Indian woman survives bitter winter walk

Wednesday, 16 December 2009 05:00

December 16, 1878. The Saskatchewan Herald tells the story of an incredible 10-day journey of a young Indian woman, caught in an early winter.Because of domestic troubles Meskacis decided to leave the home of her stepmother, where she and her husband had lived, and join her sister at Battleford. It was a walk of more than 100 miles across snow-swept plains, a journey of "privations such as few people could have endured and lived."

Meskacis set out on November 5, with only the clothes she wore and a blanket. She spent the first night lost in a snowstorm, her only shelter the lee of a bush, with no means to light a fire. The weather was milder the second day. When her moccasins became water logged in slushy snow, she hugged them in her bosom in an effort to dry them. It turned colder on the third day. The moccasins froze so hard she could not wear them. She spent that day and night again trying to dry them. Wild rose buds, provided the only food she could find.

"Meskacis suffered indescribable agony from cold and hunger" on her 10-day walk, the Herald reported. "The freezing of one heel and one of her toes made walking both slow and painful. Her shoes wore out, and she was forced to extemporize others out of pieces of her only blanket… Yet in spite of all this she never lost her reason, but walked straight along the route she undertook to follow, never once losing her bearings, or walking in a circle, as people general do when lost upon the plains."

"A strong, hearty, fresh-looking woman" when she started out, Meskacis arrived at Battleford "a skeleton, aged and haggard-looking." Under careful nourishment and treatment "she is gradually coming round and regaining strength."