The Beothuk Saga

by Bernard Assiniwi

  Anin told them to walk ahead of him, using eloquent gestures to make the Bouguishamesh obey. Instead, both women sank to their knees, crying and wringing their hands. One of them wore a dress similar to Gudruide’s, but the other was clothed in skins sewn loosely together about her legs, with a kind of apron covering her sex, while around her shoulders was a blanket made from the skin of those animals whose hair returns each season-cycle. The man remained on his feet. His hair was the colour of the wildflowers that filled the clearings at the height of the warm season. He was wearing skins wrapped around his legs to the tops of his thighs, held in place by cords. The poorly dressed woman had hair the colour of red ochre, the powdered stone with which the Addaboutik covered their bodies in the warm season to protect themselves from biting insects. All three strangers were bigger than Anin, but he was the stronger because of his spear and his bow and arrows, which he carried over his shoulder. He gestured to them again to get up and walk towards his temporary camp, where his own women were waiting.

  The man seemed resigned to his fate, but the women were visibly terrified. As they neared the camp, the tallest of them saw Gudruide, who was coming to meet them, spear in hand. She seemed to recognize her as one of her own, and threw herself into Gudruide’s arms, crying and laughing at the same time. The two women babbled in their throaty Bouguishamesh tongue while the second woman and the man stood back and looked on without smiling, remaining wary. Anin, always on his guard, prodded them with his harpoon. Gudruide pushed herself away from the woman she had been embracing and spoke to Anin in the Addaboutik language:

  “This is my younger sister,” she said. “The Vikings tried to kill her, too, just as they tried to kill me. She ran away with these two Scottish slaves, escaping from the two men you killed on the path to the bay. They are not dangerous to us. They have nowhere to go. They will be killed if they return. May we keep them with us?”

  Anin did not reply at once. Three more people to feed. Two more pale-skinned women. A man who might be of some help.

  “This man,” he said to Gudruide. “Can he hunt?”

  Gudruide spoke to the man in Bouguishamesh and waited for his reply before turning back to Anin.

  “He says he will quickly learn if he is given a weapon to hunt with. He also says he can run faster than the wind.”

  Anin smiled at this phrase. He lowered his spear and poked it in the back of the Scottish slave. Could he trust these three newcomers? Gudruide he trusted. Her younger sister seemed hardy, as did the other woman, able to carry the packs while Gudruide and Woasut rested. The man could carry Anin’s pack, leaving him only the tapatook.

  “We will take them with us,” he told Gudruide. “But they must work hard. Each must take a load.”

  Gudruide was happy. She translated Anin’s decision and her happiness spread to the three new faces. The Scottish slaves threw themselves to their knees to thank Anin for his mercy, which made Anin furious with them. He ordered them to stand up on their feet.

  “The Addaboutik hate weak people who spend their lives begging. This is now the second time these people have gone down on their knees before me. I will not tolerate weakness. I would rather kill them.”

  Gudruide tried to explain that their kneeling was a gesture of gratitude, not weakness, that the two people were slaves. Anin understood none of this. Kneeling was a woman’s gesture, and was undignified in a man. It showed feminine fear. The woman must also learn not to feel fear, and above all not to show fear if she felt it. Otherwise he would kill her with his own hands. He would kill the man, too, if he showed any more signs of weakness.

  “They are in the land of the Addaboutik now,” he said, “and they must live like the Addaboutik or else die. They must also speak the Addaboutik language. They must learn it so that I may understand them. I do not want to hear the Bouguishamesh language again. I must understand what everyone is saying. The man is not yet ready to learn how to hunt. He will be given a weapon when he is truly a man.”

  When he had finished speaking he seemed perfectly calm. He looked at Gudruide: “What does this mean, Scottish slave?”

  Gudruide explained that the two had been captured on an island in the Irish Sea. That meant they had been forced to serve the people who had captured them, and these masters had the power of life and death over them. She added that the word Scottish meant that they came from a country other than the one she and her sister came from. Anin seemed satisfied by this answer, and remained silent while he considered it. Then he told Gudruide to tell them what he was about to say.

