Settlement

by Ann Birch

  Behind the grove, they arrived at Jacob’s wigwam, built of a triangle of upright posts covered in skins. They propped their snowshoes against the exterior, Jacob pulled aside a blanket over the opening, and they entered. The interior was dark and sparsely furnished. There was a covering of hemlock boughs over the ground, and on a reed mat, a little girl was playing with a corncob doll. Beside her, on another mat, an old woman boiled soup in a small cauldron suspended from a cross-pole.

  “My mother,” Jacob said to Mrs. Jameson. Sam had met her long ago. He bowed, removing his fur cap. “And my daughter,” Jacob continued. “I tell you her Indian name—” Here Jacob pronounced five incomprehensible syllables which he translated as “sunbeam breaking through a cloud”.

  In one corner of the wigwam was a small painted chest beside a birchbark box filled with tin dishes and wooden spoons, and someone had pegged a pretty embroidered shawl of deerskin against the vertical posts. Sam counted seven neatly folded blankets piled on another mat. He knew Jacob had four children. The other girl and the two boys were probably outside somewhere gathering wood for the sugaring-off fire. And then there would be Chief Snake, Jacob’s father, and the old woman whom he had introduced as his mother. Seven people in this small space. Yet everything was clean and well ordered.

  It was warm in the wigwam. Sam and Jacob removed their moccasins and coats. Sam pulled two pipes from his pocket and offered one to his friend. “Would you like one, too, Mrs. Jameson?” he asked.

  “No, I thank you.”

  They all sat crosslegged on the hemlock boughs, and the men smoked in silence for a few minutes. Jacob’s mother smiled as she hummed a song and stirred her pot, and his daughter crept over to him and snuggled onto his knees. She had bright brown eyes and a merry face.

  “I understand why you call her a sunbeam,” Mrs. Jameson said, smiling at the child. She took a peppermint from a reticule hidden beneath her coat and gave it to the girl. Then she settled again beside the men. Sam liked the fact that she seemed completely at ease. It was hard to imagine Mary fitting in so well in these alien surroundings.

  He noticed that Jacob no longer had black daubs on his face, but his eyes were sad. “You miss your wife, Jacob.”

  “Yes, Nehkik, man without woman is not a whole man. But we manage. When the spring comes, I marry again. A fine young woman, sister of my friend, Elijah White Deer.”

  “I am happy for you.”

  “A wedding in the spring,” Mrs. Jameson said. “How pleasant to start a new life when nature, too, renews itself. And do you have a ceremony like ours?”

  “I do not know about white man’s ceremonies.” Nor care to, seemed to be his unspoken comment.

  “I shall not go into the whole affair,” the lady said. “But I wonder if the Indians swear as we do ‘to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish till death do us part’.”

  “We cannot promise to love our wives until death. Such an oath we may not be able to keep, and Indians do not make promises we cannot keep.”

  “Very wise, indeed. I wonder how many white men love their wives for more than a year or two beyond the oath-taking. But perhaps you are better fitted to judge that than I am, Mr. Jarvis?”

  Sam felt himself blush. “I cannot comment. It is impossible to conjecture.” What was the woman getting at? Was she making some judgment on his own marriage, about which she knew nothing? He turned to Jacob. “Now tell me, friend, are your people somewhat better off now that you can sell your mokuks?”

  “We barter maple sugar for flour and butter, sometimes for money. And yesterday, we shoot two fine deer, so we have plenty to eat.” Jarvis paused, as if to consider what to say next. “But all is not better...” His voice trailed off. Sunbeam put her small arms around his neck and rubbed her face against his cheek.

  “Tell me what’s wrong, Jacob.”

  “We give white man a cure for scurvy. We show him how to make canoes and snowshoes. We teach him to tap trees, to grow pumpkin, squash and tobacco. And what does white man give us in return? Alcohol.”

  Sam had heard about drunken Indians all his life, but never from Jacob. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You are a friend. You are not like that dirty dog, Crimshaw.”

