The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People

By Grey Owl

First published in 1935, “The Adventures of Sajo and her Beaver People” is a children's adventure novel by British author Grey Owl. With beautiful illustrations also by Grey Owl, the story is based on the real-life experiences of a young Ojibwe Indian girl called Sajo and her older brother who adopt two baby beavers, Chilawee and Chikanee, in an attempt to save them from fur traders. An instant bestseller, it was translated into numerous European languages including Polish and Russian. Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (1888–1938), also known as Grey Owl, was a British 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528789899

Grey Owl

Grey Owl (1888-1938), an Englishman, immigrated to Canada as Archibald Belaney in 1906 and quickly constructed an identity as a Native, assuming the Ojibwa name Wa-sha-quon-asin and eventually settling in Saskatchewan on Ajawaan Lake. He spread his message of preservation through multiple bestsellers, including The Men of the Last Frontier, The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People, and Tales of an Empty Cabin.

Book preview

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 the conquering march of civilisation.

Those of later years lie back in remoter fastness where, mercifully, the tentacles of a greedy commerce may never crush them while yet on log remains upon another;; where no clatter of alien tongues can ever outrage the solemn hush by which they are invested, as they stand there patiently and peacefully through all the slow passage of the years, and wait.

In each there is a story, or many stories, of its few visitors who drifted in and drifted out again, to pass on and never more be seen; of creatures who dwelt nearby and some that lived within it, or of the river, lake or pond by which it stood; of the wild, mysterious country by which it lay surrounded; or perchance the legends of those who dwelt among those ancient forests long ago.

Hunger there was, and feasting; anxiety and laughter, triumph and despair and high adventure, each one had seen them all. Red-brown in the summer, gay with bright green moss for chinking, a replendent glittering snow mound in the winter, each one had stood strong and staunch, robust against the power of the North. And, in a way, each had seemed to live and to have a personality all its own, which was augmented with each new story or event. And some of these I will try now to record, as once I told them to Anahareo, when she and I sat before the open stove door in the House of McGinnis, during that unforgettable winter that now seems to be so very far away.

And as I write my pen seems filled, not with ink, but with the sighing of the night wind in these forests, the gurgling of sunny watercourses; with the crash and roar of rapids, the hiss of whirling snowstorms, the crackle and glow of open fires. And from it there sometimes flows, in strange accented rhythm, the half-forgotten folk-lore of a nearly vanished race.

I will try with it, this pen of mine, to bring to you something of the spirit of romance, something of the grandeur and the beauty, a little of the soul of this untamed and untamable North land. And though, maybe, I reach a little beyond my stature and these efforts fall far short of their high intention, even so, you who read may find perhaps some passing interest in these stories of the people of a great Frontier, and in other tales of those more humble creatures that, though posscessed of a consciousness more limited than that which man is gifted with, are fulfilling very adequetley the purpose for which they are created, and are doing the best they van with what they have to do it with -a line of conduct that constitues the main ingredient of success in any way of life.

Grey Owl

PREFACE

While the events recorded in this modest tale did not, in all instances, occur in the chronological order here appointed them, all of them have taken place within my knowledge. Indeed, most of them are recorded from personal experience and from first-hand narrations by the participators themselves.

Save for a few of the details connected with the two children's visit to the city (regarding which I had only the impressions of two bewildered youngsters to work on, and further obscured by the passage of over a quarter of a century), no circumstances have been brought in that are not actual fact.

Any Indian words used are correctly rendered from the Ojibway language, in the regional dialect of the area involved, and are spelled phonetically so as to simplify pronunciation. The words are simple, and their meanings are made to appear in an easy and natural manner.

In the illustrations I have made no attempt at artistry, confining myself strictly to clear outlines, in the interests of accuracy—not that my efforts in this direction were at all endangered by any vigorous attacks of artistic ability. My two sole departures into the, to me, treacherous field of poetic licence occur, firstly, in the figure of the moose who stands guard at the heading of Chapter Two. Although the scene is laid in the month of May, I have given him a full set of antlers, as he would appear later in the season, thus offering a more interesting educational exhibit than would the somewhat mule-like creature he would appear without them. Secondly, the owl that is represented at the head of Chapter Four is not of the variety known as the Laughing Owl, who, in spite of his vocal capabilities, is rather a commonplace, uninteresting-looking specimen of his genus. I have therefore supplanted him by the more representative type, known as the Great Horned Owl. So, like all good transgressors whose misdeeds are about to be exposed, I make this timely confession.

