Voyageurs

by Margaret Elphinstone

  I hung back. ‘Will they wish to see British travellers now, if all this was done to them?’

  Loic shrugged. ‘The same was done to my people, and here I am. The world – and trade – goes on.’

  I could not, however, feel comfortable while we stayed near the village, which Loic said was called in French, l'Arbre Croche, the crooked tree. We were accepted with indifference – the village lives by trading with those who pass through the Mackinac Straits – but I was glad to move away. For the first time in my life it seemed less than ideal to have been born an Englishman, and I knew not what to make of that.

  After we left the village we ran into bad weather. The lake grew choppy and the mist came down. The view would have been no great loss, for a more wickedly exposed coast I never hope to see. Once the high bluff of l'Arbre Croche disappeared from sight, Loic had naught to steer by but the waves, and the feel of the wind on his cheek. Within minutes the world had closed down to the six-yard radius around us; all I was concerned about was the wave I was on and the one that was coming. It was evening before the mist melted, and we found ourselves about a mile offshore. The land was broken and hilly, the shore still steeply sloping. The water was growing calmer, however, and no harm done.

  Alan's map had given me no notion of the roughness of the journey. We reached a break in the coast at last, and came ashore in a natural harbour protected by a thin peninsula, where spring water bubbled up through the soft sands of a little bay. But this was not the unmeasured wilderness I'd been led to expect. There were fishermen mending their nets, just as they do on Solwav shore, and children playing in the little waves that broke upon the sand. The smallest ones had smooth brown bodies with round bellies: no sign of hunger or ill-health here, for all I'd heard of failed crops and hungry winters. The bigger boys wore breechcloths, and the girls short dresses of soft deerskin or trade cloth. I never saw so many racks of drying fish as on that beach, so industriously turned and tended by sundry folk, both young and old. We brought our canoe ashore alongside at least a dozen others, and Loic spoke to a couple of fellows who were replacing the birchbark on a big canoe. They sent us into the village, where well-trodden paths criss-crossed between the wigwams, which were grouped around the cooking fires. Behind the wigwams lay well-tilled gardens that any English husbandman would be proud of. The people watched us as we passed. I followed Alan and Loic to a wigwam set a little apart from the others. When I saw it I hung back, for before it someone had planted a carved crucifix in the earth, after the manner of the Papist idolaters.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘It is for guests,’ said Loic, ‘Which is you and me, and Alan.’

  ‘Why is there a cross?’

  ‘Because when the priest comes, this is his house.’

  I consented to be led within, and to my relief the inside was wholly Ottawa, with skins spread over pine branches for our beds, and an empty birchbark water container at the door. So began a familiar pattern. At each village around the bay – which was fully fifteen miles long – we were treated with incurious courtesy. We gave gifts of tobacco, trade cloth and metal goods, and in return we were well fed on fish and corn, and very often given a place to sleep as well. The elders talked to us in French, although both Alan and Loic could also converse in the Ottawa tongue. I was never sure how much the Indians used French out of politeness to me, or whether the white man's language came naturally to their lips when speaking with strangers. As far as I could understand it, these people were used to trade fish and other natural commodities as far as Mackinac, which they spoke of in much the same terms as we in Mungrisdale speak of Penrith or Carlisle. I got no news of Rachel, but I had plenty to think about, for all my preconceptions were being turned end over end, and I knew not how I should proceed. I had thought of the land beyond the frontier as the map showed it: that is to say, as empty wilderness. I'd expected to find uncut forests tenanted by wild beasts and naked savages. Instead I found neat villages surrounded by gardens, filled with healthy children, and a people wholly preoccupied, or so it seemed to me, with the summer's fishing, and tending their crops of beans, corn and squash. Certainly I heard talk of war – but so I do in England – and very often we heard distant drums in the evening. Sometimes there was more of the savage dancing, and twice we encountered bands of young men painted and armed for war – which is not true of England, or perhaps merely our own manifestations of war and conflict seem less alarming because they are familiar.

