The New Homestead: Letters From Fort Vermilion

SEPTEMBER, 1927

BY HILDA ROSE

FORT VERMILION, ALBERTA
July 10, 1926
DEAR DOCTOR-LADY: —
I am now on the steamer going north and will land very soon, so this will be a short letter so I can get it ready and leave it here on the steamer to take back to civilization. We will land at L. Point, which is ten miles before we come to the trading post. There is only one white settler there and he is on the boat. He has fifteen children — is a very large, fine-looking, jovial man. His father was a missionary and the first white man here. He has taken a great fancy to Daddy, and as he is a very rich man his word is law on the river. The boat was crowded and we had no berths and night was coming on. He called the purser and told him to give us a good stateroom and look after Mr. Rose, as he looked tired and needed rest. Say, I never saw a man jump around so swiftly. The best stateroom was given to us and we had every attention as if we were rich. Daddy was eight days in the freight car and was in a dreadful state when he arrived. I took him to a hotel and gave a woman a dollar to carry me four pails of water from the creek and heat two cans of it, and then I bathed the poor dear and put him to bed. He could n’t even eat for exhaustion. He was just a helpless baby.
I’m so glad Mr. L. has taken charge of us. Now everything will be all right and I’ve quit worrying. Boy is the only child on the boat and is very happy. Everybody wants him, and from the captain, who coaxes him up into his tower and lets him use his telescopes, to the engineer and deck hands, he surely has a good time.
Leaving Edmonton, the freight that Daddy was on lost twelve cars just behind him. They turned turtle and piled up on the track so that my train was delayed eleven hours. Finally we got going again and we had a wreck, but our car was left standing on the track. This was in a swamp and we were there six hours at night, and the mosquitoes descended on us and Boy almost lost his mind, though I wrapped his legs in my jacket and fanned him constantly. Finally they rustled up an old locomotive and a freight car and took us to Peace River Town. It was very crowded and the first-class passengers were horrified when they had to ride with us emigrants. Three in a seat and on the floor, just as tight as could be. No lights, and they sang songs as we rode along, for most of us were happy to be going again through the dark hills to safety.
I have no time to write more. The land looks green, lovely, and lonesome. I am a little homesick. Just a tearful feeling.

July 25, 1926
The boat came up this morning and brought me your letter, and this is just a hasty scrawl that I hope will catch the boat if someone here at the L. ranch goes down to the shore. I love it here, but see hardships ahead. Getting ready for winter will be a big job. Daddy is poorly. I kept him in bed all day yesterday and he felt stronger to-day, but not able to do anything. But God will see me through and I am happier than I’ve been for several years.
It grows here—everything grows, though the season is so short one must hustle to get it planted and harvested. There is wood a plenty to burn, but it takes work to get it ready for winter. There is plenty of water in the majestic river if wells fail. Happy, dear heart! I have reached the garden of Eden. But, there is the winter and the cold, the hard work, the loneliness. I’ll get my mail once a month, I think, for some breed or somebody will come by surely. I repeat the Twenty-third Psalm each day.

