The Beothuk Saga

by Bernard Assiniwi

  Bawoodisik rounded Owl Island and looked towards his mamateek. There was no smoke rising into the sky. Adenishit never let the fire go out. Even when she was digging clams, she would return often to the mamateek to make sure the coals were still alive. Bawoodisik paddled faster. As soon as he set foot on the beach he felt a deep anguish. He knew that something serious had happened. He saw the prints of English boots in the sand, leading into the forest. He also saw the tracks of Beothuk moccasins, those of his wife and his son. Then he saw his wife, stretched out on her back on the beach. She had been scalped. Her hairless skull was a hideous thing, encrusted with coagulated blood. The marks of small moccasins about her body told him that his son was still alive. He threw himself on Adenishit’s lifeless body. He had loved her deeply. He held her in his arms and wept for a long time, unable to imagine life without her.

  He spoke to her softly, gently rebuking her for exposing herself to the enemy. He reminded her of the many methods of concealment taught by the Living Memories of the nation. He reproached her for letting the fire go out. He tried to wake her up. He called his son’s name over and over: “Buh-Bosha-Yesh,” the name he had decided to give him, the name of Anin’s first son, but he knew that there would be no answering call. He felt worse than he had ever felt before. He was angry with himself for blindly following tradition.… He should have stayed to dig clams instead of going to hunt for seals.… He should have … forgotten that men must hunt and women must dig clams.… He should have … but he had not done what he should have done, and he was angry with himself.

  When his body was emptied of all its tears, when his throat was so dry that he could no longer swallow his saliva, when his very saliva hurt his throat as though he was swallowing sand, he knew that he would never cry again. He raised himself from the ground, and lifting the body of his wife in his arms, carried her to the grave of his other wife, Basdic. He laid Adenishit beside her sister and covered her body with freshly picked flowers before piling stones on her grave. It took him a long time to find enough stones to protect his wives from being dug up by scavengers. Then, like a man walking in his sleep, he began the long march to his winter camp in the interior of the island, at Red Ochre Lake.

  The rest of the community did not try to draw him out of his silence. They respected his grief, and did not wish him to relive his horror by recounting it to them. Other members who had passed by Bawoodisik’s summer camp and read the signs were able to reconstruct most of what had taken place there. And they could imagine the rest.

  Such scenes were frequent enough that the Living Memories could easily fill in the details of the story, and they repeated them often to the children, so that the children would be cautious and even defiant when they came into contact with the English.

  When Bawoodisik spoke again, he said that now Anin the ancestor had no more descendants, it was time to name a new chief, one who was not in his direct line. He then went many moons without uttering another word. He had no advice to give the council concerning the affairs of the nation. The people could go to the elders and the Living Memories if there were important decisions to be made. Bawoodisik died long before his body ceased to live. He died with Adenishit, and with the disappearance of his son, Buh-Bosha-Yesh. Life for him was no longer worth living. To him the trees had become ugly, the sea was a monster that swallowed without chewing. The spirits of the forest no longer protected the Beothuk. He thought that the spirit protector of humans no longer influenced the understanding of men and women. He told himself that it would be good to sleep and to not awaken, so that he could join Adenishit and Basdic in the land of eternal voyage.

  One morning they found Bawoodisik sleeping in his mamateek. He had eaten dozens of the marvellous mushrooms that grew in the forest, brightly coloured on top with many white dots. The father of the last descendant of Anin the ancestor had lost the will to live when he had lost his love for the island. He had lost his three reasons for living. He had left for his eternal voyage on the same day that another child of the Beothuk nation was captured: a young boy of ten season-cycles who was also taken to Fogo Island, like Tom June.

  No one felt strong enough to go to get him back. They had gone to Bawoodisik’s mamateek to ask his advice when they found him poisoned. No Beothuk had committed suicide in the hundreds of season-cycles known to the Living Memories of the community of the Red Men, because our instinct for survival was too strong. Bawoodisik’s death brought darkness to the heart of the survivors of the Beothuk Nation.

