lose a holy curiosity.
— Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
The bison image remains a mystery, like the paint itself, used to immortalize ancient thought and the transcripts of a healer-shaman. So, what was the bonding agent? Fish oil? Egg albumen from gull eggs, or some sort of Neolithic acrylic? Or, was it perhaps the blood essence of the stone people — the memegwishiwok — proffered to the artist for some sublime ceremony, emblazoned on the rock face of granite by sheer magic? And, how is it that two almost identical bison images, painted long before Euro-travel connected the two continents, show up on rock walls thousands of kilometres apart? Coincidence? Or perhaps some metaphysical soul transfer — a telepathic information exchange between shamans that could transcend any boundary, any distance, any dimension?
I’m referring, of course, to the internationally renowned pictographs (rock paintings) found along the Bloodvein River. This heritage waterway wends its way through the woodland caribou country of northwest Ontario and east-central Manitoba. There are at least twelve known pictograph sites, each one imparting a lesson, possibly a warning, to those who venture close enough, to gaze into their own soul and immortality. These rock scriptures go far beyond the whimsy of present-day, rock-cut graffiti; alive with spiritual energy, they may well be the conduit, or portal, to the spirit world itself.
Once an agnostic about such things, my rather limited view of the spirit realm blossomed after my initial ghost experience some years ago, which took place while renovating an old farmhouse in the Laurentians. My wife and I were treated to an unexpected social call by the long-departed first lady of the century-old dwelling. It was an eerie and frightening experience, at first, but the everlasting and profound effect the visitation had on the way I now view life — and beyond — was remarkably liberating. I no longer felt encumbered by doubt. My own existence and station on Mother Earth took on a new pithiness. Patrick Giesler, anthropologist and parapsychologist professor for the University of Chicago — a good friend of mine — has studied the paranormal, cult worship, zombiism, and shamanic practices worldwide. “Of any psychic or paranormal experience, one should not fight it, but relax into it,” he remarks. “This is the door opening for soul travel … you just have to learn how to walk through it.”
I began studying shamanic practice and North American Native theology, almost to the point of obsession. I was particularly fascinated by rock art, something that white anthropologists with strong Christian persuasions seemed to dismiss as pagan renderings of little religious importance. Archaeologists interpreted the images as art, wholly from a white perspective, assuming they knew what they meant. Only the shaman healer and his students held the secret to the paintings. And there is an omnipresent spiritual force at these sites, where the shaman-teacher-healer practised his or her trade, where the physical world as we know it melds easily with the spirit world.
Could there be an evil power at play here? Malevolence spawned from the depths of some primal religion? A vengeance? Visitations to such sacrosanct places were not allowed, at one time, unless in the accompaniment of a healer-shaman. Any visit would require the offering of tobacco. Today, little or no respect or reverence is paid to these sites other than mild curiosity, as paddlers snap pictures, fondle the rock and even scratch their own names among the rock effigies. The practice of leaving a tobacco offering, at least, if not taking a moment for a prayer, or asking permission to pass by in safety, is not common enough.
Further to the north, along Manitoba’s Grass River, there is a wall of impressive rock paintings on Tramping Lake. Two local mine workers from the nearby community took a motorboat out to see the ancient drawings on rock and left their own signatures painted over the pictographs. Within the month, both men were dead — one in a violent car crash, the other in a mining accident. On the Missinaibi River in Ontario, where more than thirty-four people died over a period of fourteen years, half the deaths occurred at spiritual sites. Coincidence?
Miskowiskibi — the Bloodvein — best represents the drama of place, both geographically and spiritually. Flowing from Knox Lake in Ontario, just northwest of the town of Red Lake, the river tumbles recklessly over abrupt granite ledges on its three-hundred-kilometre journey to Lake Winnipeg, west toward the setting sun, west toward the sea of prairie grass, spilling into the geographic umbilicus of North America. Gentle current drifts between tumultuous chutes and rapids, actually making upstream travel possible — one of the prime factors that popularized the Bloodvein as a Native travel route, dating back as far as nine thousand years ago when Paleo cultures followed the retreating glaciers as the boreal-upland forests flourished. Archaeological exploits along the river have literally unearthed a plethora of burial mounds, middens, entire village sites, skeletal remains, chipped stone, pottery, worked copper and, most important, the richest conglomeration of rock-art sites found in the country.
After being detained in Red Lake for three days because of interior wildfires burning in the vicinity of the Bloodvein, I was able to work my way slowly toward the headwater, trying not to think of the fires as some kind of prophetic caution. Since its inception as a Canadian Heritage River, and because it bisected both Ontario’s Woodland Caribou and Manitoba’s Atikaki (A-tick-a-key) parks, the Bloodvein corridor had been documented by the bureaucrats for everything except recreational travel. Government foresters prescribed boundaries (some arbitrarily configured) so that the hungry needs of the logging companies could be assuaged before anything else.
The trip on the Bloodvein was part of my Manitoba wilderness guidebook project, and much of the study material I used was not readily available to the public; and with good reason. More and more graffiti had been showing up on top of easily accessed pictographs, but since my research was purely investigative, I was privy to all archaeological findings. I agreed not to give exact locations in my Manitoba guidebook of any pictographs not already publicly identified in printed material.
Gaining access to the Bloodvein demands a somewhat dogged persistence. Dealing with bugs and recent burn-overs where blowdowns littered the lengthy portage trails leaves you feeling a bit daunted. But as with any wilderness river, the necessary grunt work generally means that few people have trekked the upper reaches. In fact, with the Bloodvein, most paddlers opt to fly in to Artery Lake on the Ontario–Manitoba border, where it’s a much easier two-week paddle to Lake Winnipeg, thereby eliminating the more than eight kilometres of ankle-wrenching portaging they would have endured had they started their trip at Red Lake. The downside of this option, assuming that Native cultural stuff is important, is that paddlers miss half of the twelve pictograph sites.
I picked up a client group at Barclay Lake, about thirty kilometres east of the Manitoba border. I explained the importance of approaching the pictograph sites with caution, and that I would make a tobacco offering at each one, as I had been accustomed to doing, and that anyone wishing to leave prayers could do so. Not everyone agrees with my sentiment, or cares to share the seriousness of approaching such places with reverence, for whatever personal reason — religious faith being one of them. All usually agree to the practice, if only out of respect for the group dynamic.
On day two, I slipped behind the group while photographing a mink with a dead merganser duck clenched in its jaw. The others were heading down a deep bay, off the main route of the river, at the extreme northeast end of Mary’s Lake, making rather good time to the base of a high cliff where I told them we would find a pictograph. It was dead calm, and I easily caught up to the group who were now collected below the immense rock face, and the painting of red ochre and magic was as visible as the day it had been created. It portrayed a lone shaman, a powerful image — a simple cartoon-like figure. Instead of the usual body outline and projecting arms and legs, the torso had been painted in — an indication that there was strong energy here.
I had the same feeling well over me as I had when I met my first ghost — a sense of dread, prickly skin, slight nausea, or like when I walk into an old dwelling that has a particular resident malevolent energy and I feel an overwhelming need to get out. I had allowed our group to approach the site in such
