Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

by Tantoo Cardinal

  “It means something like ‘those living here now,’” Kannujaq said with a grin.

  But Kannujaq was troubled by his last memory of the Shining One, his boat swept away on odd currents. Was this the destiny of all strangers in this land? Was it the destiny of his kind?

  Perhaps the Tunit would eventually speak of his people only in legend.

  Kannujaq had no way of knowing that, while the Viking colony in Greenland would fade from existence, his own descendants would travel freely over the next three centuries, settling not only in Greenland but over all the old Tunit lands. The world would grow much colder, as in the time of his ancestors, and his kind would be the only survivors here. And they would speak of Tunit only in their own legends.

  But Kannujaq’s mind never strayed far from the present. His musings were eclipsed by annoyance that Siku had disposed of the raider artifacts. The angakoq had felt they were evil and was convinced that the sea should have them.

  Kannujaq wondered how long they could travel before Siku noticed everything lashed to the sled. The boy had forgotten about Angula’s knife, which Kannujaq had snuck back and retrieved. It would be ideal for iglu building in the winter.

  Like his people, Kannujaq remained, above all else, practical.

  BASIL JOHNSTON

  The Wampum Belt Tells Us …

  IMAGE CREDIT: © PETER HARHOLDT/CORBIS/MAGMA

  CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTE

  IN 1968 I WAS INVITED to an Indian display mounted by the grade 5 students of Churchill Avenue Public School in North York, Toronto, as a grand finale to their five-week in-depth study of Indians. Students, parents, and teachers were justifiably proud of the exhibition.

  The entire library was one large, open gallery. It was a veritable feast of Native memorabilia. Against the walls were tables bearing an array of pictures, maps, and artifacts, both genuine and plastic. Posters and several large pictures of Indian chiefs and warriors adorned the walls. At one end of the library was a large canvas teepee; in front, a tripod made of saplings meant to represent an outdoor fireplace. Students, faces painted in warlike colours and wearing paper headdresses, mingled with the guests, whom they conducted about the exhibits while explaining what they knew of their respective First Nations. All of them wore nameplates of the tribes whom they represented: ALGONQUIN, IROQUOIS, SIOUX, HURON, OJIBWAY. In front of the teepee stood a grim-looking grade 5 chief, his arms folded. Like the rest of the Indians, he had his face painted in hostile colours. I went directly to him.

  “How!” I said in greeting.

  The Blackfoot chief looked at me quizzically.

  “Why so glum, Chief?” I asked. Before replying, the chief looked around to make sure that there were no teachers within hearing, and then whispered “I’m bored.”

  “How so, Chief?”

  “Sir! Don’t tell anybody, but I’m bored. I’m tired of Indians. You see, sir, I always wanted to be an Indian, and when we started this unit on Indians I thought I’d learn something. When we began this unit we had to choose a special project from social organization, hunting and fishing, food preparation, clothing, dwellings, and transportation. I chose dwellings”—and at this point the little chief exhaled in exasperation—“and that’s all me and my committee did for five weeks, sir! We studied and researched teepees, igloos, longhouses, lodges, wigwams. We read books, encyclopedias, went to the library, looked at pictures, and drew sketches. Then we had to make a teepee. Is that all there is to Indians, sir?”

  Two comments hit home. “Is that all there is?” and “I always wanted to be an Indian” affected me enormously and profoundly. Now, there is nothing particularly unusual about wanting to be an Indian. In fact, back in the 1960s a youngsters wish to be an Indian was as common as wanting to become a fireman, policeman, nurse, or actress. And children could not give a rational reason for wanting to be an Indian. It was the mystique, perhaps a romantic notion derived from a picture, that attracted wannabe Indians.

  That youngster had a dream, preposterous as it may seem to adults, worth pursuing because it represented something real. And dreams and visions are necessary to create and to accomplish. When his school offered a five-week in-depth unit on Indians, that boy looked forward to the program that would teach him all he wanted to know and needed to know that would enable him to turn his dream into reality and become a living, breathing Indian. But the course let him down. He learned about social organizations, subsistence, food, fashion, dwellings, and migration. But he uncovered nothing about the true nature of Indians. He was exasperated. Despite his disappointment, he still clung to hope. His question and tone pleaded for some assurance that “Indians” were so much more, and that it was still worthwhile to dream.

