Voyageurs

by Margaret Elphinstone

  There was only one point when there seemed to be any argument, and under the cover of raised voices I touched Loic's shoulder. ‘What are they saying?’

  Loic began to translate for me rapidly as the others spoke. ‘This is about a Treaty made five years ago. It is called the Treaty of Detroit. The Ottawa chiefs north-west of Fort Detroit agreed to sell their lands to the United States government. Lewis Cass is the governor of the Michigan Territory – they agreed this eight years ago. Cass has signed this Treaty with the Ottawa. Nidon says what can this mean; what is the Michigan Territory? There are no Americans here, except at the forts at Detroit and Fort Wayne away to the south, and Mackinac by itself in the north, and now Mackinac is once again British. Otherwise, in all this land there are none but the Anishinaabe – we whom you call Indians. In the Treaty the Americans said the Ottawas could still hunt and fish on the lands of their fathers. The chiefs did not wish to sell, but money and other things were promised. But those who signed the Treaty for the United States government have not kept these promises. There is hunger among our people. This is because there has been too much hunting. The traders must have furs, and more furs, and now too many animals are gone. And so the chiefs must sell.

  ‘And now there is trouble. Settlers have come, all around Fort Detroit, and the promises made to the Ottawa are not kept. Some of these men here say the Ottawa at Detroit are fools, and all this is far away. If there is war, it is not our war. Other men here are saying, we have talked to the Ojibwa at Saginaw, and they say the settlers are coming further north, into Ojibwa hunting grounds as well. If we do not fight against the Americans now, our children will live to curse us. Although we are far away, the day may come when it is our hunting grounds that they covet. And what the white man covets, he will take. And so these men say to Alan, yes, we will make our alliance with the British. Your war is our war, and we say yes, we will come to fight.’

  ’Alan is . . . ?’ The words died away on my tongue. Had I not known it since the day I met him what he was, and refused to admit the evidence, even when it was clear and plain before my eyes? But if I had admitted to myself what I knew, I wouldn't have been able to compromise. Alan and I wouldn't be here together now, and what slender hope I had of finding Rachel would have been gone for ever. I had no reason to protest; my ignorance had been my own choice.

  I turned my attention to Alan, and watched him closely. The talk had changed; Nidon and the man on his right were sharply interrogating Alan, or so it seemed to me, and Alan was talking vehemently, though sometimes stuck for words. When that happened he muttered something low in French for Loic to translate. Very well, so I was the one who was not to understand. I could have interrupted, and confronted him. I chose to wait.

  It was almost noon and very hot when Loic nudged me again. ‘Now we speak of Rachel.’ Nodin was talking, pausing after each statement for Loic to translate for me: ‘In winter these people are on the mainland. All the families are scattered, each in its own hunting territory. After your sister was lost the winter came – everyone here left the island. At that time of year there is no news. When they leave their winter hunting territory they go to a place – the place where we camped on the beach two days ago – they all go there every year for their maple syrup harvest. This is the time when there is news from far off. Since Rachel is lost there have been three maple syrup harvests. If Rachel were among their own people she would have come there. Everyone comes to the maple syrup harvest. Each year the story has been told. For three years all the people at the maple syrup harvest have heard it. Each family now knows this story. If there is any news we hear it.’

  ‘And are there many of these maple syrup villages?’ I asked.

  ’Mais oui. In all our lands there are such villages.’

  When at last the talk and the smoking were done, and we'd taken our leave, Loic went back to our camp, and Alan and I set off along the villagers’ path into the forest. ‘I said I'd show you where we looked,’ he said.

  I followed him along a narrow path. The ground under my moccasins was soft with leaf-mould. I could hear a woodpecker again, and sundry calls and screeches of birds. At first we walked among maple, birch and basswood, but presently there were more of the great white cedars, and at last only cedars. When I looked up I saw a roof of huge twisted branches, often broken off or dead, and peeling bark hanging down like a curtain. The canopy seemed to touch the very sky. I laid my hands against a trunk, and gazed up until I felt dizzy. The bark under my hands was dry and flaky. Up above bits of it had come loose and hung down in long filaments. The exposed wood was bright yellow.

