The Beothuk Saga

by Bernard Assiniwi

  All the leaves had fallen when I gave birth to a male child. He was not big, but he was healthy. I was in my twenty-seventh season-cycle, but this was my first child and my milk was not abundant. We had to start him on solid food very early so that he would grow and survive. But I was very happy, and Nonosabasut was watchful and attentive. Shanawdithit helped me with my daily tasks. She was now seventeen season-cycles, but there was no one to take her for a wife. This is sad for a people who for hundreds of season-cycles have lived only for the family, the clan, and the nation, whose strongest urge is to populate the island and defend the integrity of their territory. If we were more numerous, we would have declared war on the invaders who used any means within their power, including violence and trickery, to kill us.

  There were not enough resources on the island to feed a larger nation. The only way for us to survive was to drive the palefaces out of our country. That was our dream. But it remained nothing but a dream.

  During the winter after the birth of my child, Shanawdithit was wounded again by a fur trapper who surprised her at one of his marten traps. This time she was hit in her right side, up high where her coat was attached. She walked for half a sun to where Gausep and his wife were hunting, and they cared for her well. Despite her third wound, Shanawdithit was always smiling. She said that if she was shot three or four more times there would not be enough left of her for a husband. She also calculated that at the rate she was going, she would have enough flesh for a hundred season-cycles.

  Time passed and the number of Beothuk decreased. The fever that followed a dry cough and a general tiredness continued to take us. Three men and two women and four babies died during this last season of cold and snow.

  Then the warm season returned, and with it the heat, the sun, the berries, the blackflies and mosquitoes. It amused me to think that these tiny insects would bite us and then fly off to bite the English. I wondered if our blood tasted the same. I also wondered why the English did not cover their skin with red ochre to protect themselves from fly bites. I thought that blackflies must be able to find many nice, comfortable places to go about their business under those dark, heavy clothes the English wore. The thought of it made me laugh. It wasn’t much, but it was some compensation for all that we had lost.

  Throughout the warm season we talked about the things we would need for the winter that would come after the season of falling leaves. We would have to steal a few more sails in order to cover our mamateeks. Birchbark was becoming scarce. The trees were being cut before they could grow to their full height. At Notre Dame Bay, where we traditionally went for the largest trees, the English had cut them all down for firewood, the biggest trees first. We had to make our tapatooks smaller and smaller. We had to take their sails because they had taken our trees. The same may be said of other things. We would have dug clams, but when we went down to the beaches at night we would find that there were no clams left in the sand, the English had gathered them all during the day and left none for us. They blocked our rivers and prevented the salmon from swimming up to us. They hunted our game and prevented us from making winter clothing. It took Nonosabasut a whole winter to trap ten beavers to make me a coat for the season of cold and snow. Fortunately the meat from that animal is the best of all those that live on our island, and is very nourishing to those who know how to prepare it.

  It was decided that as soon as the season of falling leaves came, a small group would go down to Notre Dame Bay to steal some sails. At the beginning of the falling-leaf moon, five persons left for the bay: they were Shanawdithit, Nonosabasut, Gausep, his wife Mamatrabet the Song, and Shanawdithit’s father, Mamjaesdoo. When they arrived, they observed the activities of the English from the top of a small hill we call the tapatook, situated just behind the house and wharf belonging to John Peyton Jr. From there they saw that Peyton’s men were loading a ship with salmon taken from our Exploits River. When the ship was loaded and ready to leave, Peyton had to wait for high tide so the ship would not be grounded on the many reefs that fill the bay. He appeared to be nervous. He walked back and forth between his ship and his house. He walked up and down the wharf. He sensed that he was being watched, but he could see nothing. He was a sensitive man, was John Peyton. This story was told to me in detail by Shanawdithit and Mamatrabet. In telling it, the women shuddered again with their fear of being caught before the mission was completed. In order to get the sails, they had to cut the ship’s ropes, get to the tiller, direct the ship towards the beach, ground it, take down the sails, and then carry them back to Red Ochre Lake.