  The new council was made up entirely of women. The members made several important decisions. They decided it was time to come out of hiding. As soon as the weather permitted, they would go to the bay, all the community together, to dig clams until the season of abundance returned. Hant’s Harbour was the ideal place for digging clams in the spring, and so all the men, women, and children would go there together. No one would be armed. There were three moons in which to spread the word.

  “We must force the English to respect us and to accept our presence on the island,” said the women. “They must understand once and for all that we are not evil monsters, but men and women of a different colour. We must do this for the sake of those who remain, and in memory of those who are no more. We must do this for our future children.”

  This female movement had grown from the despair of the nation’s males. Broken and demoralized, the men had let themselves become soft, and were afraid to make the smallest decision. The women saw this and got together to form a new council. They did not elect a chief, saying that the people had fallen into the habit of relying too much on one person, and of therefore neglecting their own personal responsibilities to the community. They decided unanimously to govern by consensus, as all the councils of the nation had done since the creation of the Beothuk people.

  The women decided they had to take the situation in hand. The elders worried, but the women were young and had an unshakeable faith in the human spirit. They reminded the others that young Deed-Rashow the Red was being raised by the English in Fogo. If he was still alive, then perhaps he would help his people make peaceful contact with the English.

  “We must meet with them and learn how we can live together in peace. Otherwise they will kill us all. It is not good for us to hide and run from this new civilization that has come from away. There must be a way to learn how to live side by side without killing each other.”

  The council adopted the following strategy: the women would show themselves first, with their children, then the elders. The men would come out last. Everyone would begin to dig clams and collect shellfish. If the English arrived, they would continue what they were doing as though they were alone.

  If they had to acknowledge the English presence, they would keep smiling so that the colonists would understand that the Beothuk were also human beings and intended no harm against anyone. If verbal contact was possible, they would of course try to make them understand, but as a group: no one should try to make contact individually.

  “We will go out together, and it is as a community that we wish to be accepted.”

  The women were very proud of their plan. Once again, they had contributed to the preservation of the Beothuk Nation. Perhaps even to its expansion. They were energetic, proud, almost arrogant. The men were not asked to express their opinion at all. They had had enough opportunity to improve the life of the Beothuk Nation and they had failed to do so for a hundred season-cycles. It was now time for the women to make the decisions.

  What would they do, then, if the English were frightened by the sight of so many Beothuk in one place, and fired at them without trying to make contact? They would raise their arms above their heads to show that they were not carrying weapons. Would the English refrain from firing upon an unarmed enemy? They would not kill the entire community! Such a thing was inconceivable. The important thing was not to panic.

  Before going to Hant’s Harbour, they had to make baskets for collecting the clams and shellfish. Everyone ha
d to set about this task so that they would be ready to leave at the start of the warm season. Throughout the winter, mussels and other shellfish buried themselves in the sand on the beaches; the harvest would be plentiful.

  “If the English leave us alone, we could hold a feast-for-everyone again.”

  The women made the rounds of the mamateeks to collect all the dried grass that had been picked during the previous falling-leaf season. Then they gathered in the large central mamateek to share the work of making baskets and other containers. The people spent much of the season of cold and snow preparing for the public demonstration, the first in the history of the Beothuk. During this time of feverish activity, Mixed-Bloods from the Bay d’Espoir came with sacks of dried and smoked meat to help the Beothuk through the season of deprivation. The Mixed-Bloods seemed to be prosperous. When the Beothuk asked them how they got along with the English, they replied that the foreigners seemed to have accepted their presence well. They even spoke of regular meetings to exchange furs for things like cookstoves, iron cauldrons and pots for carrying water, as well as knives and axes. They told the Beothuk about precautions they took to avoid conflict with the newcomers. They warned them never to accept alcohol from the English, because the English would then cheat them by taking things they wanted and leaving nothing in exchange.