[No date]
The talk now is only ‘fur” and ‘dogs.’ In another month there won’t be a breed or Indian within one hundred and fifty miles, nor anybody, as all will be on the trap lines and we won’t see a soul till spring. Yet, I don’t dread it. Yesterday a large wolf — and they are immense — came within three hundred yards of our tent. From the ground to the top of the middle of their back is thirty-six inches. Take a yardstick and measure the biggest dog you know and you’ll get some idea of them. Some are black and some are gray and some are mixed. The bounty is eight dollars and the best skins bring twenty-five dollars. You know we are on a bend of the river. The wolves have a trail right across the neck at our back, so we can see them as they streak across. I have six wolf traps and I shall set them out as soon as my bait is rotten enough. It takes an awful stink to lure them to your traps, unless you have a dead horse or something to set your traps around. The largest wolves stand as high as forty inches to the back up here. I have n’t got a decent rifle for them. Nothing but old muzzle loaders that Daddy’s forefather used in the Revolutionary War and a good little 22 rifle.
If I can get them once into a trap I’ll kill them with a club and ‘shabbynacky’ myself a good 30.30 rifle. ‘Shabby-nacky’ means ‘trade’ in here. The only white people to come ‘in’ this year besides us were two priests to lake the place of two old priests going ‘out.’ One at the Catholic Mission and one at the English Church Mission. So we are very well known by hundreds of breeds and savages, as they have what I call ’moccasin telegraph’ service here. It travels very fast by moccasin and canoe. If someone gets a new dog we all know it and all about it very quickly. Our dog is known to hundreds that have never seen it.
To save my candles I am writing this by the stove. By taking off one lid I get a fitful light that barely enables me to see to write. It makes me think of Lincoln’s early life. We are still living in a tent, but it’s getting pretty cold nights. It was twenty degrees above zero in the tent last night and I won’t be able to get a log cabin this year, as good logs are too far away. So we are going to take what is handy, which is poplar pole trees, and cover the tent and put a roof on it of poles and put hay and dirt on it. This pioneering is tough, all right, but I expected it and a merry heart goes a long way. Though not a day passes that I don’t question myself whether I have done right in coming so far away. But no one could help me where I was, and I wanted to keep my self-respect and raise the boy to be a real man, and I did n’t have a show there.
Boy has a very small Indian pony — looks like a small Shetland pony, but has the toughness and pep so necessary down here. Our rivers flow down to the Arctic here. When Daddy came he stopped at the last drug store in civilization to get a box of salve. The kindly little gray-haired lady who waited on him asked him, ‘Whither bound?’ and he said, ‘Fort Vermilion.’ ‘That’s my grave,’ said she sadly. ‘Why, were you ever down there?’ says Daddy. ‘Yes, I wintahed one yeah on the Great Slave Lake.’ ‘Didn’t you like it?’ asked Daddy. ‘No,’ says she. ‘Too fah from a doctah.’ ‘Well,’ said Daddy, ‘she’s quite close to a “doctah” now, for her husband is one and runs that little drug store.’
When Boy comes riding on his pony back over the hills, now you see him, then he’s out of sight in a gully, now he’s riding up the slope, gone again, and then comes racing home on a gallop. Well, it’s like looking at a Wild-West movie show, only it’s real. He and his pony are one — all the brother he has except his big black shepherd dog. I must get some dogs, but not this year. Only dogs are used here in winter. You lie down on your sled wrapped in a feather quilt and the river is the road. A trapper offered me a trained female dog, but I have too much on my hands yet awhile. A bunch of wild pups would drive me crazy. A husky is half wolf; a malamute is a husky bred back to a wolf. They make fine sled dogs, but have to be well fed or they’ll turn on you and eat you up. I have too many to feed now, but I’ll have a bunch of trained dogs after a while.
One of the breeds says he’ll take Boy out on the trap line when he gets big enough. The trap line is from one to five hundred miles off and lies over a big country where only Indians live, well watered with unknown rivers and lakes. Each trapper chooses his line, which runs through the bush along these rivers, creeks, and lakes, and he builds a cabin at the end of each day when he goes over it the first time. Six cabins is the rule. So it takes a week to go over his route, and he travels thus all winter long, back and forth. In the spring he comes out to the trading posts with his catch and trades it for what he needs or sees at the post; wastes his substance on whiskey, cards, and foolishness; goes in debt to the post for a grubstake for the next winter, and then there is the hardship and loneliness of the trap line ahead of him again.
All the talk now is ‘dogs’ and ‘fur.’ ‘Saw some fur last night,’ says Peter R., a half-breed. ‘What was it?’ I asked. ‘A big wolf, and if my horse had n’t got scared I ’d ’a’ shot him,’ he answered. The foxes are shy and you never see them. A large bear looted Jack W.’s cabin. Just tore things loose and carried off his bacon. A wolf carried off a fresh beef hide from the white settler’s place two weeks ago. That’s all the news. I have no paper from the U. S. and I wonder what they are doing there. Those clippings would be interesting— I hope you are saving them. Politics and world happenings, you know.