  It was a moonless night. The mission had to be carried out silently. Gausep carried the tapatook down to the beach, accompanied by Nonosabasut and Shanawdithit. The three of them paddled without taking the blades from the water, sculling in the Beothuk manner, towards the wharf. Suddenly they saw Peyton come out of his house and walk out onto the wharf to the ship. They barely had time to glide under the wharf, which was mounted on pylons, and to wait there without moving, without even breathing, until the nervous Englishman went away. The wait seemed so long the two women thought it would never end. Finally Peyton returned to his house. As soon as he was out of sight, Gausep climbed onto the ship and helped the others up. They tied a rope to the tapatook, and lifted it to the deck of the ship. Then the two women cut the hawsers. Slowly the ship drifted away from the wharf, pushed gently by a north wind, and headed towards the beach. Gausep was at the tiller while the two women cut the ropes attaching the folded sails to the mast, and laid them out on the deck, near the tapatook. Then they lowered the tapatook into the water. There Nonosabasut and Mamjaesdoo, along with four other men who had just come in from fishing halibut, were waiting in water up to their waists for the others to lower the sails. They placed the sails in the tapatook, pulled the tapatook to the shore, and lifted it out to carry it to Red Ochre Lake. Gausep found two muskets in the captain’s cabin. He broke them up into pieces, in recognition of all the wounds that had been inflicted on us, and for the dead of the Beothuk Nation. Then he gathered up all the fish hooks and hatchets he could find and plunged into the water to join his companions.

  It was not easy to transport those sails to our camp. The men cut two long poles and strung ropes between them to form a kind of netting, then they placed the sails on the netting so that two men could carry them. By changing places from time to time, they were able to make the return journey, which otherwise would have taken ten suns, in only seven.

  No lives were lost to the community during this expedition. As soon as they returned to camp, it was time to dig the pits for the winter mamateeks and to put the poles in place around them, and then cover the poles with the sails from John Peyton Jr.’s ship. Then the women made a second wall inside the first, to the level of their heads, and stuffed dried moss between the two walls. They also laid pine boughs on the ground around the central firepit. Finally, the pine boughs were covered with caribou hides to make the mamateek comfortable and warm.

  It took many suns to make a mamateek for the season of cold and snow, for there were many important precautions to take. The positioning of the mamateek had to be right, at the top of a small rise so that water would not run into it. Also, the ground around had to have good natural drainage, so that the mamateek would not become an island in the spring.

  It was in this mamateek that I spent the season of cold and snow with my husband Nonosabasut and our male child.

  52

  It is with great sadness that I take up the telling of this history of my people. I am Shanawdithit, of the Beothuk Nation, the niece of Demasduit. I am now the Living Memory of the Red-Ochre people. My aunt passed on to me the duty of relating the events that followed her telling.

  With the aim of getting back what had been stolen from him, John Peyton Jr. obtained permission from the governor, Sir Charles Hamilton, to recover his goods. He also received permission to capture one or two Beothuk in order to establish contact with them. It may be, as the historians of that peri
od say it is, that the governor was concerned with the well-being of our people, and that John Peyton was truly a philanthropist and humanitarian, but it would be hard to prove it by those who were primarily concerned in this matter.

  When the Mixed-Blood hunter Paul Paul saw the expedition set off from Upper Sandy Point on the morning of March 1, 1819, he recognized the two John Peytons, senior and junior, Dick Richmond, John Day, Jacky Jones, Matthew Hughster, William Cull, Thomas Taylor, and a man named Butler. From this list he knew that something unpleasant was about to happen to the Beothuk people. Although advanced in years, and taken with the dry cough, the half-Shanung, half-Sho-Undamung hunter hurried on snowshoes as fast as he could to warn us of the coming danger. He hurried so as not to lose time, and soon became exhausted with the effort. It was reckless of him, because the people of the forest know better than to venture into such an immensity of cold and snow alone.