  After a mile or so we came to a sandy hillock and into blinding sunlight. We climbed up, and were suddenly in open country. Crickets rasped in the thin scrub of willow and juniper, and there were clouds of butterflies among the flowers. I could feel the heat of the sand through my thin moccasins. As we climbed to the top our footsteps crunched through the dried-up grasses. Scoured white tree roots poked through the sand like bones. The dunes were the only high point on the island. I could see down on to the tree canopy, like looking into a strange country. From there I could see North Manitou, and to the east, the high mainland dunes, the low line of the Michigan coast, and a headland jutting out far to the south.

  ‘We canoed all round the island,’ said Alan. ‘You see how it's sand all round? Here, we'll walk out to the bluff, and you can see the beach below the dunes. I told you before, a canoe could come ashore anywhere, and no one the wiser. We looked for signs where there are beaches – footprints, canoe marks – but anyone who wanted to be secret could hide all that. Then we went to North Manitou’ – he pointed. ‘We went round that too. No one lives there. It's sacred land – there are graves – Loic would say, strong medicine – many manitous. So we couldn't go beyond the shore.’

  ‘Thee means there are no paths?’

  ‘I mean I wouldn't dare.’

  Such an admission, coming from Alan, perplexed me. His courage had never seemed to me to be in question. Another question hovered on my lips, but I didn't ask aloud. Instead, I looked east to the mainland. Only Indians lived there, Loic had said, the Ojibwa and Ottawa. There would be summer villages, like this one on South Manitou, and winter hunting grounds, and maple syrup groves. And apart from that there was just the forest, untouched by man since the day it was created. Only God knew what lay in its depths. Until today I'd thought of Rachel as having vanished into a wilderness beyond all compass. Now I saw that she could not possibly have done so. There was nowhere – at least for a white girl – to go. Either she was among the Indians, or she was dead. Unless someone had carried her away right out of the Michigan Territory . . . but there had been no one. I began to understand how kenspeckle strangers would be, for since we left Mackinac it had fully dawned on me that the place was inhabited. There were eyes to see. An American sloop, or a brigade of canots du maître, could not have landed and left South Manitou in summer without Nidon's people being aware of it. Assuming Nidon was speaking the truth – and I had no cause to believe otherwise – she was not among his particular band, or he'd have heard about it. In which case, all we had to do was to visit the Indian bands who regularly travelled in these waters. I was comforted by the logic of my reasoning, and heaved a deep sigh.

  But before I could make a plan with Alan, there was the other matter to deal with.

  ‘Alan!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Will thee tell me now what orders William McGillivray gave thee in the letter I brought to thee?’

  He had the grace to look guilty, though to be fair, the sin was not his. ‘The letter?’

  ‘Ay. Did that letter tell thee to make use of me, and to go among the Indians again, in the Michigan Territory, and say to everyone it was to look for thy wife? Did it tell thee that?’

  Alan met my gaze. His eyes were green in the strong sunlight. ‘Since you ask me: yes, brother Mark, it did.’

  ‘And under that guise, thy commission is to incite
the Indians in Michigan to join with the British army in Upper Canada in fighting the Americans with war and outward weapons, representing to them that such bloody strife will serve their own ends and interests?’

  ‘It wasn't I that told you anything different,’ said Alan. ‘But in fairness I should say that McGillivray didn't give me that commission.’ He sighed. ‘I'd better make a clean breast of it. You'll be thinking it's worse than it is. McGillivray's letter is a promise to the Indians. My job is to show it to the chiefs and read it over to them. It clarifies that the trade embargo is an American imposition. It says that if the British – helped by the Indians – drive the Americans out of the North West Territory of the United States, the North West Company will offer the same good terms to traders in the Michigan Territory and the routes to the Mississippi as they did before.’ Alan glanced at me. ‘You told me McGillivray gave you his oath the letter wasn't about making war. And nor is it – exactly. You look like the avenging angel, brother Mark. I hope you're not going to throw me over this cliff?’