August 24, 1926
Have n’t a minute to spare, as winter is n’t far off, but must write you a few lines, as I know you’ll be anxious about us up here in this vast wilderness. I am still living in a tent and cooking over a camp fire, and it appears to be very healthy, judging by how dirty we get to be. I smell like a smoked herring. No well dug yet, so we get water from the river, and very good water it is. A large bear is prowling around, but not having shells for bears I can’t tackle it yet. I have fifty-six traps of all kinds, which is just one twentieth of what the other trappers have, but I will get more if I catch any fur. The trading post trades you anything you want for fur, charging about four times what it’s worth, plus the freight in. This trading is very interesting indeed. Suppose I take some eggs or butter to the store. They’ll offer me, say, fifty cents a pound or dozen. ‘Shabbynacky,’ or else I can take it home. There is no cash business done at all. But it’s not ‘so worse,’ as one man said. The trader will buy you anything from the ‘outside’ you want, from a box of salve to a threshing machine, providing you have it coming. Furs dropped in price fifty per cent, here when the U. S. put a fifty per cent tariff on raw furs. So the poor Indian
‘gets it in the neck.’ The trader plays safe. I went horseback over to see a family living seven miles from us and learned quite a bit about setting the traps. The breeds are really beginning to like us. One smiled at us and joked me about being a barber when he passed by to-day and I was trimming Daddy’s hair out in the sunshine in front of the tent. They are a very quiet, silent, race, but once a friend, it’s forever true.
Our homestead is in a bend of the river and has some low hills at the back, where it is thirty feet higher than the river. There is a small lake and a slough with muskrats in it, partly on our place, and the lake on the homestead for Karl to locate on when he is eighteen years old. I expect to make our living catching the rats and a few foxes. The fur is so scarce that the trappers go far inland and have trap lines a hundred miles long. But that leaves what there is here for me; and foxes can run, so I’ll get some, I’m sure, and rats always live in sloughs. We have been very busy putting up hay. Daddy can’t work hard, but he got a job from the white settler to ride the big mower for him for a few days, and in return his breeds stacked up what hay we’ll need for the winter. The hay grew on our homestead, which is nearly all cleaned good hay ground. There is plenty of hay around here, as the white settler has set fires for forty years and cleaned up for fifty miles around his place for his stock to graze on.
You have caught the spirit of my venture. So have the breeds and Indians. They will love us soon. We are so original and natural. I received all your letters and we enjoy those editorials. More than before we need a window to see what the world is doing. I do dread the winter and we are cutting logs and poles, but it’s slow.
I have warm blankets and quilts and a moose hide to make us moccasins and ten pounds of wool yarn to knit up, and I shall cut one blanket up for clothing and lining coats and vests. We’ll make it fine. Vegetables never fail here, nor grain or berries. By salting one spot against the prevailing wind, deer and moose can be got easily. There are big fish in the river. The Lord is my Shepherd once more, and He only helps those that help themselves.
My two good friends will never get over it, I fear. They are shocked to death. So frail, Daddy so old, boy so young. But that’s what makes it so interesting. Not to go to a poorhouse, nor crawl on my belly in an irrigated garden for a living. As I look at the river on three sides, where there will never be a sign of human habitation in sight,

We were so tired of half rations, so sick of the struggle. I expect hardships, welcome them, but it will be on a full belly and I can stand it.

