by Gary Collins
The news shook Kop to the core. Nonosbawsut was a noble warrior and great hunter who had trained Buka.
The whites in the boat were uneasy. They would soon pull away, and he wanted more information from Shanawdithit.
“Where are they taking you? Where can I find more of our breed?”
“They are taking me on a ship with billowing wings, which will bear me south over the wide sea, to where I know not. Our breed is no more. I fear you are the last osa’yan’a!”
The men in the boat had relaxed some, after no arrows came and they felt sure there was only one man watching them. But they still kept their guns pointed toward Kop’s voice, and they were still wary. But seeing no threat, the stickman gave a command. Two of the men put down their guns and took up the oars, while the other two kept their guns pointed shoreward. With the first stroke of the oars, the boat pulled away from the shore.
Both Kop and Shanawdithit knew their voices would soon be silenced with distance. Shanawdithit cried out, “Search for them! In the hidden valleys beneath the mountains. In the deepest forest you may yet find them.”
She was about to say more, when a blow from one of the oarsmen racked her head sideways. She slumped down on the middle thwart and was still. The Unwanted Ones had heard enough of the savage prattle. The boat took the surge of the current and veered away, out of arrow range.
Kop shouted after them, “I will search for them down every trail! Beneath high mountains where green valleys make way, I will seek them. And though their spirits, like rivers, are forever hidden in the Great Sea, still I will search for them.”
The beothuk seasons passed and five of the Unwanted Ones’ years went by, and in all that time Kop found no trace of his own kind. He was now truly the last Beothuk. The small Mi’kmaq Bear Clan grew to both accept and ignore the Beothuk who sometimes appeared in their camp. He always appeared when the evening fire was low. And the hunter always brought welcomed meat for Jimijon’s spit. The Mi’kmaq were as nomadic as the Beothuk. They followed the caribou migrations across the island. They trapped the interior during the fall and winter, and they fished on the coast in the spring and summer. The vast hunting grounds surrounding what the Unwanted Ones called Red Indian Lake were being explored and hunted extensively. Forays into its regions by the whites to hunt the Beothuk had begun. To capture them. To save them. All failed. And when no retaliation came from the Red Indian lands, the slaughter of deer began.
Wealthy englishmen were experienced in hunting from the green veldts of central Africa to the endless plains of Tanzania’s Serengeti. They offered purses, heavy with the coin of the British realm, to English outfitters, to be taken on safaris of slaughter. The sweating backs of black bondsmen, slaves and guides, suffered under packs of food and drink of which they would never partake. Their hunting treks were long and winding and brutally fruitful.
Stories of other buffaloes, in countless numbers, circulated around the English gentry. And they came to the American plains to hunt. To test the deadly ability of new rifles. To kill. To destroy. And to enslave. Upon their manor walls hung the curved horns of Africa’s mighty cape buffalo. The draped robes of the disappearing American bison. The black tresses of the Red Indian.
And then tales of a virgin wilderness, where caribou as tame as English pups and sporting magnificent broad antlers, came from ships returning laden with riches. No one hunted them save for savage heathens with primitive bow and arrow. The English sportsmen sailed to Newfoundland to hunt caribou and any other wild creature they encountered. And when they went hunting, the Mi’kmaq led them. They carried out only the best of antlered racks. They left behind the rotting carcasses of hundreds of slain deer.
“We only guide the English. We do not kill for them. And though the Beothuk trail is cold, we do not lead them there,” Jimijon said one night when Kop had confronted him about leading the Unwanted Ones on hunting sprees for caribou.
“The kosweet, like the Beothuk, were once many. Now they are few,” said Kop, and he said no more.
Despite their arguments, Kop and Jimijon remained friends, at arm’s length. For the most part, though their way of life was rapidly changing, the Mi’kmaq still hung on to their old ways. Trading furs was an age-old tradition with them. For the Beothuk, it was not.
