Prairie Grass

by Joan Soggie

  “No, I suppose not,” replied Jean-Jacques slowly, when it seemed that Jacob expected some kind of response. He had heard stories from tattered groups of Lakota and Assiniboine who’d been pushed out of their land. Not a safe subject to discuss with a white man, even an old friend like Jacob. “Where is Maskepetoon now? Can you tell me where to find him?”

  “Yah, he has his tipi set at the north edge of town, in the Red River fellas’ camp. I told him what a big fellow you are now, he’d like to see you.”

  The Sinclair camp was not hard to find, but, once there, Jean-Jacques hesitated to enter it. Most of these men were probably mixed blood like him, with at least a few Cree or Assiniboine or Sioux mothers in their family tree. But this group was part of the British Hudson’s Bay establishment, a different breed of cat, as Jacob would have said, from the independent mixture that defined the Michif.

  A young man with merry blue eyes and red hair reined his horse beside him. “Are you looking for someone?”

  “Do you know the Indian they call Broken Arm?”

  “Maskepetoon? Surely! This time of day, I can probably lead you right to him!”

  The stranger dismounted to walk alongside Jean-Jacques across the camp. “Did you know he is the most distinguished member of our party? Just came from some sort of conference, back down on the Judith River. Some official from the United States government requested the pleasure of his company. Asked him to represent the interests of the Cree at a meeting between the American government and the plains tribes.”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Jean-Jacques. “He’s not American.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter to the Yankees. They think that our northern prairie will all be part of the States someday anyway. That’s why this expedition is so important. Gotta get a British foothold in Walla Walla before those greedy bastards have claimed the whole Pacific coast.”

  “Anyway,” the stranger continued, “those Indians don’t care about boundaries. I guess old Maskepetoon is as much American as he is British. Which is to say that he’s neither.”

  Jean-Jacques grunted in agreement. Classifications like that were meaningless when applied to the people of the land. Like Maskepetoon. Or like me.

  But, of course, the Yankees would see the advantage in gaining the cooperation of the old chief. When he was still a child, Jean-Jacques had understood Maskepetoon stood above the common run of men. Everything he had seen or heard about him since that first meeting confirmed that opinion. People listened to Maskepetoon. He commanded respect, the way the rising sun commanded wakefulness, as a natural consequence of his presence.

  But even a chief like him was affected by disease, trade embargoes, poor hunts, Jean-Jacques mused. The Blackfoot, Sioux and Assiniboine all competed with the Cree for whatever hunting or trade business remained. And now, guiding for a Company man, Maskepetoon was as good as working for the Hudson’s Bay. Would the Company show him respect? Jean-Jacques had heard about the Sinclair expeditions to Oregon Territory, and how even after all he had done for the HBC, some members of that establishment still regarded Sinclair as an outsider. Because of his parentage. It was the treatment of British half-breeds that had so angered Sinclair. Some arrogant official had dumped overboard a shipment of tallow Sinclair had consigned in York Factory, saying, “This Company is not run for the benefit of the employees.” Sinclair had gone all the way to London to plead his case.

  When even a British mixed-blood educated in Scotland couldn’t expect respect and a fair deal, what hope was there for the Metis? Or the Cree?

  It seemed everyone was worried about their future. Sickness, tribal warfare, the Indian wars in the States, declining markets in the fur-trade, Hudson’s Bay Company pulling back and showing their true colours. Jean-Jacques recalled the words of the chief factor at Fort Carlton, overheard complaining as he scowled at the letter from London. “The directors only care about the bottom line. In the end it is the investors, not our traders or servants, that we must please.”

  All this flashed through Jean-Jacques’s mind as he strode alongside his talkative acquaintance.

  “Here we are,” grinned the young gentleman, indicating a group of men gathered around a small fire. “You will find Broken Arm holding court there.”

  Jean-Jacques thanked him and approached the group.

  A half dozen men, Cree or Assiniboine or Sioux, it was hard to tell, their clothing an eclectic mix of traditional buckskin combined with Hudson’s Bay blankets, old jackets and broad-brimmed hats, stood or squatted near the fire, sheltered a little from the chill autumn breeze by a couple of wagons.

