When the ground was frozen solid we set out for St. John’s, first crossing the mountains south of Red Ochre Lake. Nonosabasut had already made the journey to St. John’s once, and told us that it would take as many suns as three times the fingers on both hands to get there, and the same to get back. We left the main group at the southeast end of the big lake, at a place where a natural harbour came in through the trees, and made our way towards Snowshoe Lake, so called by our people because even in the warm season we had to wear snowshoes to walk across the marshes that surrounded the lake, because the small bushes the Shanung call sagakomi grow so thickly. In winter the springs make the ice so treacherous that we have to wear snowshoes to spread our weight over a wider surface. Even though the snow had not yet fallen, we strapped our snowshoes to our backs before setting out.
This first part of the journey was very difficult. The land had been part of Beothuk territory for thousands of season-cycles, but we seldom hunted on it, and allowed several Mixed-Blood families to use it. The Paul family had made it their hunting and fishing territory. They were the largest family in Bay d’Espoir. At the end of two suns of rapid, steady travelling we reached the large lake that the Mixed-Bloods called Maelpaeg. We had climbed up and down many promontories, cliffs, rises, hills, and mountains. We had crossed dozens of brooks, including the one that bordered the Paul hunting grounds. When we arrived at the head of the lake, we looked about and found a canoe made of birchbark in the manner of the first Shanung to live on the island, and quite unlike our tapatooks, but strong enough to allow us to do some fishing. There were freshwater salmon in the lake, as well as Atlantic salmon and sea trout. At the outlet, the water flowed into the river of white water, which in turn emptied into an arm of the sea known as the Northeast Arm. L’Oignon took the canoe and went fishing while we built a temporary shelter for the night. The weather warmed as evening fell, and it rained during the night, a heavy, persistent rain such as arrives at the end of the falling-leaf season. Our bark shelter kept the rain off well, but we were still cold and we slept curled up close to one another, to conserve our bodies’ heat. L’Oignon had caught twelve medium-sized trout and we had eaten well before going to bed. But in the morning we had to catch more fish before continuing our journey. We wanted to have dried and smoked fish for the days when fishing or hunting would not be possible. We left our camp late that day, but we quickened our pace and did not stop until we had reached a beautiful lake that was the source of a river filled with salmon. There were so many salmon at the head of this river, where it left the lake, that it was child’s play for Shanawdithit to catch two with her fishing spear. Then she made a good fire of dry birch branches and cooked the fish on a large, flat rock with their skins on, so that they kept their flavour.
The next morning we set out again, this time to reach the Bay d’Espoir, the home of the Mixed-Bloods. These people used to be called Shanung, but that was before the Sho-Undamung came to live with them, making the Mi’kmaq a mixed-blood people. We were welcomed with much festivity, and fed with many kinds of game that had become unfamiliar to us. The Mixed-Bloods were a truly generous and sympathetic people. We had never believed the stories circulated by the English, that these people had come to the island to kill us. The English said such things only to appease their own conscience, and to distance themselves from our troubles. First the Shanung, then the Mixed-Bloods, had often brought us fresh meat to help us through the cold season. The English never once gave us anything. We had never been attacked by the Mi’kmaq, nor by the Innu, but the English never missed a chance to shoot at us. The Mixed-Bloods lent us their canoes. The English beat us back whenever we came close to them. The English never welcomed us into their villages, as the Mixed-Bloods did. To get even close to their villages we had to hide and use forest paths unknown to them. The rumours they spread about the Shanung were meant only to cause trouble between us, so that the English could kill us more easily. It is true that we had had our differences with the Shanung more than a hundred season-cycles earlier, but that was long over.
We stayed with them for two whole suns, sleeping in warm beds and not having to use up our own food. We were served like chiefs of the old days, when our nation was still strong and we held feasts-for-everyone. Now we had become poor and could barely feed ourselves, let alone others. There were no more feasts-for-everyone. But our friends remembered the past. I met the Living Memory of their people and learned many things from him about our common histories that I did not know.
