Prairie Grass

by Joan Soggie

  “Where am I? Where is Gabriel?” he asked, realizing with annoyance that he sounded both tearful and frightened. Willing his voice to a deeper tone, he demanded “Where are my dogs!”

  With a forceful hand, one of the women pushed him back onto the robes. Her voice was firm and her speech, while not exactly like his mother’s, was familiar.

  “Your friend is here. Your dogs must have run back to your camp. My son-in-law found you asleep in the snow and your friend weeping beside you. He thought at first you were killed by the bump on your head. But you have a good Cree skull, in spite of your ridiculous Canadien chapeau!”

  Two younger women giggled. Jean-Jacques thought they must be this woman’s daughters.

  “But where am I? Who are you?” he asked.

  “Questions, questions! Has your mother taught you no manners?” the woman complained, smiling. “You are in the winter camp of Chief Maskepetoon. I am his wife. Now drink this and sleep. You will feel better when you wake.”

  Loud, outdoor voices roused him from the drowsy warmth that enfolded him. The darkness had deepened as he slept, firelight casting long shadows that danced across the walls. A gush of icy air swept through the warm smoke-smell, accompanying three bulky figures that seemed to suddenly fill the confined space. The woman who had spoken to Jean-Jacques earlier now abruptly dragged him wrapped in his robes to the outer perimeter of the tipi, hurriedly making space for the men to seat themselves by the fire.

  A lined face appeared; a pair of piercing dark eyes peered down at him. “Are you feeling better now, child? My wife says you will recover. But we have other guests in need of our hospitality now.”

  He turned back to the other men and switched from Cree to English.

  “Come, friends, sit and warm yourselves.”

  Jean-Jacques, now wide awake and curious, rolled over on his side so he could follow the happenings with eyes as well as ears. The chief seated himself against the willow backrest his wife had placed for him facing the fire. The other men, obviously foreigners and Anglais from the clothing revealed as they shed their heavy outer garb of leather and furs, settled themselves gratefully into the warmth.

  “It is not often our winter camp is honoured with so many visitors in one night. The boy and his friend came from a mixed-blood camp which is not far out of your way to Fort Ellice. And you say you have come from Fort Edmonton but before that you crossed the winter mountains? That is a path I too have taken, but not in winter.”

  “Not the wisest decision I ever made,” admitted one stranger. “I have travelled all over this land these past few years. It took us only fifteen days to cross the mountain pass last spring. We had no idea how lucky we were.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “It took weeks to come back through those same mountains this autumn. Winter came early and we hadn’t enough supplies. Hunting was bad. It was a fool’s decision.”

  Jean-Jacques sat up to get a better look at the man’s face in the shimmering light. “You are foolish!” he whispered. Who would respect a man who admitted to such poor judgement?

  But the stranger was continuing his story. “We were half dead with cold and hunger before we reached Fort Edmonton. It took us a month to regain our strength. A month of Christmas and wedding feasts! Now this wedding party going back to Fort Ellice invited us to accompany them. How could we refuse such another winter adventure? With such companions?”

  The young man laughed again and sipped the steaming cup in his hand.

  “You have had fine days for your travel. Dogs run best in the cold. And fine hunting too, it seems.”

  The chief’s tone was affable, but Jean-Jacques, keenly interested in the exchange, wondered if the Anglais understood the nuances of hunting in another band’s territory, something the Metis and Cree always took into consideration. They might trespass on another’s hunting ground, out of bravado or need, but they understood that it went against custom and carried risks. From his reply, Jean-Jacques judged that Kane was unaware that he might have given offence.

  “Yes indeed, two fine bulls just waiting to be killed. We stopped long enough to cut the choicest portions for ourselves and loaded one of the sleds with as much as we could carry to feed the dogs.”

