Paul Kane's Journal of his Western Travels, 1846-1848 - History and ...

Coffin Rock Various Coast Salish tribes used this place on the
Columbia River, four miles upstream from its confluence
with the Cowlitz River, to deposit their dead in canoes.
Columba/Columbia See Culumba.
coIveU/CoIIvll/Colvii/CoIviD/coIvill Fort Colville was visited
by Kane November 20-23, 1846, and August 8 to September
9 and September 16-22, 1847. Named for Andrew Colville, a
London governor of the HBC, the fort was established upriver
of Kettle Falls. From the beginning, it also had a large fann
attached to it.
Cometees punch boat/Punch Bowl Committee Punch Bowl
is a small lake atop the Athabasca Pass in present Jasper
National Park, on the British Columbia/ Alberta border. It
straddles the height of land, feeding both Pacific Creek (and
thus the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean) and the Whirlpool
River (and thus the Athabasca River and Arctic Ocean).
It was named in 1824 by George Simpson for the London
board of the HBC.
compaoeys fann Situated on the Cowlitz River near present-day
Toledo, Washington, Cowlitz Fann was started in 1839, several
years after John McLoughlin (see Sandwitch Islanders) encouraged
several retiring voyageurs to settle and fann there. WA
(140) reports that by the time of Kane's visit the fann was
yielding large crops of wheat.
the constant scie In early July, 1846, Kane sketched The
Constant Sky, a Saulteaux woman, whom he met on the
lower Red River while waiting two days for a favorable wind
in order to cross Lake Winnipeg to Norway House. Kane's
landscape and portrait log names her "Caw-ce-ca.ce checock
a Soto the constant Skey. " The number for this entry in
the log is 5, the same number that appears in Kane's hand in
the sketch of a young Saulteaux woman and an Assiniboine
man illustrated as Fig. 72 in Harper's work (194). Besides
this sketch, there appear to be three other works by Kane that
feature this woman (see author's essay, note 28).
WA uses the name "The Constant Sky" only once, to
identify a Saulteaux woman and child painted by Kane two
years later, on July 26, 1848, during his return trip. Her
Indian name is given phonetically in the book as "Caw-keeka-keesh-e-ko.
,. Neither Kane's journal nor his landscape
and portrait log mentions this encounter or any sketch or
painting being done. Three possibilities suggest themselves
concerning this confusion. One is that, although neither the
journal nor landscape and portrait log mentions the second
meeting, Kane perhaps met the same woman on two different
occasions, twenty-four months apart, and in slightly different
locations without realizing as much.
The second possibility stems from the practice in WA of
simply transposing events of Kane's outward journey to a point
in the narrative where the events of the homeward journey are
presented. Harper's identification of The Constant Sky in two
paintings is based on these facts: one of the paintings bears her
name and WA (310) names her. But there is no incontrovertible
reason for assuming that Kane sketched her on two occasions,
once in 1846 and once in 1848; rather, it may be that Kane's
editor simply moved the anecdote to Chapter XXV to provide
copy at a point where the narrative, like many travelers'
narratives for the homewardbound leg of a joumey, had grown
thin. The problem with this hypothesis, however, is that
neither in his journal nor in his landscape and portrait log does
Kane mention The Constant Sky's having a child.
A third possibility seems likely; it is th~t WA invents a
meeting in 1848 that never took place. Based on the available
evidence - the watercolor that Harper identifies as being of
The Constant Sky (283) does not include a child, and neither
the journal nor the landscape and portrait log mentions a
sketch with child or the occasion for it - one must wonder
whether Kane, as he sometimes was known to have done in
his studio paintings, embellished a work with a variety of
artifacts bono wed from other studies he had done or collected
on his travels. If he did so in the case of The Constant
Sky by adding a cradleboard and papoose, the editor of WA
could surely have drawn up a suitable passage for the book's
manU$Cript, the book having succeeded, not preceded,
Kane's completion of many of his paintings on canvas (the
painting of The Constant Sky owned by the Royal Ontario
Museum, was sent by Kane to his patron, George W. Allan,
in 1856 [Harper (321)]; WA was published in 1859). This is
the most sensational of the three possibilities, perhaps, but
still is not one to be easily discounted. Certainly, the single
paragraph in WA about the The Constant Sky is a self-contained,
conventional piece of prose description bordering on
being a purple passage in its own right. It is quoted in full here
with the added observation that it must have been inserted in
the manuscript late in the book's preparation since it does not
occur in any fonn in the draft manuscript of the book owned
by the Stark Museum of Art (11.85/2 [Cn:
By way of passing the time, I took my gun and strolled
up the river, accompanied by the guide, and fell in with a
solitary Sotto woman and child sitting under a tree. She
was quite alone, as her husband had gone up the river
fishing in the morning. She did not appear to be at all
alanned or confused at our approach, and freely entered
into conversation with the guide, to whom she told her
name, Caw-kee-ka-keesh-e-ko, "The Constant Sky."
Tempted by the beauty of the scene, and she seeming to be
in no wise unwilling, I sketched her likeness and the
surrounding landscape .with considerable care. (310)
On balance, given the editorial complexities of this book, this
third possibility appears to offer the most plausible explanation
of this question of Kane's meeting and painting The
Constant Sky .
CODSuble, Mr. Along with Moodey and Brown, this man,
named Constable in WA (316), overtook Kane at the Slave
Falls of the Winnipeg River, on August 9, 1848. Although
none has been further identified, it would seem that they were
soldiers in the 6th Royal Regiment of Foot, which had been
sent to Red River in 1846 at the request of the HBC, both to
help enforce its trade monopoly in the face of increasing
competition from Americans, and to be on call in case of an
outbreak of hostilities over the Oregon Boundary dispute.
Because the dispute was settled in June of that year, the
regiment was replaced in 1848. In August, 1848, Constable
and his party would, therefore, have departed from the Red
River Settlement and traveled east along the fur trade route.
Corona, battelof La Coruiia, the northwestemmost port in
Spain, served the British cavalry when it launched its inland
offensive against Napoleon's forces in November, 1808. The
campaign was an unmitigated disaster, culminating in the
British retreat to Corunna (Eng. sp.) and a battle there,
January 13-17, 1809, in which many British lives were lost
due to the delayed arrival of ships to rescue the British from
the advancing French. Of this battle, Napoleon said he had
driven the easily defeated English into the sea.
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