Mattie Mitchell (20 page)

The two men were passing the herd of reindeer, which had
wandered off again—the deer always returned on their own
now—when Mattie saw one with a lighter colour. It was a
caribou! He killed the animal with one shot to the head using his
Martin Henry rifle.

The closest reindeer twitched a bit at the sound of the shot,
but the others merely turned their heads. The two men started
to paunch the animal. When Mattie opened up its belly with his
Bowie knife and the caribou's warm blood ran out and steamed
onto the snow, the reindeer bolted, their hoofs clicking as they
ran.

They hauled the entrails away from the hot carcass, cut the
heart, liver, and kidneys away, cleaned the blood from the organs
with snow, placed the viscera inside their packs, and fastened a
rope around the head of the animal. With the two of them pulling
eagerly, they returned to the campsite, with the caribou leaving a
trail of blood growing ever fainter as they went. It had all taken
less than an hour.

Mattie skinned the caribou whole and Greening cut the tender
meat for the waiting pots. Mattie cut thin, green strips from the
hide. He told Cole they would not last as long as cured leather,
but they could be used for their snowshoe repairs. After filling
their bellies with the freshly cooked caribou meat and a steaming
cup of “switchel” tea—tea without sugar—Cole sent Mattie and
Greening out again to find a way through the mountains.

To the traveller trying to find his way through treacherous
wooded valleys, barren plateaus, and places where countless
streams flow, a good vantage point is always a boon. A distant
mountain, high ridge, or a distinctive lone hill, when viewed
from one of these same landmarks, appears as if it could be easily
followed. But when that same traveller comes down from the
viewing point and stands beneath the smallest of trees before
wending his way through a trackless wilderness, his landmarks
have suddenly vanished and he is left with only his own sense of
direction to guide him.

Mattie Mitchell was known for his incredible sense of
direction. When he went the wrong way—a rare event—he would
somehow know in just a few minutes that he had gone wrong and
would immediately correct his way. To add to his problem on
this day was the wind, which here on the flat-topped mountains
seldom stopped blowing. It was snowing again, too.

He found a place where a man could get down a gorge by
jumping on many tumbled boulders that had been dislodged by
some long-ago erosion. The way also travelled beside a sheer
drop-off, one the acrophobic reindeer would certainly not go
near. And then, just as the light was leaving the land, he found a
way to lead the deer down out of the mountains.

Now the two men made their way back to camp, not using the
broken way they had come, but walking over new snow toward
the welcome campsite and rest.

The snow had stopped some time during the night. The next
morning dawned cold and clear. Twenty-two of the reindeer
were missing and had not been seen since they had gotten the
hot scent of blood from the slaughtered caribou. Cole had fed
the dogs with some of the meat. They were running short of grub
again.

Cole directed Mattie to lead him down through the pass he
had found, to the settlement of Parson's Pond, where they would
buy provisions and return with them to the herd. They made it
after dark that evening as far as the abandoned oil wells by the
saltwater pond itself, where they entered a deserted shack. They
lit a fire in the small wood stove and slept soundly under a roof
that did not flap in the wind.

Parson's Pond is a saltwater inlet that allows the North Atlantic
waters inland almost to the foot of the mountains. Fresh water
enters the pond from the streams on the hills nearby, mixing with
the clear, salty ocean waters. In 1867, businessman John Silver
was drilling for oil by the north shore of this brackish lake when
he was stopped by the French government.

The French still claimed rights to this land, claiming the
Treaty of Utrecht as their authority. This treaty, signed by the
French nation in the city of Utrecht in the far-off Netherlands in
1713, ceded to the English all of their claims of eastern Canada,
along with most of the coastal part of the island of Newfoundland.
However, the French retained their age-old fishing rights to part
of the island, according to article thirteen of that treaty:

That part of the said Island, which stretched from the place
called Cape Bonavista to the northern point of the said Island,
and from thence turning down by the western side, reaches as
far as the place called Pointe Riche.

It is worthy of noting that, in all of the negotiations that
involved a land many times larger than both the French and
English nations combined, the native peoples who inhabited
the land were not mentioned. The English allowed the French
fisherman exclusive rights to erect flakes for the purpose of drying
the codfish and reluctantly agreed to temporary shelters limited
to the fishing season. Silver's oil drilling did not fall under the
fishing agreement, and the French, knowing they would never
reap any benefit from oil along “their” fishing shores, protested.
Amazingly, well over a century after the signing, the Treaty of
Utrecht put a stop to Silver's enterprising venture.

Mattie Mitchell had witnessed that operation from a distance
as an eager young trapper in his twenties. He had seen the same
place drilled again in 1895, when the Newfoundland government
discovered oil there. This venture too was plagued with problems,
not the least of which was a financial one, and this latest operation
failed, too.

Mattie Mitchell and Hugh Cole left the dilapidated shack
in the morning without breakfasting and walked the five or so
miles to the settlement of Parson's Pond. They arrived at 6: 30
a.m. and were welcomed into one of the friendly homes, where
they enjoyed a hearty breakfast they did not have to cook for
themselves. After the meal they purchased supplies and headed
back into the mountains with loaded packs.