  His plea was reminiscent of another boys plea to Joe Jackson, one of the Chicago White Sox baseball players accused of deliberately losing games in the 1918 World Series, to “say it ain’t so, Joe.” Faith had to be restored.

  To long to be an Indian, as this youngster longed to be, may be dismissed as nothing more than a childhood fancy, a phase. But the longing to be an “Indian” is not confined to youth today.

  Just a little over five hundred years ago this boy’s ancestors came to this continent when Columbus, blown off course, landed in the Caribbean. Not long after him came Cortés, Pizarro, Cartier, and Cabot seeking a western passage to the Far East with its silver, silks, and spices. Here on this continent, these adventurers saw lands and riches, customs and practices that they had not seen or heard of in their part of the world. Within a few short years these adventurers, their crews, and their sponsors abandoned their pursuit of the Far East and its riches. They wanted what the North American Indians had; they longed to be like the Indians.

  The Wampum Belt Tells Us…

  For hundreds of years before the coming of the White people, the Wampum Belt, a chronicle of a people’s history, had few new symbols woven into its fabric. It was as if nothing worth recording had taken place, no wars, nothing but peace. The last event to be recorded was the battle between the Anishinaubae and Cat Nations. Since then nothing.

  At first these landings of White people were not taken seriously by most—bad navigation, bad seamanship; but others saw them as a fulfillment of a prophecy. Neither the White people nor the North American Indians saw them as events that would alter the political, social, and economic life of western Europe and that of the Indians of the New World.

  But there were troubles from the start, troubles to the south. The White people didn’t continue on to the Far East as they had intended—they stayed. After them came shipload upon shipload of other White people. Their numbers and strength grew. Within a few generations these bands grew to nationhood, bigger and stronger than the North American Indian nations.

  They grew as did the Weendigoes in Anishinaubae mythology. Whereas the Weendigoes of mythology roamed the land only in winter and could be thwarted, this new breed roamed the land the year round, ravenous and voracious beyond belief, devouring not only the flesh, blood, and bones of its victims but their souls and spirits as well. Unable ever to allay their never-ending hunger, the new Weendigoes ravaged the land and its forests and fed upon animals.

  As if there were not enough blood and flesh and bones for them all, the Weendigoes turned on one another. The English Weendigo forced the French Weendigo to give in; the American Weendigo rose up against its English father and forced it back to Europe, and then fought the Spanish Weendigo and sent it reeling into Central America.

  The American Weendigo became a nation. Still it wasn’t satisfied. It needed more land, just a little more and then it would be satisfied, happy, glutted. It went westward, killing, destroying the Indians who fought back to keep what the Great Mystery had given them. “Just a little more,” the Weendigo promised the Indians of the Ohio Valley. “Just a little more, then more.”

  North of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the Anishinaubae peoples were uneasy. There were rumours that the American Weendigo coveted the land that the En
glish Weendigo still retained on this continent.

  In the spring of 1812 a messenger from Christian Island arrived in Couchiching, where the Anishinaubae peoples of the Lake Simcoe region had their summer town. The messenger, called a mazhinawae by the Anishinaubae peoples, told the chief and his people that the people at Christian Island had received word from the Owen Sound Anishinaubae that Tecumseh wanted all warriors to gather in Couchiching in one hundred days. Tecumseh himself would attend the meeting.

  There was no time to lose. The Lake Simcoe Anishinaubae peoples sent their courier to Parry Island. Couriers went from village to village along the north shore to Manitoulin Island, Sault Ste. Marie, Temagami, Nipissing, Golden Lake, and the Kawarthas, inviting warriors to assemble at Couchiching to hear what Tecumseh had to say.

