A Discovery of Strangers (23 page)

Monday January
15th 1821
Fort Enterprise

Our men arrived from Fort Providence with
2
kegs of rum, one barrel of powder
,
2
rolls of tobacco
,
60
lbs. of ball and some clothing. They brought two Esquimaux, Augustus and Junius, with them, who will act as our interpreters when we reach the Polar Sea. They have been
21
days on the return march up and the labour they have undergone is sufficiently evinced by the collars of the sledges having worn out the shoulders of their coats. One of the rum kegs was broached on the way up and a considerable quantity abstracted
.

Mr. Back found it necessary to go on to Fort Chipewyan
.

In the evening the officers joined the Canadians in the hall, to enliven their spirits by a dram of rum, and also to prevent them from conversing upon our differences with the Indians, which they had observed. They are most fond of dancing, with which they continued until
2
a.m., an exercise also in a peculiar manner serviceable to Mr. Hood. Ever ardent in his pursuits, he had, through close attention to his drawings and other avocations, confined himself too much to the house in winter, and his health was impaired by his sedentary habits
.

Monday February 5th Fort Enterprise

Two Indians arrived from Bigfoot for a further supply of ammunition. They are hunting south and west of the house, and Bigfoot is displeased at not having rum sent to him. Sent him a keg of diluted spirits and some powder and shot
.

Monday February
12th
Fort Enterprise

The winter habitations of the Esquimaux are built of snow, and judging from one constructed by Augustus today, they are very comfortable dwellings. He selected a spot on the river where the snow was about two feet deep and sufficiently compact
.

The purity of the material of which the house was framed, the domed elegance of its construction and the translucency of its walls, which transmitted a very pleasant light, gave it an appearance far superior to a marble building and one might survey it with feelings somewhat akin to those produced by the contemplation of a Grecian temple reared by Phidias. Both are triumphs of art inimitable in their kinds
.

8
S
TOLEN
W
OMAN

“This happened a long time ago, when a man and a woman were living together,” Keskarrah begins several nights after the voyageurs return from great Tucho without Boy English. Or Broadface and Little Marten either, who were the only People who agreed to keep up with Back travelling to Fort Chipewyan on his little snowshoes.

Though perhaps no one except Greenstockings is thinking about that journey; certainly no one in the lodge mentions it. Why should they, any more than the inevitable passages of weather? People have come to the esker from The Hook’s camp because they wanted to, and from Longleg’s, and Bigfoot’s as well, and met where others had already arrived. Many have brought food, others have not, and there are certainly dances and talking and singing and eating whatever anyone has, and now as many as can get into the lodge sit or lie circled around Keskarrah, listening. The warmth of their many bodies together
flares the fire upwards into light, glistening on winter-burned faces. Some smaller children crawl over one person to another, or fall asleep in convenient laps, under warm hands they find gentle enough.

“Maybe it was a thousand years ago,” Keskarrah says at the head of the fire. “Memory can see that far, and many of you know this one about the woman and Blackfire, but hear me now.

“Blackfire was a great warrior, though no one knows his name from before then, or who his People were, and sometimes he is called ‘No Fire’, or ‘Very Long Without Fire’. But Blackfire is his name for us because in that coldest winter, when it happened, he had a fire burning inside him that no one could see, not even in the darkness. It was his fire, one he had to carry, and it wasn’t wood that made it burn either.

“It began at this time, when it is coldest, and the animals had gone away as they sometimes do for us, for no one can truly understand the way of the wind or the caribou. All the People had to live on were the good rabbits. The man who would become Blackfire was a superb hunter and he had killed the most, a great pile, and everyone brought their rabbits together to his lodge the way we do to feast, especially after long hunger when eating alone becomes worse than not eating at all. It was so hot in the lodge from women cooking that Blackfire and the other men had taken off their shirts, they were naked to the waist keeping the fires going to eat.”

A murmur of assent and encouragement rustles through the lodge, and Keskarrah lifts his head higher, his voice rising:

“Then Blackfire’s woman heard something, outside. She was already known everywhere as a very wise person and her names are several too. Not Copperwoman, who was stolen as well, but
some call her ‘Fiercely Desired Woman’, or ‘The One Fought Over’, or ‘Ravished Woman’, or ‘Woman Stolen Back and Forth’ — but for us her name is ‘She Who Delights’, as her man is Blackfire.

“That day She Who Delights heard something, and stood listening so hard, it sounded like a coming thunderstorm though it was midwinter. Blackfire saw her, and came beside her in the door to look for himself. Instantly he knew what it was: an army of enemies was attacking, closing in on their camp. There was only one tiny gap left where they were not already surrounded, and he grabbed his snowshoes and threw them down to run.

“But the binding on his left shoe broke as he turned his foot into it. Immediately She Who Delights threw one of her snowshoes down for him and he was off like an arrow, the way warriors are trained to do, running for the tiny gap between the attackers. He was so fast he got through before they saw him coming and he ran for the hills, naked as he was.

“Blackfire’s brother’s boy, who lived in his lodge like a son, also grabbed his snowshoes to run. But he twisted his foot putting them on and couldn’t get through before the gap closed. So he was the first one lanced, by the rocks below the hills, and then those enemies attacked the camp and cut and clubbed every person to death, every child and even the dogs, and they burned the camp, a fire so huge it seemed the world was burning to the last scrap of wood or bone or leather. And after they had heated themselves on that, they buried the ashes in snow so that there would be nothing to help Blackfire if they didn’t find him and kill him too.

