to persuade us to look after our salvation as a species and as a planet, and to do it now.
Further Reading
The essential biography of Grey Owl is Donald B. Smith’s splendid From the Land of Shadows: The Making of Grey Owl (Western Producer Prairie Books, 1990) to which I am much indebted. It is in paperback (GreyStone, 1999) and is a must-read. For a good shorter version of the life, Jane Billinghurst’s Grey Owl: The Many Faces of Archie Belaney (GreyStone, 1999) is well worth a look. Lovat Dickson’s early biographies, Half-Breed (P. Davies, 1939) and Wilderness Man (Macmillan of Canada, 1973), are a bit dated but still enjoyable and informative, by the man who was Belaney’s publisher after Country Life and who knew him well. There is a wealth of other materials: a photography book of Grey Owl country, a prose poem, appreciative essays, memoirs, and several biographies.
Later books by Grey Owl after The Men of the Last Frontier include his entertaining bestseller Pilgrims of the Wild (Dundurn Voyageur Series, 2010), which dramatizes the beavers and includes a valuable biographical introduction by Michael Gnarowski. The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People, long a children’s favourite in many editions, is nonetheless a satisfying read for adults. (The title is Sajo and the Beaver People in the United States.)
For the role of the Indian, Daniel Francis’s The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture (Arsenal Pulp, 1992) is stimulating, as is Betty Keller’s account of the Mohawk princess, Pauline Johnson, Pauline (Douglas & McIntyre, 1981). Cheryl MacDonald’s Great Canadian Imposters (James Lorimer, 2009) is more scholarly than its title suggests and includes a short biography of Chief Leroy, as well.
Ernest Thompson Seton’s last chapter in The Book of Woodcraft and Indian Lore (Doubleday, 1921) offers a sixfold “Message” from Indian experience (as the prophet of outdoor life, the beautiful, the sacred) with comparisons of Native philosophy to the thought of Socrates and Jesus, among others: the cult of the idealized Indian at its most intense.
The Richard Attenborough movie Grey Owl (1999) is available on DVD. The photography is exceptional. I recommend Anahareo’s lively Devil in Deerskins (New Press, 1972), if it can be searched out. I met her at the book’s launch and found her alert and delightful company. My own Wilderness Writers (Clarke, Irwin, 1972) talks about animal-story writers. See also Margaret Atwood’s Survival (House of Anansi, 1972).
THE MEN OF
THE LAST FRONTIER
ORIGINAL PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The publisher feels that a short foreword is necessary in offering this book to the public.
It should be explained that the author is a half-breed Indian, whose name has recently become known throughout the English-speaking world. His father was a Scot, his mother an Apache Indian of New Mexico, and he was born somewhere near the Rio Grande forty odd years ago. Grey Owl is the translation of his Red Indian name, given to him when he became a blood brother of the Ojibways, and his proper legal style. He trekked, in his early twenties, into Canada and followed the life of a bush Indian, trapping, fire-ranging, and guiding. During the Great War, he enlisted in the 13th Montreal Battalion, became a sniper, and saw service in France. On his return he took up his old life as a trapper, but presently found his chief interest in the preservation of the beaver, which was on the verge of extinction, and his efforts in that direction have been recognized by the Canadian Government. He tried his hand at writing an article on Canadian Wildlife, and his letters to his publisher, from time to time, were so original, so full of the local colour of his surroundings, that, in 1929, the suggestion was made that he should write this book. Difficulties have been many, both for author and publisher. The book was written in many camps, often the author was a hundred miles from the nearest post office, and frequently weather conditions made any journey impossible. His MS., by no means always easy to follow, was further complicated by the fact that it had been typewritten by a French-Canadian who knew little English.
Among the pile of letters and MS. which, in the course of time, accumulated at the publishers, were several rough but extraordinarily vivid sketches drawn by the author in pencil on pages torn from an exercise book; one of these is reproduced here and others appear as the end papers of this book.
At Grey Owl’s own request, and because the publisher felt very strongly that much of the value of his work lies in its individuality, the editing of his MS. has been reduced to a minimum and alterations have only been made to clear possible ambiguities or where a phrase would have read too strangely. This will explain to any reader who may find the author’s language anywhere unnatural that the fault does not lie with Grey Owl.
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
PROLOGUE
A deep slow-flowing river; silent, smooth as molten glass; on either bank a forest, dark, shadowy, and mysterious.
The face of Nature as it was since the Beginning; all creation down the eons of unmeasured time, brooding in ineffable calm, infinite majesty, and a breathless and unutterable silence.
So it has lain for countless ages, dreaming, dwelling on the memories of untold tales no longer remembered, wise with the wisdom of uncounted years of waiting.
Overhead an eagle manouevres in the eye of the sun, and in the shadows on the shore an otter lies asleep.
Far-off in midstream appears a tiny dot, growing larger and larger as it approaches, and presently a bark canoe, yellow as an autumn leaf; and floating as lightly, speeds by. The sun glints sharply at regular intervals on paddles swung with swift and tireless strokes, by six brown, high-featured savages. Eagle feathers bob in unison, copper-hued backs bend and sway, driving forward the fragile craft, high of prow and stern, with a leaping undulation that is the poetry of motion.
In the centre stands a white man, bedizened with the remnants of the lace and ruffles of the courts of Europe. His cheeks are hollow and his frame gaunt. His skin is streaked with blood from the bites of myriad flies, but he recks not of it; his burning gaze is fixed ahead: Westward, Westward, from whence the river flows.
A few minutes and the bump and swish of paddles become inaudible. The canoe diminishes again to a speck and disappears into the unknown. And the tiny waves of its passing find their way to shore, and so die. The two wild creatures stare in idle curiosity, and return each to his occupation: the eagle to his undisturbed soaring, the otter to his interrupted sleeping: and little know that, for a moment, they have gazed on History.
And so, unostentatiously, without pomp or ceremony, all unknown to the teeming millions of the Eastern Hemisphere, the long closed portals of the Western World swing open.
I
THE VANGUARD
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture; I can see
Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Class’d among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and
