a log just to see how fast they could go, then they'd jump on another log, and jump onto the wah-ni-gan. They were so clever. They wore cork shoes on their feet. That's why they could do it. That's how they could stick on a log.
The "Chippewa boots" were the greatest boots for lumberjacks -- they were one of the greatest. But on the drive the lumberjacks wore what they called "cork shoes." The cork shoes were kind of high priced, but they were waterproof; they were water-preserved shoes. It was a good shoe. I wore them too. I liked to wear them. They would protect your feet. The cork shoes had kind of a high heel. Otherwise, if you had shoes with thin soles and low heels, you couldn't stand on the logs. They were a good shoe. And when they walked in the dining room you could hear those corks chewing up the floor of the wah-ni-gan -- su-it, su-it. The wah-ni-gan was made with a pine floor and those cork shoes would tear into it as they walked. Oh gee, that was a wicked-looking bottom that they had on the soles of their feet!
And when they came to town they walked in a joint(21) or went into a store with those cork shoes on. They'd walk on that pine floor in the store, and anywhere you went you could see those little slivers on the floor.
They just walked in. People didn't mind that. And when us kids would go along in the store we had to be very careful where we stepped because we were barefoot. We feared we'd get slivers. But if we were careful where we stepped we would be all right. They picked up and swept up after the lumberjacks. They held down these slivers on the floor by sweeping it and cleaning it. So that'd give us a chance to walk around and buy candy. But when we were kids with barefeet we were glad to get out of there. Stories! As I say, they would go in public places with their cork shoes. We didn't mind the lumberjacks walkin' around with corks on their shoes. Lumber was so cheap. They could change the floor anytime they wanted to. We had lots of lumber. Those cork shoes had a lot to do. When the lumberjacks came to a cement sidewalk, when they came to a cement porch or something, you could see sparks on the bottom of their soles. They'd make sparks by kicking around. They had a lot of fun with those cork shoes. Those lumberjacks, the ones on a drive, used to stay on a drive 'till the 4th of July. They'd stay 'till the drive was over, but it usually was over by the 4th of July. When they completed the drives they got paid off. Then they'd come in with their stake and would they celebrate! Then they came home and they got ready for the winter. Them days they could still celebrate with a little alcoholic drink.(22) And many of them did that. But groups -- communities, you might as well say -- would also celebrate together. They had a good time, them days. We all had a good time when we got together. And when they got together lumberjacks liked to contest one another to see who was best at doing what.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
</