  Despite the advanced age of John Peyton Sr., the expedition made good time, covering much ground each sun. They knew exactly where they were going. They slept little and walked with a determined rhythm, like soldiers who have received precise instructions.

  During this time, poor Paul Paul was having more and more difficulty catching his breath, and had to stop more and more often. Finally, completely exhausted, he sat down to rest, and did not get up again. Far from his own people, far even from the Beothuk camp, he went into his final sleep beside Badger Brook on March 3, 1819, without being able to warn us that the enemy was approaching. His body was eaten by wolves and other predators, and was found in the spring by one of his sons, who had gone out to look for it.

  We thought that we were about to spend a peaceful season of cold and snow. We forgot that we had enemies. When the leaves had fallen, we had the two sails taken from Peyton Jr. and we did not expect him to come after them until the spring. However, we had taken great care not to take any of his fish. No barrel on his ship destined for England had been touched. We took only two sails, ten fish hooks, and three boarding axes. It is true that Gausep broke the muskets, those weapons that had caused so many deaths and had wounded so many of our people, including myself three times.

  The month of winds came, and we thought we had escaped the vengeance of the English for another season-cycle. We were wrong. Many of us were gathered in the mamateek of Nonosabasut and Demasduit, known as Wonaoktaé, the Living Memory of the Beothuk Nation. The sun was going down rapidly, and it was almost twilight. There was a shout – “Bouguishamesh!” – and we all ran immediately outside and fled into the woods. Demasduit, carrying her infant son, was the last to leave. One of the Englishmen ran after her. Seeing that she was going to be caught, she literally threw her two-season-cycle-old son to Gausep, who caught him and threw him in turn to me. I muffled him up in my fur coat to keep him warm, and hid myself behind a stand of white pine, along with several others. The man caught up with Demasduit and, as we had been taught to do since we were children, she opened her coat to show him that she was a woman. Then she touched her breasts, which were swollen with milk, to show him that she was nursing a child.

  We all recognized the men as Beothuk killers. The one who caught Demasduit was the son of the old assassin, Peyton Sr. Although he had not yet done anything to us, the loss of his sails certainly meant he was not well disposed towards us. Gausep and his young son took out their bows, ready to attack the butchers from the Bay of Exploits. But Nonosabasut stopped them by saying that he was going to try to talk to them first. He advanced towards the group of men and, looking the old Peyton straight in the eye, told him to tell his son to let Demasduit go. When John Peyton tried to take out his pistol, Nonosabasut, swift as lightning, grabbed the weapon from his hand and threw it far away. It landed in a mound of snow covered with a crystal crust. Then Nonosabasut, the husband of Wonaoktaé, seized the old murderer by the throat with his left hand and, threatening to hit him with his right, said to him: “Tell your son to let my wife go, or I will kill you.”

  Then Peyton Jr. ordered Nonosabasut to be killed. One of the men raised his musket, which had a bayonet fixed to the end of it, and plunged it into Nonosabasut’s back. Our friend fell to his knees.

  Nonosabasut picked up a small, forked stick, raised it into the air as a sign of peace and friendship, then touched his forehead with it, and trying to stand up, offered it to Peyton Sr. The old man became afraid, thinking that Nonosabasut was attacking him again. “Are you going to let him kill me?” he shouted. We all knew what his words meant. When he had shouted them, Dick Richmond raised his musket and shot Demasduit’s husband in the back. Nonosabasut fell face down on the snow, but still he was not dead. He got to his feet again and grabbed old Peyton by the throat. Then a number of muskets all fired at once, Nonosabasut fell, and this time did not get up.

  I know that now everyone says that it was Nonosabasut who, unarmed, first attacked those poor, helpless murderers who were armed to the teeth, but I, Shanawdithit, tell you that although Nonosabasut was courageous and loved Demasduit very much, he was also not stupid, and would never have faced ten well-armed men, with their muskets and pistols, alone and weaponless as he was. He was only trying to save his wife. One day I heard someone say that the English thought that Nonosabasut was an enraged monster. Nonosabasut was well built, strong, and impressive of stature. But he was not a monster, and he was not enormous. He was an ordinary Beothuk, and because he was not motivated by fear, but by love, his enemies were afraid of him and saw him as bigger than he was. He was a good husband, a gentle and caring father. He loved Demasduit deeply, and she loved him in return. Such men gain in stature when they are dead, and those who kill them are the ones who should be reproached.

