“Have your parents not taught you to respect other people’s —” the agent searched for the word in Algonquian but there was not one, so he used the English word “— property?”
“What is ‘property’?” Red Wolf enquired.
“Owning things! That horse is for me and nobody else, especially not you. You can’t just walk off with other people’s property.”
The boy raised his head and looked squarely into the eyes of the white man. They were unlike any eyes he had seen before, the colour of a pale blue winter sky, fringed with lashes like dried grass.
“Everything is for everyone,” Red Wolf said.
“How old are you, Horse Thief?”
The child frowned.
The man rephrased the question in a manner that the boy understood. “How many summers have you seen?”
“Five, I am told. And I am not a horse thief. I was just —”
“Five, eh? You’ll be in school soon. Then you’ll learn some respect.”
Gathering up the reins, the agent pulled himself into the saddle and wheeled the horse around. “I won’t forget you, Horse Thief!” he shouted, kicking the gelding forcefully with his heels. The horse flattened its ears and bounded into a canter. “We’ll meet again, soon. And then I’ll teach you a lesson.”
CHAPTER TWO
The People were divided. Some wanted to migrate further north, hoping to find another area that was rich with game and fish, a place where the white man would never come.
“There is no such place,” others said.
Voices were strident as everyone tried to make his or her point.
“Many white-skins are coming, more than all of our people.”
“They are greedy.”
“They want everything for themselves.”
“Why do they cut down the trees that hold all of creation together?”
Nobody knew.
A woman whose weathered face bore the signature of a long life of hardship struggled to stand. Gradually the discussion stopped, everyone waiting to hear the old woman’s wisdom.
“For the sake of the young ones, go to this place they call ‘reserve,’ where the children will never be hungry. The Great Spirit teaches us to care for everyone, the old ones who will soon leave our wiigwams and go to meet the Ancestors; the young ones who have recently come into our wiigwams, filling us again with love and hope; and the generations in between. Today it is hard to know what is best for us all. So I ask you to choose what is best for the children. They will carry the life of The People forward. For their sake, I beg you, please do not go where the snows will be deeper and the winters colder, where the game may not come, and the fish may not swim, where your baby’s lusty cries will grow weak and fade to silence. Go to a place where you will have shelter, where, at the end of a long winter, you will still have food to fill your children’s bellies.”
“But what about The Life?” a man asked. “Anishnaabek Bemazawin. The Life of hunting, trapping, and fishing, of gathering the bounty of Mother Earth. The Life to roam throughout the land of our grandfathers?”
“What good is The Life,” replied the old woman, “if our children have starved to death?”
For a while there was silence. Even those who opposed the old woman’s views gave her the respect she deserved.
But the passion to live off the land was powerful, especially in the young men. Later that evening they gathered in smaller groups, eager to voice their opinions. HeWhoWhistles’ was one of reason.
“The pale-faced one is asking us to make our mark on his treaty,” he said. “He waves his markings at us and tells us what it means, but we cannot interpret the scratchy lines! Some of you have said that the white-skins are not to be trusted. Should we trust their signs?”
There was a movement of heads. “No.”
HeWhoWhistles continued. “We have learned to read the signs of the animals, signs that help us and protect us from harm. Now our young ones must learn to read these new signs. Then, in days to come, we will not be deceived.”
He sighed heavily. “I do not wish to go to the reserve that they speak of. But I will go. I will go because they will make school for my son.”
“We do not need their school. We teach our children everything they must know, just as our fathers taught us.”
“We live in different times,” HeWhoWhistles replied. “We cannot teach our children the ways of the white-skins. They must go to school and become part of the new world. Our sons and our daughters are the future.”
In the end there was no agreement. Some decided to stay and fight the loggers, even though they knew their bows and arrows were poor defense against the exploding sticks of the white-skins. Others decided to leave the area in search of new hunting grounds. But HeWhoWhistles, in the hope of a better future, made his mark on the government paper, and with his wife, his parents, and his son, followed the guide to the reserve.
As the family gathered all its possessions and walked away, Crooked Ear whined softly from his hiding place among the trees. The guide’s short fire-stick had not exploded like the long ones in the wolf’s memory, but it had that same acrid, burning smell. The intense odour filled his gut with terror and rooted his oversized paws to the spot. He trembled. He wanted to lope after the little Upright, but he couldn’t.
As the human procession faded from his eyes, and eventually even from his nose, another type of horror began to gnaw at his stomach: loneliness. With the loneliness came panic. He wanted to run from the invisible enemy, just as he had on that fateful night two moons ago when he had fled from the ground that claimed the blood of his family. Back then weeks of running had left him exhausted, starving, and close to death. Miraculously, he had found the little Upright and had become alive again, but now the little Upright, too, had gone.
His nose searched out the delicate scent of the boy from among the innumerable terrifying smells. When he found what he was hunting for, he snuffled his warm breath into the earth, disturbing the aroma and enriching it. He inhaled deeply. It was comforting. Then, slinking in and out of the shadows, his coat blending perfectly with the undergrowth, he followed the little Upright, who in turn followed the human with the fire-stick. The young wolf had no choice. Neither did the young boy.
