We arrived at Tete Jaune Cache on the Fraser River on the
first of July 1907. For weeks we had struggled toward this point,
exPecting a town of considerable size, but there wasn’t one darn
building in sight. Just two tepees sitting in the middle of a
bearing.
An Indian man about fifty years old emerged, two squaws
around forty-five, three young women named Big Harriet, Mary
and Annie, one sixteen-year-old boy named Samuel, and four or
five young children. Of all of them only Samuel seemed to have an
occupation, going out each day in his dugout canoe to catch
spring salmon to keep this little colony supplied with fresh fish.
There were two large smoking racks beside the river, and the
women kept them loaded with the fish that Samuel caught and
with wild game.
Since we intended to stay here a week or more, we set up a
good camp beside a creek. It was a lovely spot; the scenery was
truly magnificent and there was plenty of fine grass for our
horses. We picketed one of the saddle horses nearby and settled
down to take life easy for a while. When supper time came round
I took my time establishing a fire and prepared sourdough biscuits
with all the little children standing about watching every
move I made. After a while, Big Harriet and Mary and Annie
came to watch as well, which sort of pleased me because they
were good-looking girls and it had been a long time since we had
seen girls at all. But by the time we sat down to eat, all the Indians
had come over, not saying anything, just sitting on the
ground watching every bite we took, their eyes following our
forks from our plates to our mouths and back to our plates again
until we darn near choked. Finally, father jumped to his feet.
"For God’s sake, Ervin, feed these poor hungry people!" he
yelled and stalked off. He never could bear to see anyone go
hungry. So after that night I always cooked up our biggest kettle
full of salt pork and dried beans, and the next biggest with rice or
sago and dried apples, and a huge batch of sourdough bread.
Then I would sit the Indians down and feed them while across the
clearing in front of their tepees sat racks of fish and venison and
other wild game. When they had eaten, I would call my father
and brothers to eat.
On our second day at Tete Jaune Cache, Mac MacDonald
rode into the clearing accompanied by an American named
Finch, the man who was to operate the store at the Cache. He was
a small wiry man about fifty years old, who had only one thing on
his mind: he had to get a building up before the pack train
arrived with his supplies.
He buttonholed father as soon as he dismounted.
"Mr. MacDonald,” he asked anxiously, "would you and your
boys help build my store? I’ll pay you well__”
This was really history in the making—and there is not a
MacDonald alive who can resist finding his place in history.
"We’ll be glad to help,” said father and got his axe out of his
pack. The store had to be built of logs, of course, so we headed for
the small clusters of trees that grew here and there in the clearing.
Mr. Finch, Angus and I cut fourteen- and eighteen-foot-long
logs, the dimensions of the building, while father put our single
set of harness on Sugar Billy, who was not too pleased to find that
he wasn’t going to get the same rest break as the other horses.
Dan, who was a natural-born teamster, skidded the logs to the
building site about a hundred feet back from the river. Father
and Mac notched the logs and put them in place as fast as Dan
could deliver them and we could cut them. The walls were up in
three days, the ridgepole and other roof supports were in place
the following day. Next the split timbers were put up for the roof
and the joints between them chinked with moss. We made a
stoneboat and hauled blue clay from the river, mixed the clay
with water to make a thick paste and plastered it over the split
timber to about six inches thick. We smoothed it down and left it
to dry in the hot sun to make the roof watertight. Father made the
door and the store counter of hand-hewn boards. We put a couple
of small windows into the side walls and built shelves for the
stock out of small poles.
Two days before the store was finished, the pack train
arrived, so work came to a halt while we unloaded the supplies
and covered them with canvas and tarpaulins. The population
took quite a jump with the arrival of the three pack-train men,
but there were more on the way: Bill Spittal and the Monahans
arrived the next day and that night two more men joined us.
One of the latter was Bill Sprung, a real loner who told no
one where he was going or why he was going there. He was an absolute
mountain of a man with the smallest pair of eyes I ever
saw. He had the strength of an ox but probably the same amount
of intelligence.
He had teamed up on the trail with Ed Chappel, who was
perhaps the same age as Sprung, somewhere in his forties we
guessed, but considerably smaller, about five feet eleven and 18
pounds. He told us he had ranched in Montana and sold out there
to come to the Cariboo. He was happy to hear we were headed
that way, too.
Father’s eyes kept straying to Chappel's saddle horse, a first
class-looking dapple grey about sixteen and a half hands high a
tough, fast animal.
"A fine horse,” commented father.
"Yes,” said Chappel. “I wouldn't trade him for a million
bucks!”
