Mattie Mitchell

by Gary Collins

  “How do you know of this, Matthieu?” Howley asked incredulously. “You could not possibly have read it!”

  Despite Howley’s obvious excitement, Mattie paused before answering, as was his way. When he spoke again his voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “Dere is ol’ tale tol’ by my people of ver’ pale-skinned captain man. Dey talk dis man ver’ long time ago. Dis man ’ave no ’air on ’is face. ’E come ’ere in great ship wit’ t’ree spars. One time his man flee to our lan’. When captain man fin’ him ’e cut ’is ear off wit’ long knife an’ t’row in salt sea.”

  Howley was speechless for a long time, something that was unusual for him. When he spoke again he had resumed his calm demeanour. “Matthieu, I sometimes doubt the words of your oral history. Yet I wonder about the volumes that will forever remain hidden.”

  They talked then of the long wilderness that lay ahead of them, of rivers and lakes they would have to cross. And again Howley wondered how it was that Mattie could know such an immense area so intimately. He asked Mattie if all of his people were as adept and knowledgeable with wilderness lore as he. Mattie stirred the fire with a long, blackened stick before answering. Flankers rose on invisible heat waves and the fire flared up, casting shimmering yellow streaks out over the limpid water.

  “Ver’ many my people good trapper. Some not so good. One man live east on Akilasiye’wa’kik Quospem. The white man call dis place Gander Lake. ’Is name Soulis Joe. We meet sometime on long trail. Talk trail talk. ’E ver’ good man. Trap alone like me. Tall like me, too. Good as me, too—almos’.” Mattie finished with a grin.

  They left Miawpupek in the grey dawning of the next morning and crossed the southeast arm of the bay in a borrowed canoe. Mattie led the way, on familiar ground, to where Bay d’Espoir reached farthest inland. They walked northeast, skirting the southern banks of the many-angled Jeddore Lake, and camped by the water the Mi’kmaq called Ahwachanjeesh Pond.

  Late one evening, from atop Mount Gabriel, Mattie pointed out the Annieopsquotch Mountains away to the west, a name his people used for “Terrible Rocks.” He showed Howley the direction they would follow in the morning toward the high Ebbegunbaeg Hill. It was a landmark his people had followed across the land for years.

  That night they camped in the shadow of Ebbegunbaeg, beside a stream that ran merrily along while the two weary travellers slept. They left in the morning with Ebbegunbaeg to their backs and walked west to Meelpaeg Lake, where they explored its eastern banks for two days.

  Resuming their journey, they rounded the north end of Meelpaeg Lake and left the waters to continue their southerly flow behind them. From there they set out north and then east and followed the waterway to Noel Paul’s Brook—named after another Mi’kmaq trapper—into Newfoundland’s mightiest of rivers, the Exploits.

  JAMES HOWLEY HAD COME BY SCHOONER to the Bay of Exploits in 1875, when he met with Mattie where the mighty Exploits River runs into the salt sea at Sandy Point.

  Across the remotest parts of the island, Howley followed the Indian where few white men had ever walked before. It was the longest and most rewarding trek of his geological career. And when they walked out to the coast on the other side of the island, the two men were friends.

  The two men set out in the heat of the summer midday on July 3. With Mattie leading the way and with Howley sketching and scribing his maps, they travelled north and west and finally south.

  They walked along the Exploits waterway, where the Red Indians came no more. They rafted rivers and ponds and camped in the short summer nights to rest. On one such night they were sitting on a wide beach next to a bright campfire on the western shores of what Mattie called “The Red Pond.” On this rare occasion he asked Howley a question. “How come ever’one call us Red Indians? No Red Indian ’ere no more. My skin eart’ colour, not red. We are people of de eart’.”

  And so, Howley, who knew much about history and who had learned more from Mattie Mitchell than he could ever repay, explained to Mattie how the native Indians of Newfoundland had come to be called Red Indians. The Europeans, he told him, were forever after the wealth of the eastern countries. The English and French, the Spanish Conquistadores, and the Portuguese all sought the spices and silks and rare jewels of far-off India and Asia. A journey south past the great bulge of Africa and then east into the Indian Ocean and beyond sometimes took years to complete. When it became accepted that the earth was actually round—and not flat, as most explorers of that day had believed—navigators believed they could reach the eastern countries by sailing west.