  ‘Loic told me thee was encouraging Niclon and his warriors to come and fight for the British in this war.’

  ‘Mark, you asked me about McGillivray's letter. I've told you about McGillivray's bloody letter! I know you think me perfidious beyond your miserable grey-coated salvation, but I don't tell lies! Here!’ He pulled the familiar paper, with its broken seal, from his haversack. ‘Read the bloody letter, if you must! But don't call me a liar. Or else you'll go over the cliff. But no – you're too bloody virtuous to fight, but you know a neat trick or two if you want to throw a man, don't you? So I guess it's me that'll go over. Fine! But I'm not a liar!’

  ‘I'll read it later,’ I said mildly, for somehow his show of temper had given me the mastery. ‘I want thee to tell me now, if it wasn't William McGillivray who ordered thee to incite these people to war and fighting with outward weapons. Alan, who was it?’

  ‘What's that to do with you?’

  ‘Thee knows it's all to do with me.’

  ‘It is not! And if it were, would you have me forsworn? I suppose you'd be glad of it, being above all oaths yourself!’

  ‘I think thee got thy orders in York in Ninth Month last,’ I said, watching him closely. ‘Maybe thee got them from the general, Isaac Brock. I rather think thee did.’ The rigidity of his expression told me all; I knew Alan's cast of countenance pretty well by now. ‘Ay, thee was in York to see the governor, for purposes of war. Thee need say no more. But I cannot go further with thee on this business. I'd like thee and Loic to take me across to the mainland, and I'll go my own ways from there.’

  ‘Don't be such a bloody fool!’ Alan came away from the edge of the bluff and began pacing up and down, as well as he could in the soft sand. ‘You'd be a lamb among wolves! ‘Twould be bloody murder, if anything would. No, I can't leave thee – I mean you, damn it!’ He stared out at the lake for a bit, and when he turned round the rage had all gone out of him. He grinned at me ruefully. ‘I think we're stuck with each other, brother Mark, so we'll just have to thole it as best we may. I'm sorry if I deceived you, but I didn't lie to you, you know. I've been most careful not to.’

  ‘I'm glad of that. But still I cannot travel with thee, while thee incites these people to go to war.’

  ‘This is difficult,’ said Alan. ‘I'm pledged to others, you understand.’

  ‘Thee also gave thy word to me.’

  ‘Inexorable, aren't you? I haven't broken my word to thee, either, as far as I'm aware.’ He sighed again. ‘I tell you what, brother Mark. Let's go back to camp and put it to Loic. If we all put our minds to it, I'm sure we can agree on something.’

  I thought that over, and found it good. ‘I can't change my mind on this. But I trust Loic, so I'll agree to talk with him.’

  1 My mother would have liked the Indian gardens. She hated this modern fashion for bare earth between the plants. When my wife began to plant our vegetables the Indian way, in hillocks, my mother was quite ready to experiment. It was the garden that first brought my mother and my wife into friendship. God has been very merciful unto me.

  2 The Indians gather their rice wild from the northern lakes in Ninth Month. It's unlike the East India Company rice we see nowadays, being dark brown in the husk, and much nuttier in flavour.

  CHAPTER 19

  LOIC SAID, 'ALAN, WHAT DO YOUR PEOPLE DO WHEN two men have a quarrel?’

  Alan shrugged. ‘These days? Nothing much. Perhaps one challenges the other, and they fight. Mark won't fight. My father fought a duel when he was in the 72nd. The other fellow pinked him; he had the scar on his shoulder to prove it. I've better things to do than fight duels. Or in this brave new world they're more likely go to law, and lose all their money in the courts, and are no better off.’

  Loic said, ‘Mark, what do your people do when two men have a quarrel?’

  I thought about it. ‘The elders would come and talk to them. They'd worship together, and the elders would make them resolve their differences. If that didn't work, it would be the concern of the whole Meeting. There might be a Particular Meeting about it. The worst thing that could happen is that one – or both – might be disowned.’