September 6, 1926
My conscience is troubling me very much. I tried to doctor a sick soul and gave a sedative instead of using the surgical knife. The white settler has a dear little daughter, just twenty-two years old. I never thought I’d find a woman smaller than I, but this girl is, and so pretty and sweet. They grow that way up here in the woods. I mean, sweet. All the young girls are that way. Their eyes are shy and timid and I could n’t hurt them. The white settler has so many kids, and the girls range in age from ten to twenty-three and there are seven unmarried and all are just as I have described them. M. is the one that haunts my wakeful hours at night. Which reminds me of a verse in the Bible, which says, if I remember right, ‘The poor are always with us.’ For M. told me the first day I met her, ‘The breeds are here, and we must accept, them and treat them like human beings.’ Daddy said the same and we are doing it.
All breeds are not alike, but the big majority have strong backs and weak heads. Among the exceptions is one named N. That’s his first name. He is nearly white, tall, very strong, and would pass for a Frenchman ‘outside.’ But here he’s just a breed, and among his fellows looks like one. He has always worked at the ranch and played with the children as he grew up, and fell in love with M. Her parents have forbidden her to ever think of marriage with a breed. M. has refused eight white trappers, to share their cabins, and I don’t blame her. I have n’t seen one yet as nice as N. Yes, he wipes the dishes for her every day and they look anywhere except at each other when anyone is looking, but when they’re alone blue eyes look at soft black eyes. He eats with the breeds at their table and this little act of wiping the dishes is his one happy moment after each meal.
Dear Doctor-Lady, I wish you could see them together. So happy and yet so unhappy. Then one day M. broke down and cried and told me. And I comforted her, assuring her everything would come out all right and that N. was a very good man. I could n’t bear to see her cry and I forgot that she will have breed children if she marries N. My sympathy made me do wrong. For I don’t want breed grandchildren myself. I can’t think of anything more horrible than to have grandchildren with strong backs and weak heads. For breeds are just big children. If I had expressed my horror at such a union as she contemplates, my conscience would be clear and I’d feel like a brute. What shall I do? Just let nature take its course? Am I, a woman from the ‘outside’ and well informed, responsible for this? She said she was going to marry him or die an old maid.
It’s too bad that we are fifteen miles from the white settler. Karl gets so lonesome for children. I play with him some, but it’s not the same. He knows the name of every breed around here and quite a few Indians. He has also made a friend of the Mounted Police, who is nicknamed ‘Baldy’ and is a rather young-looking man with a splendid appearance, as if he had just stepped out of a storybook. But they lead a very strenuous life here, protecting the white settler and keeping the Indians peaceful. There is only one at each fort and their days are full of danger, and braver men never lived. Baldy has told Karl many stories of his own exploits and of another who was his partner a few years back, but got shot by a murderer who was quicker on the trigger than he was that time.

So among uneducated, silent Indians, childlike breeds, and trappers of the fur, Boy’s life will be spent. But already I see a change in him. He is more manly, more to be depended on. He realizes that we are in a new, wild country and that I depend on him to make a home here and provide the necessities of life. The silence almost gets me. For two weeks I have n’t seen a white person, and we, Boy and I, have been alone. Daddy had to appear in person at the nearest land office to file on our homestead and he left us on the twenty-seventh of August. He will most likely be back the end of this week. Boy and I have been so lonely without him. But the law has to be complied with, and by homesteading himself, if he should die before Boy is of age, I also get a homestead, besides the right to prove up his homestead should he die before it is proved up or after. He is very anxious for Boy to get a good farm and enough to pasture stock on. It’s possible to get half a section, besides Boy’s homestead, right at eighteen years of age this way. I think that Daddy will be with us a good many years yet, but he does n’t think so, though I tell him that ‘creaking hinges last a long time.’

You can’t get a breed or an Indian to live alone. They are the most childish and superstitious mortals I’ve ever heard of. Their fears simply get them. ‘What are you afraid of?' I ask them. ‘I don’t know’ is all the answer I get, or ‘I won’t stay alone — I can’t.’ My health is better here and Karl is growing so fast I can just see him grow, and he is just as chubby. So the climate so far agrees with us. I hope you are well, too, and happy.

