“I have done right, have I not?” Matonabbee asked Hearne.
But his wife thought not and left Matonabbee for her bloody first husband. Hearne tried to console Matonabbee and said that perhaps she would rather be a sole wife than have “the seventh or eighth share of the affection of the greatest man in the country.” But even more distressing to Matonabbee, a second man demanded his wife back, or else a ransom of ammunition and iron kettles. This man was stronger than Matonabbee and would have pinned him in a fight, so the Chipewyan chief was forced to let a second wife go as well. This troubled him greatly; the first woman was comely, the second peerless in leatherwork. Matonabbee sat down and told Hearne the expedition was over and he would go no farther. But Hearne begged him to continue and spoke of the esteem that his descendants would always have from the Hudson’s Bay Company in appreciation of his service, and after much cajoling eventually Matonabbee assented.
They continued north that very afternoon, Matonabbee intent on putting as much distance between himself and his former wives as possible.
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Everywhere Matonabbee went, warriors flocked to him. They joined him at the winter camps, at Clowey Lake, at Peshew Lake, and on farther north. When sixty more fighters joined their ranks, Matonabbee ordered a camp be built for his wives with young babies. His two childless wives stripped their loads to carry the minimum required food and powder, Awgeenah and the other men began to fashion shields from thin boards, and finally Hearne spoke up and asked what was going on.
Matonabbee was forthright about his plans. He told Hearne that from then on the purpose of their journey was in fact twofold. Yes, they were traveling to the Far Off Metal River, but they were doing so to make war on the Esquimaux.
Hearne begged them not to do it, but Awgeenah and the other warriors told him he was a coward. “You are afraid of the Esquimaux?” asked Matonabbee.
Why shouldn’t he be? The fearsomeness of that race was well known to Indian and Englishman alike. How the Esquimaux hunted animals as big as houses and then ate the meat raw. How they made spears and harpoons out of the horn of the unicorn; the same royal substance that Queen Elizabeth had fashioned into a scepter, each common warrior carried into battle. They stole the wives of all peoples, survived winter without fire, and paddled boats that swam underwater faster than any Indian’s canoe.
“I despise them more than fear them,” Hearne said, nervously, as he looked over the scores of warriors gathered, he the only white man. “I do not care if you render the name and race of Esquimaux extinct.” And then Awgeenah and Matonabbee cheered for Hearne, for they felt the same way.
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It was the height of summer, and warm, creeks and trails like slush, rain on frozen lakes and fog rising from the cold water. There were few women to carry the loads, and only three canoes for the whole party, so progress was slow, and they took turns using the boats to cross rivers.
As they traveled, they killed large numbers of deer and fish and fur-bearing animals of every type. Some game, they ate the whole beast, and some they ate only the tongue and sucked the marrow, and some they simply tossed on the ground. The white man asked why, and Matonabbee and Awgeenah and the warriors explained that they had full dominion over all other living things. They told him that when the world was new, a giant walked the earth, his head reaching even the clouds. And with his walking stick he leveled the land and set all the rivers and streams. And then he took a dog and ripped it into pieces and threw the flesh about, so that it became fish and birds and beaver. And he told the Chipewyan people that they should kill and eat all of these animals and never spare them.
Hearne then asked about their god, and if they worshipped this man, but Matonabbee, who understood the questions, because he had been taught about the Christian god as a child, said no, that all “should pass through this world with as much ease and contentment as possible, without any hope of reward, or painful fear of punishment in the next.”
Soon they came upon a band of Copper Indians, who understood their designs to attack the Esquimaux. So they gave them more canoes and threw the war party a feast and, in recognition of Matonabbee’s leadership and standing, gave him all the choicest cuts. The Copper Indians had never seen a white man before, and they mocked Hearne, saying that his hair was like a buffalo’s tail, his eyes the color of a gull’s, and his skin “resembled meat which had been sodden in water till all the blood was extracted.”