  At the end of July, three hundred warriors were assembled at the Couchiching Narrows, among them Newash, Waukey, Madawayash, Bisto, Metigwab, Tomah, Aissance, Copegog, Kitchi-cosinau, Naningishkung, Zauw-indib, Kitchi-cheemaun, Kitchi-noodin, Manitowaubi, Chechauk, Paudash, Zhingwauk, Waukegijig, Pitwanikwat, Abitung, Nagonash, and some such as Kinoshmeg and Webokamigad, whose fathers had taken part in the siege of Detroit under Pontiac fifty years earlier. All wore their hair in the style of a bristling ridge that ran from the forehead to the nape of the neck; on either side of the ridge, the hair was shaved to the scalp. Their faces were painted in red and black, the colours of blood and death. In their hands they carried war clubs; some had guns. They were ready to kill or die.

  Last to arrive was Wauwunoosh, Tecumseh’s courier from the Lake St. Clair area: Tecumseh himself was unable to come, he’d been called to southern Ohio to drive out the Long Knives who had encroached upon Indian land.

  That evening after they’d all eaten their meal, the warriors and the Couchiching Anishinaubae peoples assembled in a large open glade, waiting for their chiefs to get the evening’s program underway. Old Aissance, who had taken part in the siege of Detroit half a century earlier and who was now the principal chief of the Lake Simcoe Anishinaubae peoples, opened the meeting with a brief welcoming speech. “It is a memorable occasion … and to commemorate this day I will ask Abeedaussimoh, our mazhinawae and keeper of our Wampum Belt, to tell the story of our peoples and so to remind us who we are and what the Great Mystery has given us.”

  In the old days the mazhinawae recited the history of the Anishinaubae peoples at the outset of winter and the storytelling season and on special occasions such as the present. With the Wampum Belt draped over his arm, Abeedaussimoh, pointing to two figures of two canoes with masts fore and aft worked into the belt, began.

  “More than three hundred years ago a ship and its crew were driven off course by the wind and the fates onto the southern shores of this continent. Nearly half a century later, Jacques Cartier, working in the pay of the King of France to find a northern passage that would shorten the distance from Europe to Asia, chanced upon the northern shores of the gulf of the St. Lawrence River.”

  The arrival of bearded White men created a stir among the people of the Land of the Great Turtle. Some thought that the coming of the men with pale skin and hair upon their faces was the fulfillment of a prophecy. Others were not awed.

  The Indians greeted the strangers and welcomed them ashore and treated them as guests, brought them food and drink. “But—” the mazhinawae paused, pointing to an image of a man with a stick—“when the Indians asked to board the vessel to inspect its quarters, the captain of the vessel ordered a crew member to fire the thunderstick, as ancestors called the gun.”

  There was a tremendous explosion. Half a dozen seagulls fell dead into the water. Indians screamed. Not a few soiled their loincloths, front and back. Panic-stricken, the Indians raced ashore. For days afterwards their ears rang and their eyes blurred.

  Word of bearded White men and their thundersticks was carried inland to other Indians. In no time most of the inland Indians knew about the aliens.

  After leaving the terror-stricken Indians and the northern shore of the St. Lawrence River, Jacques Cartier and his expedition sailed south to the Gaspé. From here he swung west and upstream until he came to an island in the middle of the river. Cartier and his ship couldn’t go any further upriver because the river was too shallow and the rapids too strong. Cartier and some of his men went ashore and planted a cross on the crest of a high hill, claiming all the land for the King of France and naming the place Mont Réal.

  Here the mazhinawae put his finger on the image of a cross.

  “You know,” he said, “the Houdenassaunee were ruffled by the erection of this post. To the Houdenassaunee and to many other people of Turtle Island, a post in the ground is a mark of death, the mark of the grave of a dead person. What the white-skin, bearded aliens did was a sacrilege that bodes evil and … death. It’s a bad sign.”

  Next the belt shows ships going back. On board are two young Indians.

  Before he went back to his own country, Cartier asked Donnacona, chief of Hochelaga, to let his two sons accompany the expedition on its return home, so that they could see France and its great cities and its civilization. Cartier promised to bring the two boys back with him when he returned the next year. At first Donnacona wouldn’t hear of it, but his two boys badgered him until he agreed to let them go … but only if Cartier would leave two of his men with the Houdenassaunee.