Kop still kept to the old trapping grounds of the Beothuk. The tributaries north and west of Red Indian Lake were still largely untouched. When he came across the steel traps of the whites, he destroyed them. He was adept at trapping the marten cat. The animal, when cured properly, boasted the richest of furs on the Island of Newfoundland. He left their soft hides, as well as the cured hides of fox, otter, and beaver, with the Bear Clan. The Mi’kmaq continued their trading with the people they called Europeans. They traded with the English, whom Jimijon told Kop had cheated them. They preferred to deal with the French traders on the west coast of the Island rather than with the English. He said the English trader wanted pelts piled as high as a gun was long before he would even talk trade. The French would trade for furs half the gun’s height, providing they were all otter and marten cat fur. Powder and shot could be traded for lesser furs.
Early one spring, when the clan left the hunting grounds and walked west, Kop went with them. The trapping season had been good, and they carried furs upon their backs or dragged sleds filled with furs behind them. The Beothuk had not stained his skin red since Kuise’s death. His skin colour had a softer, richer hue than the others, but he blended well with the Mi’kmaq.
Kop kept back while Jimijon traded with the Frenchman on the steps of his trading post. There were other Europeans present. They resented the Mi’kmaq collection of furs. They never mingled with them and rarely said more than curse words to them. They never once suspected the last Beothuk was standing near them. If you saw one Indian, you had seen them all, they believed. And the Mi’kmaq did not betray the Beothuk.
Though Jimijon had informed Kop he could barter for a gun for himself in exchange for the marten pelts, Kop refused. He wanted nothing to do with the weapon which had caused him so much pain. Which had destroyed his world. He would not wear the white man’s garb nor use his traps of steel. He did accept a knife and a small kettle. The only items Kop cherished from the whites were the coarse, sand-like sugar and tea. He loved the sweet taste of the earth-coloured liquid. He would accept nothing more from the Unwanted Ones’ way. From Jimijon he learned of the happenings in his land. Jimijon could get by with both the French and English languages, though neither the English nor the French tried to learn his. Jimijon informed Kop of coastal events, and Kop told him what he saw inland.
On one of his trips to Notre Dame Bay, Jimijon learned from a servant who was “in service” to John Peyton the younger, in whose home Shanawdithit spent most of her last days, that the woman had been carried away to St. John’s to be placed on public display. There she fell ill with the coughing sickness so prevalent among the Europeans. The Beothuk had no resistance whatsoever against the dreaded disease. The white healers could not save her, and there she died on a Saturday night, June 29, 1829, far away from the hills where she had lived.
Kop’s demeanour changed with the news. His face was etched with a terrible loneliness borne from the soul, such as no one could ever know. He looked into the surrounding forest at the edge of where he and Jimijon were seated by a campfire. Night had come, and the forest was dark and still. For Kop it was now truly empty and bereft of life. The silence went on between the two men.
Then Kop wondered aloud if the bearer of such news had told how and where Shanawdithit had been buried. Jimijon was silent for the longest time and avoided Kop’s eyes. Kop sensed the Mi’kmaq knew more. After a while, the Mi’kmaq gave him his answer.
The body of the last Beothuk woman had been disembowelled by curious St. John’s doctors. By doing so, they were not looking to determine how the woman had died. They already knew that. Wh
at they were so keen on learning was whether or not Shanawdithit was, “in form and feature, face and limb,” the same as other human women. Her remains were not permitted to be laid in the same hallowed burial ground with European people. She was laid to rest, without ceremony, in an obscure piece of ground: headless, unmourned, unsung, unmarked.
Kop didn’t speak for a long time after hearing this. The fire was nursed into small flames. Something rustled among the leaves somewhere in the woods. Both men looked up, but the sound didn’t come again.
“I have seen the burial boxes of the Unwanted Ones many seasons ago,” Kop said suddenly. And he in turn told Jimijon what he had once seen by the shores of Red Indian Lake. He never went to stay there anymore, he said. Not even for one day or night. But his trail frequently led him past the area of his birth, where the black openings of the empty lodges stared at him. It was one of these openings which had halted him one day. The lodge doorway was closed. Not only was it closed, but it was sewn tight, from the outside.