  We paddled the length of the bay, stopping at several villages, then headed south again. We passed many rivers; later we would follow these inland, or portage our canoe across a spit into an inland lake, each one larger than Windermere. Everywhere there were summer villages, and where the rivers led away into the forest, we always found men fishing where the waters were dreuvy. No one could travel these waterways unseen or unremarked. On this first journey we kept to the shore of Lake Michigan, until we reached a vast bay divided into two by a long peninsula. Later we explored these shores too; for now we traversed the mouth of the bay, where sometimes the water was so shallow among the shoals we had to walk our boat long distances, even when we were far from the shore.

  Still we were in inhabited country. I began to think I had been wholly mistaken about the nature of the Michigan Territory, but when at last we came round the point that sheltered the double bay, I looked into a different country altogether. I saw a great headland to the south of us, and way out on the lake two long low islands. The shoreline was a wilderness of steep dunes and blowing sand. The islands looked very far away. When Loic pointed to the islands and said laconically ‘Les îles des Manitou’, my heart leapt. The north island looked to be the bigger, but from here both were mere shadows cast in the path of the setting sun. That night we camped in a little bay just south of the point, at the top of a grey shingly beach. I walked back to the point in the evening sun, taking Alan's sundial compass, and took a bearing on South Manitou. I have noted it in my book: the time was half past eight, and the island almost due south-west of where I stood. I shut the compass, and went on staring across the lake until the two thin islands were hidden by the dark.

  Thereafter the Manitou islands were always in our sight. We kept them on the beam, as we paddled alongside a rugged coast where sandy cliffs fell to a windswept shore. There were no villages, indeed there was no shelter at all except the dead trunks of trees fallen from above as the sand was washed from under them. I expressed some of my disgruntlement, and Loic was quick to sing the praises of that miserable desert, telling me that above the dreary dunes lay a veritable Paradise, where forests of oak and elm, pine and maple were home to every kind of game, the small lakes teemed with fish, and the people were blessed with every gift that the land could provide. Tossing on the lake beneath the barren dunes, I found it hard to take his word for it. In my mind I conjured up images of my own lakes: the wooded islands and lovely curves of Thirlmere, the view south from Derwentwater into the jaws of Borrowdale, the fierce clean lines of the Helvellyn range as it casts its shadow across Ullswater. For the first time I recognised my own country for the veritable Eden that it is. Never before had I thought of it as small, but now it seemed to me like that Paradise on earth which all men dream of and desire. I'd supposed that Garden to be unattainable in a fallen world, but now I saw with new eyes, and knew that the new Jerusalem was already present – had always been, although I saw it not – in that land where my lot was first cast. A great longing came over me, and stayed with me thereafter, like a voice out of the silence which never ceased to call me. I was still determined to search for Rachel, there was still a great tumult in my heart when I thought of Waase'aaban, I was still ready to give all that I had to the daily journey with Alan and Loic, but I longed above all else to be in my own country at Mungrisdale: to be home.

  We passed that dour coast at last, and crossed a bay where we could see smoke from a village. We camped in the next bay, where a great maple grove, sheltered from the west by t
owering dunes, gave on to a small inland lake. There were many paths about the place, and within the grove we found a long hut clad with birchbark, quite deserted. In spring, Loic said, many people would meet here from their winter hunting grounds to harvest the maple sugar. I stood at the edge of the clearing and peered under the tree canopy, while the squirrels chattered at me and the birds cried their warnings. It was late afternoon, and very warm. Even the mosquitoes seemed half asleep. Never had I seen such trees: the biggest roots were as high as my head. I thought of this great forest stretching unbroken from here to the shores of Huron, and of all the unknown lives of birds and beasts and men that it must shelter. This land will always be hidden, I thought; the good God made it, but what lies within can never be revealed, and that is how it should be, and will be until the end of time.

  The thought sobered me, but when I repeated it to Alan, as we sat by our campfire on the beach, he said, ‘If only that were true. I expect they used to say that about the Ohio River.’

