West to the Bay

by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

  When Edward sailed away four years ago, Thomas was eleven and he climbed the harbor tower for a better view over the heads of the townspeople. He watched as Edward, and the other boys who were leaving Stromness, boarded the departing ship. He waved until the sails of the ship were out of sight and, as he clung to the tower, he decided he was going to join the Company when he was old enough. And now it had happened.

  Thomas picked up a rock and threw it as far as he could, watching as it hit the ground and bounced before rolling to a stop. He then walked over to the stone fence he and Stuart had built around the pasture. He sat, not caring if he dirtied his best breeches. He looked out over the land which would be Stuart’s when their father died. That was why his oldest brother had never joined the Company and left the island. Stuart’s future was assured.

  And now so was his. Thomas smiled to himself. His life was just beginning and it was going to be a great one, if he could believe even half the stories told by the men who had returned home after years with the Company. Certainly a lot more thrilling than if he stayed here on the island.

  Thomas stood and walked towards his home. The flagstone farmhouse had been built years ago by their father, the spaces between the stones chinked with peat, and later with lime mortar. He walked into the kitchen where his mother was preparing their noon meal. She looked up at him, her eyebrows raised.

  “Yes, I have been accepted,” Thomas said, grinning.

  Mary nodded. “Your father will be happy.” She bent her head as she rolled out dough for biscuits.

  “Now, Mother,” Thomas said, walking around the table and giving her cheek a kiss. “You know I really want to go.”

  Mary wiped a tear from her eye. “First Edward and now you.”

  “You still have Stuart, and Molly, and Isabel, and little Bruce, to keep you busy. You will not even miss me.”

  “Yes, I will. A mother always misses a child.”

  “But I am not a child. I am fifteen, a man.”

  Mary smiled and patted his cheek. “You will always be a child to me.

  Chapter 2

  York Factory, Rupert’s Land. April 1750

  Little Bird left the Home Guard Cree village with her grandmother, heading to the frozen river for water. The day was warm and sunny. Water dripped from the snow melting off the tree branches and the smell of spring filled the air. Little Bird had one of the axes her grandfather had given them balanced on her shoulder. The wooden pails they carried were also from her grandfather.

  As she walked beside the straight backed, always energetic older woman she saw for the first time that she had grown taller than her grandmother. She wondered when this had happened. She had not noticed it over the winter as she sat listening to her grandmother’s stories, or when they made baskets together, or when she braided her hair.

  Although her grandmother’s hair was gray, Little Bird never thought of her as old. They spent so much time together, her grandmother teaching her the ways of the Cree, telling her about the life she had lived as an Inland Cree, and how her parents had come to live with the Home Guard Cree.

  She explained that the Inland and Home Guard Cree were both members of the Swampy Cree tribe. The name Home Guard had been given to the band by the white man because they had set up their permanent camp near the fort. They hunted for their food and trapped, trading the furs to the Company.

  Although they spoke their native language in the village, most of the Home Guard Cree knew English, and her grandmother had taught her the language at an early age. Occasionally, she spoke about her life with Little Bird’s grandfather, a grandfather they only saw once a year.

  At fourteen, Little Bird was almost old enough for marriage, but there were so many questions she wanted to ask her grandmother about her own marriage, and how she felt when her husband left her with two children to look after. Questions she wanted answered before she wed.

  As they walked to the river she asked. “Grandmother, why did you not marry one of our men when Grandfather left?”

  Her grandmother, who was called Patient Woman by the band, looked at her and Little Bird held her breath. Her mother had warned her never to talk about her grandfather leaving unless her grandmother mentioned it first.

  Her grandmother smiled at her. “There was no one I cared enough about.”

  “But you must have been so alone.”

  “Alone and scared, and lonely and hurt,” Patient Woman replied. “But I always hoped he would return. And I was right.”

  “Only once a year, though.”

  “That was what he wished, and I was willing to accept that.”

  Little Bird thought about her grandfather’s visits. She, her sister, Spotted Fawn, and their mother, Moon Face, would move into her uncle’s teepee to let her grandparents have the teepee to themselves. They either spent the day inside talking or went for a walk holding hands. She saw the love between them and never understood why he did not stay.

  “Why did he leave?” She had only been told that he left because his second enlistment with the Company was over. She was sure there was a different reason, because she knew the men could sign on as long as they wished to.

  Patient Woman sat on a rock beside the still frozen river. She took the axe from Little Bird’s hand and held it gently in her own. As she spoke her eyes had a far-away look in them.

  “Your grandfather was seventeen, and a beggar on the dirty streets of the city they call London, when he was accepted by the Company. He thought it was a miracle because he now had a full belly, clothes to wear instead of rags, and was being paid for his work.

  “But his miracle only lasted a few months. He had not reckoned on the quiet, the solitude, and the loneliness, after being raised in noisy London. Nor had he been told about the cold, and the snow in winter, and the mosquitoes in summer. We met during his first winter and were married in the spring.”

  “How old were you?” Little Bird asked.

  “I was sixteen.”