  “What is worse,” said one of the Mixed-Bloods, “is that that drink makes us crazy and causes us to fight among ourselves, which is never good for us. So no matter what bargain you are offered for it, do not accept it. You will lose everything.”

  When the Bay d’Espoir people left, one Beothuk couple expressed their desire to go with them and to live among them. The Mixed-Bloods agreed to take them and even invited all the Beothuk to join them. But the council of women politely refused this offer. They had determined to try to make their own peace first. If that attempt failed, then they would think about joining with the Mixed-Bloods.

  The council warmly thanked the Mixed-Bloods for so generously sharing their food with the starving Beothuk, a people who were once the uncontested masters of the island now called Newfoundland.

  47

  John August and Tom June were not the first children to be stolen from the Beothuk. Our people still talk about young Ou-Bee, whom the fur trappers took while they were looking for beaver. They broke into a family’s mamateek at the head of a bay on the south shore, at the edge of the evergreen forest. The family was sleeping soundly after having worked hard to set up their summer camp. Ou-Bee awoke at the sound of a musket being fired at close range. The first thing she saw was her father covered with blood, still lying where he had been asleep. She then saw her mother being shot full in the face. Then one of the trappers slit her younger brother’s throat with a long knife. There was blood everywhere.

  Ou-Bee was naked under her caribou blanket, and when she leapt to her feet and tried to escape she was stopped at the door by one of the men, who slapped her face so hard that she fell backwards. Another man held her down by the shoulders while the man who had struck her pulled down his cloth trousers and raped her. She screamed and tried to fight him off, but he was like a starving animal and did not stop until his appetite was appeased. Then a third man held her on the ground, squirming in her own family’s blood, while the second man took his turn with her. Then it was the third man’s turn. Ou-Bee was completely exhausted from screaming and fighting, and she was in terrible pain, not only in her body but also in her spirit. She was in pain from having been soiled by the English pigs. Pain from rolling in her family’s blood. Pain from having seen her loved ones being murdered, and of being alone. And pain from being helpless, unable to do anything to punish their murderers. If she could only get her hands on a weapon she would kill them all, as they had killed her family. But she could not move, she could only vomit on them, and even then she was beaten even harder by the men, who felt no pity for a young girl of only twelve season-cycles, a girl whose life had just been lost to her forever. Because they had taken a live Beothuk captive, each of the men received a reward of ten pounds.

  Ou-Bee was sent to England, where she was adopted by a family named Stone. They tried to give her an English name, but she steadfastly refused to respond to it. She responded only when they called her Ou-Bee. Whenever Mr. Stone was alone with Ou-Bee he tried to kiss her, but then she would scream like a terrified animal. Her screams would anger Mrs. Stone, who would come into the room and beat Ou-Bee to shut her up. But her terror of Mr. Stone was so great that she would start to scream as soon as she was alone with him. This apparently causeless screaming exasperated Mrs. Stone even more. Ou-Bee began to have nightmares in which she relived the scene of her rape, and she would wake up screaming, which of course brought Mrs. Stone into her room, to beat her until she was quiet. Somehow, the young girl survived. She was even able to laugh at the blows she received. Mrs. Stone struck her so hard and so often that eventually her heart began to give out. After that, Ou-Bee paid no attention to the treatment she received at the hand of Mrs. Stone.

  It was men she feared. For the rest of her life she detested the presence of men. Mrs. Stone complained that the girl had a mean streak in her, that she never smiled, replied only listlessly when spoken to, and refused to play with children her own age.