  ‘The settlers will never come into the Michigan Territory,’ said Loic, as he laid another stick on the fire. ‘The white men say there is too much swamp here. It is not true, of course, but the white men always build their trading posts in a swamp – they seem to choose where the mosquitoes are on purpose – and then they say how bad the land is. They are wrong, ça va sans dire, but that is just as well, perhaps.’

  From where we sat I could see South Manitou Island more clearly than ever, across the water, which shone green over the sand at our feet and deep blue in the open water beyond. I could see sand dunes at the south end of the island, and a long low greenness. When I swam in the lake that evening, the water was warm and silky, and the island looked so near I could almost have believed I could swim out to it. I woke at dawn to a clearer light. The island was no longer enticing, but cold and blue and far away. But there was no wind to speak of, and the way was open. We were afloat in no time, and slowly, as we paddled, the mainland sank into a faint blue line behind, and still the island looked to be no more than a blue vapour on the horizon. Gradually it took on substance, and after three hours’ hard paddling we came into the shelter of the bay on the east side of South Manitou Island. This was the true beginning of our quest – and yet we were almost into Eighth Month – but at last we were here.

  I was still lost in thought when I came upon various canals and islands dug in the sand, surrounded by many small footprints. I looked down and smiled, for they reminded me of hours spent damming the beck at Highside when I was a little lad, and of my little Bristo cousins, who lived at Portinscale, and Robert Southey's children playing on the beaches of Derwentwater.

  I tried to follow the prints a little way, but the dry sand was all blown about, and they went nowhere. When I looked back the half mile to where our camp was, I could see a trickle of smoke rising vertically. Alan and Loic must be up and about. The clean curve of sand between us was like a sudden invitation. I ran fast, splashing over firm sand, till I reached the camp all damp and out of breath.

  ‘What is it?’ Loic looked up from stirring the pease. ‘Have you seen something?’

  ‘No.’ I sat down, panting. ‘I've sat in a canoe too long, that's all. We have a hot breakfast today, do we?’

  ‘Why not? I think we won't travel today. Here's Alan. Will you eat?’

  When we'd done Loic banked up the fire with damp wood and last year's sodden leaves.

  ‘So,’ said Alan. ‘We've told them clearly enough where we are and what we're doing. Shall we go?’

  The Ottawa village was beyond where I'd walked that morning. We found marks in the sand dunes where several canoes had been beached in a hollow. Beyond them a path led into the forest. It wound among groves of birch and maple, until it reached a big clearing, made by beavers maybe, with a group of wigwams at the far end. ‘This is a summer village,’ said Loic. ‘People come for the months of fishing, and for berry-picking. They were here when Rachel went away. Since fall and until early summer they are not here. In winter there is no one here, because on an island there are not the big animals to hunt.’

  The dogs were already barking as we approached the village. ‘No one will be surprised,’ said Loic. ‘We had our fire in the usual place.’ The dogs ran out to meet us, tails held high, followed by a straggling band of children. Loic called out as we came near, ‘Boozhoo! Boozhoo! Gii bi-izhaayaang o'ikkidoyaang gi-ogimaa – we've come to speak to your leader.’ In this village they were obviously less used to visitors than they were in the north. The children clustered round us, asking questions. I don't know what Loic said to them, but he made them laugh, and only one or two of the girls hung back shyly. The others jostled round us, chattering like starlings. They accompanied us to some fenced-in gardens. Some women were weeding round the hillocks where the corn grew. Beans twined upwards up the cornstalks, and squash vines covered the earth all round.1 When they saw us the women left their work and came to the fence. When Loic spoke to them, they pointed to the wigwams. There was some talk, but it was all in the Ottawa tongue. When we walked on, the older woman came with us. She was barefoot like the children, and she too wore a deerskin dress, only hers was embroidered with many beads. A necklace of polished bones hung round her neck. As we walked she fired questions at Loic: as soon as he'd answered one she had another ready. I watched her face, which was that of an old woman, although her hair was still black as a raven's wing, and she walked with an easy stride. She reminded me a little of Madeleine La Framboise.