  Mattie frowned as he stirred the fire. He squinted in concentration at this statement from Sage, but he remained quiet. Howley continued.

  “So they sailed west. And they came to this island. Some say it took them thirty days to get here, some say it was more like fifty days. In any case it was a far cry from a year’s sailing. They thought for sure they were in India!

  “There are even tales of a fierce northern race of seafarers who came here in long boats with high prows. But they are only legends handed down and probably not to be believed.”

  Howley never noticed the strange look that came over Mattie’s face as he said this. Howley, reclining comfortably on the sandy beach, sat up straight as he considered how best to relate the “discovery” of this island to his friend. Staring into their campfire, he went on.

  “When they ‘hove to’ in their rolling caravels in some sheltered cove, somewhere around this island, they found there were already people living here. The Europeans called them Indians, and because their skin was painted red, they called them Red Indians.”

  Mattie was staring at Howley as he spoke. His face was a mask of concentration. Howley could see the man’s intelligence as he digested what he was hearing.

  “You know what is amazing, Matthieu? Even when these early explorers sailed thousands of miles farther south, they still figured they were in the Indies. They even called islands there the ‘West Indies.’ But what is more incredible is this. They gave the name ‘Red Indians’ to all of the native peoples they came in contact with. The painted skin colour of the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland forever gave the name to a race of native people that covered an entire continent.”

  Howley was silent for a while. “Do you think the Red Indians are still with us, Matthieu?” he asked suddenly.

  The fire crackled. Small, black rivulets lapped gently along the beach’s edge. The fire glow caught the waves, making them glitter like beaded lace. Behind them, where the beach ended, a great, dark, virgin forest reached into the heavens. Above the trees, glittering stars twinkled and shone. The soft summer night breeze brought to their ears a sighing, gently rushing sound. It was the river that ran unseen into the lake through a deep-wooded canyon off to their left. A pair of loons cried out on the dark lake. Somewhere above them snipes hunted, their trilling cries rising and fading. A mysterious wilderness feeling, an unexplained ancient spirit, had come stealing along.

  Howley felt uncomfortable and kept staring into the fire. But Mattie Mitchell looked at the whispering waves that sparkled and shone when they crossed the fire-path and disappeared into blackness after they passed the man-made light. When Mattie spoke, his voice sounded reluctant at first, but soon it resumed the cadence that was his alone. Sitting beside the lake where the Beothuk people had once lived, and with the soft summer spirit listening all around them, Mattie told Howley the Mi’kmaq story of Santu, which had been passed down to him by the elders of his people.

  “In time long pas’ my people don’t come ’ere,” he began, indicating with his hand the huge lake that stretched away in the darkness. “Mi’kmaq ’ave saying. Red man’s dat way, Mi’kmaq dis way.” Mattie pointed in a generally eastern direction for the Beothuk and a westerly one for the Mi’kmaq.

  “I nivver see Red Indian. I find ver’ many ol’ trails not made by Mi’kmaq. One time I find ver’ strange wigwam by big river. No one live dere.” Mattie stirred the campfire again and appeared
to be uneasy.

  “Sometime I ’ear soft footfall behind me. No man’s dere. Sometime I feel spirit in nighttime. Like dis night. Red man’s ghos’, maybe.” Mattie turned his head and looked all around the black outer rim where the firelight could not reach, as if expecting to see something. Howley knew Mattie was a very spiritual man. He also knew he had a dread of ghosts. It was the only thing that Mattie Mitchell feared.

  Mattie spoke again, his voice quieter but steady. “Santu born ’ere by dis water my people call Red Pond,” he said. “Santu’s mother Mi’kmaq woman. She lie down on beach in summertime wit’ Beothuk man. Maybe dis beach!” Mattie looked all around again. “Mi’kmaq woman ’ave girl chil’. Call her Santu. Santu call her father ‘Kop.’ Dis Mi’kmaq name fer beaver root grow in water. Dis root red like Beothuk man. Mi’kmaq woman, Red Indian man’s child ’ave Mi’kmaq blood an’ Beothuk blood.” He paused in his story and glanced at the sprawling figure of Howley, sensing the man’s doubt in the tale. “Santu leave dis place long time ago. She ’ave chil’ wit’ Beothuk blood.” And with that, Mattie rose from the beach and walked past the fire glow. His tall figure disappeared in the dark.