  While they spoke, the women had been passing a platter of cooked meat to the men. Now Maskepetoon lit a pipe and inhaled the pungent smoke, then passed it to Kane. The air was close with the smell of smoke and leather and warm bodies. More men and women drifted in through the lifted tipi flap, murmuring soft greetings. It all felt friendly and familiar to Jean-Jacques. Just this way would neighbours casually drop by to share the novelty of a stranger visiting at his father’s house. Jean-Jacques noticed one of the young men touch the shoulder of the girl who helped the older woman serve food, and she turned and smiled up at him, leaning back to whisper something to him and nod towards Jean-Jacques still rolled in his robe in the shadows. The young man knelt beside him and asked in Cree, “So, you are better now? You were almost as white as the snow you were lying in when your friend’s shouts brought me to you.”

  So, this was his rescuer. But instead of thanking him, he blurted, “Where is Gabriel?”

  “Sleeping in another tipi,” the young man replied. “He fell asleep before these strangers arrived.”

  “But who are they?” Jean-Jacques knew he was being rude, asking so many questions. He could not help it.

  “English, travellers, I do not know exactly what or who they are. Not traders, not men coming with words from the queen or from God. One of the mixed-blood men from Fort Edmonton says this Kane, he makes pictures telling the stories of his journey. Maybe it is magic, or maybe just some more white craziness. They are all mad, you know.”

  Jean-Jacques smiled, nodding in agreement. He liked this man.

  “Thank you for helping me and my friend,” he said, “It would have been a long walk for us to get back home.”

  “You would have died there in that coulee if we had not found you.” The young man’s face was serious now. Jean-Jacques was reminded of his father. “It was a childish trick, to go so far from your camp by yourselves with a raw team in midwinter. Now someone will have to get you home. Maybe the mad Englishman will take you.”

  For an instant Jean-Jacques felt a flash of anger. This man had as good as called him, Jean-Jacques, a fool. But then he thought, maybe it is more manlike to admit your mistake. Papa says, watch and listen and learn.

  So, he said only “I know. We won’t do it again. At least not this winter.”

  The man smiled but continued sitting with his back to the main company, facing Jean-Jacques. In a flash of understanding, Jean-Jacques realized that the young man probably hoped to marry the girl but did not yet have the approval of her parents. For him to look at or address them directly before that time would be incredibly bad manners. Even after formal acceptance, he would avoid looking directly at his sisters-in-law or mother-in-law, if he valued his reputation.

  But both the young son-in-law-on-probation and the rescued boy were free to listen to the conversation going on around the campfire.

  “Yes, I know Mister Rundle, the god-talker,” Maskepetoon was saying. “And Mr. Hunter. And Mr. Thebo. They all come to us, tell us that our beliefs are wrong. They each claim that they speak for the Creator God, but they all have heard his words differently. Each says the others speak lies.”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “My people may listen to them and look for what truth these god-talkers might carry. But until they decide to agree with each other, I will keep to the old ways.”

  Then Maskepetoon’s low voice settled into the storytelling cadence, with the slightly exaggerated formality that denotes mischievous humour. Jean-Jacques settled comfortably into the warmth of his robes and closed his eyes, allowing the words to carry him into the magical land of story.

  “Once a good Cree warrior listened to the foreign god-teachers who came to his tribe. He believed their story of heaven, their warnin
g of hell. He learned their prayers and followed their way, believed in their Christ. And in due course he died. His spirit, just as the god-teachers had promised, left this land and flew up straight to the white man’s heaven. It was very beautiful, warm as a Hudson’s Bay blanket and comfortable as white man’s cloth trousers, full of the kinds of marvelous toys only a white man would dream of or need. At first he was very happy.”

  “But soon he saw that he had no share in their joy and pleasure. All was strange to him. He met none of the spirits of his ancestors. No one welcomed him. There was no hunting nor fishing, none of the creatures that had once made his heart light. His spirit grew sad, and he begged to be allowed to return and choose again.”

