WA-SHA-QUON-ASIN

Southland Times, Issue 23538, 18 June 1938, Page 14

WA-SHA-QUON-ASIN

Writer And Naturalist

(SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THE SOUTHLAND TIMES)

By

R. G. C. McNAB

Will you promise never to take advantage of the weakness of another human being or animal? Never take the life of a weak or defenceless animal for your own amusement? Never join in a chase where foxes, stags, otters, or hares are driven for miles and miles by crowds of dogs and men—and sometimes, I am afraid, by women and children? Is this fair play? Is this sport?

In the last week of last year the British Broadcasting Corporation authorities forbade Grey Owl to speak these words over the air; the words were considered anti-social. Refusing to omit this offensive passage, Grey Owl left the studio, saying that if he gave way he “would be ashamed to face the animals back home.” Grey Owl, whose civilized name was probably Archie McNeil, was the son of a Scottish father and an Apache (United States) mother. He was brought up among Apaches, and, as a lad, was taken into a Canadian tribe of Ojibways, who gave him the name he has made famous, Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin, Grey Owl. In 1914 Grey Owl enlisted in a Canadian unit, was sent home wounded in 1917, and became a forest ranger and trapper. Eleven years later the pain suffered by a trapped beaver made him swear never to trap again. The story of his first beaver friends and of his conversation was told in “Pilgrims of the Wild.” To gain more converts he wrote and lectured, and, to please himself as well as his audiences, he braided his hair, wore Indian garments, and began, more and more, to return to Indian forest habits. Five years ago he was famous, and, in his eyes, wealthy, with two extravagances, fire-water and long-distance telephones. He became one of Canada’s great men, respected and loved in Saskatchewan, and fame brought publicity, money, and lecture tours. In March 1938, he returned to Canada to prepare for 28 lectures in the United States. At Ontario he told reporters that another month of lecturing would kill him. A month later he died of pneumonia in his fiftieth year. In his own walk of life no man was better known or more successful than Grey Owl. He wrote four books, of which the first is the least popular: “Men of the Last Frontier,” “Pilgrims of the Wild,” “Sajo and the Beaver People,” and “Tales of an Empty Cabin.” It is not fanoiful to see in the last book sadness for the loss of simple happiness and activity that his new way of civilized life was causing, successful as his work was, both for himself and for the conservation of wild birds and animals. The reasons for his success are definable: absolute knowledge of what he was writing or speaking about, the conviction that he had a good mission in life, and uncommon

literary skill. The last element is the strangest, for his tales and essays have similar qualities to those of other great non-academic naturalist-writers from Gilbert White and Walton down to Jefferies, Thoreau, and Audubon. No doubt the simple life led by these men purged their writings (as it did their characters) of affectation, and made them direct, definite, and exact. To clarity were added gifts of sharp illustration, understanding of different moods, and the power to describe birds and trees and streams and animals as they are. None of these men felt more keenly about the unnecessary sufferings of animals than Grey Owl, perhaps because his conversion had something of the suddenness and completeness of a few evangelical conversions. His passion to save animal life was religious, and the small effect his work had, though in its own sphere the effect was unprecedented, made him somewhat melancholy and hopeless, but not bitter. “Pilgrims of the Wild” and “Sajo” will, so far as any prophecy is reliable, carry on his work of lifesaving for many generations, for he has written so truly and with such sincerity that the tales will seem lifelike and their purpose good, maybe long after the beaver-people who were their immediate cause are extinct. But Grey Owl described his own purpose in the preface to “Tales of an Empty Cabin.”

And though I reach a little beyond my stature and these efforts fall far short of their high intention, even so, you who read may find perhaps some passing interest in these stories of the people of a great Frontier, and in other tales of those more humble creatures, that, though possessed of a consciousness more limited than that which man is gifted with, are fulfilling very adequately the purpose for which they were created, and are doing the best they can with what they have to do it with. POSTSCRIPT: This notice of Grey Owl’s death was written before the recent reports of other assertions about his birth were read. The writer sees no reason to believe that the sources from which his information was drawn are unreliable. Two pieces of evidence lead him to believe that Grey Owl was half-Indian, and not an Englishman. First, the circumstances of his domestic life, which need not be described and which are not mentioned either by those who claim him as a relation or by his publisher, who refers only to Grey Owl’s romantic marriage with Anahareo. Second, his style, which, clear and crisp as it generally was, burst ever and again into the lush and vaporous description typical of many native writers, of Maoris, Hindus and Polynesians.