  “In this country there are no slaves. There are only males and females. Males are stronger than females, but females are very useful and good companions. No one gets down on their knees to beg. Knees are for coupling, or for wrestling, for satisfying our needs among ourselves. Tell them that here, Anin gives the orders because he knows the country better than the others. And tell them that they must learn to speak Addaboutik.”

  While Gudruide relayed his words to the newcomers, Anin went to join Woasut and the child who had been with them for barely two suns.

  13

  The six members of the clan were standing at the top of a cliff overlooking the windy coast at the edge of the long tongue of land they had just crossed. There had been no further incidents during their trek towards the wind. Gwenid had easily carried her older sister’s pack; Della, the Scottish woman, had taken Woasut’s so that the Beothuk could better look after her baby. Robb, the slave, was given Anin’s heavier load. They had had to make a detour towards the cold region to get around a chain of high mountains, and so crossing the tongue of land had taken them seven suns. Anin considered that there had not been seven suns, but rather seven periods of wan light, since the sun had not once shown itself.

  Robb carried Anin’s heavy pack without complaint, a broad smile never leaving his lips. Della, whose load was as heavy as Robb’s, removed her leg coverings and put them on only at night, despite the thorny bushes and sharp branches they had to walk through. Her legs were strong and shapely, Anin did not fail to notice. Well muscled. She, like Robb, smiled a great deal of the time, and talked almost incessantly. She repeated the Beothuk and Addaboutik words that Woasut and Gudruide had taught her over and over, and so was soon able to express at least her simpler daily needs. Robb was less quick to learn than Della, partly because Anin spoke to him hardly at all while they were walking, and not at all when they took turns beating a path for the others.

  Now, at the top of the cliff, they decided to take shelter from the wind near a brook that fell sharply down towards the sea at the head of a long bay. Water from melting snow had formed a natural, sloping path down to the shore, but Anin chose to make camp at the top rather than expose the clan unnecessarily at the bottom. He also thought there would be less wind at the top, and they would be close to the forest, where they would find firewood and bark, of which there was none at the level of the bay. He set the three women to gather firewood and start a fire. They also collected moss, still dry from the recent season of cold and snow. Then they cut evergreen boughs to carve out a place that would be protected from the wind and the damp.

  Meanwhile, Anin and Robb went off in search of birch trees big enough to provide bark for a mamateek. Armed with sharp cutting stones and short clubs, they set off into the bush. When they found a suitably sized tree, they made a long, vertical incision on one side of its trunk, and two circular incisions at the base and higher up. Then, more slowly, they peeled the bark from the trunk, tapping the sharp stones with the wooden clubs. To make the top incision, Anin stood on Robb’s shoulders while the slave moved around the tree. It took them a whole sun to gather enough bark to make a mamateek large enough to hold six adults and two babies, since Gudruide must surely be approaching the time of her confinement.

  The two men also marked the position of an immense birch tree from which they would later take bark for the second tapatook they would need when they were ready to begin their sea voyage in the
warm season. They did not take the bark now, because tapatook bark must be in prime condition. The bark they had taken, they rolled and tied into loose bundles so that it would not be difficult to stretch over the framework of the mamateek. When they returned to camp with their first load, they found that the women had already cut and positioned the poles for the framework, and had traced a circle in the centre for the firepit, which would be made with stones the women had also gathered. Anin was astonished. How had the women cut the poles so quickly? Della raised her robe and showed him a large, iron axe tucked into the belt of her undergarment, and broke out into loud, sonorous laughter that was pleasant to hear. The three other women also began to laugh. They were proud of the good work they had done. Soon all four of them were doubled up with laughter, which the two men found so infectious that they, too, began to laugh without quite knowing what they were laughing at. It was as though their exhaustion from the long journey was being evaporated by cascades of pure joy and relief.