  Maskepetoon was speaking softly in Cree. Jean-Jacques stopped a few feet away to listen. If anyone noticed him, they chose to ignore the interruption.

  “Yes, they are worried,” Maskepetoon was saying, looking directly at one of the men, as though answering his question. “They do not want to have to fight us for our land. But land is what they want, and if they must kill us to get it, they will do that.”

  “Then why did they want you to meet with them?” a thin-faced man scowled. “Did they think you could just give them all the Cree land and save them the trouble of fighting us for it?”

  He laughed derisively and looked around the circle for agreement. The others maintained stoic silence, but looked to Maskepetoon, expecting a response.

  Maskepetoon’s steady gaze forced the mocker to drop his. After few moments the chief spoke, his voice calm and flat. “There will be no need for them to ask me, or anyone else, for permission. If we continue to fight each other, wear white man’s clothes, use his guns, catch their feebleness and illness, they need only wait. When the time is right, when our children are starving and our young men weak and our elders sick at heart, they need only tell us what they want, and we will give it to them in exchange for a few rags or a scrap of meat.”

  “Never!” growled one man angrily. “We will go to the mountains, we will hide in the northern forest …”

  “And learn to eat fish like the Swampies and Flatheads” snorted another derisively.

  “Or grow potatoes like my papa does,” burst out Jean-Jacques, suddenly unable to keep silent. How can they not see the truth of what the old chief says! Some might have starved last winter if it were not for our root cellar full of potatoes.

  Without moving a muscle or raising their eyes, the group’s attention shifted to him. His embarrassment was overcome with exasperation. These people, he realized, in their proud stubborn refusal to adapt to a new reality, were so like his mother’s people, his own family.

  “I apologize for interrupting your discussion. My name is Jean-Jacques Lapraire, my father is Pierre and my mother is Virginie of the Eagle Hills people. I come to speak with the man my father’s people call Bras Casse.”

  * * *

  In later years, Jean-Jacques would look back on those next weeks freighting for Jacob, in Maskepetoon’s company, as the time when he first realized how huge and yet how small the world was. And how big one man can be.

  Scattering of dry snow snaked across the half-frozen trail as they headed out of Fort Benton. Maskepetoon often chose the meagre comfort of the wooden wagon seat, leaving his horse to follow rider-less as he climbed up beside Jean-Jacques. He pumped Jean-Jacques for news of happenings along the Saskatchewan, asking after almost everyone the boy knew and many he had heard of but never met. The missionary Rundle, the factors at Carlton and Qu’Appelle, Chief Short Stick, the Calling River people, the McKay brothers. Makepetoon knew all of them and listened with keen interest to Jean-Jacques’s scant store of news. He was equally keen on rumours of raids and battles, sometimes speculating aloud about which Blackfoot war chief may have been responsible for an attack near the Cypress Hills or Old Wives Lake. Jean-Jacques guessed this was not just natural curiosity about happenings in his homeland while he had been absent for so many months. The chief had some plan in mind.

  Winter was setting in by the time they reached Fort Qu’Appelle, where th
ey parted company, Jean-Jacques continuing east to fulfill his freighting contract with Jacob, Maskepetoon turning northward to find his people’s winter camp somewhere along the North Saskatchewan River.

  When they met again, two years later, in Captain John Palliser’s large camp at Fort Qu’Appelle, the legend of the Peacemaker had spread throughout the West. Through Bras Casse’s diplomacy, war between Cree and Blackfoot had come to an uneasy peace. It amused Jean-Jacques that the Irish captain of this impressive expedition, while priding himself on his tact and insight in dealing with the natives and half-breeds in his entourage, seemed to have no idea that Maskepetoon, his native guide, was in fact a hero of boundless courage, universally respected by friend and enemy alike. Nor that in at least one instance, along the Elbow of the South Saskatchewan, it was only Maskepetoon’s presence that protected the Palliser encampment from attack by a roving Blackfoot war-party. Indeed, Jean-Jacques was aware Palliser’s hail-good-fellow-well-met demeanour was a condescension towards his social inferiors, those not of his class. He overheard the captain mockingly comment to Dr. Hector on the ridiculous sight of his guide dressed in his own cast-off military cap and jacket.

