Mattie Mitchell (18 page)

Fifty reindeer remained aboard the ship to be transported
farther south along the northeast coast of Newfoundland, where
they would be off-loaded at the town of Lewisporte, Notre Dame
Bay, at the A. N. D. Company's dock. One Sami family and four of
their herd dogs remained aboard the
Anita
to accompany the fifty
reindeer to their final destination. Just as the ship was building up
steam to leave, word came from Grenfell that Notre Dame Bay
was frozen solid and there would be no entry from the sea. So the
remaining fifty reindeer were off-loaded with the others.

The fifty reindeer now belonging to the A. N. D. Company—
forty of them pregnant females—were slated for work as log-hauling draft animals at the company depot in Millertown on the
shores of Red Indian Lake, and if they couldn't get at least part
of the way there by sea, then by God they would walk all the way
there by land.

There was no other way. But who would take on such a
task? Not only that, who knew the way through the treacherous,
winter-stormy Long Range Mountains? There was only one man
who had the knowledge and the ability to carry this daunting feat
through. Fortunately for Hugh Cole, the Anglo-Newfoundland
Development's manager, such a man was already in the employ of
the company, the sixty-four-year-old Mi'kmaq Mattie Mitchell.

Hugh Wilding Cole was a young Englishman who had come
to work for the A. N. D. Company just two years before and had
proven himself to be a valuable asset to the company. He was
fearless and strong, both in muscle and will. Cole had arrived in
St. Anthony on Christmas morning, 1907, in preparation for the
reindeer arrival.

He had brought with him translator Morris Sundine, a man
whose native tongue was Swedish. Cole had no way of knowing
when the ship would arrive, so, leaving Sundine to remain in St.
Anthony, he left again by the coastal boat
Prospero
under the
command of fifty-three-year-old Abram Kean. The trip south on
the
Prospero
was not a good one. The boat encountered winter
storms almost day and night. The ship
Prospero
, named for
Shakespeare's character in
The Tempest
, earned its name on this
winter's voyage. The ship finally arrived in the outport of Little
Bay in Notre Dame Bay, where Hugh Cole hired a dog team and
its musher and finally made it to company headquarters in Grand
Falls.

The company's decision was to bring the reindeer—for which
they had paid good money—to Millertown as planned. Cole was
instructed to leave as soon as possible for Norris Point, Bonne
Bay, and pick up Mattie Mitchell, who would guide them north
to St. Anthony and bring the reindeer back with him overland.
Cole took Tom Greening, a company foreman and experienced
woodsman, and both men travelled by train as far as Deer Lake,
which was as far north as they could get by rail. Cole's freight car
contained a dogsled, five hauling dogs, some camping gear, and
enough food for a week or so.

They arrived in Deer Lake at 9: 30 p.m. on a cold Saturday
night, January 25, 1908. By the time they were ready to leave
Deer Lake on January 27, three feet of snow covered the frozen
ground. By 3: 30 p.m. the temperature had risen and it rained,
making the going very difficult. By the time they had stitched
together their bed of fir boughs, the rain stopped, the clouds
shifted, and they slept fitfully under a mantle of bright stars. They
had travelled only four miles northwest from Deer Lake.

The rain began again sometime before dawn and it continued
until midday. With the heavy rain and mild weather, travel was
impossible. In true Newfoundland style, the temperature dropped
drastically that night, the skies cleared, and Cole and Greening
broke camp again. On January 29 they travelled a full twenty
miles. They reached Bonne Bay at 3: 00 p.m. on Thursday,
January 30.

They crossed from the bottom of the long eastern arm of the
bay to the small village of Norris Point by boat. They arrived
late in the cold winter afternoon and Cole knocked on Mattie
Mitchell's door. A shy, black-haired, and very pretty woman
answered after his second knock. Opening the door only halfway,
she told them her husband wasn't at home. Cole told her who he
was and introduced Tom Greening. Mary Anne relaxed when she
learned they were from the A. N. D. Company. She wasn't used to
having strange white men knock on her door late in the evening.