The weather had grown sultry, and no one could sleep from the clouds of mosquitoes, when they finally found the Coppermine River. It was narrow, shallow, and full of rocks, and the white man appeared frustrated; he said the river was navigable only by canoe and not ship. Matonabbee did not care about the size of the river, and sent out scouts to look for Esquimaux. They were quickly rewarded. There was a camp nearby, downriver, at a waterfall. Matonabbee led them across the river to prepare the ambush and ignored Hearne when the man bellyached that his survey was incomplete.
Awgeenah and the other warriors restrung their bows, cleaned their rifles, gathered powder for their pouches, affixed spears. They painted their wooden shields with symbols and animals and the spirits of their totems: the sun, the moon, earth, sea, sky, the trickery of raven, the speed of wolverine, the endurance of caribou. Then they chopped their hair, tied it back, stripped their clothes, and painted their bodies red and black, and though mosquitoes covered their skin, they paid no notice.
The Esquimaux camp was small, and Matonabbee had gathered a large war band; everyone knew a slaughter was upon them. Hearne wondered aloud if “Providence should work a miracle in their deliverance,” as he could see no other means of their escape.
Awgeenah and the warriors instructed Hearne to stay behind, but the white man said he thought he was in more danger that way, as the Esquimaux would flee right toward his hiding spot. So they handed Hearne a spear and a bayonet, and told him to stay close.
In the early hours, just after midnight but with the sun still burning bright, Matonabbee and Awgeenah and the other warriors fell upon the sleeping camp. The Esquimaux ran from their tents naked and weaponless. One young girl was hit by a spear and fell at Hearne’s feet, grasping his legs as she screamed. The Chipewyan warriors returned to the white man and stuck her twice more, and she squirmed about the poles fastening her to the dirt. The warriors asked Hearne if he wished to take her for a wife? Hearne begged the men to relieve her of her agonies, but instead the warriors berated him for his softness and sympathies. Finally, Hearne said that he would do it, that he would kill her if they would not, and his vehemence moved them. One warrior withdrew his spear from her body and then reaffixed it in her heart. Then the two men left the Englishman in contempt, but Hearne sat with the girl for a long time, as long as it took her to die.
The Chipewyan killed every Esquimaux without quarter. They plundered the tents of the copper wares, and made piles of the dead women, and remarked how ill-formed and ugly they were. Then a call went up, that a scout saw more Esquimaux in another camp on the other side of the river. They called tima tima to the Esquimaux, indicating their friendliness, and then shot at them with their rifles. The bullets landed short, though, embedded in the far shore. The Esquimaux came out, curious to examine the metal balls, until one man was struck in the leg, and then they fled in a fervor, paddling away in their kayaks. All except one grandfather, who was still packing his belongings when Awgeenah and the other warriors finally reached the camp. By the time they were done with him, Hearne said the man resembled “a cullender.”
Through it all, the Esquimaux dogs never stopped barking, but the Chipewyan abandoned them there, still leashed to their kennels.
Away from the camps, one old Esquimaux woman sat alone by a shoal in the stream, spearing salmon for her dinner. Her eyes were cloudy, her hearing dim, and she seemed to have no awareness of what was happening to her people in their tents as she blindly poked at the water. When A
wgeenah and the warriors found her, she was quiet and still, surrounded by piles of fish and squinting at them with bloodshot eyes.
She tried to run. But they seized her and transfixed her on the end of a spear. Then they held her down and plucked out her eyes and stabbed her, slowly, again and again, in the few meaty places of her body, not her organs or vitals. By the time they were done, they had penetrated her with a dozen spears, so as to stake her to the ground.
When they were finished killing Esquimaux, Matonabbee and Awgeenah and the men sat and ate, as they were hungry from their work and had not eaten in some time. They picked up the blind woman’s pronged stick and caught salmon and ate them raw. On his map, the white man called the place Bloody Fall. Then they led Hearne the last few miles of the river’s course to the sea. There was sealskin and whalebone everywhere. The white man said they had reached the Arctic Ocean. He tasted the water and declared it fresh, then raised his glass to his eye and looked out on it. Matonabbee led Hearne to the place where they gathered copper, but the area was small and mean, and they found only one four-pound lump. Awgeenah and the warriors said the chunk looked like a hare. Hearne said it was a waste of a trip. Then they turned around and returned south.
