by Ann Birch
“If the Indians are to be assimilated into white culture, and I suppose that’s inevitable,” Mrs. McMurray said, “they must come in contact with decent white people whom they can respect.”
“Not those goddamn traders and merchants, excuse my language.”
“My Chippewa friends respect my husband. He encourages them to cultivate potatoes and corn, and he gets them a fair deal for the catch they sell to the fisheries. Because they recognize his worth, we now have thirty children in school.”
“And Charlotte is my right hand. She noticed that the women were constantly tipsy, so she drew them into the singing of sacred music, and now she has a fine choir which has achieved renown in this part of the world.” He smiled at his wife and gestured at the open door of the vestry, through which they could see the women who sat quietly in the pews nearby, talking among themselves as they did their beadwork. “Instead of drinking cheap whiskey in their wigwams, the women come here for hours every day.”
“Dear Mrs. McMurray, would you have them sing something now? I should so like to hear them. I have always enjoyed good music.”
Anna’s hostess went to the front of the chapel. She said a few words to the women in Chippewa, and in a minute they began to sing “Fairest Lord Jesus” in their own language.
Anna moved forward to stand beside Charlotte. As the Indian choir sang, she listened, then joined in the last verse, singing it in the familiar words she knew. Then she went along the pews, smiling at each of the women as she said “Bojou”. Several of them touched her swollen face gently, talking to her about the goldenrod cure while Charlotte translated for them.
The next morning, Anna looked at herself in the pier glass in her bedchamber. The swelling in her eyes had receded, and scabs had formed on the red blotches on her cheeks. She went down to breakfast carrying the goldenrod ointment, which she placed beside her napkin.
“Whitefish from the Ste. Marie’s River,” her host said as the servant put a platter on the breakfast room table. “I eat it three times a day for most of the year. But Cook could fry you an egg, if you’d like.”
“No egg for me, thank you.” Mrs. Jameson slid a large portion of the fish onto her plate. She ate in silence, helped herself to a second piece, then said, “I have had tuna from the Gulf of Genoa, anchovies from the Bay of Naples, and salmon from the highlands of Scotland, but there is nothing in the world better than this whitefish from the Ste. Marie’s River.”
Mr. McMurray smiled and passed the apple vinegar. “Even better with a splash of this.”
“And what would you like to do today?” Mrs. McMurray asked as she collected their coffee cups and stacked them on a tray.
“My greatest wish is to visit the rapids and see how the fish are caught. But I know that you must have parish tasks which cannot be postponed, so—”
“We do need to travel downriver for several miles to visit one of the chiefs.”
“Why don’t you come with us?” Mrs. McMurray said. “Then we can spend the rest of the afternoon at the rapids.”
At that moment the knocker on the front door banged. “Oh, I know who that is,” Anna said, getting up to follow Mr. McMurray into the hallway. At the door was a young half-breed dressed in a buckskin suit tied at the waist with a blue sash from which hung a beaded pouch. He carried a red paddle. When he saw Anna and her host, he swept off his capote and bowed. “Here for Mrs. Jameson, your Honour.”
“And right on time, too, my boy. Good for you,” she said. “May I introduce Fanchon? He was one of the voyageurs who rowed me from Mackinaw Island. He lives here in the Sault, and I engaged him to paddle me about in his little canoe.”
“But Charlotte and I intend to—”
“My dear sir, I will not interfere with the many tasks of your daily life. Turn me loose with Fanchon to sketch those fair meadows and woodlands we sang about in the chapel, and I shall be back just before sunset—”
But before she had finished speaking, Mr. McMurray had thanked Fanchon, given him a coin and closed the door on him. “You are ours for the day, ma’am. Now get yourself ready, and we’ll be off.”
“Chief Shingwauk is one of our star converts,” Mrs. McMurray said as she and her husband paddled down river, Anna sitting between them. “It was a year ago. Mac offered up prayers in the chapel for his son, who was gravely ill. The boy recovered, and the chief became a Christian.”
“Now he tells his band, ‘I once lived in a dark forest, and now I can see a blue sky’,” added Mr. McMurray.