Mattie's wife told the two men that she expected her husband
home before nightfall, but then cautioned timidly, “My man
always bring dark on 'is shoulder.”

Long after the dark had come, Mattie Mitchell came crunching
along the snow-packed gravel road to his door and shortly met
with Cole and Greening. He agreed to lead them on the trek to
St. Anthony without question. When Cole asked him if he would
consider taking on the task of guiding a herd of fifty reindeer
from St. Anthony to Millertown, Mattie asked him what reindeer
were.

Cole told him they were really caribou but with a different
name. He told him where the animals had come from and
explained his company's experiment and the need to get the
animals to their depot in Millertown. Mattie considered for a
moment and then agreed to lead them.

Cole knew that Mattie had guided the geographer H. C.
Thompson up over the Great Northern Peninsula in 1904
on an extensive mapping expedition for the Newfoundland
government. He asked Mattie if he had a copy of one of the maps
that Thompson had compiled. Mattie told him he didn't have one
of the paper maps but that he had the route in his head.

Another winter storm blew in from the sea and snow lashed
with northwest winds, stranding them in Norris Point until
February 3, when they finally left for St. Anthony. They reached
Lobster Cove just north of Rocky Harbour that night.

And then, quite suddenly, Mattie Mitchell became ill. Red
blotches appeared on his face and legs and gave him considerable
pain accompanied by fever. Mattie had erysipelas.

The expedition made it as far as Gulls Marsh the next day,
when Mattie's resistance and great strength gave out. They didn't
make a decent camp and huddled around their campfire in misery.

They stayed there for two days until Mattie appeared to have
improved. The big Indian refused to let the others carry or let
the dogs haul his load. On the late evening of February 7, when
they walked into the tiny settlement Parson's Pond with snow
drifting all around them, he collapsed. His illness had overtaken
him. They waited for three days, without any medicine, for their
guide to heal.

The morning of February 11 dawned cold and sunny, and still
the water of the nearby Gulf of St. Lawrence was “stark calm.”
Mattie told Cole his sickness had passed and that he was ready
for the trail again. They crossed the mouth of the river at Parson's
Pond using a local fisherman's boat and followed a good, snow-packed trail until they reached Portland Creek by dusk of that day.
That night the three men set up their tent and made a good camp.

Before leaving the next day, Cole bought a new, harness-broken sled dog, and two hours after dark that night they mushed
into River of Ponds. They had made twenty-six hard miles that
day. The next day Greening became ill with “la grippe” and
slowed them to walking only six miles, after which they made
camp at Trappers Cove on February 13, just south of the entrance
to Hawke's Bay.

They crossed the end of that frozen bay the next day
and prepared to cross over from the east side of the Northern
Peninsula to the west side. Here in Hawke's Bay, Mattie was
assisted by William Uland, who knew of a trail that would take
them across. Following his advice, the team made the journey
across the peninsula.

They encountered another mild day that turned cold at night,
forming a thin crust on the snow which made for hard going.
However, on Monday, February 18, after making their way
twenty-four miles down the Cloudy Brook Valley, they made it
to Dr. Grenfell's sawmill. After walking across the ice in Hare
Bay on February 20, they took shelter from a blizzard in an
abandoned home in Island Bight. From there they pressed on
until they finally made it to St. Anthony on Friday, February 21,
with Mattie Mitchell leading the way.

The men made preparations over the next several days for the
trip south. They obtained heavy tents complete with small funnel
holes in their slanted roofs, along with small portable wood-burning stoves and sleeping robes, which they hoped would keep
them warm in the winter nights. Finally, they bought food for all
of the party as well as for the dogs.

Winter gales with snow, mild days with rain and dense fog,
and temperatures dropping to five degrees below zero hampered
their goal of cutting the A. N. D. Company reindeer from the rest
of Grenfell's herd. At long last, on March 4, the herd and the
humans all came together at Locks Cove. The reindeer trek with
the Mi'kmaq Mattie Mitchell walking proudly in point position,
stood ready to add another historical, adventurous first to the
varied pages of Newfoundland lore.