The journey back to the bay was grueling. The white man’s feet wore raw; every step left a red footprint in the snow. Winter returned, so hard and deep that when they came upon the great lake of the Slave, they walked across its frozen surface. They finally arrived back at Prince of Wales Fort at the opening of summer. Hearne expressed his thanks to Matonabbee and said that though his trip had failed, he could take satisfaction in the fact that he had done his duty to his master and finally put to rest any speculation that there might be a northwest passage through the heart of the continent.
That last assertion proved wildly untrue.
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Hearne would soon command Prince of Wales Fort, and Matonabbee continued to cross the Barren Lands to bring him furs, and the two grew even closer in friendship. Once, Matonabbee was troubled by a rival and asked Hearne to kill the man, who was then many hundreds of miles away. Hearne agreed and on a piece of paper drew a picture of the two men wrestling, Matonabbee holding a bayonet against the heart of his foe. Across from the figures, Hearne drew a tall pine tree. It was topped with an all-seeing eye, and a human hand reached from its branches. Hearne told his friend Matonabbee to show the paper to anyone who would look, and within the year the man withered and died, as all expected who knew the power of such medicine.
But in the winter of 1776, when Matonabbee arrived at the bay on his regular migration, he found that Hearne had changed. Matonabbee led a cohort of three hundred Chipewyan, bearing five thousand beaver furs and seven thousand pounds of musk ox flesh for the Englishmen to eat. At first, Hearne greeted him warmly and dressed Matonabbee in a captain’s jacket of the Royal Navy. And then Hearne dressed Matonabbee’s wives, and repaired the rifles of his hunters, and gave them powder, ball, and tobacco. But when Matonabbee requested seven jackets for his seven lieutenants, loyal men such as Awgeenah, Hearne wavered. He thought Matonabbee ungrateful and did not want to provide the gifts.
“I do not expect to be denied such a trifle,” said Matonabbee.
Hearne scoffed and asked where else he would take his furs.
“To the Canadian traders,” said Matonabbee. And though Hearne then grudgingly relinquished the goods, there was ever the threat implicit, and from then on Awgeenah and Matonabbee and the other Chipewyan would also seek out the peddlers from Montreal.
By their good fortune, one of those traders, Peter Pond, crossed into their watershed the next year. Matonabbee himself delivered the castor gras beaver furs that would make Pond famous among his business partners in 1779, when young Alexander Mackenzie first clerked in his countinghouse in Montreal.
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Hearne was the last governor of Prince of Wales Fort. One day in 1782, as the American Revolution dragged on, warships flying British flags appeared on the horizon. The garrison cheered, assuming relief. Hearne saw otherwise. It was a ruse.
“You may cease rejoicing. These are French warships come to wreak havoc,” Hearne told the men. Outnumbered and hopeless, Hearne surrendered. The French took him prisoner, razed the fort to the ground, and scattered the Home Guard.
The news traveled quickly. Matonabbee was on the land when he heard that his childhood home had burned. His livelihood, his stature, his future, fell with it. In response, Matonabbee, this leading Chipewyan, who held no belief in a future state, hanged himself from a tree. The white men said they had never seen an Indian do such a thing. Stripped of their provider, Matonabbee’s wives and children starved to death that winter.
But Awgeenah would not go hungry or follow Matonabbee to the noose. Instead, he took his mentor’s place as the trading chief of his nation.
Awgeenah wore both the red coat of Peter Pond and the tattoos of his people, black stripes across his cheeks set in with awl and cinders. So skillfully did he play the Hudson’s Bay Company against the North West Company, and the reverse as well, that he earned the name English Chief. Trading made him rich, riches made him generous, generosity made him powerful among the Chipewyan. He traveled as far as Matonabbee had, collecting debts even from the Copper Indians who lived along Tucho, the massive lake of the Slave Indians. And everywhere he went, the English Chief was a man of stature, and power, and respect.