They beached their canoe near the chief ’s wigwam, and as they approached, they saw him talking to three men.
“Goddamn traders from the Hudson Bay Company at Michipicoten,” Mr. McMurray said to Anna. They had bottles of whiskey in their hands, but the old man was shaking his head vigorously.
“When I wanted it, you would not give it to me without a pile of furs into the bargain,” they heard him say. “Now when I do not want it, you try to force it upon me. Drink it yourselves!” He turned his back on them and went into his lodging, closing the skin flap behind him.
“Damn you scoundrels!” Mr. McMurray said as the traders headed for the shore. “Tell your factor to leave the man alone. Or better still, tell him to learn something about fair play. Furs for money, not whiskey. Let him learn that—if his thick skull can comprehend such a complicated message.”
“Stick your Bible up your arse, preacher,” muttered one of them, an unshaven, coarse-featured brute with a red nose. He gave Mr. McMurray a punch on the shoulder as he passed.
Anna picked up a heavy stick from the path. But Mrs. McMurray put her hand into her husband’s and said softly, “Leave them alone, Mac. You cannot reason with curs.”
The interior of Chief Shingwauk’s wigwam formed a good-sized room. It was like Jacob Snake’s abode, neat and clean. The floor had been levelled and trodden to smoothness and was covered with mats of varying attractive patterns, woven from corn husks.
“You are welcome,” he said to them in his Indian dialect, while Anna’s hosts provided translation for her. “Please sit down.” He pointed to the raised couch which circled the birchbark walls of his home. When they were settled and had spent some minutes talking about the catch for the fishery, he passed them tea in tin mugs and got down to business.
“I shall dictate a letter to the Governor. Then I entrust it to you. You will present it to him at the Grand Council on Manitoulin Island. My letter will deal with the Governor’s refusal to carry out what the former Governor promised us.”
“I have with me a tablet on which I shall record your words exactly as you tell them to me,” Mrs. McMurray said. “But since the Governor does not speak our language, I must transcribe what you say into the white man’s dialect.”
“Great Chief,” Shingwauk said as she took down his words, “your predecessor made promises to me and to my band. He promised log houses, but nothing has been built, though five years have passed. I am now old, and to judge by the way you and the former Great Chief have used me, I shall be laid in my grave before anything is done. Better that such promises were never made than that they were made and not carried out.
“Great Chief,” he concluded, “it may be that I do not see clearly. I am old, as I have told you, and perhaps you have indeed carried out the promises, and I cannot see those log houses because of my failing eyesight. If you visit me here, I shall give you a plate of whitefish, and we shall go together into the countryside, and you will show me that you have carried out those promises.”
Anna, the McMurrays and Shingwauk laughed together. It was a fine piece of irony. “We leave for Manitoulin at sunrise tomorrow,” Mrs. McMurray said as they parted from him, “and my husband will see that your excellent letter is placed directly into the Governor’s hands.”
“Alas,” Anna said as they got back into the canoe, “I do not know that Governor Bond Head will be any more sympathetic to the Indians than his predecessors.”
“But what about Sam Jarvis?
He is a decent man. Surely he can bring pressure to bear on the Governor?”
“I hope so.” But as Anna spoke, she thought of Sam’s reluctance to deal with Crimshaw.
True to their promise, the McMurrays took her to the rapids in the afternoon. They stood for a while on the Indian burial ground at the top of the falls and looked down at two little canoes dancing and popping about like corks in the midst of the boiling surge of water. In each, a man sat in the stern, steering with a paddle, while on the prow, a fisherwoman placed herself, balancing a log pole with both hands, at the end of which was a scoop-net. With each dip into the water, she caught a fish or two.
“Amazing, amazing,” Anna said. “I have never seen anything so wonderful. The passage between the rocks is so narrow, and yet they manage to keep their footing.”
“Not all of them.” Mr. McMurray handed her his telescope. “See those tall wooden crosses on the landing place at the foot of the falls? They speak for themselves.”