October 25, 1926
This will be just a few lines to let you know that I’m well and we’re all feeling good. Winter is here, snow on the ground, and we are still in a tent, but building on our cabin. It’s not very cold, except in spells, and I have a heater up besides the old cookstove. There is no soul closer than seven miles — not even an Indian. All are away on their trap lines.
We had fish for supper last night and prairie chicken for dinner. Just as a battle looks more terrible to those far away than to the one in the fray, so this must look that way to you. It’s pioneering, I’ll say, but I think we’ll winter through all right. I do wish we had a house and barn, but will dig away at it and by next winter we’ll have it. I have a roof over the kitchen stove and three walls to that, but have to cut lots of logs yet for the rest. Old winter will be a snorter in another month and I must go to work again. Can’t wait a minute.
Thank you for the paper. The mail is a bright spot in our life, a window to look out on the big ‘outside.’ The river is n’t running ice yet, but will any day, and then the mail will be once a month and I may not be able to get it regular, as it’s over thirty miles away and I have no dog team. I saw a dog team this week. A trapper passed through with five dogs. I gave him his dinner and then I kissed each of his dogs on the forehead and hugged them and cried a little over them. He vowed he’d never whipped them and I told him right to his face he was a liar. Such beautiful dogs, and their hearts were broken; their tails turned down and slicked tight to their stomachs at the sound of his voice. This country is ‘hell’ for dogs and Indians. The Indians are in the grip of the fur traders and are robbed terribly, and just starve along, always in debt to the traders. And the traders just hate white settlers and manage to keep them out. We are the only ones to come in this year. Those that came before have most of them gone out again, but I intend to stick. If I get through this winter I’ll make it. It’s a wonderful country, a bracing climate, and I love it.
The fairy-tale book and Robinson Crusoe have been a godsend for Boy. Just what he needed for his mind. He has his sled and a hill to slide on, a dog to play with, and he is getting to be an expert with the big axe. Much better than I am. Well, it’s going to be a hard time for me for a while, but I ’m game. So much is at stake.

January 18, 1927
Just think, I’ve been to a party. A real party, and it seems just too good to be true; and a year from now there’ll be another one. But first I must tell you about the Preacher, because he enters so much into our lives. The English Church sends us one missionary and we call him ‘the Preacher.’ The old one was pensioned and sent to England the week we arrived here. He thought he could ride his circuit as usual and the result was he was found wandering in a muskeg, by the Indians. He had started out with a sandwich in his pocket and no mosquito bar, and when found was out of his head. It’s no trouble to get lost here at all. I never venture over a quarter of a mile from home without the dog. When I want to go home I tell him to go ahead and show me the way. Our new Preacher is just out of college. He’s a dandy — real good-looking, young, jolly. Can sing a rollicking college song or dance a jig. He is very modern, immaculately dressed, and rides like all Englishmen — bumpety-bump. It looks so unnatural. We enjoy his visits very much and he has called four times already. There are so few here that it does n’t take long to get around.
No, the teacher got cold feet at the last minute and would n’t come. She was a strong, husky Scotch woman, and if she’d come we’d have got along fine and got our cabins built. Yes, I read your proposition of the irrigated land; I know all about truck, fruit, and apples and the marketing of it, too. It sounds nice, but when you can’t sell what you raise, what then? Freight rates are so high that the selling price of the stuff won’t cover it. There are no markets in the West. Some day I’ll tell you of five years spent on an irrigated ranch. I’m grateful for the offer, but never again will I crawl on my belly for nothing.

February 9, 1927
There are just 131 civilized in here. By ‘ civilized ’ I mean speaking English and wearing clothes. Of these, thirtyone are white, and I can count the white women on my fingers. The Preacher is a mine of information and our newspaper. He likes us and is delighted to think we are really settling here. We sometimes talk about the ‘Bonny Lassie’ left in England and the aged mother who won’t sell her antique and cherished old furniture and silver because she’s keeping it to move right into the ‘Vicarage’ when he becomes ‘the Vicar’ of the little village church. He loves the freedom here and says he can’t go back to the narrow life of the English vicar. The Bonny Lassie is planning on coming here this summer. Won’t that be fine? Pretty rough on this gentle English girl to live amongst Indians and trappers, but I know she and I will be the best of friends and she’s a brick if she comes. It’s a self-imposed exile for me and will be for her, too. Love for your mate makes you daring, but it has its compensations.

