Authors: Karl Iagnemma
“What do the figures represent?” Elisha asked.
By way of response Tiffin sighed with pleasure, rubbing the soles of his bare feet. He was seated cross-legged beside the cookfire, the birch-bark scroll on the sand before him. The man’s nose was sun-blistered and peeling, his muttonchops grown to carroty tufts. Behind him Mr. Brush reclined against a pack of stores, absorbed in oiling his rifle.
“In fact, the message is simple to decipher. Observe: a figure of a man with a banner streaming from his mouth, as if in proclamation. Next, an image of a Native lodge—likely a Midewiwin medicine lodge. These curving lines, here, represent streams or rivers. And these grooves are a temporal counting method, describing the passage of days or weeks. Thus, it is an announcement to passing Chippewas that a medicine lodge is being constructed near a particular river, and that all are invited to attend the ceremony in five days’ time.”
Susette passed mugs of steaming stew, and Professor Tiffin swallowed a spoonful then puffed to cool his mouth. “My dear woman,” he said, “would you agree with my interpretation?”
“I do not know. My mother never wrote with drawings. She had French.”
“Precisely!” Tiffin said. “You see, the Chippewa people have lost the ability to communicate with symbols—and thus they have no written record of their own history. Imagine! They cannot answer the most fundamental questions: How did you come here? When did you come here? And why?”
“Please excuse me.” Mr. Brush rose with his mug and started down the beach. The day had darkened beneath a scrim of clouds, and now a breeze swirled in and flared the cookfire. Lake Superior’s swells were tipped with greenish foam.
“A marvelous scroll, truly. The pigment is astonishing—a mixture of hematite-rich clay and pine sap. Quite indelible.” Professor Tiffin turned to Susette and whispered, “Madame, your culinary preparations are delicious, however
perhaps
you could employ a bit less pepper.”
“But surely not all Chippewas have forgotten their language,” Elisha said. “Otherwise no one could have written that message.”
Tiffin grinned condescendingly as stew rilled down his chin. The sight amazed Elisha: the unkempt hair and clothes, the vagabond manners; yet with it a confidence near to arrogance. He was like a court jester, the boy thought, or a wise fool in one of Shakespeare’s comedies.
The man dipped a second portion of stew. The Chippewa people, he explained, use pictographic writing for mundane communications; however they also employ pictography to maintain the historical record. These writings are recorded by members of the Midewiwin, a mystical society—a sort of Native Masonic order—who etch historical narratives on scrolls and stone tablets, which they bury in sacred locations. Over time the Midewiwin have dwindled in numbers, and the locations of the buried tablets have been lost. And thus the ancient historical record has vanished.
“I have read about buried tablets,” Elisha said. “The one in Albany, a few years back. And the one in western Virginia—the broken tablet with the prayer carved on its face.”
“The Grave Creek tablet!” Professor Tiffin’s cheeks were pink with excitement. “The Grave Creek tablet is mere pottery, my boy—this summer we will unearth tablets describing the history of the Native people
after the deluge
. They will explain the Chippewas’ connection to the ancient Christians, and the mystery of their arrival to America! We will discover a Native Genesis, if you will!”
Mr. Brush had returned to camp during Tiffin’s monologue and stood with arms folded, listening. Now the man snorted. “A Native Genesis! That is simply too rich.”
Tiffin froze with the mug at his lips. “As you are no doubt aware, the question of the origins of the Native people is rather crucial. Smith and Harlan have written on the subject. Constantine Rafinesque as well. Though perhaps you’ve been too busy collecting pebbles to notice.”
“You are suggesting that howling red savages are the lost sons of Moses! Natives
have no religion
—they are incapable. The nearest a Chippewa ever comes to Christ is when he passes a church en route to the saloon!” Mr. Brush nodded to Susette Morel. “I refer only to full-blood Natives, Madame.”
Tiffin turned from Brush and addressed the flickering cookfire. “Your mind is fouled by bigotry. A pathetic condition for a scientific gentleman.”
He is not intimidated by the man, Elisha marveled. Brush had been with Brown at Sackets Harbor during the Second War for Independence; Elisha imagined him shouting orders from horseback above a smoky field, his soldiers motivated by fear rather than affection. Nervous, as Elisha was, at the prospect of disappointing the man. Tiffin was either very brave or very foolish.