The delineations of animal character are to be taken as authentic, and the mental and physical reactions ascribed to the animals are as nearly correct as a lifetime of intimate association with wild life, in its own environment, can make them. These portrayals, as well as all other descriptions, have been very carefully drawn, so that the young reader will not be transported into a world that is altogether make-believe, but may gain new and pleasing impressions that need not later be discarded as mere phantasy. My intention was to write a child's story that could be read, without loss of dignity, by grown-ups.

It is highly probable that Chilawee and Chikanee,[1] the two beaver kittens who are the heroes of the story, survived to a ripe old age in their home-pond, for not only was this colony, after these events, considered inviolate by the hunters in whose trapping-grounds they were, as well as by the entire community, but soon after their release the region for many miles around was included within the boundaries of a well-known Provincial Park. The Yellow Birch river—in fact the whole area—remains in very nearly the same unspoiled condition it was in at the time of the story. The name of the stream itself has been changed since old Indian days, though it may still be identified by those who chance to travel on its waters, by the magnificent forests of yellow birch, maple and other hardwoods that still clothe the granite hills through which it flows.

Gitchie Meegwon, or, in English, Big Feather, known as Quill to the white people who later entered the region, was a personal and well-loved friend of my younger days, and has long since joined the Great Majority. My first trap trail was laid under his highly efficient and somewhat stern direction. A bark canoe, made by this man, is still on exhibition at the Normal School museum on Church Street in Toronto, or was at the time of my last visit there in 1911. His character was such that I have taken the liberty of substituting him for the real father of Sajo and Shapian, who has also passed on. Sajo and Shapian have been beyond my ken this many years, so that to me they have never grown up, and are still the very winning little girl and the tall, serious-minded, courageous lad that they were in those dear dead days that are gone. The town to which they made their adventurous pilgrimage was not, at that time, the vast metropolis it seemed to them, and although it did not for a long time attain to that distinction, I have, in this narrative, made use of a privilege accorded to the Tellers of the Tales, not only among our people but the world over, and present it as it appeared in their eyes, dignifying it with the title of The City.

It is my hope that, besides providing an hour or two of entertainment, this simple story of two Indian children and their well-loved animal friends may awaken in some eager, inquiring young minds a clearer and more intimate understanding of the joys and the sorrows, the work, the pastimes and the daily lives of the humble little People of the forest, who can experience feelings so very like their own. And the writer even ventures, at the risk of being considered presumptuous, to allow himself the thought that perhaps, too, it may invoke in the hearts of even those of more mature years a greater tolerance and sympathy for those who are weaker or less gifted than themselves.

Above all, may it be my privilege to carry with me, as fellow-voyagers on this short, imaginary journey to the Northland, a small but happy company of those little ones who, for so short a time, dwell in that Enchanted Vale of Golden Dreams that we call Childhood.

Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin (Grey Owl).

Beaver Lodge, Ajawaan Lake,

Prince Albert National Park,

Saskatchewan, Canada.

November 25th, 1934.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pronounced Chill-a-wee and Chik-a-nee.

CHAPTER ONE

THE LAND OF THE NORTH-WEST WIND

Far, far away beyond the cities, the towns and the farmlands that you are so used to seeing all about you, away beyond the settlements of Northern Canada, lies a wild, almost unknown country. If you wished to see it you would have to journey Over the Hills and Far Away, to where there are neither railways nor roads, nor houses nor even paths, and at last you would have to travel in a canoe with your Indian guides, through a great, lonely land of forest, lake and river, where moose, deer, bears and wolves roam free, and where sometimes great herds of caribou wander across the country in such vast numbers that no one could possibly count them, even if he were there to do so.

Here, in this great Northland, you would see a part of North America as it was before the white man discovered it, and as it will remain, I hope, for many many years to come. You would not see very many white people there, even to-day, for besides the few trappers and traders, the only human beings that live there are the scattered bands of Ojibway[1] Indians that have made this land their home, calling it the Land of Keewaydin,[2] the North-west wind. They are a race of people so ancient, and they have been there so long, that no one, not even they themselves, know where they came from or how they ever got there. Far beyond the reach of civilization, they live very much as their forefathers did when Jacques Cartier landed on these shores over four hundred years ago. Their villages of teepees,[3] tents and sometimes log cabins, are still to be found, often a hundred miles apart, in sheltered

Reviews for The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People

[tripleblessings_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The tale of two beaver kittens rescued by an Indian hunter and taken home to his children. They soon become the beloved pets of the whole Indian village. Written in 1935 by Grey Owl, who was really Archibald Stanley Belaney, an Englishman who came to live in the wilds of Canada among the native peoples and took on an "Indian" identity. He was a famous naturalist, writer and public speaker in the 20s and 30s in Canada.