And on April 15, Mattie Mitchell, in full stride and wearing
torn snowshoes, came down out of the mountains leading the
curious reindeer and the human troop behind him. Part of the
way brought them to a very steep place and the deer snorted their
obvious dislike, but the barking dogs and the yelling humans
would not allow them to turn back. The stag that had been
crippled by the dog was still lame and the rocky decline caused
the animal much misery, so Cole ordered the reindeer loaded on
one of the sleds, where it was tied securely and rode in style, like
the Lapland women, down the south side of Parson's Pond.

Snow started again, and with the strong winds whistling in
from the gulf bringing its Arctic chill to the land, Mattie led
them through sheltered leads among stunted tuckamore. Here the
reindeer found the food to their liking and the company had to
drive them from the flora constantly. They swam the reindeer
across St. Paul's inlet, where the animals seemed to enjoy the
short swim and kept rubbing their bodies against the dories the
humans were paddling, as if playfully hoping to dislodge their
handlers into the water.

Just as dark came on the evening of April 8, Mattie's wife,
Mary Anne, heard a commotion outside her door. Stepping
outside she saw racing, barking dogs and yelling children, several
men, and two younger women all hurrying along the snowy path
that ran by her door into the hills. A distant barking from the
green hills joined the village din and the echo of the excited
dogs resounded around the quiet evening cove at Norris Point in
Bonne Bay. Then Mary saw her tall husband come walking at the
head of a bobbing bunch of animals, with the lowering shadow of
darkness settling upon his broad shoulders. And that night Mattie
slept under his roof and held in his arms the woman that he loved.

ALLOWING LITTLE TIME FOR REST
, Cole got Mattie to take
him to Deer Lake by a fresh dog team the next day. They arrived
at the rail terminal at 6: 30 a.m., in time to smell the fumes of the
eastbound way-freight's struggling engine.

Mitchell returned alone to the herd in Bonne Bay the next
day. The ice in the east arm of the bay was starting to break up
and was unsafe for the reindeer to travel across, so Mattie led the
group along an alternate route that he had walked thousands of
times: around the northernmost end of the east arm to Deer Lake,
where the reindeer browsed beneath the magnificent looming
mountains on a land that Mattie himself owned. He led them
down through the valleys and up over the mountain passes. They
crossed the rising Lomond River at a steady, shallow spot that he
knew of and headed southwest to Deer Lake. The lame stag was
unable to walk, so they strapped it to a sled again and released it
only at night to feed.

On April 24, the expedition arrived at the logging town of
Deer Lake, where they were met by a well-rested Hugh Cole.
Sundine, the Sami herder Aslic, and his wife and their daughter,
Maretta, who stared in amazement at the first whistle-blowing
locomotive she had ever seen, boarded the train at the railhead.
Cole ordered four of the reindeer stags, two of which had suffered
injuries on that last talus slope coming into Parson's Pond, and
two which simply appeared to be “played out,” loaded into one
of the covered freight cars for the run east to Millertown. The
other Lapland herder, Pere, Aslic's son, who had developed a
friendship with Mattie, stayed with Mattie Mitchell and Greening
to drive the herd to Millertown. All of the accumulated baggage
from their trip south, including the komatiks and the dogs, were
also loaded aboard the train. Cole left the three men one small
dog and enough grub to last for two days before he departed with
his entourage on the train, first class, for Millertown.

The trio set off on the last leg of their historic trek. The
reindeer followed Mattie without encouragement. The lone dog
trailed behind them silently with its tongue out. They travelled
with relative ease along the railbed in the disappearing wake of
the train. They left it where it crossed Kitty's Brook, well inland
on the south side of Sandy Lake.

South and east for the next five days, Mattie led the party on
the familiar way along the general course of the brook, which
they crossed out of necessity several times as they went. Past the
Gaff and Main and the Fore Mast in the distance, they walked
and crossed south of the Mizzen Mast. Here, in the very heart
of this island nation, the influence of the sea that surrounded it
persisted. European explorers had given the rocky promontories
that stood above this plateau the names of a fully-rigged sailing
vessel, and by doing so the geological formations lost their age-old Indian ones. The four outcrops rose up out of the barren,
windy landscape, like the permanently frozen pingos of the Arctic
coast, and had always been used to guide the Indian people along
their way.

This was a place Mattie knew well. He had hunted caribou
here many times and had once led an American sportsman there
to take a trophy stag with more than forty points. As he passed
through the area, Mattie remembered the headless deer he had left
on the barrens of the Topsails that day. The American refused to
take any of the meat, and Mattie, who had to carry on his back the
weighted, spreading antlers, was able to take only a few choice
cuts from the carcass. He also remembered the Yankee sport
taking the biggest, juiciest of the steaks out of the iron frying pan
as soon as Mattie had cooked them by their campfire that night.
He wished he had his pack filled with some of that meat now.

Down and away from the drifting Topsail barrens they made
their difficult way to the thick, wooded valley where the Hines
River rushed east toward the huge Red Indian Lake. He set rabbit
snares every night in the alder beds and every morning he was
rewarded with a brace and sometimes more of the tasty animals,
which the three of them ate gratefully. Late one evening he crept
up behind a beaver lodge. The big rodent was swimming back
and forth in the small channel of water that opened beside its
“pantry.” He recognized it as a male and, knowing the female
would care for the kits that were almost certainly inside the
lodge, he killed the animal with one clean shot. That night the
three men feasted on roasted beaver meat and, in the morning,
with their bellies filled for the first time in days, they crossed the
Buchans River and stood on the northern bank of the windy Red
Indian Lake.