Cole had with him a Lapland herder, sixty-five-year-old Aslic
Sombie, and his wife of thirty-six years, their thirty-year-old
son, Pere, and their daughter Maretta, who was thirty-two and
could neither speak nor hear. Cole's interpreter, Morris Sundine,
Thomas Greening, and Mattie Mitchell made up the eight people
who would do what had never been done before.

The original plan was to follow the winter sea ice as far as
possible, maybe to the bottom of White Bay, and from there cut
overland to Millertown. However, by this late date the huge Arctic
ice floes had shifted south in their ceaseless spring migration.
Cape Bauld had been dividing and checking the mighty white
floes for weeks, sending massive sheets of ice south in swiftly
moving streams along the land toward the warm waters of the
Gulf of St. Lawrence. The island of Newfoundland now had a
white bridge to the mainland of Canada.

On the Atlantic side of the Great Northern Peninsula, as far
as the eye could see, the shifting icefields had come and filled
every cove and bay as they poured along by the land and silenced
the surrounding sea. Great blue swatches of open water could be
seen everywhere when the men viewed the sea from high points
of land. These open areas of water would close and open without
warning as the wind shifted or as the tide ebbed and flowed. A
decision was reached to follow the shore ice as far as possible to
the western end, and possibly the southern end, of Hare Bay, and
then abandon the ocean crossing in favour of the longer but much
safer route overland.

Somewhere in the mysterious time of pre-dawn, a leviathan
had reached up and leaned in from the changing sea behind it to
take a huge, jagged bite out of the Northern Peninsula, almost
severing its defenceless head. This five-mile-wide stretch of water
at the mouth of Hare Bay, penetrating eighteen miles inland, was
where the reindeer drive really began.

The exposed vertebrae along the spine of Newfoundland's
Great Northern Peninsula is not for the timid or the faint of heart
on the warmest of summer days. With the grip of late winter still
firm upon the land, the very idea of travelling, on foot, the entire
length of that winter-bound peninsula—let alone nursing along
a herd of semi-wild animals—seemed ludicrous. Many of the
local trappers who knew the immediate area better than Mattie
Mitchell doubted that it could be done. Though Hugh Cole figured
the route would be a challenge for anyone—especially after the
trip up from Deer Lake—he had such dependence in Mitchell's
wilderness lore and incredible sense of direction that he entrusted
him with the task of guiding his party the entire unmapped route.

With his easygoing, carefree manner, Mattie didn't see the
trip as anything more than a prolonged walk “on the country.”

HOWEVER
,
THE EASY
,
TIME
-
SAVING
way across the frozen
Hare Bay was not possible. Due to the recent rain and subsequent
freezing, the bay had turned into a black, icy sheet. The reindeer
would not be able to keep their footing on such a slippery surface,
so Cole made the decision to walk around the bay, increasing
their trek by forty miles.

Leaving the sea behind them, the group set out for the distant
Long Range Mountains, the northernmost link of the huge
Appalachian chain that began far south on the North American
continent. Mattie Mitchell, with his tireless, long-legged stride,
was the vanguard of the group. He walked on leather-tied
snowshoes of his own design and making.

The small party of nomad-like travellers were a sight to
behold, with an Indian stepping boldly out in front, constantly
breaking trail through the deep, snow-clogged valleys and sparse
scrublands and deep forests alike. Following behind him came
the smooth-stepping deer, their flaring black nostrils forcing
grey, plumed mists into the frigid air that hung like wreaths
above them as they moved along. Next came the endlessly
barking dogs, running along the sides and sometimes behind the
reindeer in response to their foreign master's yelling. And then
came the Sami herder and his family, all dressed resplendently
from head to feet in the skins of the animals they had come to
herd. Inside their nearly knee-high reindeer skin boots, their feet
were wrapped in dried grasses.

Bringing up the rear of the caravan came the sled dogs, their
muscles straining as they pulled the load, some of them with their
ribs showing. All had pink tongues bouncing out the sides of their
toothy jaws as they plodded along a snow trail broken by the
snorting reindeers' broad hooves.