  Ah, the King Street merchant who bought the mokuks. Sam knew him well. He himself was in debt to Crimshaw for the imported wines he liked so well. He was a mean rascal who drove a hard bargain. Sam had heard rumours of how he plied the Indians with cheap liquor. Drunk, they gave him their furs, fish, and maple sugar for next to nothing. Still, the man was not all bad. He had only last week given Sam an extension of two months on substantial debt. Perhaps he had been impressed by the news of Sam’s promotion.

  Sam reflected that “drunken savage” was one of the favourite epithets for an Indian among Toronto’s upper classes. And yet most of his white friends also drank to excess. He was about to confess something of this nature to Jacob when the lady said it for him, “Alas, alcoholism is the scourge of both the white and brown races.”

  The old woman tending the fire said something in her native tongue.

  Jacob replied, then turned back to Sam. “Elijah White Deer is sick. Perhaps later this day, I show you the evil that Crimshaw does. But first, my mother wants to give you and Mrs. Jameson a cup of broth.”

  It was an excellent soup of venison and Indian corn, followed by a chunk of maple sugar sliced from a mokuk which the old woman kept in the painted chest. And there was tea too, strong, hot and flavoured with maple sugar. They all ate with a hearty appetite, and Jacob seemed to put aside his cares and enjoy it too. His mother sat with them by the fire.

  At the end of their meal, the old woman put some pieces of dried salmon into a bark packet, which Jacob put into his deerskin pouch. “Food for Elijah,” he said.

  Then Jacob took them outside into the snow. Mrs. Jameson stopped at a large maple tree. Sam waited for the inevitable question. “Will you show me how the Chippewa tap the trees?”

  “See,” Jacob said, pointing to where a pine trough had been placed directly under the drip. “First we make a hole in the tree with this. I do not know white man’s name for it.”

  “Auger,” Sam said.

  “Then we drive this into the hole.” Jacob indicated a round spile, hollow in the centre. “Better always to tap on the warm side of the tree. Warm days, frosty nights, good syrup.”

  They watched Jacob’s strong hands touch the tree bark gently. “You told us that the Indians showed white settlers how to tap trees,” Mrs. Jameson said. “I gather they did not at first have the Indians’ skill?”

  “Long ago, my grandfather tells me this story. He says white man takes axe and gashes tree, starts sap flowing, then tree dies from pain.” He shook his head as if he could not believe such ignorance.

  “There is nothing a Canadian settler hates more than a tree,” Mrs. Jameson said, and she told Sam and Jacob of the devastated bushland she’d seen on her trip to Niagara Falls.

  “You have a flair for reducing complex issues to a simple sentence,” Sam said. He knew his voice had an edge.

  She did not respond, perhaps sensing his sarcasm. Jacob intervened. “Let us go and meet Elijah White Deer.” They tramped back past the collection grove and deep into the bush. There were no footprints now, only the ones made by their own moccasins. They came to a wigwam, the door of which was covered by a filthy blanket. Jacob pulled it aside, and they entered.

  Every part of the habitation was dark and wretched. There was not a single article of furniture, only a dirty blanket on the muddy floor, on which was sprawled a sleeping man, arms flung out, as if he had fallen on his back. His snores were loud, and from his open mouth came the unmistakable stink of cheap whiskey. A mound of excrement lay in one corner.

  “And Crimshaw is responsible for this?” Sam struggled not to put his handkerchief over his mouth and nose.

  “Two weeks ago,” Jacob said,
“my friend goes to town with the dogs and sled full of mokuks. Crimshaw gives Elijah tobacco and offers glass of whiskey. ‘No,’ Elijah says. So he leaves him alone and talks to his customers. Then he says to Elijah, ‘Have a glass of cider.’”

  Sam sighed. He knew what was coming.

  “Elijah drinks. But it is not cider, really. It is cider mixed with strong alcohol, and Elijah has had no food. His mind goes crazy. He has two and three, maybe more. Crimshaw takes all of Elijah’s mokuks and gives Elijah ribbons and a bottle of whiskey. He does not come back to camp. I go look for him, find him stone cold on the shore of the lake, sled upside down, empty bottle beside him.” He set the birchbark packet of salmon beside his sleeping friend and arranged the blanket around him more securely. Then they went back into the camp.