  “Did he marry you because he was lonely?” Little Bird tilted her head to one side.

  “At first I thought he did but later I think he really did love me. He was so proud when I gave him a son, and we were the reason he signed on again for another three years when his first servitude was up.”

  “But he finally left after Mother was born.”

  “Yes, he did. He returned to London and signed on a ship heading to warmer places. But he missed us, and after six years he joined the Company again as a sailor on their supply ship. He could not bring himself to come back here to live, but he has come to see his family once a year for the past twenty-eight years.”

  “That must have been hard on Mother and Uncle Red Elk,” Little Bird said, thinking of her own father who had been killed two years ago. She still missed him.

  “On your uncle mostly because he remembered us as a family. Your mother has only known his once-a-year visits.”

  “So your brothers helped you raise Mother and Uncle Red Elk, just as uncle has helped us since Father died.”

  “Yes. And that is why each time your grandfather comes he brings us pots, and tools, and beads. And he gives guns, and powder, and shot, to my brothers. It is his way of helping to take care of his family.”

  “And he brings you new clay pipes and enough tobacco to last you months.”

  “Yes,” Patient Woman smiled. “He does.”

  * * *

  Little Bird lay on her mat in her area of the teepee. The fire in the middle had dwindled to a red glow and the cold was seeping in. She snuggled down in her fur skins and thought about her grandfather. Her first memory of him was as a small child peeking around her mother at the tall man she was supposed to call Grandfather. She did not know how old she was at the time, but she did know she had been scared of him. And for the next few years it seemed as if the visits ran into each other. They had been such a small part of her life she had not paid much attention to them. She knew he was her grandfather and she could tell that her grandmo
ther and mother were glad to see him, but she had not understood why.

  At the age ten, she was able to remember the details of his visit. And the next time he came she had seen him differently. He was her grandmother’s husband, her mother’s father. And she had noticed family resemblances. Her uncle Red Elk was tall like his father and he had his father’s light hair color. Her mother, Moon Face, looked more like her Cree family. And although she had married an Indian, her children were lighter skinned than she and had finer features from her white blood.

  Spotted Fawn, had long, dark hair and brown eyes. Little Bird was a smaller version of her sister, but her own eyes were blue like their grandfather’s.

  At the time he left, Little Bird’s grandmother was just one of a number of country wives, as the Indian women were called, abandoned by a white man when he returned to his homeland. These country wives were left to raise the half-breed children alone. Usually they heard stories of their husbands taking white women as wives and starting a new family. But Little Bird knew some white men who remained at the post raising their children with their Indian wives. In spite of his loneliness she felt her grandfather should have done that.

  She wondered about the man she would someday marry. Would he be one of the Indian braves in the camp, or would she choose a husband from the Inland Cree who came to the fort to trade. If she did, she would have to return inland with him and not see her family until the next year’s trading.

  Maybe she would take a white man for a husband. Marrying a man from the post would raise her status in the band, and she might even be moved into the married men’s quarters at the post. But thinking of the pain her grandmother must have gone through when her grandfather left, she was not sure if she wished to do that.

  Across the teepee her sister, Spotted Fawn, was whispering with her husband, White Paddler, another white man. Little Bird listened intently to the conversation and wondered if her mother and grandmother were also listening.

  “You do not need to go,” Spotted Fawn said. “You could stay here with me.”

  “I have to go,” White Paddler said. “You know that the French have built posts inland and are trading for the best furs. It is only the poor furs that are now brought here to trade. Factor Smith was pleased with the ones we brought back last year and he wants to send another brigade this spring.”

  “Why cannot someone else lead them?”

  “Because I want to see more of the big land to the west. Last year I did not go very far.”

  “I have been there,” Spotted Fawn said. “There is not much to see.”

  Little Bird remembered the time she, Spotted Fawn, and Moon Face, had gone inland with her Uncle Red Elk. Although the majority of the Home Guard Cree stayed in the camp year round they were free to return with the Inland Cree who paddled to the fort each summer to trade. Her uncle had decided to do that, and had asked his sister and her daughters if they wanted to visit their distant relatives. They left in the summer and returned the next summer with the trading party. During that year they visited her grandmother’s cousins and their families, and spent the winter in a camp along a big river. While there she had seen her first buffalo hunt and tasted her first buffalo meat.

  “From what I have heard, there is lots to see. Last year I went because I had been stuck at the post on this bay for three years. This year I am going to explore the land and meet more of the Cree. I am twenty years old now, and I want to see the mountains away to the west and even reach the other ocean before I get too old.”

  “What about us?” Spotted Fawn asked. “How will Mother, and Grandmother, and Little Bird and I, survive without you?”

  “You uncle looked after you when your father died. He has agreed to do the same until I return.”

  “I will miss you.”

  “Why not come with me?” Little Bird could hear the hope in his voice.

  “I cannot.” Spotted Fawn’s voice was subdued. “Grandfather will be here this summer and I wish to see him.”

  “And so does Grandmother, and so does Mother, and so do I,” Little Bird whispered to herself.