To stay ahead of the high-stepping reindeer was impossible,
even for Mattie, whose stride was long. At the very start of the
journey, the always inventive Mi'kmaq would start off ten or so
minutes before the others. This allowed him time to decide on the
best trail direction, as well as the safest routes to stay on track,
before the reindeer caught up with him. Mattie always feared the
animals would step on the backs of his snowshoes if they came
too close, even though the lead deer always stopped a few feet
behind him as it snorted impatiently.

As the trip wore on, the reindeer would follow Mattie
Mitchell's every twist and turn and stop whenever he stopped.
Their herder and his yapping dogs could move them from behind,
but the reindeer would follow no one but the Indian.

On March 7, by the time the expedition camped for the night
near Main Brook Pond, the Laplander Pere Sombie was suffering
badly from snow blindness. Mattie made a band from the soft
inner bark of a birch tree, cut narrow slits for the eyes, and got
the man to tie it around his head. It worked so well the Sami man
kept it around his head day and night until the bark finally broke.

They found out very early about the herding instinct of the
reindeer. At every opportunity, the animals would head back
toward St. Anthony. At night the party had no choice but to keep
a constant watch over them, in four-hour shifts.

Cole also discovered, on their very first day on the trail,
a custom of the Laplanders that caused him a great deal of
consternation. The Lap woman and her daughter both rode in a
sled called a
pulka
which their labouring dogs pulled. The
pulkas
had arrived with the Lap herders and were intended to be used for
the trip. They were shaped like barrel staves, no more than a foot
high, two feet wide, and less than six feet long. The sleds proved
to be totally useless. They worked well in the cold, dry Arctic
climate of Lapland, but here on the coast of the ever-changing
Atlantic climate, the soft, damp snow kept piling up in front of
the sled until the dogs could not pull them.

As soon as he could make arrangements, Cole replaced them
with the Newfoundland komatik. The two women then rode in
the komatiks and, despite further arguments from Cole, refused to
walk. It was their custom, they told him, and when Cole shouted
his protest, they yelled words back at him that his translator,
Sundine, could not understand. Cole was sure they were cursing
at him.

They were crossing a large pond on Monday, March 9, when
they were surprised to see two dog teams approaching them. Drs.
Little and Stewart were returning to St. Anthony from Englee,
where they had been attending to several patients.

The doctors were amazed at the sight of the reindeer walking
behind the tall Indian. They talked for a while about the trail ahead
and the snow that never seemed to end. The doctors wished Hugh
Cole every success with his venture. With a yell to their restless
dogs and running behind their komatiks, the two men mushed
away to the north. The misshapen pond where they met would
take Cole's name on maps of Newfoundland.

They walked out to the frozen northwest arm of Canada
Bay on March 10 after walking fourteen miles in the teeth of
yet another winter storm. The temperature was well below zero,
visibility was poor, and everyone—except the bundled women—
was tired.

Cole decided to leave for the outport community of Englee to
buy supplies. In spite of the late hour and the poor weather, they
started out, with Mattie in the lead. They took no dog team or
sled. It was Cole's intention to buy a sled as well as a small dog
team at Englee to haul the grub back.

Along the way they found several blazed trees and, in a few
places where the snow had swept clean, the faint traces of the
doctors' trail. They arrived back in Canada Bay the next day.
The snow had stopped but the high winds continued, and with it
severe drifting, too bad for further travelling. Cole ordered Aslic
Sombie to put an ox—a gelded stag—in harness and break it for
pulling while they waited for the wind to abate.

With the wind finally easing a bit, they left Canada Bay the
next morning and made their way southwest over the high hills to
Cloudy Brook and camped for the night. They made twelve hard
miles on Friday, March 13, after chopping a rough trail through
the dense growth along the river. It had rafted up with broken ice,
making it impossible to cross.

One of the local dogs that Cole had bought in Englee
harassed the reindeer at every opportunity. Cole had punished
the dog for its behaviour once, but, given the chance, the dog
always approached the deer with ferocious barks and snarling
bites. While they were getting the deer through the narrow trail
they had cut, the dog chewed free of its leather harness and slunk
away toward the lead animals.