  It took them several suns to settle into their new camp and to be rested. The women made plans to gather clams and sea cucumbers, and Woasut promised to show the others how to catch squid. The mamateek was completed during the first sun, just after nightfall, the women having no trouble putting the last of the bark in place and leaning heavy poles on the covered framework to secure it. Anin lit the fire and the clan ate the last of the dried and smoked meat.

  That night, Gudruide spoke in Addaboutik about her life in the cold country, which she called “the North.” She came from an island called Ice-land, she said, and had emigrated to another place called Green-land. Her parents were fishers and farmers, planting seeds in the earth and raising the two-horned beasts and also sheep. She spoke about animals they called horses, on which they rode and which they also used to pull heavy loads on large sleds with wheels, runners that moved in circles. The men from Green-land would often go off in search of new lands that were good for farming, she told them. The men would spend months at sea without seeing land, and often they would drown when there were storms. Gudruide told how she had come to the land of the Addaboutik and the Beothuk. They had almost been killed by waves higher than five men. The waves had swamped their drakkar, which was a tapatook big enough to hold them as well as three two-horns and ten sheep. Anin and Woasut marvelled at her stories. Anin wanted to know why her own people had tried to kill her and her sister and the two slaves.

  “My husband was a close friend of two brother merchants,” she replied. “Finnbogi and Helgi. The brothers had entered into an agreement with a warrior, a woman named Freydis, who became Finnbogi’s mistress. When she was pregnant by him, she told him he must give her half of all the goods covered by their agreement. Since he already shared the ownership of the goods with his brother Helgi, Finnbogi told Freydis that he could not give her what he did not rightfully own. Freydis then had the brothers killed by the two men that you killed on the path, Anin. My husband knew about this, and told Freydis that when they returned to Green-land he would denounce her. So she had him killed, as well. My sister and I also knew about this, of course, so she also tried to silence us. But we fled, each going in a different direction. I went alone, and Gwenid took the two Scottish slaves with her. The rest you know.”

  Anin pondered Gudruide’s tale. What a strange life these Bouguishamesh lived. In order to gain possession of a few goods, a female warrior would kill three men and attempt to kill two women and the slave couple. Among the Addaboutik, a murderer was punished by death or banishment from the community. These people were greedy, and he and Woasut had been lucky to have come across only three of them, and to have killed all three. The two women from the North could not be blamed for the bad conduct of the others, of course. Still, the strange customs of the people Gudruide had described made him realize he must remain on guard, so that nothing of the sort would happen to him and Woasut. As for the two Scottish slaves, they must be greatly relieved at no longer having to serve such people.

  That night, with the fire burning and the six adults and the child adding the warmth of their bodies, it was very warm in the mamateek. They lay almost naked on the evergreen boughs covered with caribou blankets, and in the soft light of the fire Anin contemplated the skin of the four strangers. He saw Gudruide’s round, white belly, which seemed ready to burst, and the dark thatch between her legs. He looked at her sister’s long-limbed body, and at Della’s fiery red pubic hair. Woasut’s sex was completely hairless. Anin wondered how it was possible that there were so many differences between people. Their skin colour, their hair colour, the rich growth of hair between the legs of these pale people, and the absence of such hair among the Addaboutik and Beothuk. He determined to ask the purpose of this nether hair the next time they were all talking together, as they had been this night. Then he lay down beside Gudruide, enfolded her in his arms, and went almost immediately to sleep.

  14

  The women had been awake all night. Gudruide’s baby had arrived – a beautiful girl.

  Plump, healthy, pink, her skin paler even than that of the other new members of Anin’s clan, she was so big that for a while it seemed she would never come out. Gudruide spent most of the night in labour; it was nearly dawn when the baby’s head finally appeared in the passage. It was Gwenid’s first birthing, and she had been quite unnerved. Della, the Scottish slave, seemed to have had more experience; still, as the night wore on, she had said they would have to sacrifice the child to save the mother. Although Woasut could not understand what the two other women were saying in that guttural language of theirs, she knew that Gudruide’s situation was serious. At the critical moment, she ordered the other women out of the mamateek and melted some of the seal fat that she had been carefully conserving since the previous leaf-falling season. She coated her hands with the warm oil, inserted one deep into Gudruide’s birth passage and slowly withdrew it, pulling the baby with it. Then she inserted her other hand, and urged Gudruide to push with each new contraction. Before long the baby’s head was out, and the child was born with no further difficulty. But Woasut knew that it would never be as strong and resilient as her male child, because Gudruide had been lying down when she delivered it. Also because the female child had waited so long to come out. That was always a bad sign in a newborn.