  But Palliser seemed to like to talk to Maskepetoon all the same, and more than once Jean-Jacques saw them seated by the campfire in deep discussion. He could guess the topic. Nothing but Maskepetoon’s belief in the possibility of people living together in peace and harmony on the land could make his face glow like that, nor bring such power to his slow Cree voice.

  At the same time, Jean-Jacques saw Maskepetoon did not entirely trust Palliser’s motives in studying this land so carefully and writing down every detail of geography and vegetation in his notebook each night. Why would he gather this information but to expedite settlement? It was this distrust of Palliser, Jean-Jacques thought, that determined the route Maskepetoon had chosen when Palliser hired him to guide his expedition from Qu’Appelle Fort to Fort Carlton. It was the same route that the prairie bison herds followed each summer as they munched their mammoth swath across the plains, leaving the land barren of grass, and every waterhole muddied and trampled.

  Why would old Broken Arm take the expedition this way but to show Palliser the land’s most inhospitable face?

  And it seemed to be working. The choking dust stirred up by their wagons, the constant wind swirling over the treeless flats, the stale drinking water in their bottles, kept Palliser and his companions in a state of weary discomfort.

  “What foul country this is!” Palliser declared. “A horse could starve here. Not fit for man or beast.”

  Jean-Jacques grinned and winked at Maskepetoon, who smiled serenely into the campfire.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kentucky Bluegrass. Long dark-green blades with boat shaped tips. Veined dark-green sheath. Spreading panicle with purplish spikelets. Prefers moist fertile soils. Often confused with Plains Rough Fescue. Sod-forming root. Possibly introduced. Good forage. Invasive in disturbed areas. Gabriellas’ Prairie Notes

  Gabby (2012)

  Sunday dawned another fine day, and I was there to greet it, even though Annabelle’s notebooks and Madeline’s research had kept me reading, digesting and compiling until the small hours.

  Madeline warned me her sister Olivia would arrive that afternoon, and I should not expect any peace to continue working after that.

  “Olivia and I are polar-opposites,” Madeline said. “She’s opinionated, dogmatic, intolerant. There is no talking sense to her. I sometimes wonder if we really are sisters!”

  I’d turned away to hide my grin. And resolved to at least get the next section of Jean-Jacques’s story into my notes before Madeline’s twin arrived.

  I had snuck my French-press coffee maker and a packet of fresh-ground java into the house in my backpack. In the early morning light, I tiptoed around the kitchen finding a mug and brought the kettle to a boil. Out on the porch the morning was still cool and damp, but the screens kept out most of the mosquitoes. It made a fine quiet workplace. So absorbed by the material was I, that I did not hear Madeline when she got up, nor when she went out the backdoor to fetch salad fixings from her garden. It was past noon when she let the screen door bang behind her and called, “Earth to Gabriella! What century are you lost in, girl?”

  “Oh, somewhere in the mid-1860s,” I laughed. “That must have been an interesting time!”

  “Hmmm – isn’t that an ancient Chinese curse? – ‘may you live in interesting times?’” Madeline remarked.

  I had been deep in the tangle of miscellaneous accounts referring to Jean-Jacques’s friend and mentor, the peripatetic plains Cree chief. It was plain from the details in Annabelle’s account that her father must have told many tales about this person. This Cree leader was, obviously, someone Jean-Jacques admired. How could such a person have been ignored by the history books? What luck that I had stumbled across the one historian who had begun to give Maskepetoon the attention he deserved. I had not yet emailed Jeff Relleter with any questions, as I’d promised to do, but thought how excited he would be to hear about these first-person accounts. I resolved to tell Madeline about his work.