Mattie heard the dog barking but paid it no heed. The Lap
dogs were always barking. Then he heard an unusually vicious,
wolf-like snarl coming from behind him. When he turned, the
new dog had the lead stag—which had been quietly following
Mattie—in a ferocious grip by the hind leg that drew blood.

With one long step, Mattie reached the animals. Without
breaking his stride, he directed a kick at the dog. The rounded
front of his snowshoe lashed soundly against several of the dog's
taut ribs and it ran away yapping and crying in pain.

The frightened lead deer bolted into the woods, snow flying
from its legs as it ran. Mattie followed it for a while and then came
back to report the attack to Cole, who found the dog cowering
behind one of the loaded komatiks. He had intended to beat the
dog, but seeing that Mattie's big foot had inflicted punishment
enough, he tied it in place with the other dogs using a heavy rope.
It snowed again that night, a blinding, wind-hurled snow that cut
into a man's eyes if he looked into it. When the morning came
the crippled stag had returned . . . but thirty of the other reindeer
had disappeared!

MATTIE HELPED THE SAMI HERDER
, who had seen dogs inflict
wounds on reindeer many times before, make up a kind of
poultice for the wounded stag. The animal's left hind leg between
the pastern and the knee was badly torn. Without speaking and
using a practical sign language, the two indigenous men used
what their people had always used, natural medicine. They found
spruce frankum and heated it to a gluey paste. The men chopped
through the rough outside bark of a young tamarack tree and
scraped off handfuls of the pink, stringy inner bark, which the
Sami pounded into a pulp.

They blended the spruce resin and the tamarack paste together,
and applied the compound to the reindeer's leg, holding the salve
in place with a soft bandage of birch bark. When the Sami knelt
to administer aid to the deer he was honour bound to protect, the
Mi'kmaq Indian, who had killed hundreds of caribou, stood at
the animal's neck and whispered into its twitching ear a language
that only he and the deer understood. The deer shivered all over
but didn't once move its injured leg.

Cole had a terrible row with Aslic, who wanted to stay until
the other reindeer returned, even if it took as long as a week. Cole
absolutely refused. He believed the deer would return on their
own. Besides, the weather was too bad for searching, and added
to that fact was the tracking problem. There were caribou in the
area, and they would be wasting their time tracking reindeer that
could very well
be
caribou. As soon as the weather permitted,
they would move on.

Late at night on Tuesday, March 17, the wind finally blew
itself out. In the morning they went looking for the reindeer. Cole
and Sundine returned to camp with nothing, but Mattie, who had
Greening and Pere with him, came back with ten of the roving
animals. Mattie had found them feeding by a brook five miles
away. During the day, Mattie found more of the herd. By mid-afternoon the remainder had returned on their own.

The evening was clear and bright, so they decided they would
move out over the barren hills ahead of them. They kept moving
until several hours after dark, when they entered the woods
again. Here they stopped for the night. The men smoked their
pipes and sat around the fire in temperatures below ten degrees.
When Greening went to check on the herd, two caribou were
lying down with the reindeer.

On this night, Mattie took the middle watch, from midnight to
4: 00 a.m. He walked among the reindeer in the clear, cold night
and was amazed at how he sank to his knees in the deep snow
without his snowshoes while the deer walked over it. Noticing
the two wild caribou milling about with the reindeer, Mattie saw
an opportunity to stock up their dwindling supply of meat. He
would talk to Cole in the morning about killing the two caribou.

Back at the campsite, the Sami family settled around a fire
and camp of their own. Mattie took note of how close the family
was. While they had been accepted by Cole and the others, they
still kept to themselves.

Mattie could relate. Both his father and mother had died when
he was very young and he was an only child. He had been passed
around between several Mi'kmaq families, some of whom loved
him and some who hated him. Mattie could never remember
being a boy. He did recall one time, though, when he had tried to
be one.

HE WAS STAYING WITH A MI
'
KMAQ
family who had told him
they were his cousins. They were camped a bit upstream from
the mouth of the brook the white man called “Indian River.” It
poured into the northwest arm of Halls Bay, where he was told he
was born. The Indian boy had heard many stories about the white
man Hall who was captain of a schooner