  When Lieutenant David Buchan came to make contact with us when I was still a young girl, he spoke to Nonosabasut for a long time and did not report being overly impressed by his size. We are always astonished by lies when our tradition has taught us that only truth exists. If lies killed, then all the non-natives on this island would be dead. I no longer believe that truth alone is the means to life. Our tradition definitely does not apply to the English.

  Nonosabasut was not our chief. Our community had been reduced to only a few individuals. We were families, not clans. Nonosabasut was the most energetic of us all, and the most experienced, but it is wrong to say that we were all under Nonosabasut’s authority, or that we were still a “tribe.” That at any rate is a non-native expression, unknown in our language. We were once a nation, divided into separate clans, and each clan was symbolized by an animal spirit-protector in whom the reincarnated spirits of our ancestors resided. Is that clear to you all? I, Shanawdithit, the Living Memory of the Beothuk Nation, do not wish to repeat it.

  The expedition had taken only five suns to follow the river up to the lake, but it took many more to return with Demasduit as a prisoner. Her hands and feet were tied tightly, and she was drawn on a sled so that she could not escape. She was cold and hungry. Whenever they gave her that horrible salt pork to eat, she would spit it out and vomit, unable even in starvation to overcome the revulsion she felt for that meat. But she played with her captors, ordering them to lace her moccasins for her, and to wrap her more tightly in her blanket. That is why the English thought they had captured a Beothuk princess, the wife of a Grand Chief.

  One night, while her captors slept, Demasduit succeeded in loosening the ropes that tied her to the sled, and slipped quietly out of their camp. She tried to cover her tracks in the snow with her coat, but without snowshoes she quickly became exhausted and was recaptured. For the rest of the journey to the Bay of Exploits she remained calm and quiet, staying as close to John Peyton Jr. as she could. She had picked him out as the leader of the expedition. She would not let Dick Richmond come near her. He had been the first to shoot at Nonosabasut. Whenever Richmond tried to touch her she flew into a terrible rage and struck at him like an evil spirit, and spat in his face.

  For the first few days she was kept in the home of the younger Peyton. T
hen she was transferred to the house of the Episcopal missionary at Twillingate, a Reverend Leigh, who turned her over to Mrs. Cockburn, his housekeeper. From then on, Demasduit was never called anything but Mary March.

  When the ice melted, Reverend Leigh brought her to St. John’s. When he learned that Demasduit had a young child of only two or three years, he decided that she should be returned to her people. No one had thought of that before: it had never occurred to her captors that that was why she had shown them her swollen breasts. It was only when she tried to express the milk out of her breasts that the reverend understood that she was a nursing mother. She gave him her word that she would return to the English settlement of her own accord if they let her go back to nurse her son. She would return as soon as her son was weaned. And since a Beothuk’s word is the witness of the truth, she really did intend to return. John Peyton Jr. went with Reverend Leigh to St. John’s to see Governor Hamilton.

  The governor ordered Captain W. N. Glascock to take command of Her Majesty’s Ship Sir Francis Drake, and to go to Notre Dame Bay to return Mary March to her people. She could nurse her child and, perhaps later, help to establish peaceful relations with the Beothuk. He also ordered John Peyton Jr. and Reverend Leigh to accompany the woman until she was once again among her people.

  Meanwhile, an inquest was held into the death of Nonosabasut. All the members of the expedition were questioned, and the conclusion they came to was this: “The grand jury is of the opinion that no malice was demonstrated during the events and that it was not their intention to spill blood while detaining one person. It seems that the victim died as a result of his own attempted attack against John Peyton Sr. and his men. The men acted legitimately in their own defence.”