“Mr. Brush, Professor Tiffin,” Elisha said, “why don’t we all simply abide each other’s opinions. Maybe both of you—”
“I refuse to pay you any more mind,” Brush muttered. “That our legislature is financing your efforts is enough to put me off supper.” He tossed his mug into the empty cookpot and Elisha started at the clatter. “Well! I will spend my days analyzing this region’s topography and timber and mineral evidence, and you will hunt for buried treasure. In that case I propose a wager: at the expedition’s conclusion we will independently submit reports to an impartial authority in Detroit—say, the Young Men’s Society—and ask them to judge whose work is of greater value to science.”
“Excellent! The loser will publish a notice in the
City Examiner,
apologizing for squandering public funds. We shall wager our scientific reputations.”
“I would prefer you offer something of value, but so be it.”
Tiffin stepped around the cookfire, his trousers shifting to reveal a ragged tear, a seam of floury skin. Brush bent forward with a tight smile, a lick of hair fallen loose from his oiled coif.
The two men shook hands.
They paddled past the Two Hearted River and Sucker River into a range of high, steep dunes. The party spent an afternoon measuring the peaks’ heights, then climbing the highest dune to achieve a vista. Ospreys watched them from deadwood logs half-buried in the sand. The terrain was yellow siliceous sand mixed with nuggets of hornblende and limestone; the rocks were glassy volcanic fragments and variegated mounds of sandstone. Elisha dutifully recorded his observations, allowing himself a single painterly description: of quartz pebbles the size of pigeon’s eggs littering the beach.
Susette shot a brace of fat wood ducks and spitted them over an open fire. Mr. Brush and Professor Tiffin toasted her health with mugs of water, their previous day’s argument seemingly forgotten. Despite Elisha’s attempts at conversation Susette said little, her attention fixed on the roasting birds. She understands everything, he realized: my daydreams, my ridiculous desires. He knew he should apologize for his brazenness but the notion left him heartsick. He retired to his tent without finishing supper.
That next morning they came into a region of sandstone cliffs streaked with pink and violet and deep, bottle-glass green. These were the Pictured Rocks, according to Tiffin, the colors caused by chemical reactions of lichens with minerals in the stone. Swallows flitted among cliffside nests. Each man reached for his fieldbook while Susette steadied the canoe, singing,
“A la claire fontaine, M’en allant promener…”
The wind was still, the sun barely strong enough to warm the skin. They sketched rapidly, Tiffin brushing his scene with watercolors; finally the three presented their work to Susette for jury. She grinned, declaring Professor Tiffin’s drawing the finest, though only for his access to paint. Mr. Brush said nothing, rubbing his jaw to conceal a smile.
They had been among the Pictured Rocks for an hour when the lake grew suddenly restless. Sooty cumulus clouds lay heaped to the west. A drizzle began that slid beneath Elisha’s waxed cape and set his teeth to chatter. Waves chopped against the canoe’s bow.
The party doubled their pace, searching for a landing site among the cliff walls. A vague, vaporous column moved toward them; then the rain thickened to a downpour and thunder crackled overhead. “We must land immediately!” Tiffin shouted. “We will be swamped!” Water sluiced over the gunwales. Elisha dug with the paddle, his shoulders burning, his throat gripped by fear. Behind him, Mr. Brush grunted at every stroke. The canoe rolled and Tiffin shrieked with terror.
“There!” Brush steered the canoe toward a stretch of low shoreline between the cliffs. It appeared to be the entrance of a river. Tongues of lightning flickered over the forest. When the canoe neared the river’s entrance Mr. Brush leapt into the lake, waves licking at his chin, and then Elisha and Professor Tiffin and Susette splashed beside him, groaning as they hoisted the canoe over a sandbar and into the placid river.
They sat on the riverbank for a long while, hunched against the rain. No one spoke. Elisha rested his head on his folded arms, overwhelmed by fatigue. At last Professor Tiffin said, “We might have, perhaps…” His sentence trailed to silence.
The river was umber-colored and smelled sharply of balsam. They glided past rows of pine stumps, the sawn faces like grave tablets in a cemetery. Some ninety yards upstream they came alongside a clearing with five split-log cabins set in a half-circle around a small frame house. A bare flagpole stood beside the frame house’s door.
It was a white man’s camp. The party landed the canoe then stood motionless, as though confused by the sight; then Mr. Brush rapped at the frame house’s door and called, “Hello in there!” Silence; a hermit thrush’s call. Brush knocked again, then stepped back and stamped at the door’s edge. It swung wide, smacking the inside wall. Professor Tiffin stepped past him into the house.