"One of Grey Eagle’s strain?" asked father.
"You know Grey Eagle’s horses?" asked Chappel. Sure
enough, this was one of the Flathead Indian horses, just like
father’s old Frank, and Chappel and father traded stories of their
mounts’ abilities far into the night.
The opening of the first store in Tete Jaune Cache called fora
celebration and we all decided that a feast was necessary. Finch
contributed beans and bacon baked in a large Dutch oven, a ham,
and dried fruits cooked with rice. Father shot a young buck deer
and we barbecued the hindquarters along with the ham.
When the food was ready, we invited all the Indians and
everyone else to feast with us. The food disappeared quickly and
everybody had a good time, especially the Indians. I always
marvelled at the enormous quantities that group could eat when
white man’s grub was put in front of them. Of course, it was early
in the year and we were probably the first people to arrive in that
part of the mountains with a good supply of grub, and maybe the
only people willing to share it.
With the store open for business and the feasting over, Spittal
and the two Irishmen headed downstream about twelve miles
to what Angus dubbed Spittal Creek: it was here that Bill had
made his strike. Father and Angus went with them. Having prospected
so many years, father simply could not resist having a
look.
They set up camp at the edge of the creek and wasted no time
getting out their gold pans. The Monahans were new at the game
but they caught on after father instructed them in the finer
points of panning. Spittal seemed to know just where to look for
gold there and settled to work methodically on a gravelly
sandbar.
At the end of the first day there had not been a sign of gold
and Spittal was in a vicious mood, snapping at everyone. It was
not very pleasant around the campfire that night. The next day he
headed into the creek still shovelling his breakfast into his
mouth. The Monahans and MacDonalds followed a little later.
Once again they finished the day empty-handed, and Spittal’s
temper was even worse than the night before. The Monahans, to
escape his wrath, decided to go hunting in a nearby grove of trees
from which they had heard movement during the afternoon. A
bear, perhaps, they decided. Stealthily, they crept up and, sure
enough, there was something big and black in the bushes. The
older brother, the same one who had lost his boots in the McLeod
River, raised his gun and fired. His aim was absolutely dead on.
He had shot his fine black Irish hunter dead. Now he would have
to ride one of the pack animals back to Edmonton.
I am sure Spittal never slept that night because he was in the
creek panning before the others had rolled out of their blankets
in the morning. As they ate breakfast they listened to him cursing
every stone beneath his feet. After lunch, the younger Monahan,
the one who was going into the priesthood, sat down on the bank
despondently.
"Billy," he said, "is it sure you are that this is the right creek?
It is possible that — "
Spittal assured him in rather colourful language that it was.
"Then,” said Monahan, "is it sure you are that this is the right
part of the creek? You see, Billy, my brother and I are thinking
there’s no gold here!”
Spittal exploded. "Damn it, I know there’s gold here because
I Put it here!"
This blew the prospecting party all to hell, so Spittal and the
Monahans headed back to Edmonton together. We never heard
of the two Irishmen again, but two years later we heard of
Spittal. Some Indians came into the 70 Mile House with a story
about some white men starving up in the Clearwater country,
and the police came through our ranch to look for them. Apparently
Spittal had got hold of some ore samples and showed them
to people claiming they were from a mine he had found up there
They paid him money to take them to it in the fall and got snowed
in. The only thing that saved them from starvation was shooting
one of their horses.
It had now been ten days since our arrival at the Cache and it
was time to move on. Before leaving we had to replenish our
grocery supplies because we had used a lot more than we had
figured on. Of course, feeding the local Indian population had not
helped at all. Our supplies had melted away like a snowbank in
the sun. We were the first customers in the new store, and we
bought a hundred pounds of flour, fifty pounds of sugar, fifty
pounds of dried beans, fifty pounds of bacon, ten pounds of coffee
and five pounds of tea. This, we figured, would get us through to
the next store if we avoided freeloaders.
We expected prices would be much higher than they had
been in Edmonton owing to the terrific cost of having to pack
everything in over that long, dangerous trail, but we were still a
little shocked when we saw the bill. Two hundred and fifty
dollars! Flour was $1.00 a pound, bacon that we had bought in
Edmonton for 25 cents a pound was 75 cents here, and sugar was
$1.25 a pound. Luckily, Finch owed us for our construction work
so we came out nearly even on the bill. Father decided that we
would only need five pack horses for the rest of the trip because
we had much less to carry, so we sold the Squaw Mare and Jackie
to Mac for $150. Father was happy when Mac paid by cheque: he
wanted to give him the horses for all the help he had given us, and
never cashed the cheque.
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