After many days, HeWhoWhistles and his family reached a clearing, where wiigwams were pitched among log cabins and shacks. At first sight, the area seemed deserted, but soon men and women trickled out of the dwellings and stood watching. There was no joy on their faces, no laughter on their lips. And there were no children. HeWhoWhistles’ heart sank.
“Where are the children?” he asked.
“They’re at school,” the guide replied in Algonquian.
HeWhoWhistles brightened. “Where is school?” he asked, his eyes searching the buildings.
“Over in Bruce County,” the man said with a sweeping motion.
“How far?”
“A five-day walk.”
“You said it would be here! On this land. Our land.”
“You got it wrong! Why would the government build a school here for just a few Indians, and another one somewhere else for a few more? Makes no sense, does it?” The guide didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s one large school in Bruce County. It’s a boarding school. Your boy will live there.”
HeWhoWhistles screamed with rage. It was a sound he had never made before.
“Calm down, Indian,” the man ordered, drawing his gun. “Step back. Let’s talk about this, real calm.”
HeWhoWhistles knew the power of the white man’s fire-stick. If angered, it would explode and take his life. How would he be able to protect his family then? He did what he thought was best; he backed up and hid his emotion in a stony face.
“He is my son,” he stated, his voice flat and controlled.
“You’re wrong! The boy’s a ward of the government now. He goes to school. That’s the law.” Algonquian words did not exist for some of the things the man wanted to say, so he in
terjected English words. “Break the law and we’ll lock you up and throw away the key. Understand?”
HeWhoWhistles did not understand. “I put my mark on your paper because you say there would be school here. No school, then we leave this place. We go home.”
“Too late now,” the man said. “You signed! That makes you part of the Indian Act. This is your home now. As for your son, he belongs to the government!”
“No! He will stay with his mother and me. We will teach him the Anishnaabe way.”
“Don’t you understand? You have no parental rights! The Indian Act, sections 113 to 122, took your rights away. The boy goes to school. You should have read what you were signing!”
HeWhoWhistles’ rage was barely concealed. He had been deceived. He had made his mark on the white-skins’ paper, trusting their spoken words, even though he had been warned that the pale-faced ones were not to be trusted. He had been a fool! And now he was losing his son. He wanted to push his blade deep into the man’s gut and twist it upwards, but confronted with the revolver aimed at his chest, he struggled to hold his violent emotion in a motionless body.
StarWoman’s eyes were filled with tears, and her voice quivered. “Don’t take him from us … please.”
The man’s heart softened. Thinking the crisis was over, he holstered his gun. “The government intends to educate these children and make them Christians. It will be easier for everyone if you co-operate.”
“Who will look after him?” StarWoman asked, panic rising in her throat. “He needs me. He has seen only five summers.”
“He’ll be treated well. The house-mother at the school cares for the little Indians like they were her own.”
“But he is my son!” StarWoman protested.
The man’s patience was wearing thin. “As I told you before,” he said sharply, “you have no choice. The Indian Act says the boy has to go to school. Anyway, it’s not forever. You can fetch him home for two months every summer. Apart from that he’s the government’s responsibility until he’s fifteen.”
StarWoman lunged at the man, howling like a crazed animal, beating her fists against his chest and clawing at his face. “I will not let you take him, I will not, I will not.”
With a firm shove, the man pushed StarWoman away. She stumbled back and fell to the ground in convulsive sobs. He reached for his gun and aimed.
HeWhoWhistles acted without thinking, throwing himself on his wife, covering her and protecting her from the fire-stick that would surely kill her.
The white man’s finger trembled on the trigger. He had shot Indians before and hadn’t lost sleep over it, but not like this. Not in the back, not when they were already down. Indians were no better than dogs, but he wouldn’t even shoot a dog like this.
HeWhoWhistles held his breath, expecting to hear the explosion of the fire-stick and feel the burning stone rip through his back. Seconds passed. Apart from StarWoman’s stifled sobs there was silence.
A paper fluttered to the ground and landed by his head. “Here’s your pass. You and the boy can leave in the morning. The school term’s already started, so don’t dawdle. Anyway, you only have ten days; five there, five back. There’s a date on the pass. If you’re not back by that date, we’ll throw you in jail when we catch you. Understand?”
HeWhoWhistles had protected his woman from the fire-stick, but he couldn’t protect his son from the government.
CHAPTER THREE
Crooked Ear followed the child and his father for five days, his pads falling softly on the narrow trail, but when the forest ended and the track headed diagonally across a meadow, he would go no further. He needed to feel the protection of the trees. Open spaces made him anxious. So he sat on his haunches just within the tree line, one ear pricked to the sky, the other folded in half, his amber eyes following the two Uprights. The little one ran back to him and buried a wet face into his ruff, but the soothing feeling was not there.
The tall Upright took the little one by the hand and led him into the gentle waves of sun-bleached grass. Crooked Ear trembled and whined, wanting to follow, but the feral part of his nature kept him rooted. The little Upright vanished first, then the tall one disappeared. Their scent hung on the air, and Crooked Ear raised his nostrils to the breeze and inhaled. Then he sat on his haunches and waited.