  MATTIE MITCHELL AND JAMES HOWLEY left the “Red Pond” the very next morning. They traversed the Victoria and the Lloyd’s River systems. Mattie led the way. While Howley sketched his maps and entered the geology of the land, Mattie hunted and fished and provided for them both.

  They crossed the rivers and the valleys of this wild land again and again over the next two months. They reached the open caribou barrens of Newfoundland’s interior on the south coast, and on a cold, foggy October 27, they stepped tired and hungry onto the white beaches near the fishing outport of Burgeo. Howley’s ragged black beard hid most of the sores from the hordes of biting flies, “That forever feasted with great relish on my ‘White’ blood, yet appeared to dislike the ‘Red’ blood of my companion.”

  When they finished the expedition, Howley took away numerous books filled with information about the Newfoundland wilderness that would be used by generations to come. Howley’s name would live forever in the many volumes describing his adventures. A town in the forested heart of the island he loved took his name and still bears it today.

  But the man who showed him the way across this vast, unknown wilderness, and who hunted and foraged for their camp on this venture, was forgotten.

  Years later, American anthropologist Frank Speck would verify Mattie’s tale. Speck interviewed an Indian woman in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who told him her father was an Indian from the island of Newfoundland. Her name was Santu. The woman appeared to be approximately seventy-five years of age. This would mean she had been born around 1835. The last known recorded Beothuk was the woman Shanawdithit. She died in 1829.

  Santu told Speck her father was a full-blooded Beothuk man from the “Red Pond” of Newfoundland. Santu called the Beothuk Meywe’djidjk, meaning “Red People.” Her father’s name was “Kop” and her mother was a Mi’kmaq woman. Santu remembered her father very well. She said he squeezed the juice from the red root that grew there and smeared it all over his body, even his loins. They also knew where to find the red earth, which was also used to dye their bodies. The dye would last for half a year.

  Santu said her father, Kop, ate meat half-roasted on a stick. He killed caribou with bow and arrows. The arrow that killed the caribou was sacrificed to the animal’s spirit and never used again. They travelled to the coast in the springtime, she said, where they hunted si’kane’su—whales—using arrows and spears. She remembered being wrapped in a small blanket or tu as a child. The woman also told Speck she remembered being bundled in with dogs to keep warm on cold nights.

  She still remembered a few words of her father’s language. They called rain gau. A woman was be’nam. When the Beothuk be’nam were in their menses, they were not permitted to step over a hunter’s snowshoes, or even his tracks, for fear of casting a bad spirit upon his hunting. A very fat person was called a gu’wa. She even recalled the Beothuk word se’ko, which meant “prayer.”

  The Beothuk were constantly under attack by the white man from across the sea, according to Santu. Her father, Kop, had been raised by the Mi’kmaq after his people had all been killed by the whites.

  Santu had gone to Nova Scotia by canoe. She married a Mohawk Indian and lived in New Brunswick for a while. When her husband died, she married a Mi’kmaq chieftain who was called Toney. Speck interviewed Santu’s son, Joe Toney, who told him the same story of the Beothuk man who was his grandfather. His mother had told him the tale over and over again. Joe Toney died in Nova Scotia. He was believed to be 102 years old.

  When Howley read the article by Speck, he remembered a warm summer night on Mattie Mitchell’s “Red Pond.” Most of all he regretted his own doubt in a tale that wasn’t properly recorded. He suddenly wondered how many more untold tales Mattie Mitchell had “recorded” in his head.

  CHAPTER 5

  MATTIE MITCHELL SAW NO OTHER MAN through the long, cold winter. He walked alone over his own snowy, unmarked trails. He established new ones. And always he was the vigilant hunter and consummate trapper. Mattie was as much a part of the land he walked as were the animals he hunted.