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On April 21, 1786, Awgeenah delivered his own fantastic pile of furs to Peter Pond at his post, the Old Establishment, near the Lake of the Hills. He led a party of dozens of hunters, and his haul was so great that the English Chief single-handedly made the trading year a success. John Ross, Mackenzie’s partner in the New Concern, could only envy Pond’s clerks as they delivered the furs at the summer rendezvous in Grand Portage. The North West Company was winning the trade war, and the New Concern was faltering badly.
There was nothing to do but keep up the business. Mackenzie and his partners were outmanned and outgunned: fewer trade goods, fewer canoes, fewer voyageurs, inferior guides and interpreters. But each returned to his previous post—Mackenzie to Île-à-la-Crosse, Pangman to Fort des Prairies, Ross back to Athabasca to compete with Peter Pond—for the next winter.
Though still a clerk, Roderic Mackenzie was given his own post to run at Lac des Serpents, where he lived “within a gunshot” of the rival North West Company fort. As winter set in, a supportive Alexander sent his cousin letters full of tips and encouragement. How to give gifts, extend credit, and hold back liquor from those partners who grew troublesome with drink. How to shut his mouth, when it came to speaking to other traders. “Keep every thing as secret as you can from your men,” he wrote, “otherwise these old voyageurs will fish all they know out of your Green Hands.” And how to avoid getting stuck in the snow. “I have not a single one in my fort that can make Rackets. I do not know what to do without these articles. See what it is to have no wives,” he wrote, noting that women always made the snowshoes. “Try and get Rackets—there is no stirring without them.”
But Alexander also shared a fear with Roderic as the season pressed on in early 1787. It had been months since he heard any word from Athabasca, their most important department. “I am anxious not having any news of Mr. Ross,” he told his cousin.
It was Roderic who got the word first. In the spring he traveled to Île-à-la-Crosse, finding Alexander already gone to Grand Portage and Ross’s brigade late returning south. When the voyageurs from Athabasca did finally arrive, he discovered the cause of their delay.
John Ross was dead. “Shot in a scuffle with Mr. Pond’s men.”
Roderic immediately sped to the rendezvous to deliver the news. “I embarked with five men who volunteered and depending on my foremen as a guide.” Though the man was inexperienced and was unsure of the route, the thousand-mile trip only took “a month of hard labor.”
“The cause of our appearance so unexpectedly was soon known throughout the place,” said Roderic, upon arrival. The New Concern and the North West Company partners held an emergency joint meeting. They would merge, effective immediately, cease the competition “for their common welfare,” before anyone else died.
John Gregory, Mackenzie’s original patron, would return to Montreal with his former rivals to provide credit and oversee all affairs. The collected roster of bourgeois and clerks was divided among the existing posts. Roderic Mackenzie was given Alexander’s old assignment, at Île-à-la-Crosse. Pond had stayed at his post, had not traveled to Grand Portage, so despite the accusations against him—the Yankee of dubious morals was “under a cloud,” according to Roderic—Pond would have to remain in the north for one final winter. But not alone. Alexander Mackenzie was sent to Athabasca to work with him.
It was an uncomfortable assignment. As everyone knew, Ross’s murder was not the first of which Pond was accused.
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MURDER AT THE OLD ESTABLISHMENT, 1787
Peter Pond came from Puritan stock, but he didn’t have much use for religious rituals and never received the education biblical study required. He was born in 1740 in Milford, Connecticut, a town of ships and farms. His father was a shoemaker, his brothers ne’er-do-wells. Throughout his life, Pond maintained only a functional literacy, phonetically writing his journal in the same nasal New England accent with which he spoke: he found Indians “waryers” who were easily disturbed by an “eevel sperit,” and he worked with “voigers” who were always “fiteing” and “dansing.”
Disappointment River Page 10