For example, he told me that his people had been living here long before the French and the English came. His ancestors had seen Anin pass through on his voyage of initiation. But they did not speak to him because they were afraid he might be an enemy. He told me that his ancestors had also seen the men with hair the colour of dried grass, and who sailed in huge boats, at the same time as Anin. I asked him if this meant that the island belonged to them as well as to us. Why hadn’t our two peoples made contact, if that were the case? He replied that there were too few of his people in those times.
The soft living in the Mixed-Blood community could easily have seduced us for a long time. We were among people who had once belonged to our nation and who had freely chosen to be in this place, to live here in peace. We could not blame them. They still called themselves Shanung, but we knew they were Mixed-Bloods.
The next stage of our journey was the pond at the Blue Coast, a section of sea-cliff that was so high that when you stood on it looking straight out all you could see was blue sky. The cliff was peculiar in that the trees that grew on it did not point up to the sky, but followed the slope of the incline. Here the word “sky” did not seem such an inadequate word to designate what we used to call “the immensity of the spirit.”
I remembered being told by the Living Memory of the Mixed-Bloods that, unlike us, they each had two names, because they had been baptized in the Christian manner. These Christians had chased the Vikings out of their country many … a very long time ago. Their religion allowed them to kill anyone who did not follow their teaching. They were like the English, who are also Christians. And the French, and the Spanish, and the Portuguese. They all have permission to kill anyone who is not a Christian. That was why the people at Bay d’Espoir were allowed to live in peace: because they were Christians. The English could not kill them. If we became Christians, perhaps we would not be killed by the English. I spoke about this with Nonosabasut, who laughed at the idea.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But then, wouldn’t we have to stop killing them, too? Would we not be able to avenge our dead? The English would still rob us: only then they would be robbing us of the pleasure of watching the bastards die for having shot at us for the past how many hundreds of season-cycles! No. I could not accept that.”
And he laughed again.
“Besides,” he said. “Have you never heard of the wars that those Christian people have fought between themselves? If they can wage war on each other, why could they not still wage war on us? If they refrain from killing the Mixed-Bloods, it’s because the Mixed-Bloods are useful to them, as guides and hunters, to provide them with food and furs. Not because they are Christians.”
His reply made me thoughtful and sad. I believed that I had found a solution to our troubles. But now I wondered if the Beothuk even wanted to survive physically. I was no longer sure. Perhaps it was better to go on being the Living Memory of my people than to try to find simple solutions.
The next stage took us deep into the heart of dangerous country, the region where the English lived. We would also be close to the passage that would take us onto the Avalon Peninsula, between the two large bays called Placenta and Trinity. It would be a critical stage in our journey. We would have to sleep surrounded by Bouguishameshes. The very thought of it made my skin contract like that of a plucked ptarmigan. The evening of the next day we slept near Arnold’s Cove. We could see the houses of the colonists and smell their domestic animals, which were still rare on the rising-sun
coast but more numerous down here on this part of the island. There were horses, a grey one and a brown one. They were pulling a huge wagon filled with fish. The English found many ways to avoid doing physical labour themselves. It would have taken twenty Beothuk a whole sun to carry that many fish as far as these two horses were moving it. But there was no room for horses at Red Ochre Lake. They need plenty of space to be useful. I prefer our ways.
L’Oignon told us that these animals were very inconvenient. You have to give them so much food, and since they can’t find it themselves you have to dig up the ground and grow it for them.
“Digging up the ground to feed horses,” added Nonosabasut, “and then to use horses to pull food for humans, is a form of slavery. Once you begin you can never stop. The way I see it, you end up eating to work, instead of the other way around, as it is with us.”