Red Wolf reached out and clutched his father’s hand. In silence they walked the last few miles, their pace slowing until, some ten feet from the gate, they stopped.
“I am frightened,” Red Wolf whispered.
Man and boy stared through the iron bars of the gate to the large building that stood in a grassy clearing. It was like nothing they had ever seen; big, solid and symmetrical, with three rows of small barred windows neatly stacked, one on top of the other.
“I don’t want to go to school,” Red Wolf said, gazing without comprehension at the mandate etched over the main doorway: To rescue the heathens from their evil ways and integrate them into Christian society.
“We have no choice,” his father replied. “It is the white man’s law. You must learn their ways. It is the only hope for The People.”
The boy’s chin quivered. “I want to go home,” he said, the back of his hand quickly wiping a tear from his cheek.
Tears stung HeWhoWhistles’ eyes, but he would not allow them to fall.
“It will be exciting for you,” he said, forcing a smile, “like going to summer camp! You will have new friends to play with.”
Red Wolf remembered how he had felt each spring when his family left their small camp on the beach at Clear Lake and made the annual migration to the larger summer camp in the northern forest. It was exciting to pack the entire contents of their home into canoes and paddle for days across lakes and up rivers, sleeping under the stars, and waking to the calls of loons. He wished he were back in the canoe now, trailing a hand in the clear water, watching his father’s muscular shoulders, listening to the quiet dip of the paddle, the slap of a hand on a mosquito, or the rasp of fingernails on bitten flesh. He remembered how eager he had been to sleep in the new summer wiigwam, even though it was identical to the winter one, right down to the mats, the furs, and the birch-bark containers that they brought along. But he didn’t feel any excitement now, only apprehension and gut-wrenching sadness.
“Soon you will understand the white man’s signs just as you understand the signs of the animals,” HeWhoWhistles said, “then you will make marks and send them to me.”
The child lowered his head and stared at his feet, working the toe of his elk-hide moccasin into the dusty surface of the laneway. “But how will you understand the marks, Father?”
HeWhoWhistles sighed. “I will visit soon … as soon as they let me leave the reserve. Time will pass quickly. Winter will come. And go. And then you will return to us.”
The sound of a key turning in a lock brought father and son back to the world around them. They looked through the iron bars of the gate directly into the round face of a man who had not one hair on his head.
“You’re late. Very late! Days late!” the man said in stilted Algonquian. “Come. Biindigek. Hurry.”
He opened the gate and yanked the child through, slamming the bars in the face of HeWhoWhistles and turning the key with a loud clunk.
“I must see where he will be,” HeWhoWhistles demanded. “His mother, she must know.”
“Come back at the end of June,” the man shouted, dragging the child toward the building.
“June?” HeWhoWhistles said.
“When the sun is high in the sky,” the man explained. “When the days are long.”
“He needs this,” HeWhoWhistles protested, offering up an elk-skin pouch.
“Take it home!” the bald man yelled. “And get out of here right now or I’ll set the dog on you.”
Red Wolf dug in his heels and used all of his strength to resist the force of the big man who was taking him from his father. Impatient with the slow progress, the man gripped the boy’s ear a
nd lifted him to his toes. Red Wolf squealed and lashed out blindly with his fists. The man let him go and doubled over, hands between legs, blotches of scarlet spreading up his neck and over his head. Red Wolf dashed toward his father, throwing himself against the locked gate, scrambling to get a foothold, trying to climb up and over.
HeWhoWhistles pointed to the top of the tall gate, where barbed wire lay coiled like a sleeping snake. “The wire has teeth! It will eat your flesh! ”
Red Wolf continued scrambling upward. He was inches from the top when the man’s powerful arms grabbed him, jerked him away from the gate, and carried him through the school door. He fought to look back at his father. HeWhoWhistles had sunk to his knees and was wailing.
The school door slammed shut. “Listen well,” the man growled, tossing Red Wolf against the wall as though he had no more weight than a leaf. “I will talk in your tongue so you will understand. I am Mister Hall. I run things here.”
He lowered his voice to a whisper and hissed through crooked yellow teeth. “I can make your life very uncomfortable, or we can be friends. You get to choose. See, it all depends on how you behave. Understand?”
Before he could respond, Red Wolf was shoved into the wall a second time. He gasped, struggling to breathe.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re a worthless Indian,” the man said, spittle flying from his mouth along with the mixture of Algonquian and English words. “And it’s a waste of everybody’s time trying to educate you, civilize you, and integrate you. You’ll never be anything but a filthy savage!”
A glob of saliva fell on Red Wolf’s shin. It crept along the slope of his foot toward the porcupine quills that his mother had sewn on his moccasin. He watched as though all of this was happening to a different child, a different foot, a different moccasin.
The man released his grip and stepped back a pace, wagging a finger vigorously in the air and barking strange words. “I don’t enjoy this job, but it’s a good income for me and the wife. So what I’m saying is this —”
Red Wolf Page 2