  The sun was sinking. “We have to get back to the garrison,” Sam said. “But first I must buy some of your excellent maple sugar.”

  “I, too,” Mrs. Jameson said. “My housekeeper makes a delicious maple sugar pie. I have never tasted anything better.”

  Jacob and another Indian put the mokuks of sugar into two slings for carrying. Then Sam and the lady strapped on their snowshoes, and Jacob accompanied them to the lake’s edge. In the distance they could just see the garrison. “Before I say goodbye, my friend,” Sam said, “I ask you to be steersman of my canoe when I go to Manitoulin Island this summer for the gift-giving ceremony. It is an important time, and I want you to be part of it.”

  For the first time that afternoon, Jacob’s smile broke through. “It will please me, Nekhik. And may the Great Spirit guard and protect you this day and forever. And you, too, Mrs. Jameson.” He grasped their hands.

  They plodded in silence through the melting snowdrifts along the shore. Mrs. Jameson had insisted on carrying one of the slings, and the added burden slowed their pace.

  “You are angry with me, I think,” the lady said as they paused for a moment to lean against a tree and shift the position of their slings.

  “Angry? Well, perhaps I am. You are a newcomer to our land, yet you take pleasure in making judgments on us. ‘There is nothing a settler hates more than a tree.’ ‘Alcoholism is the scourge of both the white and brown races.’ And what was the other thing? Oh yes, ‘How many white men love their wives for more than a year beyond the oath-taking?’ For Jacob to make judgments on us, that I can understand. His people were here long before the white settlers arrived. But you... After two months you have all the answers. You—”

  “But I am right, am I not? Look at the drinking at those parties I’ve attended. Are any of your friends sober by the end of the evening? Are you sober, for that matter? The only difference between a drunken Indian and a drunken white man is that the Indian has to drive his own dogsled home while the white man has his coachman to steer him in the right direction. And the devastation of the trees, why Mr. Campbell, who has lived here all his life, agrees with me. You should go oftener beyond the confines of your smug little town, get out into the settlements, see what is happening to the forests.” Her words lashed his face along with the snow that had started to fall.

  “And what about the broken promises of marriage?” Sam replied. “What makes you an authority on that, you who can afford to look down on the rest of us from your perch as the Chancellor’s Lady? You understand nothing about the demands of child-rearing, the stresses of debt—”

  “Oh, Sam, if you only knew... I’m sorry. I’ve spoken rashly. Don’t be angry with me. Please.”

  “Sam, you called me Sam.” He stopped in his tracks, put out his hand and touched her sleeve. “Dear Anna, I am not angry. It’s just that what you say strikes too close to home. I confess that I no longer know the meaning of love. It is so buried under the burden of family life, of expenses, of unfulfilled needs and aspirations. Do I love Mary? Does Mary love me? If you asked me that point blank, the answer would be ‘yes’, but what would I really mean?” He paused, trying to sort his thoughts. “To have and to hold, for better for worse, that part is clear. The rest of it—that stuff about loving and cherishing—too high-flown for me.”

  She smiled then. “Don’t worry about it. The scholars who wrote The Book of Common Prayer liked the sound of their own words. As a writer I understand that. Like them, when I come up with a felicitous phrase, I’m so happy, I can’t bear to throw it away—even when it’s not exactly a propos.”

  “Not sure what you’re getting at, Anna.” Now that he’d come out with her name, he couldn’t say it often enough.

  “Listen to the rhythm.” Slowly she intoned, “‘To love and to cherish till death do us part.’ They’ve followed up the iamb—”

  “The what?”

  “I-a-m-b. It’s followed with three anapests, a-n-a-p-e-s-t-s, a perfect rhythm to show rising emotion. The literal meaning is totally subordinated to the sound.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about. I’m as lost as any drunken Indian who has no coachman to steer him home.”

  Doubled over now with laughter, they tipped forward, grasping each other’s arms to stay upright. He was so close to her. He could feel his prick rising. Then Anna pointed into the distance, through the falling snow. “The garrison doesn’t seem to be getting much closer. Dear Sam, I suppose we’d better get moving before this idiocy goes any further.”

