Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1919 — ANCIENT OLD TRADING POST [ARTICLE]

ANCIENT OLD TRADING POST

About Fort Smith There Seems to Gather All tlie Romance of the “Silent Places." Of all the glamorous old trading posts of the Honorable Hudson Bay company, there is none With more of the romance of the silent pieces about It than Fort Smith, perched above the Rapids of the Drowned on the Slave •river, writes “Nlksah” In the Chicago Daily News. The Slave flows here from Lake Athabasca to Great Slave lake,- and half-way on Its Journey, Just where the sixtieth parallel of north latitude divides the province of Alberta from the Northwest Territory, it passes Fort Smith. \ . The fort is set high above the troubled waters several hundred feet np the steep, rocky bank. A fine spot for defense it was, in the early days, but now that attacks are over It is an inconvenient location in spite of its picturesque qualities. All day long you can see those who are In the biblical phrase “drawers of water” toiling up the steep path with yoked buckets over their shoulders —Indian women and > children, servants of the company, carrying eyery drop that Is drunk, and whatever may be used for other purposes. It Is no discredit to wash sparingly In Fort Smith. One must needs have scant consideration for the value of human labor to do otherwise. ~ All about the trading post are scattered the tepees of the Indians, wanderers of the great woods, on their annual trading expedition. They bring with them the breath of the vast woods -country; Its struggle has shaped their tight-lipped mouths, Its loneliness has made their steady black'eyes Inscrutable ; its mystery has made their laugh a low, quick bitten thing, like a laugh snatched In the shadow of terror. All these things the white woodsmen show even more strongly, with the quicker impressionability of finer day. The northern woods runner is a man apart, almost a separate species of the human animal,shaped by the relentless pressure p£ an Irresistible environment. - . -