Christmas: York Factory 1843

Although the individuals of the two companies were thus almost always at enmity, strange to say, at the forts they often acted in the most friendly manner to each other... during the Christmas and New Year's holidays, parties and balls were given without number... Great preparations were made... The evening came, and with it the guests; and soon might be heard within the fort sounds of merriment and revelry, as they danced, in lively measures, to a Scottish reel, played by some native fiddler upon a violin of his own construction.

... a scene of the oddest description presented itself. The room was lit up by means of a number of tallow candles, stuck in tin scones round the walls. On benches and chairs sat all the Orkneymen and Canadian half-breeds of the establishment, in their Sunday jackets and capotes; while here and there the dark visage of an Indian peered out among their white ones. But round the stove --- which had been removed to one side to leave space for the dancers --- the strangest group was collected. Squatting down on the floor, in every ungraceful attitude imaginable, sat about a dozen Indian women, dressed in printed calico gowns, the chief peculiarity of which was the immense size of the balloon-shaped sleeves, and the extreme scantiness, both in length and width, of the skirts... On a chair in a corner near the stove sat a young good-looking Indian, with a fiddle of his own making beside him. This was our Paganini, and beside him sat an Indian boy with a kettle-drum, on which he tapped occasionally, as if anxious that the ball should begin... the fiddle struck up, and the ball began. Scotch reels were the only dances known to the majority of the guests, so we confined ourselves entirely to them.

Robert M Ballantyne