February 11, 1927
These civilized people are scattered over a couple of thousand square miles. Many live in teepees and the rest in log cabins, except two or three who have board cabins. Mr. L.’s house was built by his father forty years ago of boards sawed with a handsaw. Some labor.
He gives a party once a year after Xmas. The Preacher was so afraid we would n’t go that he came after us. It’s hard to find the trail in the snow and it’s a perfect maze to me, but we arrived at 7 P.M. and after a hot supper the L. children gave their school programme of music, recitations, songs, and dances. They have a big schoolhouse in the back yard and the eldest daughter teaches them. After the programme the dining room and big kitchen were cleared for dancing. Everybody was there except five and the Catholic Mission.
The white women were elderly — wives who had followed their husbands in here. Old-fashioned, unbobbed, and with long skirts. But it was like coming home, so warm was the welcome I received from this lonesome sisterhood. They held my hands so long; they did n’t want to let them go. They were nearly all from the States. One had gone insane — not very bad; you could see her mind was shattered. You know it takes some mental calibre to come in here and live alone and not see a white woman more than once or twice a year. If you have n’t much in your head the lonesomeness will get, you. This woman is poor white trash from the cotton fields of Texas. She knows nothing but work. I questioned her about her life here in order to learn what I could of the loneliness that makes insanity among sheep herders and farm women.
I see by one of your letters that you have no conception of how far north I am. Calgary is a large city crowded with cars. Farther north is Edmonton, also a big city. Next comes Peace River, a small town at the end of the railroad. It has some autos and two wooden hotels. Each hotel has a bathroom in it, but you have to carry your water up from the creek and heat it on the kitchen range if you want to take a bath. Then I went on a steamer that holds thirty carloads of freight in the bottom. We went north all the wray until we came to the Great Slave Lake Region. We got off just this side of it in the wilderness. There are no autos in here. There are nine white people at Fort Vermilion, the Governor, doctor, Mounted Police, Hudson Bay man, and so forth. Get a map and find the Great Slave Lake. A little south of it — that’s here. Boy has already had two invitations from Indians to go trapping with them there when he gets a bit older.
The Calgary, Edmonton, and Peace River Town districts are settled with farms till it looks like a checker-board. Here is the primeval wilderness. Unless I have the dog with me I never dare go out of sight of the house, as I get lost so easily. The white settler’s wife and children have to climb a tree quite frequently when picking berries to see in what direction to go home. As there are no roads in the sea, so there are none here.

February 12, 1927
I have now been in bed one week. Last night was a good night and I feel rested and easy to-day. Just a week ago I fell, striking my back on a small bag of frozen salt in the tent. I walked back to my little house, undressed, and crept into bed, and there I’ve been ever since. It will be two weeks yet before I can walk. I found the hurt place in the Anatomy. The hurt is on the right side.
I lie on my left side. To-day Daddy raised me up in a reclining position which feels very nice. Boy is the cook, and by following my directions does real well and bakes good bread. Sets his sponge at night just like any good housekeeper. There does n’t seem to be anything out of joint and we’re so far from a doctor that at a dollar a mile the price is prohibitive unless something is really broken. The Indians are doctored free, but not white people. Doctors should be free to all people. I’ll never have another doctor’s bill hanging over me if I can get well without. So tired I won’t write any more now.

