The Rock Paintings of Tramping Lake
From the northeast corner of Alberta, through the northern half of Saskatchewan, the northwestern, central and southeastern part of Manitoba, most of Ontario below the Hudson Bay Lowlands, almost all of Quebec and the entire area of Labrador, runs the broad, horseshoe-shaped band of Precambrian rock known as the Canadian Shield. Over thousands of years, and across thousands of kilometres, the overhanging cliffs and bare rock faces of the Shield have served as a natural canvas for aboriginal artists. Ancient rock paintings - known as pictographs or petrographs - and rock etchings - known as petroglyphs - have been found all across the Canadian Shield, in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and
Saskatchewan. At least 700 rock painting sites have been identified in Canada's Precambrian region, with about 2 dozen designated locations in northern Manitoba.

Visitors to Wekusko Falls Provincial Park (27 kilometres east of Grass River Provincial Park on the Snow Lake highway), or canoeists travelling the popular Cranberry Portage to Wekusko Falls canoe route, can travel by water to the site of one of Manitoba's largest known concentrations of aboriginal petrographs. At the narrows of Tramping Lake, in the southeastern part of the Grass River waterway, ancient artwork appears on a series of 14 rock faces, on a granite outcropping that dominates the shore.

The Tramping Lake paintings, which include images of deer, bison, moose, birds, fish, snakes and humans, are thought to have been created 1,500 - 3,000 years ago by Algonkian-speaking ancestors of the Cree and Ojibway First Nations. Like other petrographs found in the Canadian Shield, they have been applied to the rock with a pigment made of red ochre (any natural clay or mineral containing a high concentration of iron oxide) combined with a binding agent (typically derived from animal sources such as beaver tails, bear grease or gull eggs). Ancient aboriginal artists used their own fingers, as well as feathers and other simple brushes as applicators; they worked from canoes tied to sticks wedged firmly into the rock faces.

Only about half of the Tramping Lake petrographs can be easily discerned; many have been badly weathered or obscured by lichens. Like other Shield paintings across Canada, they are thought to represent the dream images of ancestral Cree and Ojibway. Some may be the result of "vision quest" fastings of young hunters searching for a guardian spirit, while others may be related to the medicinal and curing ceremonies of Cree shamans. Aboriginal oral history and archeological evidence of tobacco offerings at rock painting sites throughout the Shield suggest that belief in the "Maymaygwaysiwuk" (or "Memegwaysiwuk"), mischievous, sprite-like people who were thought to live in rocky cliffs, was widespread.

While the precise age of the Tramping Lake petrographs has not been determined, other archeological artifacts found in the area suggest that habitation of the area dates back 3,000 - 5,000 years. Tramping Lake is part of the chain of lakes that makes up much of the long-travelled Grass River waterway.

Living the Trapper's Life

The great fur brigades of the 18th and 19th centuries are long gone from the Upper, Middle and Lower Tracks of the northern Manitoba river routes. But professional trappers still live and work along the creeks, rivers and lakes of the Grass River waterway. More than 200 years after David Thompson completed his extensive survey of "Muskrat Country," muskrats, beaver and marten continue to be an important economic resource of the Grass River territory.

The trapping lifestyle is the ultimate outdoor occupation, conducted on all kinds of terrain and in all kinds of weather - much of it cold and snowy. Trappers are resourceful, independent and often highly reflective people who are accustomed to spending long hours on their own, setting and checking lengthy traplines. They are keen observers of nature, often serving as the front-line eyes and ears of the natural environment.

Today, snowmobiles and 2-way radios are standard tools of the trade, but some trappers continue to maintain traditional dog teams and toboggans. Setting and running a trapline is often a 2-person partnership; several northern Manitoban trapping businesses are comprised of husband-and-wife teams.

Registered traplines, government regulation and reporting, and comprehensive trappers' education programs are now features of the Manitoba trapping industry, but the ethics of self-determination and mutual respect are still important to modern-day trappers. Veteran trappers are proud of the heritage of "gentlemen's agreements" that once governed their trapping territories, and frequently refer to the "unwritten code of the north" that kept them from encroaching on the traplines of others.

Visit a Northern Manitoba Trapline: Find out what it's like to follow a trapline by arranging a Trapline Visit in the Grass River area. Contact the Thompson Wildlife Association in Thompson, Manitoba.