“You have not been here long enough to understand the full danger that awaits those people,” Mrs. McMurray said. “Even if they can keep their footing, their canoes are so light and fragile that a large wave might break them in two. We have had to read ‘The Burial of the Dead’ over two corpses recently. There is no need for such daredevilry, you know. There is a portage that connects the navigable parts of the strait. Voyageurs—they are generally men of good sense—would rather carry four hundred pounds on their backs over this two-mile portage than face the terror of the falls.”
“Voyageurs, perhaps, but these are Indians, and look, they seem to be managing. With a good canoe and an experienced steersman, there would surely be little danger. It would be a glorious sensation, would it not?” Anna stood a few minutes in silence then looked straight into Mr. McMurray’s eyes. “I intend to descend those rapids.”
“Forget it. It’s madness. A burial ground above and crosses below, you can see it’s a perfect setting for calamity.”
As he spoke, a tall Indian appeared behind them. He wore a dirty blanket coat, but he’d taken time to paint one eye with a red circle, and the knots in his hair held feathers from an impressive variety of birds. “Ogima-quay, Ogima-quay,” he said, bowing from the waist.
“What is this word he keeps repeating?”
“It means ‘fair English chieftainess’,” Mrs. McMurray said with obvious reluctance.
Anna listened to the spate of Indian dialect and pieced together the meaning from his gestures towards a small birchbark canoe which lay nearby. “He has a proposition for me, does he not?” she said. “He wants to take me for a ride down the rapids. Tell him I will go.”
“No,” the McMurrays said in unison.
But the Indian had already read Anna’s intent. With a flourish he readied the canoe in the shallows beside the rapids and held it steady while she settled onto a mat at the bottom of the craft.
In a minute they were into the heart of the falls. “It’s as buoyant as a bird on the waters,” she said loudly, trying to drown out Mr. McMurray’s cry of “Goddamn pigheadness!”
The water poured over them in a surge of white foam. Her steersman with astonishing dexterity kept the head of the canoe to the breakers, and somehow they danced through them. Though she was soaked from head to toe by the spray, she could just see that the passage between the rocks was sometimes not more than two feet in width. One miscalculation on the part of her steersman, and it would indeed be “calamity”.
But the Indian managed to turn in sharp angles to avoid the rocks, and after a few seconds, Anna had not the slightest sensation of fear, only a giddy, breathless, delicious excitement. She was aware of everything, even the tiny blue kingfisher that dived into the foam at the bottom of the cascade.
They plunged more than a mile in five minutes, and suddenly they were at the landing place. Her steersman helped her alight, and she found herself in the midst of a group of Indians who took turns clasping her hand while shouting “Hah!” in unison.
Then she heard over and over a polysyllabic word, “Wah, sah, ge, wah, no, qua! Wah, sah, ge, wah, no, qua!”
What did it mean? Seeing her incomprehension, one of the women said, “Lady of the Bright Foam, that is what we call you. You are first European lady to come down the falls.”
“And who is my steersman?” she asked the woman, pointing to the Indian whose expertise had provided her with this accolade.
“Camudwa.”
“Please tell Camudwa I thank him for his skill. He has given me the best experience of my life.”
All this was translated, and Camudwa clasped her in his arms as he said, “Bojou, Wah, sah, ge, wah, no, qua!”
More shouting of “Hah!” and Anna found herself back in Camudwa’s canoe. “Now he takes you home to reverend sir,” her helpful Indian translator told her.
A short trip along the Ste. Marie River, and she was again in front of the McMurrays’ stone house. Camudwa seemed reluctant to leave her, and it was only when the McMurrays hove into sight, coming from the burial ground, that he stepped on shore and helped her out of the canoe.
She remembered a word she had learned when Mrs. McMurray had praised her Indian choir in the chapel. “Minno, minno,” she said, and a smile spread across Camudwa’s handsome face. Anna turned to meet her hosts.
“I suppose we must congratulate you,” Mr. McMurray said, “but what you did was sheer idiocy. Did you think about this Indian who steered the damn canoe? Did you think about anyone but yourself?” He took a deep breath. “I apologize, ma’am. That last comment does not befit a gentleman. My only excuse is that my nerves are shot.”