  She led us to the central wigwam, in front of which a big iron kettle hung from a hook over an open fire. A very old woman was sitting on a log, her face turned up to the morning sun, while a younger woman – her daughter, perhaps? – was looking after the simmering pot. A baby crawled over to one of the log benches and hauled himself upright to stare at us with round eyes. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. After some talk Loic said, ‘The men went fishing early. We can wait here for them, she says.’

  It was peaceful in the morning sun. The fire crackled at our feet. Alan sat on the ground with his back against the log, his feet stretched to the fire, and presently fell asleep. The baby began to grizzle; his grandmother picked him up and fed him corn porridge from a spoon. The other children drifted away. I watched the girls playing a game, squealing like a flock of gulls as they tossed a ball of woven grass to and fro, catching it on a string suspended from two long sticks. The boys had vanished into the woods. The baby's mother brought out a bark bag of flour. She made a dip in it just as the voyageurs did, poured in a little water, and one by one she kneaded little fist-sized loaves. Jacques would have thrown these into the stew, but she impaled each loaf carefully on a stick, and set them around the fire to cook. When they were half done she added a measure of rice2 and a bunch of herbs to the simmering pot.

  The sun was already halfway to noon when the men came back with nets full of fish. I nudged Alan awake and he sprang to his feet. The men stopped short when they saw us. I couldn't tell who was the leader, because they were all dressed for fishing. Alan indicated a tall young man, and said quietly, ‘That's Nodin. We talked to him before.’ Loic spoke, and the young man replied sharply. I watched the quick exchange of words, accompanied by gestures in our direction. Loic translated. ‘This is Nodin. He remembers when Alan and I were here two years ago. He thinks there's nothing more to say, but he'll talk to Mark, he says, because I explained you're Rachel's brother, come all the way from your own country to look for her.’

  ’G'miigwechiwìgìn, nwiijikiwenh,’ I said.

  There was a moment's silence as they all looked at me. Then Nodin burst out laughing, stepped forward and shook me by the hand in the British way, speaking directly to me as he did so. I shook my head, and Loic evidently told him my linguistic abilities were now exhausted, but for all that we sat down in a much friendlier spirit. Alan took tobacco from his leather bag, and Nodin took it, and passed it to the young man on his right to put away.

  The women were rapidly gutting a
nd splitting the fish, and tossing them into the pot. A couple of girls were called away from their game, and told to set the baked loaves out on clean rush mats. Nodin called upon Loic to translate some more questions. I answered as best I could, trying to explain where I'd started from and how I'd come on my long journey. The pot of fish was beginning to smell good, for all that I reckoned by this time to have eaten enough whitefish to last me my lifetime. I was glad when it turned out we were expected to share the meal, for reasons both carnal and politic. The young woman – I think she was Nodin's wife – handed out the fish stew in wooden bowls, and the smallest girl carefully gave out wooden spoons with which to eat it. Her sister followed her, bringing round the bread, and then the women retired to the other side of the fire.

  We ate in silence. It wasn't until the pipe was filled with a twist of Alan's tobacco, and passed round, that the talk began. I grasped the pronunciation of certain words, particularly ‘Tecumseh’ and ‘Detroit’. Occasionally, when Alan didn't understand either, he nudged Loic, who translated, and in this way I picked up some snippets. Apparently the American General Hull had marched into Upper Canada, but – this is what I understood Alan to say (I found his speech much the easiest to follow) – there was every reason to trust, now that war was openly declared, that General Brock would beat him back to Detroit, especially since the British had taken Mackinac. Nodin was able to tell Alan that the Shawnee chief Tecumseh had defeated another American army in Ohio, and the remnant had already fled back to Detroit. ‘It only remains to take Detroit,’ said Alan, his eyes blazing.

  They all had plenty to say about that, and perhaps Alan's ear was attuned, because there was no translating for a long time. The way the men of the village spoke put me in mind of a Meeting for Worship for Business. Each man had his say and was given due attention, and sometimes there were spaces in between the words. Alan never interrupted these, but he was as alert and bright-eyed as a collie working on the hill.