  Woasut prepared a bed of dried moss and, since Gudruide was too weak to do it herself, licked the baby until it was completely clean. She also had to cut the cord with her teeth. Gudruide was all but unconscious. “Without me,” thought Woasut, “this baby would be dead. These people know nothing about birthing. What did they learn from their own mothers?” She covered the mother and her baby with a caribou blanket and went outside to inform the others that the newborn was a female and apparently in good health. The news was joyfully received, and despite their fatigue after a long, sleepless night, everyone went off to perform their daily tasks.

  The two men went hunting. Anin thought it was time for Robb to learn how to hunt the game of this country. He took a length of cord, gave a spear to the Scotsman, and carried his own bow and arrows. He also brought a net for catching fish. He would take Robb up to the high marshlands at the top of the plateaux. While they were gone, Woasut taught the two women to plait and oil dried plant strips, and to fashion them into snares for trapping rabbits. She also showed them how to set the snares. When all the snares were properly set, the women descended the path to the shore of the bay, where they gathered clams and sea cucumbers. At the foot of the waterfall there was a small tidal pool, where they found a salmon that had been trapped there by the receding waters. They quickly surrounded it and caught it with their bare hands. They were completely soaked after their adventure, but very happy, and when they returned to the mamateek they took off their wet clothes, spread them near the fire to dry, and were sitting naked, talking and laughing amongst themselves and Gudruide when the men returned. There was no shyness among the women, and they did not attempt to cover themselves when the men entered the mamateek. They went
on cooking clams and sea cucumbers on the flat stone set in the middle of the firepit. During the meal, the men’s eyes never left the women’s glistening bodies. Woasut was wearing a strip of caribou skin between her legs, held in place by a thin cord tied around her waist; she still flowed with the aftereffects of childbirth, and she had placed a lining of dried moss under the caribou skin. As long as she was nursing her child, there could be no question of coupling with Anin. Still, she understood that men wanted women, and she smiled when she saw Anin and Robb admiring the naked bodies displayed so temptingly before them. She was curious to see who would couple with whom. She hoped Anin would honour Gwenid, the sister of the woman to whom she had developed a strong attachment since their shared birthings. She thought the two slaves would choose each other. But she was wrong: it was Della who drew Anin’s gaze. Her dark red hair seemed to have a powerful attraction for him, and as head male of the clan he signalled to Robb that the latter was to have Gwenid. Then he lowered himself to his knees and told the Scottish woman to come to him. Della looked shyly at Woasut, who turned away quickly so as not to seem to be consenting to their union. How could she? She was first wife, but Anin was the provider, the man who had saved her life, and the chief of this clan of pale-skinned strangers. When Della turned and presented herself to Anin, he first caressed her from shoulder to rump, then nibbled playfully at her neck, and then entered her brusquely. When he was satisfied, he withdrew, and the young woman did not insist that he continue, as his first two wives had done. Robb, perhaps being shy, covered himself and Gwenid with a caribou blanket, under which he caressed her ardently. Just as he was about to enter her, however, she turned to him and raised her legs, so that he was obliged to take her face to face. The movement pushed aside the blanket, and the eyes of all the others in the mamateek were drawn to their coupling. It was only the third time Anin had seen this new position – once when Woasut had turned spontaneously to him, again with Gudruide, and now with Robb and Gwenid, the sister of his second wife. He was intrigued by it. When the couple were finished, he could not help asking Gudruide what it was that women saw in it.