He gave his loud, sonorous laugh, even though we were supposed to be as quiet as possible. We signalled to him to stop and he did, but he continued to let out snorts of laughter from time to time. It was difficult for him to keep his good humour in check. He laughed much more than the rest of us. He was big, tall, and strong as a bear, but he was as gentle and tender as a mother with her child. That’s how he was, my husband, the most beautiful man in the entire Beothuk Nation.
L’Oignon was always trying to make out that he was more handsome than Nonosabasut, which made us laugh. Gausep, too, would strike poses and twist his face to make himself look fine, but he was very ugly to begin with, and his contortions only made him look uglier, and that would make us laugh even harder. The laughter helped us to forget our troubles for a short while. Shanawdithit took advantage of this quiet time to stick close to me and learn about our history, and her apprenticeship progressed more swiftly than usual.
Although there were many English houses about, there were also many clumps of stunted trees, and we had no difficulty finding places to hide. We had more trouble with dogs on the farms; they would smell us from far away and bark and bark, and sometimes keep us awake all night.
Our real problems began when we reached Conception Bay. Here the houses were closer together, and there were many more people out and about. Nonosabasut decided that we could no longer travel during the day. We would hide and rest and continue our journey to St. John’s by night.
It had now been two full moons since we left Red Ochre Lake, nearly twice the time we had anticipated. But we had learned much about the world about us, and about the English ways of life.
At last we arrived at the edge of a small forest on the east side of a high hill that overlooked the village of St. John’s. From here we could watch the activities of the whole community. Snow had been falling steadily for two suns, and the cold was beginning to bother us. But we did not dare to light a fire for fear of being discovered.
The wind changed just as the sun was going down. It came from the east, and blew hard all night. That was our signal to begin our final preparations. Nonosabasut and L’Oignon were to start their fire at the eastern end of the village. Gausep would go to the south and Shanawdithit and I would go north. When we had set our fires, we would flee back along the same route by which we had come, and go all the way to Conception Bay before stopping. There we would rest and wait for the others in a small hiding place we had built for that purpose.
When we had all heard the plan, Nonosabasut said it was time to make a fire to warm ourselves. He said we should wait to start our fires until all the lights were out in the English houses.
But since we could not be sure that all the English would go to bed at the same time, Shanawdithit and I decided to start our fires in a barn in which there was a great deal of dried grass for the horses. Shanawdithit had to call the farm dog inside and cut its throat with her long knife to shut it up. Otherwise we would have been discovered by the dog’s owner, who was constantly looking out his window to see why the dog was barking. There was a good stand of conifer trees near the barn, and the next house was close to the buildings of this one, and so the fire spread very rapidly. In fact, it spread so quickly we were almost caught in our own trap. We had to run like the wind to escape, and we kept on running until we reached Conception Bay, where we finally stopped just as the sun was beginning to rise. We waited there for a whole sun, but no one seemed to have come after us. During the night we were awakened by footsteps: it was Gausep. He had run all the previous night, but during the day he had had to hide until nightfall again before he could join us. He assured us that we had no need to worry about Nonosabasut and L’Oignon, because the corner of the village where they had gone to start their fire had taken well, and they were able to get away quickly.
But the wait was terribly long for me. My man, my husband, my companion, my whole life, was absent from me. I did not once close my eyes. I had never found time annoying and I used to laugh to hear Tom June say he never had enough of it. But that night I realized what time is. It is a martyrdom that never ends. An eternity.
Shortly before daybreak my head was filled with the sound of footsteps. It was Nonosabasut. But he was crying like a baby. We could see that everything had not gone according to plan, but we did not question Nonosabasut. We did not say a word. When my husband was ready to tell his story, he would tell it. There was no use asking questions. When he had calmed down, he told us that his brother L’Oignon had been burned alive when he had tried to run through a wall of fire that had cut the village in half. It was his clothing, his cotton clothing that Lieutenant Buchan had given him during the expedition five season-cycles before. L’Oignon had worn these clothes especially for this occasion. If he had been wearing clothing made from caribou hides, he would not have died. Our clothing does not catch fire so easily.