  His mind held no fear of the trackless wilderness, nor did the long winter night cause him the dread experienced by most of the white men he knew. For him it was simply a dark part of his day, a time for cleaning his furs and mending his garments, a time for silent, much-needed rest.

  On blustery days he stayed near his shelter, packing the falling snow again and again around the base and partway up the wall of his wigwam, until the strongest wind could not penetrate it. When the terrible dry cold of the long winter nights set in, the wigwam suddenly turned frigid when the fire died. On such nights, Mattie drank all the water he could hold before “turning in.” His swollen bladder always awoke him just in time to add more fuel to the dwindling fire.

  To add further insulation against the winter chill, he hung over the inside of his door the partly cured hide of a huge mui’n, a black bear. The hide measured longer than Mattie himself. He had spent hours at night flensing the fat and blood from the big hide. He soaked it in the nearby stream and had allowed the minnows to pick at the last tiny bits of fat until the skin was clean. However, the hide still glistened when the firelight shone on it, turning the tips of the hairs silver.

  The hide should fetch a good price on the coast, he figured, although he never knew from one year to the next what money he would receive for his furs. There was one furrier in the Bay of St. George who always gave him a fair price, and although it was far to walk—if he couldn’t get a boat ride down the coast with one of the local fishermen, a rare event—Mattie would take his furs nowhere else.

  But for now the bear skin would break the draft from his door.

  Mattie relished the story of the bear hunt he planned to tell the village children. He seldom talked much with the adults, especially the whites, who for the most part rarely spoke to him at all. But the children were different, Indian as well as white. They always came running to hear his “trapline tales” when he came walking in to the village at the end of each winter. And Mattie never disappointed them.

  But it hurt him deeply one evening when a young, blue-eyed white boy with yellow hair, who had been listening with the others, was called home by the relentless shouts of his mother. Mattie heard his angry mother say plainly, her voice carrying on the quiet evening air, “I told you to stay away from dat filthy Injun.”

  With his usual stoic manner, Mattie bore the taunt, like all of the others he had endured, and said nothing.

  THE STORY OF THIS BEAR HUNT HAD begun nearly a year ago, on a late spring morning. The days were getting longer and warmer. The snow was beginning to melt. Geese could be seen flying in wedges against the evening sky, their honking resounding through the hills as they headed north. The nights were getting shorter, but they were still cold enough to freeze the snow.

 
It was the time of year when a man could walk over the crusted snow without need for snowshoes. It was a time relished by all trappers, since great distances could be covered in a day. It was nearly time to leave the mountains, but Mattie searched early each morning for one more thing. He carried his snowshoes on his back. If he found what he was looking for it would take him far away, and he had no intention of being forced to walk home without them on snow weakened by the sun.

  He found exactly what he was looking for on the second morning of his search. Imprinted in the snow’s surface were the tracks of a very large black bear. The print that had broken the crust was bigger than Mattie’s fully spread hand.

  He followed the tracks for just a few minutes. The bear had passed here not long ago. It had been running from tree to tree and paying extra attention to several decayed stumps that it had ripped open. Obviously the bear was very hungry. Mattie had no intention of following the animal at all, though by its spoor he knew it was not a nursing mother, but a male. Its hide was at its worst this time of year and its flesh would be lean and tasteless. The long winter had sapped the animal of its fat reserves. Mattie turned and began back-tracking the bear.

  It was easy enough to do. The bear had left a clear but very twisted trail. There wasn’t one deadfall or one exposed stump rising up through the snow that the animal hadn’t searched thoroughly for food. Mattie figured the bear had come out of its winter den that very morning, and he wanted to find it.

  The tracks led him in a general direction toward a high ridge in the distance. He wanted to leave the spoor and cut straight for it, but he couldn’t take the chance. Maybe the bear had come from a different direction altogether. He had been fooled before, so now he kept on the tracks. Sometimes they circled and crossed over themselves. He followed them for more than four miles before he knew he was nearing the den.

  The spoor led up over an imposing slope that faced south. The warming sun had melted most of the snow away from the place, exposing a wide, talus rubble that had long ago foundered down. Mattie climbed up over the rock slide and was soon standing on a very wide ledge. Over the years, huge boulders had fallen from the hill above, one on top of the other, which he figured had caused the talus slide.