Inside it was warm and stank of musk and smoke. Susette lit a splint to reveal a low room dusted with ash, shriveled herbs hanging from the ceiling joists, a charred backlog crumbled in the fireplace. Above the mantel hung a tin-framed print of King George. In the far wall was a single small window, the bull’s-eye panes opaque with soot.
“Abandoned fur post,” Brush said. “This must have been the commis’ house.” He toed a mound of beaver pelts beside the door. “These must not have been worth the burden of transport when they departed. Or else they departed unexpectedly.”
“I remember a fur post here,” Susette said. “It was the Hudson’s Bay Company. I do not know why they departed.”
“You are insinuating that they were massacred, but I do not care,” Tiffin said to Brush. He moved to the woodbox beside the hearth and rooted inside for kindling. “I propose that we dine immediately. I am near starved.”
“Someone has laid us a banquet.”
Brush nodded toward a sawbuck table in the corner. A plate and knife and mug sat before a pewter platter that appeared to be draped with a mink’s pelt. Then Elisha realized it was the remnants of a meal, lumps of meat or fish furred with black mold that had crawled over the platter’s lip onto the table.
“Pay that no mind,” Professor Tiffin said. “The fact that they were untidy does not mean they were scalped by rabid Chippewas. Elisha, fetch some water while I kindle a fire.”
Susette prepared a quick meal of fried pork and corn mush and they fell to eating, sitting on beaver skins around the hearth, their grease-smeared faces flickering in the firelight. When the last bit of mush had been mopped up Professor Tiffin sighed, blotting his brow. “My dear woman,” he said softly. “Your cookery skills would put Hestia herself to shame. Perfectly seasoned.”
The man rose with a groan and ventured into the room’s far corner. “Silver and red fox, fisher…black bear, by jay. Our host was a tolerably good trapper!” He took up a splint and ducked into a low storeroom, reappeared holding an earthenware jug. Tiffin twisted off the cork and brought it to his nose. “Whiskey! Indian whiskey, but whiskey nonetheless!”
“Curb yourself,” Brush said. “That is home-brewed mash, for Natives. If you’re lucky you’ll only go blind.”
Professor Tiffin took a sucking pull on the jug. “My sweet darling dear. Oh! I have missed you severely!”
“We may as well make camp,” Elisha said. “These skins are likely the softest beds we’ll see until September.”
“Dickens!” Tiffin shouted. “Scott! Hemans!” He was kneeling beside the window, the splint illuminating a low bookshelf. The man’s voice rose to a strangled pitch. “Pope! An entire library! English and French!”
He gathered an armload of books and spilled them before the hearth with a gleeful cackle. Elisha took up the jug and drank: the liquor was weak but seasoned with fiery red pepper. He coughed, blinking back tears.
“Is there Shakespeare?” the boy asked. “How about
As You Like It
?”
“A splendid choice! But unfortunately…here, instead we have
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Even more appropriate! Madame Morel, you sit beside me, here. We shall read alternating parts.”
The woman hesitated; then she sat beside Tiffin on a pile of skins. Elisha passed the jug and she sipped deeply, wiped her mouth with her wrist. She offered the jug to Mr. Brush; he scowled, then tipped it back and swallowed two long gulps. He gasped.
“Begin here,” Tiffin said. “Act two, where Oberon encounters Titania in a wood near Athens. I shall read Oberon. You shall read the role of Titania.”
She tilted the book toward the fire. “Titania. ‘What, jealous Oberon. Fairies, skip hence. I have forsworn his bed and company.’”
“No, no—you don’t announce who is speaking, you simply speak. And project your voice, as if to an enormous audience, like this.” Professor Tiffin cleared his throat. “‘What,
jealous Oberon
!’”
“‘What,
jealous Oberon!
Fairies, skip hence! I have forsworn his bed and company!’”
Elisha was frozen, mortified. Susette’s reading was halting but clear, her pronunciation nearly perfect. In his mind’s eye he saw himself kneeling beside her, reading like a schoolmaster from
Godey’s Lady’s Book
while she sat patiently. He swallowed a pull of whiskey. My good Lord, he thought, I am a fool.
“‘Tarry,
rash wanton
,’” Tiffin said. “‘Am I
not
thy lord?’”