  “By going inland you will miss the supply ship,” Spotted Fawn continued. “Maybe this is the one with your brother on it. He will have news of your family, and you will not be here to listen to it.”

  Little Bird remembered the times White Paddler, whose white man’s name she had forgotten, had waited for the supply ship. He had eagerly looked for a friend with news of home, and last year he had expected his brother to be here when he returned from inland. He had been very disappointed when he was not.

  “If he does happen to come this year, I can hear the news when I get back in the fall.”

  “You sound as if you do not care if your brother comes.”

  “I do, but not as much as I used to. I have a good native wife.” Little Bird could hear him kiss Spotted Fawn. “I live in a teepee with your family so that I may learn more of your ways. I have forgotten what my family looks like in Stromness. I do not even know if I would recognize my brother. I tried writing them letters the first two years, but I never managed to complete one. Maybe that is why they have never written to me.”

  Spotted Fawn sighed. “You are determined to go.”

  “Yes. And tomorrow I must start getting new canoes built, and old ones repaired, and deciding how many supplies I will need for the journey as well as what I must take to trade. The Indians will bargain hard knowing we are competing with the French.”

  “When will you leave?”

  “As soon as the ice is gone from the river. Hopefully, that will be sometime in May.”

  Little Bird watched White Paddler get up to add wood to the fire. He was a tall man with skin darkened from the summer sun, and even in the middle of winter his skin retained much of its tan. In spite of his dark skin he was still a white man and Little Bird wondered if he would someday return to his homeland and leave Spotted Fawn alone.

  Chapter 3

  Stromness, Orkney Islands. May 1750.

  “Where do you think you are going?” Stuart asked.

  Thomas stood beside Nellie. “I am going into town.”

  “Not today. The barn needs cleaning.”

  “But I want to watch for the ships. They might land today.”

  “Then they will land without you because you are cleaning the barn.”

  “Why cannot Harry or Bruce do it?”

  “They are out planting.”

  Thomas angrily turned Nellie loose in the pasture then went into the house to change into his work clothes. In the barn, he grabbed the fork from the corner and began throwing the dirty straw and manure from the first stall out into the center aisle. His anger increased with each fork full. The Hudson’s Bay Company supply ships usually arrived in Stromness towards the end of May. Since the middle of the month he had been doing his chores then riding Nellie into town to meet with John. Together they would climb the slight hill behind the town and watch out over the water for the first glimpse of a sail. When they tired of that, they headed for the pier and sat on the end talking about their future.

  Because of Stuart he would be late, and he just knew today would be the day the ships docked. He would give anything to be on the boat right now, sailing for Rupert’s Land, leaving this farm work behind.

  When the first stall was clean, he went to the second. After the third, he paused and wiped his forehead. It was hot work and he was thirsty, but he refused to stop. He wanted to get to town. When the floor of each stall was bare he went for the wheelbarrow. He forked the straw from the high center pile into the wheelbarrow and pushed it out behind the barn where he dumped it onto the mound made from past cleaning. This would eventually be used as fertilizer on the garden and fields.

  “Lunch is ready,” his mother called from the house.

  Noon already? Thomas shook his head at her. He had to get this done. He worked faster. Once the barn was clean, Thomas loaded the wheelbarrow with fresh straw from the stack near the pastur
e. He dumped it in the center of the first stall and went for another load which he kicked into the corners. The dust from the straw settled on his head, face, and clothes, causing him to itch all over. His thirst increased. He threw the fork down and stomped out to the well. He dropped the bucket down to the water and let it sink. When it was full, he hauled it back up by the rope attached to the handle. He drank some water and poured the rest over his head.

  From the well he could see the field where Harry and Bruce were planting potatoes. Harry walked behind the plow horse making a furrow while Bruce dropped the pieces of cut potato in the row. Having done the same for as many years as he could remember, Thomas was again thankful he was going to the bay. He could not see himself being a farmer all his life. With renewed vigor he hurried back to the barn.

  It was mid-afternoon when he finished, and though he was tired, he changed into his town clothes. He rode Nellie first to the dock, which he was both relieved and disappointed to see was empty, then to John’s place.

  “Where have you been?” John asked.

  “I had to clean the barn.”

  “Oh.”

  “I will be glad when I am out of here and Stuart cannot boss me around anymore.”

  “Let us go up the hill,” John suggested.

  They walked along the street that soon ended at the base of the hill, and then followed the path to the top. They had just sat down when John pointed to the ocean.

  “I see it,” he yelled. “I see it.”

  They both jumped up and stared at the tall masts and white sails they could see in the distance. They were in sharp contrast to the blue sky and water. Thomas and John watched as the ship drew closer.

  The town cannon sounded, announcing the arrival of the first Hudson’s Bay Company supply ship. They both ran down the hill and through the town to the dock where the huge, square rigger had entered the harbor. A crowd of townspeople had already gathered. The sailors could be seen up on the foot rope furling the sails to ensure the winds did not catch the ship and tear her loose once she was docked.