The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991

Memories of a Trapper’s Daughter: Banquet Address of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference

Memories ofa Trapper's Daughter Banquet Address of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference Lily McAuley ThiS is a real pleasure. I can hardly believe that I'm here; in fact, I've had a terrible cold all week and I thought, "What if I lose my voice? What will I do?" The next thing that kept coming into my mind was, "What if I wake up and find that this is all a dream? I would be really disappointed." I was in contact with Linda Heard through the telephone several weeks ago, and we spoke for about half-an-hour. I don't know if you are like I am, when I hear a voice through the phone, I put a body and face to it. When I met Linda here, I was expecting to meet a lady who would be about five foot, eleven inches and about 180 pounds. Of course you can see that is not how it turned out. She is a very tiny lady-a very nice lady. She also said to me, "Lily, from the memories you shared with me, I expected to see, not you, but a woman about 106 years old." The reason that I have such vivid memories is because I lived at such a place and time that was so isolated, time stood still. I feel sorry for the children of today that have memories that are not real. Little children that are growing up today in isolated areas have memories that are not real. The media has got to them. No matter where you go in the North, you can watch television and see things that you will not see until much later. Our memories are very, very clear because we actually lived them. There are a few memories, though, that are hand-me-down. There are memories that are first-person, and then there are those memories that are hand-me-down. My birth is a hand-me-down memory. My mama and my uncle and my father quite often told me about my birth. I was th ' only one of my mother's thirteen children to be born in the winter traplint I'm told it was the coldest year on record, January 9, 1934. They tell me that my birthing house was very, very small and had no floor. For a window it had a ,)rty-ounce whiskey bottle stuck between two logs. This is my husband here. WLie and I have a room here. It's the Eisenhower Suite. There is a fourposter bed there. The bed could be almost the size of the entire little building that I was born in. I'm certain it is much higher. From these beginnings, things really worked out wonderfully for me. I've had many children. I've taken ten years off my life to have six children. They were all born and raised in Churchill [Manitoba]; they are all adult people now. And 9 LILY McAuLEY Figure 1. Photograph of five Native girls in Island Lake, Manitoba District, c. 1927. "This is actually the way we dressed. Girls were never allowed to wear trousers. You'd be wearing layers of worsted wool stockings, then you'd have your moccasins and moccasin rubbers . You'd have quite a heavy wool dress, then a sweater, then you'd have a tuque-if you didn't have a tuque, then you'd have a kerchief." Photograph from the Rev. R. T. Chapin Collection, Western Canada Pictorial Index, The University of Winnipeg. 10 MEMORIES OF A TRAPPER'S DAUGHTER as you ladies know, having children is probably the hardest work you'll ever have to do. And just when the time came when I thought this is so hard, I would get a flashback of the place that my Mama birthed me; and if she could do it in that little shack with only a whiskey bottle stuck between two logs for a window, this is a piece of cake. So I wanted to talk to you about where we were, who we were, and how we lived. After my birth, I was a first of many things for my Mama. I was the only one of her children to travel in a tikanogan. This is a cradle-board. First you are wrapped in a little blanket and then you have moss packed all around you. Then...