  When Donnacona’s sons came back with Cartier the following year, they were quite proficient in French. Their tongues were kept wagging describing the glitter of France and the fancy costumes and wigs worn by all the White people. Indians, they said, could never live like that. They told their father why the stick-wavers, as they called the French, erected the cross. They said that the cross was an emblem meaning that France was claiming ownership of all the land. When he heard his sons’ explanation, Donnacona declared that the Houdenassaunee would never allow the White people to take their land.

  On the same day that his sons came home, Donnacona sent Jean Michel Parisé and Albert Lebrun, the two young Frenchmen who had stayed behind, back to Cartier’s crew. During their stay in Hochelaga, both Parisé and Lebrun had learned enough Mohawk to allow them to get by. They had also made some friends. On one of their visits to Hochelaga, Donnacona told them that Cartier and his crew were no longer welcome. Cartier was mystified and upset by the coolness of the chief’s message: “Better that you go home and never come back. The sooner the better … before the north wind blows.”

  Cartier sailed downriver to Stadacona, where he established his headquarters. From here he spent the next few weeks exploring the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence River. When he finally decided to go back to France, it was too late. Here in Stadacona the Indians advised Cartier not to risk going back at this time of the year: “Better you wait till spring. Soon the north winds will blow.”

  The mazhinawae passed his finger over an oval figure enclosing several teepees. He continued.

  Cartier had no choice but to stay in the Land of the Great Turtle. He put his men to work constructing a fort. While the bearded White men sawed, hammered, sweated, and cursed, the Indians looked on open-mouthed, wide-eyed. Never had they seen a chief drive men as Cartier drove his; he himself was driven by some spirit deep within his being. He worked his men from dawn to dusk without rest. From their seldom changing diet of cod, it appeared that the stick-wavers would eat nothing but cod all winter.

  Once every two weeks or so Cartier allowed his men some meat. Whenever the stick-wavers needed meat, Cartier sent Parisé and Lebrun to Stadacona to ask the Indians there to take them hunting. These two young men in their early twenties, having acquired a taste for liberty, were more than willing to get away from the drudgery of hewing, sawing, and hammering logs and timbers and regimented living.

  The mazhinawae held up the sash, in the middle of which were two human figures exchanging merchandise that was indiscernible.

  For the people of Stadacona it was time to venture upriver to a great sea and th
en inland to visit a people who grew corn in their fields. In preparation for the trading mission, the chief and the people of Stadacona sent an advance party ahead of the main trading mission to deliver word that the people of Stadacona needed corn and to find out what the Waendaut wanted in exchange. The chief asked Cartier if he would allow Parisé and Lebrun to go with the advance party. The round trip, the chief guessed, would take, depending on the weather, maybe a month.

  Here Abeedaussimoh showed his listeners a rough sketch of two canoes surrounded by six canoes.

  What the chief, the mazhinawae carried on, didn’t tell Cartier was the reason that he wanted an armed escort. The chief was afraid that his advance party might meet up with marauding Mohawks out to avenge a raid conducted by some Adirondack warriors. Meeting up with warriors was always touchy business. Then there were the Odauwau, who kept the rivers and portages under surveillance and wouldn’t allow anyone to pass without exacting a toll from travellers; they acted as if they owned the waterways and the land.

  At first Cartier was unwilling to let two of his men go; he needed them. But when the Stadacona chief glared and growled at him, Cartier changed his mind. To retain the goodwill of the chief and his people, Cartier let Parisé and Lebrun go.

  “Now you boys be careful,” Cartier warned his men as he shook their hands.

  The advance party was made up of ten men in two canoes. As toll payment the party took caribou pelts, merchandise preferred by the Odauwau.

  At Hochelaga the party took the south shore for easier portage, carrying their canoes and goods along the shore until they came to deeper waters. They boarded their canoes well beyond the rapids and resumed their westward journey. The party had not gone much beyond the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa Rivers when they were hailed by loud voices coming from six canoes that bore down upon them from the north shore. The chief muttered, “You’d think that these vigilantes would sleep once in a while.” The advance party stopped paddling and waited.