When I learned that the wall of fire had been near the place where Shanawdithit and I had set our fire, I felt guilty for having started our fire too early, and cutting off L’Oignon’s escape route.
I am the Living Memory of the Beothuk people, and I must remember the story of this expedition, and the tragedy that marked it, for the rest of my life.
51
In some places the river is calm, in others it rushes through narrow rapids. When it is calm it seems to be resting up for a tumultuous, growling cascade, and then it is calm again when it widens to become the long lake known to us as Red Ochre. It begins in the mountains that rise to protect the rising sun, and it flows towards the north-northeast. And although it appears calm for its journey through Red Ochre Lake, after two suns it picks up speed again as it drops into a series of small ponds, each lower than the other, and gains more water from the many brooks that feed into the ponds. It finally loses itself in the Bay of Exploits, where it forms the south arm of huge Notre Dame Bay. Six or seven suns to travel seawards from the mountains to Red Ochre Lake, two suns through the lake, and from the top of the cascading ponds to its mouth in Notre Dame Bay another eight to ten suns, altogether making a river the length of two moons. No other river in Newfoundland carried so many salmon. But the Exploits River, the Beothuk’s source of life, can no longer feed its people. It has been robbed of its life-giving power by the holding ponds built by the English colonists. The fish no longer come to the high inland ponds at the heart of the island.
That heart has also been pillaged by the English trappers, who compete with the Beothuk for furs. From the beginning they have done all they could to procure the furs that are so eagerly bought by the European markets. The Beothuk simply needed the furs to make clothing for the long seasons of cold and snow. When a fur trapper broke into our storehouses and took our furs, we had to start all over again.
Every time the English tried to establish contact with the people of the island, they hired guides who were well known to us as Beothuk killers. How could such contacts be peaceful? If peace was their intention, then why did they come armed to the teeth, and why did they track us down with these hunters of Redskins? If George Cartwright and Buchan and Glascock had been honest soldiers, and if John Peyton Jr. was
a humanitarian, why did they come to us in the company of people who could never be trusted by the Beothuk? William and John Cull, Thomas Taylor, Matthew Hughster, John Peyton Sr.?
That is how the last survivors of the proud race of Red Men saw things. They had lived on this island since the beginning of time, longer than memory. The elders said that non-native people have always been afraid of wolves, and tell many stories about those animals in Europe. Their wolves seem much different from the wolves we know on our island. Here the wolves feed on caribou and other animals. They do not eat Beothuk. Non-natives have always been afraid of Beothuk, and they have killed almost all of us.
“When there are no more of us left, the non-natives will have to start killing wolves,” the elders said. “That is what happens when you are afraid. Rather than try to conquer your fear through reason, you destroy its source.”
So said the last elders of the small community at Red Ochre Lake, during the winter of the great fire at St. John’s. When we returned to the lake after setting the fire, we had to take a different route. We decided to travel by day, and whenever anyone saw us they grabbed their muskets and fired at us. We were not hit because we knew how to run, by fanning out and running in a zigzag pattern. But our journey was long and dangerous. We would travel days on end on snowshoes. And I was pregnant. During the season of dead leaves, I gave Nonosabasut a son.
That summer, the few Beothuk still surviving had to steal salmon from the English holding ponds so that our elderly, our sick, and our pregnant women would have enough to eat during the season of cold and snow.
Our lake now had only pike, and our river yielded only the occasional sea trout. Our season of abundance was now a season of famine, a time when our men had to work as hard for food as they did during the season of cold and snow. The caribou were also hunted by the swelling masses of European immigrants to the island. There were many Irish living here now, in Notre Dame Bay. These people penetrated farther into the bush in search of game. Knowing little or nothing about us, they thought nothing of shooting at us as though we were wild animals. Our land, once so vast, shrank a little each day, rain or shine.
The Beothuk Saga Page 29