“You may chastise me if you wish. But nothing you say really affects how I feel at the moment. I am as tipsy as if I had drunk two glasses of champagne.” Anna laughed and waved at Camudwa, who waved back and shouted “Hah!” as he steered his canoe out into the current. She turned back to her friends. “It was Camudwa’s decision to take me along, was it not? He is a man, not a child. And I am capable, too, of making independent decisions.”
“So we’ll forget the burial service,” Mrs. McMurray said to Anna over their whitefish supper in the early evening. “Perhaps something could be done now to adapt the ‘Service of Thanksgiving for Women After Child-birth’?”
“Yes, indeed,” Anna said. “Something in the line of ‘O Almighty God, we give thee humble thanks that thou hast preserved this woman in the great peril of Ste. Marie’s Rapids’?”
“I could work it out, I suppose. And Charlotte could translate it into Chippewa for the congregation. But right now, why don’t we just break open that bottle of good sherry we’ve been hoarding?”
The sherry being produced by the Indian maid, Anna’s host rose and gave a toast. “Wah, sah, ge, wah, no, qua, ‘Lady of the Bright Foam’, you are undoubtedly the first European woman ever to have risked life and limb in those rapids. And though you are responsible for the white hairs that have sprouted on my head this day, I must commend you on your feat.” He bowed and sat down.
“I recommend it as an exercise before breakfast.” Laughter bubbled from Anna like water from a geyser. “But I take no credit unto myself. Had it not been for Camudwa, I’d be a bloody corpse fished from the rapids and put into a pine casket. I’d like to see him and thank him, now that I’ve had time for sober reflection on his great skill in keeping me alive.”
“He is already on his way to Penetanguishene, so I understand,” Mrs. McMurray said. “The Department of Indian Affairs has hired him to paddle the Governor and Mr. Jarvis to Manitoulin.”
The servant came in again with dessert. “My favourite,” Mr. McMurray said.
Anna put three large spoonfuls on her plate. “What is it?”
“A recipe from Charlotte’s mother. ‘Indian pudding’ is what she calls it, and it’s made of Indian corn flour, milk, an egg or two, and spices, and always served warm with maple syrup.”
“The best fare I have had since I left Toronto,” said Anna, settling i
n to enjoy it. A group of Indians came into the dining room as the pudding was being passed around. There was plenty to offer these uninvited guests, and they sat crosslegged on the floor and ate it from their own tin plates with the carved bone spoons they had brought along with them.
As dinner ended, there was a final toast from the Indian woman who had spoken to Anna at the landing place. This time she spoke in Chippewa, and Mrs. McMurray translated. “Wah, sah, ge, wah, no, qua, it is with pleasure that we now adopt you into our race. Indian women for centuries have descended the falls, but you are the first white woman to do so, and you have proved yourself worthy of becoming our sister.”
“Hah!” Sounds of approbation from all present.
It was late when the guests left. “Try to sleep,” Anna’s host said as the three of them mounted the stairs. “Everything is in readiness for an early departure for Manitoulin Island. We are going by bateau instead of canoe, because we shall be encumbered with baggage and provisions. The distance is about one hundred and seventy miles, and there is scarcely a settlement or a habitation on the route, nothing but lake and forest.”
“I recommend that you apply the goldenrod ointment liberally,” Mrs. McMurray added.
“And I warn you, there is only one small tent for the passengers. We are taking two of Charlotte’s nieces with us, so there will be no privacy.”
“And our crew, sir?”
“Four rowers, one of them being Fanchon. I thought you might like him to have a job, after my summary dismissal of him this morning.”
They parted for the night. Anna scrambled up the side of her enormous bed and left the curtains open so that she could watch the moonlight through the window and listen to the roar of the rapids.
She drifted gradually into sleep amid flickering images that brought back the urgency and passion of her day. The fretting, fuming waters pounding over the rocks had been like a beautiful woman in a fit of rage. That image had compelled her, pulling her close in spite of the danger.