  Loic said, ‘For the Indians it is much the same. At the worst my mother's people would either fight, and kill, or they would use evil magic against their foe. But we too have elders. Very often they would take up the matter and make the men resolve it. I think this is better, but we have no elders with us. You could ask me to be the judge. I am not an elder, but there is no one else. Otherwise I think you will have to fight, and this Mark will not do; or else part, and this Alan will not do.’

  ‘So we let you arbitrate?’ Alan shrugged. ‘It's alarmingly like Aesop, but what else is there to do? Go on then, Loic, what's the answer?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Loic. ‘Mark?’

  ‘Ay.’ I realised they hadn't understood this for assent, and added, ‘I agree to it.’

  ‘I must think,’ said Loic.

  Loic's silence seemed to me entirely reasonable. I leaned back on the soft sand and stared into the blue depths of the sky: The heavens, even the heavens, are the Lord's, but the earth he hath given to the children of men. I thought of the untrodden forests, and the great cedar swamps that no man yet had looked upon, and it seemed to me that giving the earth to the children of men might not be an unmitigated good. Whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. That I could not accept. I could happily have thrown Alan again – though was happier now that I'd refrained – but over the cliff – no, I knew not the rage that could make me do such a thing as that. As for hell fire, that was quite out of my jurisdiction, and when I thought of the merciful God in whom I'd been taught to place my trust from my earliest days, I realised I didn't believe in that kind of hell at all. Besides, I liked Alan well; I could deal with him quite easily without calling down retribution on his head, even if I could. The thought surprised me, and at that moment I knew, whatever Loic decided, that I would be reconciled with my brother, whatever the issues that lay between us.

  ‘I have decided,’ said Loic.

  Alan sat up and rubbed his eyes. I brushed sand out of my hair with my fingers and waited for Loic to go on.

  ‘We will go on together,’ said Loic. ‘Mark came this long way to look for Rachel, and we gave him our word we would do this. And we shall. Our first need is to find Rachel, and everything else comes second to this.

  ‘But Alan has also given his word to the North West Company to give the Michigan Indians promises of trade when the embargo is taken away. He has also given his word to General Brock in York that he would talk to the Indians about the war, and persuade their warriors to go to – well, that has changed a little – to go now to Mackinac – to fight the Americans alongside the British. Alan is fighting for his own people, and for him this work is entirely honourable.

  ‘But Mark has also given his word to his people, that he will not have any part in war or strife, or f
ightings with outward weapons – those are the words of his bond, I think – and so it would be shameful for him to support Alan in his task. Even to stay quiet and not interfere would shame him.

  ‘Every man on this earth is free to speak as he will, to go where he will, and to act as he will if it's not unlawful in the country where he finds himself. This is the country of the Ottawa. There's no evil power here that'll take away a man's freedom to do these things, though there are certainly people who'll stop him if they don't like it.

  ‘Then his blood is on his own head. So what I say is this: when we go to the villages you'll give each other the freedom to speak as you will, to say whatever you must to whomever you like. No one has the right to deny this to any man. That means that Alan may say what he likes, but all the talk must be translated so that Mark understands. I can do that. And if Mark wishes to gainsay what Alan says, he has the right to do that, and I will translate as much as he needs, so that everyone can hear. This is also more respectful to my people: you let them hear your differences, and then they can make up their own minds. And if you argue too much – why then no one will listen to either of you, and you'll get what you deserve.’

  Alan and I looked at each other, and saw in each other's eyes an equal horror. We stared like that for a long moment, and then Alan whispered, ‘Oh, Aesop Kerners, what would you!’ and began to laugh. I couldn't help smiling at him, and before I knew it I was laughing too. I couldn't help myself, for all the dismay I felt in my heart. For I knew now that I must break my lifelong silence, and begin to speak my mind, and in argumentation too, which was a thing I'd avoided always – or perhaps only since Rachel was born, for my mother used to say I was a clamorous bairn enough, before I learned to hold my peace.