March 1, 1927
Still in bed, but better. Next week I’ll be up again. It was a slight sprain and much bruised. Daddy is baking meat and potatoes for our lunch. Boy is in bed with acute bronchitis. Running out while warm into the cold without a coat must have caused it, but Daddy is bringing him around in good shape. He smokes him every day for the cough. Pours oil of pine tar on hot coals and makes him breathe the smoke. It loosens the cough up fine.
The Party. The Preacher said, ‘Now you’ll see some fancy clothes.’ ‘What! Do they wear fancy clothes?’ said I. ‘The Duskies do,’ says he. As I had only met one Indian squaw all summer, I looked forward to seeing the others. I received the surprise of my life. He calls the Indian and breed women ‘the Duskies.’ They were dressed in the latest fashion. Knee-length gowns, bobbed hair, flesh-colored silk stockings with bright flowers embroidered on the knees. Their gowns were of bright silk, and they were so painted and powdered the men looked black in comparison. Dancing the breakdown they grew so excited that Cree and Beaver war whoops made my back hair rise up in horror. I thought they’d start scalping next, but a glance across the room at the gleaming pistols and full cartridge belt of the Mounted Police reassured me. Nearly all had come in dog sleds.
My little house. I love it. There is only one room in it, but I would n’t trade it for a mansion. I could n’t make a dugout in the hill, so then I started a log cabin. Eight logs were laid when the cold came. Such a cold! The thermometer dropped steadily and we all cut wood to keep from freezing to death in the tent. We put up the big heater, but had to wear our coats to keep the cold from our backs. We lived from day to day. Building was out of the question. The intense cold just made the meat on our bones vanish away, and we ate all the time, all we could.
Thanksgiving Day came, and just at dusk Mr. L. drove up with four teams and sleds loaded and three other white men and one breed. They brought everything with them and, with the thermometer at forty below zero, put up my little house in six days and had us moved in. I fed them. They could just get in around the stove, but they were a jolly crew. They made big fires outside to get warm by. The icicles hung from their eyelashes in the intense cold, and they danced war dances around the fires and whooped to get warm. Mr. L. has a small saw outfit and saws lumber, and he brought odds and ends he had on hand. The foundation was logs and they even dug me a small cellar. I shall pay for the material and time, of course. But it was queer how they arrived just in the nick of time. Daddy was in bed for a week in the little house just from the cold. Nothing the matter with him at all. The cold grew worse until it was forty-nine below by my thermometer and sixty below by self-registering ones. Was n’t I glad we had a shelter at last!
Been feeling blue because I had no luck trapping, nearly sick with worry, when like a bolt from the blue came good news and a check! Look in the February number of the Atlantic Monthly in the back in the Contributors’ Column. ‘It can’t be true,’I say to myself a dozen times a day. Mrs. A. sent my letters in to the magazine and they accepted them. I can’t believe it. A grubstake for the coming winter; able to pay my debts and buy some clothes for Boy, right out of the blue sky!
The piano was never unpacked and the last thing the men did was to set it up in the little house.
Perhaps you have already seen the Atlantic. I received the February number and the check February 20. I did n’t fret any more about staying in bed. Your letter and package came on that day, too, and Boy’s book and all the reading for me. You are too good. How can I ever pay it back! Everybody is too good to me.

March 14, 1927
I was afraid you might worry about me, so I ’ll write a few lines to tell you that the young doctor was out to see me and he examined my back and said it would be all right, but that one kidney was still sore. He left me a heap of pills of many colors which I won’t take. The Government furnishes us a doctor and this lad is a dear child just out of college. He is very busy and has a hard row to hoe up here doctoring Indians. I did n’t send for him, for I can’t afford such luxuries. He came anyway. I guess the breeds must have told him I’d never walk again. I can’t walk much yet, but I take a few steps every day now. We had a nice visit and he told me all about college days. It was real nice of him to come sixty miles with a cold north wind blowing, but he said that was nothing. He often went one hundred and fifty miles when it was colder. Some life.

April 29, 1927
I am up and around — not so very strong. Four inches of snow fell last night and it’s still snowing, but it will go as soon as the wind changes. As soon as the ice goes out the mail will come in. I hope it goes soon. I am planning a vegetable garden and am going to farm all I can. The summer is short, but it’s almost continuous daylight and things do grow. I feel lonesome to-day and wish there were some other woman to talk to besides the one in the looking-glass. I’m not well enough to be outside and I’m tired of the inside. The mail will be so welcome.

PEACE RIVER, ALBERTA May 4, 1927
We’re expecting the boat this week with mail. I feel better — have it checked again. Spring is here, and birds. It’s so lovely it hurts. Ducks and geese and frogs make the air noisy, and birds everywhere. I am so happy.

