[The passage below refers to St. Barbe's early days in Canada, when he was around twenty years of age.]

Excerpt from Dance of the Trees

(Original spelling, punctuation and grammar retained.)

From Chapter Two
The Tenderfoot

Charlie Eagle was Chief of a tribe of Cree Indians of Algonquin stock who had settled in a reserve about sixteen miles south of Saskatoon. I met him first on a camping trip. His people were fur trappers and traders and Charlie’s function as their leader included being minister of their religion and headmaster of the school. But with his new responsibilities he had kept his skill as a horseman, a hunter and a fisherman.

From him I learned the art of still hunting which means that the hunter seeks out the tracks of the prey and when he finds a point where two of these cross he takes up position and waits. His quarry comes to him. The method is simple but requires understanding of forest lore. And it is profitable. About twenty years after my training with Charlie I returned to the North West during the days of the Hoover depression. For six weeks I spent no more than one dollar and a half because of my training in the art of living on the country while still a lad. I owe that part of my Canadian education to my friend Charlie Eagle.

I spent many nights with the Crees listening with the children to the stories that instill into their minds the knowledge of forest life that makes the world of nature as familiar to them as nurseries are to English children. The tales are told when the day’s work is done and young people gather around the camp fires. The logs are pushed together and the narrative is taken up where it halted the previous night, for these are serial stories. One tells of a hunting expedition; the two characters are classical in the universal way of children’s fiction. A boy always takes part and he is the son of an Indian hunter. The son accompanies the father on a hunting trip for the first time and always defers to him as a son and pupil. Thus good manners and filial respect are inculcated. The first instalments tell of the preparations they make before setting out. The young people listen wide-eyed, absorbing the lesson with the story. When the journey begins, every detail of the landscape is described, the way the father teaches the boy to get his bearings, the manner of progress in forests, on mountains, over lakes and prairies and the crafts of combating forest fires and sheltering from storms.

Lessons on the birds of the wild, the herds of buffalo and other wild life are woven into the emergent epic by the story-teller. All the arts and crafts of the men of the forests are highlighted. When the hunters kill wild duck, the children are told how the carcases are retrieved from the lake and cooked. Encased in clay from the bank of the lake, feathers and all they are nested in embers in the heart of a fire. Then the boy and his father rest while the birds cool in a primitive but airtight casserole.

At this point comedy, of a kind all children appreciate, enters the tale. The story is called “The Fox with the White Tummy” and this odd creature now appears. He is a hungry fox and he is scouting in the vicinity in search of something for the larder. A delicious scent comes through the trees. The fox sniffs and follows his nose which leads him to something he finds good. The duck is nicely done and father and son are sound asleep. Mr. Fox is confident he can help himself. Carefully he tries to pull the duck out of its fiery nest. But despite his cunning the long hairs of his tummy catch fire. Loudly he yelps, the hunters awake and grab their dinner as he runs off howling over the baldness of his now aching tummy.

“And that,” says the story-teller, “is how the fox got a white tummy.”

The story does not end there because the children, tireless in their appetite for stories, wish to know more about the fox and hunters. To-morrow night and the next night and forever the narrator may invent new episodes and the tale will go on—thrilling, delighting and teaching the rising generation of Indians to live simply and to be at home in the wilds, self-supporting on their own reservations.

I learned much as I sat by the fire with the children of Charlie Eagle’s tribe. The Crees accepted me as a member of the family. I felt at home with them. In the summer we organized a joint picnic with the Canadian homesteaders and had flat-racing. The Indians rode bareback. Our horses were generally better bred and could go faster on the straight, but on the corners the Indians gained every time. The holiday was a great success and became an annual event.

Twenty years later when I returned to Beaver Creek, I arrived, by a happy chance, in time to take part in it again. Renewing old friendships and dancing with girls I had dandled on my knees as babies was the greatest fun. Twenty years is a considerable time and I had long been given up as dead. My old home had become the Wild Life Reserve.

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