Rising Wolf

Rising Wolf by Roger Pocock (1927)

Rising Wolf is a condensed account of the life of Hugh Monroe, a white man known among the Blackfoot as Rising Wolf, drawn from J. B. Schultz's narrative My Life as an Indian. Hugh Monroe was born in July 1798 at Three Rivers in Quebec, the son of a British army colonel and a mother from the noble French émigré family of La Roche. He spent his boyhood in the forests surrounding his home, developing a deep love of nature and wild life, and attended school only long enough to learn to read and write. In 1813, at the age of fifteen, he persuaded his parents to allow him to enter the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. His father gave him a fine English smoothbore, his mother a pair of the celebrated La Roche dueling pistols and a prayer book, and the family priest gave him a rosary and cross. Traveling westward by canoe throughout the summer, Monroe and the flotilla wintered at Lake Winnipeg, then continued their journey the following spring, arriving in July at Mountain Fort, a new company post near the Rocky Mountains. The post was surrounded by thousands of encamped Blackfeet come to trade. Because the company had no Blackfoot interpreter, the factor assigned the intelligent young Monroe to live and travel with the Piegans, a Blackfoot tribe, to learn their language, and to ensure that they returned the following summer with their furs. The company was also anxious about American traders pushing westward toward the Yellowstone, and Monroe was tasked with discouraging their competition. Monroe set out with the Piegans, marveling at the great procession of eight hundred lodges, eight thousand souls, and thousands of horses moving across the plains. During a rest on the trail, a medicine man tried and failed to light a stone pipe using flint and steel. Monroe drew out his pocket magnifying glass and used it to focus sunlight and ignite the tobacco. The effect on the assembled Blackfeet was immediate and overwhelming. They surged toward him, shouting and gesticulating, believing he had called upon the Sun himself to light the pipe. Mothers pressed their infants against him in prayer. Monroe realized they took him for great medicine, a man of supernatural power, and from that moment he was treated with extraordinary consideration and kindness. That evening Monroe entered the lodge of Lone Walker, the chief who was to be his host. He was greeted at the doorway by deep growls from two nearly full-grown grizzly bears kept as pets. He stood still in fear until the chief spoke to the animals and they lay down. Monroe was shown to the place of honor at the chief's left hand. Over time he reached an uneasy accommodation with the bears, who stopped growling at him but would never allow him to touch them. The following spring they vanished in the night and were never seen again. Monroe later described that first journey with the Piegans as the happiest time of his life. The band traveled from Pile of Rocks River to winter on Yellow River, then the following summer wandered down the Musselshell, crossed the Big River, and moved westward through the Little Rockies and the Bear Paw Mountains to the Marias. His rifle and pistols became useless when his powder and shot ran out, but bows and arrows sufficed. His European clothing wore away and Lone Walker himself cut and sewed shirts and leggings from tanned deerskins and bighorn hide for him, women not being permitted to make men's clothing. Monroe grew his hair long in the warrior fashion and was shod with moccasins made by Lone Walker's daughter, Ap-ah'-ki, beautifully embroidered with colored porcupine quills for summer and made of thick warm buffalo robe for winter. Though custom prevented young men and women from speaking to one another, Monroe could not help but notice Ap-ah'-ki. One evening a man came to the lodge to offer Lone Walker thirty horses in exchange for his daughter on behalf of a young warrior. Monroe glanced at the girl and caught a look of fear and despair on her face. Lone Walker refused the offer, and when Monroe looked again at Ap-ah'-ki she was smiling. Some weeks later Monroe encountered her on a trail carrying firewood, spoke her name, and they embraced. They went together to Lone Walker and stood before him. The chief explained that he had refused the thirty horses precisely because he had long intended Monroe for his son-in-law, wanting a white man's wisdom and cunning as a counselor, and told Monroe only to be good to her. That same day a lodge was set up for them, furnished with robes, dried meat, berries, kettles, skins, and pack saddles, and Lone Walker told Monroe to choose thirty horses from his own herd. Monroe remained in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company for some years, raising a large family. He never returned home, kept intending a visit but deferring it until letters arrived telling him his parents were dead. A further letter informed him he had inherited a considerable property and must go to Montreal to sign papers claiming it. In simple trust he gave a power of attorney to the factor of Mountain Fort, who was traveling to England on leave. The factor never returned, and Monroe lost the inheritance through the papers he had signed. He regarded the loss as of little importance, having his lodge, family, horses, and the vast wild country around him. Monroe eventually left the Hudson's Bay Company and worked at times for the American Fur Company, but mostly trapped as a free man, ranging between the Saskatchewan and the Yellowstone and from the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg. In the early 1850s he guided the Jesuit Father De Smet to the headwaters of the South Saskatchewan, where together they erected a large wooden cross at the foot of two beautiful lakes south of Chief Mountain and named them Saint Mary's Lakes. One winter when his sons John and Francois had married and the three family lodges were camped together at the lakes, a large war party of Assiniboins attacked them in the night. Monroe's daughters Lizzie, Amelia, and Mary had been taught to shoot and joined in the defense, driving the attackers off just before daylight. Five of the Assiniboins were killed, including one shot by Lizzie as he was about to open the bars of the horse corral. That winter the family also trapped extensively, and by means of a cleverly designed log pen with a narrow opening at the top they caught more than three hundred wolves, which climbed in to reach meat thrown inside but could not jump back out. Monroe was a Catholic but also held deep faith in the Blackfoot religion and the power of its medicine men. He often spoke of a man called Old Sun, who he believed truly communed with the spirits. On dark calm nights Old Sun would invite a few guests to his lodge, have his wives bank the fire to darkness, and begin to pray to the Sun, the wind maker, the thunder, and the lightning. As he prayed, the lodge ears would begin to quiver with a gathering breeze that grew into a full blast, and thunder and lightning would approach from afar until they seemed directly overhead, deafening and blinding those inside. Then Old Sun would pray them away, and wind, thunder, and lightning would recede into the distance until they were gone entirely.

By Roger Pocock · First published 1927 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Adventure, Frontier Fiction · 3,152 words

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A. D. 1813

This is the story of Rising Wolf, condensed from the beautiful narrative in _My Life as an Indian_, by J. B. Schultz.

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wilderness · frontier · adventure · Canadian history · Native American · fur trade · survival · exploration · historical fiction · coming of age · biographical · nature

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Rising Wolf is listed on Textopian as a short story by Roger Pocock, dated 1927 CE.

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