  So they set out again. As they plodded onward, he found himself making a confession. “You know, Anna, perhaps this new posting which I have—this Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs—is not suited to a white man. My friend knows my language, you have heard how well he speaks it, but I know nothing of his. And today I have seen first hand the sordidness caused by white man’s treatment of his people. It will not be an easy job to build bridges.”

  “But surely today Jacob has given you a start for that bridge building.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Job Crimshaw has mistreated Elijah, and I think we can believe what Jacob tells us. So perhaps...”

  “Perhaps I should speak to Crimshaw and chastise him for giving alcohol to a vulnerable man in order to gain a profit for himself?”

  “Exactly.”

  They had reached the garrison, where the coachman awaited them. No further discussion was possible as they set off towards town. It was pitch dark by the time they reached Anna’s house. “Thank you for showing me the Indians at work in their sugarbush,” she said as he helped her down from the sleigh. “It was an enjoyable outing, the last I shall probably have before I give myself over to things domestic.” She leaned in towards him, lowering her voice. “I know you will do what’s best in regard to Crimshaw. One more thing. You accused me of easy judgments. And now I caution you. Do not be too quick to judge my married life.”

  What did she mean, Sam wondered as the sleigh turned east towards Hazelburn. He tried to remember what he had said to her in his anger. Something about looking down on his married life from her perch as Chancellor’s Lady? Did she mean that her own married life was not as perfect as it seemed?

  Probably he was reading too much into her comment. And yet...she had called him Sam. And had not rebuked him when he’d said, “Dear Anna”.

  The servants had lighted the oil lamps, and the warmth from the fireplaces was welcome. Miss Siddons and the children had already had their supper, so Sam and Mary sat down alone to poached salmon with butter sauce, served on pretty green-patterned stoneware.

  Mary passed him fresh rolls wrapped in a linen napkin. “Cook tells me the Indians were around this afternoon with fresh fish,” she said. “Hence this excellent supper.” She put another bit of salmon onto her plate.

  “And what does Cook trade in return?” Sam asked. He was thinking of the packet of dried fish which Jacob had left in the mud and stink of Elijah’s wigwam.

  “For six large salmon, she told me they got flour and some freshly churned butter.”

  “It sounds fair enough.” Then he told Mary about the bargain Job Crimshaw had made with Elijah White Deer. “Tomorrow I in
tend to see that swine and set him straight. He gives all of us a bad name. In fact, with every mouthful I eat, I think of that poor Indian lying there in his piss. One thing I know, I will serve Jacob and his people to the best of my ability. If Crimshaw does not stop the abuse of the natives, I personally will make him into mincemeat.”

  “But surely there is nothing we can do about drunken savages. Give them one drink, then they will have another and another. If they don’t get drink from one source, they’ll find another. You must think this through carefully. You have debts with Job Crimshaw. If you get into a quarrel with him now, about what is really none of our affair, what will be the result? He may decide to call in the amount you owe. And then what will you do? Mortgage some more land? Get into more debt? At least wait a few days and think it over. Promise me. Please.”

  “I will give no promises.”

  With a sigh, Mary left the room without finishing her dessert. He could hear her climb the stairs. He lit a cigar. Its fragrant scent soothed him. Perhaps, he thought, Mary is right after all. It might in fact be a good idea to wait before I speak to the scoundrel. He does have the power to make matters difficult for me if I take him to task at this moment. Better not to stir the pot too vigorously until I’m well established in my new position.

  He inhaled his cigar and reached for the bottle of port.

  TWENTY

  The “pretty little house” that Robert had offered as an enticement in his letters was certainly pleasant, or at least it would be when the weather was less cold and comfortless. It was simple in design, and its best feature was the southern frontage where four large windows overlooked Lake Ontario. Better fitted than the windows in their rented row house, these had no collection of snow on the inner sill. But the scene outside reminded her of the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, where Judas and Brutus and other traitors are totally immersed in ice. If spring ever comes to this frozen world, she thought, I will plant a flower garden. I will, like Dante, climb up to “look once more upon the stars”.