May 10, 1927
The mail came in two days ago and I have a chance maybe to mail this card as the boat goes back. I’ll try, anyway. Medicine came, and just what I needed. My back is nearly well. I only feel it when I stoop over. I’m late with my garden and so busy. Had a heap of letters. Books and papers all arrived. The B. cape kept Daddy’s head from freezing all winter. He even took it to bed with him. We have a fresh cow this month and lots of milk.

FORT VERMILION, ALBERTAMay 21, 1927
Spring is here at last and the grass is green. Flowers are springing up everywhere and wild strawberries are in bloom. There was quite a severe frost a couple of nights ago that may have injured them. The mosquitoes arc also with us now. If this land ever gets settled up they won’t be bad, but as it is now they are fierce. We sleep under a mosquito bar, at night, made of cheesecloth so the little ones can’t crawl through. They will stay with us now until fall comes with sharp frost. But they are bearable. Summer seems to come as if by magic. There really is hardly any spring. To-day is Sunday, I believe. I am never sure of the days in the calendar. I studied the Bible a bit and found that the word ‘hell’ means ‘the grave’ in many places in the Bible. I have heard people call this north country by both these names, but I need never do that now that people outside know I ’m here. I feel as if I have known all you folks all along, but you did n’t know about me.
The weeks and months and years slip by and the old struggle for existence goes on. It’s been a fight to keep the intellect alive. Do you think I’ll ever be able to write for a living? I can devote a little time every day to study even when I am busy with the garden, and during the long winter there is too much time on my hands. The dark comes too quickly and then stays so long.
What a lovely place I have for a home! The river forms a perfect half circle around us, and there is a hill behind us that shuts out the north wind. The homestead is flooded below the hill until June. It makes fine hay. On one side is a small lake that never goes dry. About eighty acres large. We are all alone.
I was counting on catching fur, and there is n’t any and won’t be for three years — if I can exist till then. I must write, for, while I hope to grow most of what we eat, we need to buy some things and freights are so high in here. I find that I am treated with great respect by the men in here. That’s because they admire a woman who’ll follow her man into the wilderness and stay with him. They look tough, but inside they’re homesick for some old mother, and always, of course, with the longing for a woman’s sympathy and love, which is the gnawing hunger of lonely men. The trappers are coming out of the bush on their way to the trading posts or to the ‘outside.’ Their sleeping bags are filled with duck feathers and quilted. It’s really just a large comforter; and they roll up in them and sleep right in the snow even when it’s sixty to seventy below zero.
I have gone back to when the world is still young. Civilization is gone and only the little band of lonesome women here remember it. I have a pretty little buckskin Indian pony, but have n’t dared to ride yet, as my back is still a little lame. But it is passing away and I am getting stronger every day.

May 31, 1927
Boy and I went hunting yesterday together for the first time this year. He got four ducks, each time he shot getting his bird. The fifth time he shot he killed his duck, but she floated out of reach and the water was too deep for him to wade in after her. He can’t swim yet very well, and I can’t either. Of those he brought home, two were big mallards, one was an Indian duck, and the other was a spoonbill. It’s all the meat we have and it’s very good. He is really getting to be a very good shot.
Meat is very scarce here some years and has been so for quite a few years now, the Indians say. It’s too far north and the country is so large, and wolves keep it down, too. But ducks are good as long as they last. After a while there will be prairie chickens. There are small deer here, but they are very scarce. I have never seen one. In the muskegs there are moose, but except in winter they are impassable. Bands of large wolves feed on them. It’s such a big, wild country—big lakes, rivers, and muskegs; no trails and no people. Less than two human beings to each thousand square miles, and that means Indians, too. I won’t admit out loud that I ’m lonesome, but it’s a Robinson Crusoe existence. Like being alive yet buried. Books will save my reason, and letters. Trappers tell me no white woman from the outside can stand it longer than six years. I’ll have to show them.
Sincerely yours,
HILDA ROSE