A single wide piece of birchbark, white as new snow, had been carefully stitched with leather lacings to the stud frame of the mamateek. Kop did not need to go closer to investigate what it meant. He knew. The smoke hole had been closed to keep the spirits of the dead safe within. The lodge had been used as a burial site by one of his kind. He was more interested in the trail of the living, but their trail of life was as cold as their trail of death. Their footprints were hidden beneath autumn leaves.
Long after, when he came by the same trail, he slowed yet again. The birchbark had only slightly faded. But the doorway had been cut open.
Someone with no respect had dared to enter the sanctuary of the dead. Strong winds were blowing that day. The trees were moving with the might of it. The lake surface was a seething white disturbance. Kop ventured forward just enough to peer inside. He was afraid and would go no farther. What he saw in the dim light was a crude platform above the lodge floor. He was astonished to see placed on it a wooden coffin built by the Unwanted Ones. A coffin stained red. There were three bodies. On one side of the coffin were the remains of a body wrapped in birchbark. It was as tall as the coffin beside it. On the other side of the coffin was a smaller body, also wrapped. The coffin as well as both death shrouds had been cut away. All three of the dead were stained as red as the wooden tomb. The two adults were headless. Kop was terrified and fled. And the spirits of the dead, borne by the hissing wind, chased him.
Even now, long after, Kop was very upset by what he had seen, and the telling of it unnerved him. He told Jimijon he knew not who the dead were. Jimijon pulled a clay pipe from the deep pocket of his European-made coat. He tapped the dottle out and tamped the bowl tight with coarse, dark tobacco using a broad thumb whose dirty nail was stubbed and broken. From the small woodpile he found a split, and lighting it from the fire coals, he brought it to the pipe bowl. The pipe flared, and smoke escaped from one corner of his mouth. He sucked again and inhaled. A cloud of heady smoke spilled out of his nostrils and mouth. Satisfied the pipe was drawing well, Jimijon pulled it from his mouth, spat into the fire, glanced sideways at Kop, and said, “The names of the dead have been whispered to me.”
Kop stared at him and waited. He knew Jimijon well enough to know the man would not be rushed. The chief puffed from the pipe again as if considering how to continue. What he had to tell Kop was not pleasant.
“The one the whites call Cormack is like you,” he began. Kop’s black eyes narrowed and bore into Jimijon’s face.
“He, too, searched for the Beothuk on empty trails,” Jimijon said quickly.
Kop didn’t fully understand, but his expression relaxed some.
“The one the whites call Joe Sylvester guided him many seasons past. Joe, like me, was Mi’kmaq. He was a good guide. Not a good hunter. He was a bit lazy, too. He was afraid of the red devils.” Jimijon shot a look at the “red devil” sitting next to him. Kop took no notice of the slur.
“Joe took Cormack down the valleys where the Beothuk were not.”
“We watched them go by. We didn’t want to be found,” said Kop.
Jimijon glanced at him and nodded. “When Joe led Cormack to the far western bay, to what my people call Noywa’Mkisk—where the sand blows—Cormack’s ribs were showing. He was sore from the bites of the no-see-ums and his spirit was barren, but his pride was great. He was the first of the whites to cross this land they say is an island.”
“Our land is surrounded by the salt sea,” said Kop, confirming the statement. Jimijon nodded again.
“Seasons went by. Cormack returned. He was still searching for the Beothuk. He needed good guides, all Indian.
“One Mi’kmaq, one Abenaki, and one mountaineer guided him up the great river to the Red Pond. They found the lodge you speak of. The one with the door sewn tight. The guides feared the death spirits of the red man. Cormack did not.” Jimijon paused long enough for Kop to think he had finished, when he spoke again. His voice was low.
“In the wooden box made by the whites was the body of the one you call Nonosbawsut, the tall one. He was murdered defending his woman. Lying with him was his woman, Demasduit, the one the whites call Mary March. She was carried there by the whites after she died of the white man’s sickness. Nonosbawsut was put there after by the Beothuk. Their child, too, who had died soon after the mother, was taken away and placed in the lodge. Cormack cut through the opening and went inside.”
Jimijon paused again. Kop could tell he did not want to speak. He also knew what he was going to tell him.