  Jean-Jacques drifted to sleep wondering if such a wish could be granted.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wolfwillow. Shrub growing 1-5 m tall in grasslands and ravines. Twigs brown to silver grey. Leaves ovate and covered with star-shaped silver hairs. Fragrant small silver and yellow blossoms in spring. Silvery fruit. Prefers sandy soil. Nitrogen fixer. Gabriellas’ Prairie Notes

  Gabby (2012)

  I woke with sweat dripping from my face, the morning sunshine turning my tent into a cooker. Not surprising I’d slept late. When I’d finally shut off my camp light, the eastern sky was already streaked with light. Now a cacophony of voices and vehicles invaded my space as other campers churned into activity. This was not a place I wanted to hang out in today. I scrambled out of my tent and headed for the showers.

  When I returned, my neighbours of the first night hailed me from their motorhome to come have coffee with them.

  Donna remarked, “Your cell phone has been ringing like mad.”

  Retrieving my phone from the charger in my car, I called the number in the ‘recent’ display and smiled to hear Madeline’s hearty voice saying, “Gabriella! What are your plans for the day?”

  After packing up the campsite, calling “Goodbye, and thanks!” to Donna and Bob, and answering a call from my parents, I got into my trusty Aveo and headed back up the highway towards Great Bear Lake.

  The thought of Madeline’s green, quiet yard was especially inviting after the controlled mock-camping of that semi-urban campground. What she offered me right now was exactly what I needed: access to her own library and research notes, as well as insight into the people behind the notebooks containing Jean-Jacques’s stories. Was Annabelle’s written version of the remembered tales told by her father to be trusted? How much was historical veracity and how much flights of imagination?

  * * *

  “I am confident that my mother wrote down the stories as she recalled them,” Madeline assured me. “But memory is a tricky thing. It keeps on changing. What she remembered may have been polluted, or at least coloured, by what she learned as an adult.” She paused. “But you have to keep in mind the value that was once placed on oral storytelling. It was always easy to tell from the story-teller’s manner whether he was telling a tall tale, a cautionary teaching fable, or a first-person account. My Grandpa was part of that world. So was Mama. She understood the nuances of storytelling. I am sure that what she wrote down of her Papa’s life story was done without embellishment.”

  “I read your commentary, as well. It is amazing that you’ve been able to corroborate so many of the stories!”

  Madeline’s face was impassive, but her tone grew cold. “You mean that the old half-breed’s ramblings actually are verified by the official colonial version? How amazing indeed.”

  I felt myself floundering. “I mean, first-person accounts are subjective, not written for the same purpose as an historical narrative, are they?”

  “No, not for the same purpose at all. An old man’s recollections are an attempt to pass on the truth of his life to his descendants. The colonial narrative was written by colonial lackeys to promote colonial interests. Do you know what the word propaganda means?”

  “Mmmm-hmm.” I nodded. Maybe she had a point. Who could say which was the truer version?

  All afternoon and evening and on into the next day, Madeline pointed out parallels between selected entries in supposedly objective historical narratives, and short entries in Annabelle’s notebooks. The stack of books on the floor beside us grew. I was especially interested in the section touching on Captain John Palliser’s expedition. Some of Madeline’s books were recently published work based on accounts written by Palliser, or his cohort Dr. Hector, others were excerpts printed from their original reports. Every page from Annabelle’s notes was accompanied with several more pages of Madeline’s notes, commentary, or observations on the circumstances surrounding the episode. It was very confusing.

  An hour’s run along the creek that raced by her place helped clear my head. Afterward, we sat side by side on her porch in the long summer twilight enjoying a glass of homemade rhubarb wine.

  “I am going to go through everything again,” I said. “There is too much to take in at one reading.”

  “Take your time.” Madeline stretched and yawned. “This is what the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, the Idle-No-More movement, even this Centenarian Project, are about. Sharing the truth. Our history has been a long time in the making and will take a long time to understand. Learning how we got here and figuring out how we can move on.” Then she announced it was way past her bedtime and disappeared into the cabin.