  It was a friend of the Stone family, a certain Reverend Clinch, who taught Ou-Bee to read and write English. He described her as “happy, playful, fond of teasing, and good with children, with whom she enjoys playing constantly.” He said she learned faster than any English child her age, and that after only two years of instruction the English language held no secrets from her. In fact, Reverend Clinch even began to learn the Beothuk language from Ou-Bee, and compiled the first collection of Beothuk words. Ou-Bee lived until the year 1788, when she died of tuberculosis, a disease to which native people have no resistance. Her story was later told to the Paul family in Bay d’Espoir by a soldier who had met the Stones, and I heard it directly from Mary Paul herself.

  Meanwhile, in keeping with the decision taken by the women of Red Ochre Lake, as soon as the growing season commenced, when the clams and mussels were most plentiful in the sand on the shores of the bays, more than four hundred women, children, elders, and young men old enough to dig them up, travelled to Hant’s Harbour, in Trinity Bay, and showed themselves openly on the beach. As agreed, no one was armed: their aim was to convince the English settlers that the Beothuk people were tired of hiding in the bush like wild animals.

  Suddenly a group of fur trappers appeared on the beach, heavily armed with rifles and muskets. There were perhaps twenty-five of them. Instinctively, and in a manner that had not been foreseen by the council, all the Beothuk ran out onto a rocky point that protruded out into Trinity Bay. As though that was a signal, the English began to fire on the unarmed people at the tip of the point. Some of the younger Beothuk jumped into the water and tried to swim away, whereupon the English marksmen made a game of shooting them. The terrified people cried for mercy, imploring the trappers to show them some measure of pity. But the shooting did not cease until all the Beothuk on the point, without a single exception, were dead. Those who witnessed the scene said that the sea and the rocks ran red with our blood.

  Such carnage had never been seen before. Four hundred dead. The Living Memories of the Beothuk Nation were all killed at a single stroke. All but one, the one who is telling you this story, Wonaoktaé, also called Demasduit. Of course, the perpetrators of this heinous act were not punished for their barbarity. As usual, official history turned its back on us.

  This took place at the end of the eighteenth century. It was also at this time that Tom June was spending much time with the man who had raised him, Doothun, my father. Each time he visited, he coughed more often and seemed sicker than the last time. He had the English sickness, tuberculosis, and he probably contaminated all those with whom he came into contact. But after the massacre at Hant’s Harbour, the English sickness spread more slowly throughout the island.

 
The community at Red Ochre Lake was now reduced to a pitiful few, those who had already been too weak to go to Hant’s Harbour. They were now too feeble to hunt or fish for themselves. Many of them died of starvation at this time. There were perhaps a hundred left in the community. Most of them were determined to do whatever they could to survive. They learned to set fire to clearings in the bush and to collect and eat the insects from the burnt grass. They gathered edible plants without caring about how they tasted. The combined wisdom of all the ancestors was called upon and put to use. The inside bark of the birch tree was dried and pounded into a kind of flour, which they used to make bread. This was to be the Beothuk’s food until the people reached the end of their history.

  Storehouses for dried meat were now well hidden, so that they would not be discovered by the English expeditions that were becoming more and more frequent in the interior of the island. Whenever a Red Man was sighted he was shot at. There were very few members of the community who had not been wounded in this way. Buckshot from an English musket spread in all directions, and pellets would often lodge in a person’s skin without killing him. These wounds would become infected, and would have to be treated. The skin would have to be cut open, and the cuts would then have to be healed with plants gathered from the bush. The healing process took a long time, because the people were already weak, sometimes too weak even to gather the healing plants.

  At the start of the season of falling leaves, a trapper named William Cull saw a Beothuk woman on the beach in Gander Bay. She appeared to be alone. There was no one else in sight. It would be easy to catch her. The reward for the capture of a live Beothuk was now fifty pounds, almost a whole year’s income for this coarse and greedy man. With the aid of three sailors, William Cull began to chase the woman. She ran from them in the zigzag pattern that had become customary with us, until her four pursuers were completely winded. When they finally captured her, she too, was exhausted, but because of her swiftness William Cull thought that she was a young woman. That, at any rate, is what she told everyone.