“Speak,” he told the Mi’kmaq. It was more of a plea than a request. And after a time, Jimijon continued.
“Cormack cut the heads from Demasduit and Nonosbawsut.” The words spilled out of his mouth like bile he wanted to be rid of. “He carried them away in his pack,” he finished.
Kop gasped at the revelation. Though he knew what was coming, the truth of it was no less disturbing. The burial grounds of his people had been desecrated, dishonoured by the very ones who had caused all three deaths. How were his people to enter the spirit world without their heads?
Did they hold nothing sacred? They were worse than animals. Even in death, the True People were hunted by the Unwanted Ones.
He and Jimijon talked for a short time about the dishonour which had been committed. Then Jimijon told Kop that Cormack’s guides, too, were appalled by what the white man had done. They showed their disgust for his foul deed on the trip back down the Exploits to the coast. They seldom hunted for food, rarely spoke to Cormack, and as he grew weak from hunger and fatigue, they offered him little assistance. When they arrived back to the coast, Cormack was near death, but he survived.
“He lives still?” asked Kop.
“Though he has crossed the Great Sea to the land where only whites live, it is so. He carried the stolen heads with him.”
The mi’kmaq chief’s telling of the abused remains of the last of his people disturbed the Beothuk greatly. Kop had nightmares about his people searching, without heads, for the death spirits. He had been taught the spirits of the dead guided them to the afterworld. Now he wasn’t sure if the spirits had left with the severed heads or had remained with the headless bodies. He remembered that he had removed the head from the red-headed one so that he would not see his spirit world. It disturbed him greatly.
He had stopped wearing the red ochre and no longer felt a spiritual presence. Kop had given up on his ancient religion. The disturbing story reminded him of something he had to do. He left for the coast and journeyed alone to the place where the bones of his only descendant were buried. He carried red ochre in a pouch of intricate leather. Kuise’s burial site had not been disturbed. Even the animals had merely sniffed at the raised mound and left without disturbing it. Only the Unwanted Ones disturbed the sleep of the dead. Kop’s disdain for them grew.
It took him several hours to comp
lete the burial ritual on his daughter’s remains. Kuise’s spirit was her own and not his. And though he no longer wore the red ochre, he would honour his daughter’s spirit. He painted her entire skeleton. He stained what was left of her clothing. He painted her swaddling bark. And when he had done all of that, Kop smeared the sacred ground above his Small One with the last of the dye.
20
After they had lost their fear of him, the Mi’kmaq women of the Bear Clan admired the tall Beothuk who came frequently into their camp. There were only two younger ones of mating years. One was short and giggled a lot when he was around. She had eyes for Kop. But a strong Mi’kmaq, young, a good hunter and provider who was a much-respected member of the band, also had eyes for her.
The other one was tall and taut as a young pine and in her first blood years. She, too, cast her brown eyes for the Beothuk. For the longest time Kop ignored both of them. The short one soon lost interest in Kop and mated with the Mi’kmaq hunter.
Then one day, Kop noticed the other for the first time. As a man sees a woman. She had cast her eyes his way again, and seeing his disinterest, she was walking away from him when Kop looked after her. The girl’s hips, nubile and daring, moved in time with her every move. Kop’s loins stirred for the first time since Tehonee’s death. Two nights after that, Kop’s mind was on mating.
It was the time of trees greening. The Bear Clan had come to the bay named for the English saint George to trade furs, and Kop had come down the trail with them. The trapping season had not been a good one. Deep snow and bitter winds had prevailed. Fur-bearing animals had kept hidden. Only Kop, with his prime catch of pine marten, had done well. He shared his hides with the Bear Clan, and Jimijon traded for food and ammunition. The apprentice running the trading post in his master’s absence had assured him the prices offered were fair ones. The fur trade in Europe was not a demanding one just now, he told Jimijon. Canadian beaver and American buffalo hides had glutted the European market. Jimijon merely stared at the apprentice, understanding only that the pile of furs on the wooden counter brought from a wilderness of untold hardship was not enough. Still, that evening, on a grassy knoll beside a brook at the wide mouth of the bay where they had made camp, they feasted on the white man’s food and drink.