“That was the way People fought in those days: if you make
war, kill everyone. Otherwise there may never be an end to the necessary revenge.

“Yes, those enemies did what they had come for: they chased Blackfire naked into the hills and destroyed his People. But there was one Person they didn’t kill, and that was She Who Delights. They captured her alive, though she fought them until they had to beat her senseless, captured alive because she was the reason for their winter journey. They had come for her, a powerful, beautiful and very wise woman. Men kill each other for women like that, they always have, and of course the war leader of the enemy strangers took her first, but then he gave her to two brothers, his strongest men. She was far too much for just one of them.

“Blackfire had hidden himself well among the rocks up on the hills. They searched everywhere there but couldn’t find him, and he watched them kill his People and burn the camp. He had to see three warriors overpowering She Who Delights, but neither that nor the warriors, when they left, each one clubbing his son’s body again and screaming his power, would enrage him into revealing himself. He was too smart; that fire was beginning to burn in him.

“So they carried his woman away below him, tied up like a chunk of fresh meat, and the last to leave was the war leader. Now this powerful man, White Horizon, is known to everyone. White Horizon was Blackfire’s equal among these enemies, a man powerful enough to trade with him and give him shelter when they met, and so they would not kill each other. When White Horizon passed the rocks with his bloody club in his bloody hands he stopped by the boy’s smashed body, but he did not hit it. He called out softly to Blackfire,

“ ‘Come down, I’ll give you warm clothes.’

“But Blackfire would not reveal himself.

“ ‘You’ll freeze to death,’ White Horizon called. Still Blackfire would not answer. ‘Well, I’ll leave you these long beaver mittens, they’ll help.’

“Then Blackfire hissed from above in the rocks, ‘I tell you: when the hair grows white again around the throats of the caribou, don’t sleep in your camp!’

“So White Horizon, that eternal enemy, walked away and followed his men south over the hills, and Blackfire came down and pulled on the mittens. They were so long they reached to his armpits. He piled stones over his son’s mutilated body and searched for whatever could help him stay alive, but those strangers were very clever and he found nothing. He had had to watch everything being destroyed and She Who Delights raped and dragged away and yet no tears had broken from him, but when he knew that the last spark of fire in the buried ashes of the camp was dead, he sat down and cried. Without fire in the long darkness, how could he live to gain revenge?

“Something licked his face as he lay hollowed under a snowdrift: two dogs. Badly wounded, but they too had survived the attack. So he pulled a thong from She Who Delights’ snowshoe, made a snare and set it, and slept tight between the dogs. And he caught a rabbit in his woman’s snare. He skinned it with a cracked stone but, hungry as he was, he couldn’t eat raw rabbit. Since then every Person knows, no matter how hungry you are, you can’t keep raw rabbit down, you’ll just vomit and become weaker. So he tore the skin into strips, wound them around his naked chest and fed the meat to the dogs, who of course have stronger stomachs. Then he started looking for People to help him.

“The snow was very deep and he could see no track, so he took the longest willow he could break off and poked it carefully into the snow, trying to discover a trail. At last, very deep down, it seemed he felt one, the slight hardness of a footprint deep down in the snow, and then he circled wider, probing, until he touched that faint hardening again. Day after day through the darkness he worked in big circles, setting the snare for rabbits and wrapping their fur around himself and feeding the meat to the dogs, who kept him alive with their warmth when he slept a little. But he was starving, and the dogs were too badly wounded; first one and then the other died.

“He could barely move, but now he was almost covered with rabbit and dog fur; and could feel the trail was just under the surface. He kept going, every day more slowly but he would not stop. Every day he remembered more names as the land showed him places where things have happened, surrounding him with the voices of his ancestors until one day, far in the distance, Blackfire saw the great rock where the Dogribs once shot Oltsintthedh full of arrows — that’s another story, of two sisters being stolen — which showed him direction. And when he reached the shore of lake below the rock, he found a place where People had camped so recently that one of their fires had burned down to moss, and the grey lichen still held a spark, smouldering. He breathed on it gently, into glowing, and fed it fine strands of dry moss until it grew big enough for sticks and he could warm himself at last, and roast a deer foot left lying there by those People for someone who might be hungry.

“But he ate too fast, it knocked him out. Everyone knows now, if you’ve been starving, the first thing you eat will try to kill you, so be careful! When he recovered his senses, the fire
was almost dead again. That really scared him. He built it up carefully and didn’t try eating, just warmed himself and then followed the trail. He could see it now, without feeling for it.”

Keskarrah pauses to drink the hot blood soup Greenstockings passes him. The listeners stir, nodding, the long murmurs of their attention rising in their throats, but the children have stopped running around as they usually do because all know the story is almost here now, in the lodge where they sit. Somewhere, a baby sucks.

From behind her small hiding leather Birdseye asks, “Where is raven? Wolf?”

Greenstockings knows this story her father is telling, and she could not dare ask that. Only her mother, destroyed beyond recognition … how will they ever live without her?