  But Madeline was in no mood to continue our discussion of the previous day. She indicated with a nod of her head my pile of books and papers. “You might want to put that away before Olivia arrives. She won’t be interested in any of this.”

  I was curious to meet this woman. And, thinking how Eric Tollerud’s family’s memories sometimes conflicted with, but often supplemented, his story, I wondered what new insights Olivia might offer to their grandfather Jean-Jacques’s saga. This would likely be my only opportunity to find out, as Olivia planned to return home to Texas in a few weeks. Madeline informed me Olivia had lived in the States for the past forty years.

  “She married up,” Madeline had explained a trifle cattily. “First marriage failed but by then she had a good job in an oil company. When her boss moved from Calgary to Houston, she went, too. Second marriage for them both. And a happy one, it seems. They agree on everything — politics, religion, fecklessness of blacks and Mexicans and Indians …”

  Madeline fairly spat out the last phrase.

  If that was not enough to reveal the depth of their sibling dissension, Olivia’s words as she navigated the broad shallow steps up to Madeline’s veranda clinched it. First impressions are everything.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of playing Indian, Madeline? Living in this old shack! Thank goodness you’ve at least given up your trapline.”

  I remained in my shady corner, observing and momentarily unnoticed. Olivia’s strong features bore a basic similarity to her sister’s but were wrapped in a very different package. Her smooth, perfectly made-up face seemed unnaturally taut – face-lift, I thought – in contrast to Madeline’s weathered brown countenance. Madeline’s grey chignon looked dowdy and old-fashioned beside Olivia’s glossy hairstyle. Although both may have started out as girls with the same build, Madeline looked more solid in muscle and bone, and moved with purposeful assurance. Olivia walked gingerly, with a cane.

  “I am happy with my home, thank you,” Madeline responded tartly as she and Olivia exchanged a perfunctory embrace. “You can have your gated-community and handgun, Olivia, and I will gladly keep my good neighbours and my trusty 22.”

  She gestured a trifle impatiently for me to come forward. It seemed to me Madeline felt not only annoyed but rattled by Olivia.

  “This is Gabriella Mackenzie. She’s visiting here, comes from down east but lives in Swift Current now.”

  “Nice to meet you, Gabriella.” Olivia smiled and extended her hand. “How on earth did you happen to meet my bush-mama sister?”

  I was tempted to invent an aboriginal ancestry and an expedition to discover my roots, but after a quick glance at Madeline, thought better of it.

  The truth. Or at least some version of the truth. Always the safest option.

  “Actually, Olivia, I searched out Madeline for an assignment I am working o
n. Have you heard of the Centenarian Project? No? Well, that’s not surprising, it would hardly make the news in the States. The mandate of the project is to collect stories from people across western Canada who are in their hundredth year of life. Or older.”

  Olivia looked nonplussed. “That can hardly be much of a job,” she snorted. “Who’s paying for it?”

  “It’s funded by federal and provincial grants, and supported by all the major universities,” I replied. “But you’re right, the pay’s not great. For me, it might be a steppingstone towards a career in journalism.”

  I could hardly believe I finally said aloud what I had been thinking for weeks. It was time to acknowledge where I was headed. After my contract with CP expired, I would either apply to journalism school or attempt a career as a freelance writer. There were too many stories out there not being told. Just waiting for me.

  “What do I keep telling you?” Olivia was crowing to Madeline. “That’s what’s wrong with this country, why it will never amount to much! Instead of paying for good highways and supporting industry, your hard-earned taxes are being wasted on welfare programs and universal health care and projects like this. To provide employment for journalism students. Who will fabricate stories to satisfy their liberal agenda!”

  I opened my mouth to object that I was a graduate of the social sciences, not journalism, but fortunately Madeline responded first.

  Her glare blistered, but her voice remained cool. “This is a worthwhile project, Olivia, preserving bits of our history.”

  “Harking back to ancient history does no one any good. Just drags you down.”

  Olivia sat down on one of the rustic chairs and fanned herself with a paper I had neglected to gather up. “If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, Maddie, you could offer me a glass of iced tea. With ice, of course.”