  I neatly stacked the material spread out around me, and carried it inside to the kitchen table, away from the cool night air and the mosquitoes that emerged at sundown. My computer was already set in place, and Madeline had left me a pitcher of cold tea.

  If truth is coloured by your own experiences, the truth I found might be vastly different from Annabelle’s version of Jean-Jacques’s memories or Madeline’s interpretation of her research. But I would try my best to keep the facts, the little pegs upon which histories are hung, intact. I began typing notes for my own version of that time. A time that was beginning to seem real to me.

  Jean-Jacques (1855-58)

  “Hey boy! Where you goin’?”

  Jean-Jacques stopped in the middle of the muddy street and peered into the crowd of men, horses and wagons clustered in the stable yard. Almost in the same motion, he turned back to join the grizzled and shaggy man grinning at him from his perch on his wagon seat.

  “M’sieu Jacob! What you doin’ in Fort Benton?”

  “Might ask you the same, boy. Last time I saw you, you was drayman fer yer daddy, hauling buffalo hides to Red River. He decide to bring them here this year?”

  Jean-Jacques nodded. “We did not make good last year. Out East, they heard the pox was running through the buffalo people. They wouldn’t take our hides, afraid they carried infection.”

  The older man guffawed and spat in the street. “Seems they never figger out that pestilence goes the other way, too. So, you brung them buffalo hides to the Yankees this year, didja?”

  “Oui. My Papa, et moi, we brought a wagon load.”

  Jean-Jacques wondered briefly if Jacob had heard about his phenomenal luck. He killed more buffalo in this last hunt than any other Saskatchewan Metis. He, Jean-Jacques Lapraire, age seventeen summers, had been named Master of the Hunt for one day, the youngest man ever to achieve that honour. But it would be bragging to mention it himself. He kept his gaze level and proud as he had seen the Anglais men at Carlton Post do, his face as impassive as his Cree cousins, his stance strong and relaxed as his French-Canadian stepfather had taught him.

  Jacob looked at him keenly.

  “If yer finished with yer daddy’s business, I might have a job fer you.”

  Jacob waited a moment as though expecting a response, and then added, “Some fellers on their way back to Red River from looking over new land near Walla Walla out in Washington Territory. Want to load up goods from the stores here in Fort Benton, some freight to make the journey pay. Me, I’ll dray for them, but we could use another wagon. And driver.”

  Jean-Jacques grinned in agreement.

&n
bsp; “There’s a redskin travelling with us, too. Someone you know from when you was a sprout. Name’s Broken Arm.”

  Jean-Jacques shook his head. “Broken Arm? Me, I know nobody by that name.”

  “Remember that escapade when you and that Gabriel kid got yourselves rescued by some Cree? And that crazy artist feller and bunch from Fort Ellis brought you home? Yer daddy told me you were mighty taken with that Chief Broken Arm. Well, that’s the same feller Frenchies call Bras Casse. That’s Maskepetoon in Cree. Bras Casse – Maskepetoon –Broken Arm – all the same feller. Remember him now?”

  The grin almost split Jean-Jacques’s face.

  “Maskepetoon is here? In Fort Benton? Where is he? What’s he doing here?”

  “Oh, he gets around, that Maskepetoon does. Been running back and forth across those Rockies leading Sinclair’s bunch. Hudson’s Bay sent Sinclair out to Washington Territory a few years back to try to save it for the queen. Now Sinclair’s moved his family out there to Walla Walla. Wanted Maskepetoon to guide for him agin.”

  “Walla Walla? Isn’t that where the Nez Perce have been getting into trouble?”

  “Bad business, that.” Jacob shook his head. “Broken Arm told me he talked to Chief Joseph, you know, the Nez Perce peace chief? Seems the Nez Perce think they can negotiate their way out of this mess. They’d had some kinda council at Walla Walla, the chief, he met with some bigwig from Washington who promised the Nez Perce will keep their land. But that’s purty nice country out there. The settlers, they’s not gonna let a pack of redskins keep it to theyselves.”