Halfbreed

by Maria Campbell

  It was a hard six months for all of us. We had no money and no meat. I had to set rabbit snares every day, and Mom and I would take the .22 and shoot partridges, ducks and whatever we could get. Mom was a terrible hunter but Daddy had trained me well. I didn’t mind the hard work, in fact I felt I should be horsewhipped for what I had done. We had to charge our groceries at the store and our credit was limited. Dad still laughs about it but I have hated chocolate bars ever since, nor have I ever trusted wardens and Mounties.

  The law will do many things to see that justice is done. Your poverty, your family, the circumstances, none of it matters. The important thing is that a man broke a law. He has a choice, and shouldn’t break that law again. Instead, he can go on relief and become a living shell, to be scorned and ridiculed even more. One of my teachers once read from St. Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 3 to 12: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.” Our class discussed this, using Native people as examples. I became very angry and said, “Big deal. So us poor Halfbreeds and Indians are to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, but not till we’re dead. Keep it!” My teacher was furious and looking at me said, “Verse 13: ‘Ye are the salt of the Earth but if the salt have lost his savour wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden underfoot of men.’ ” Then she closed the book and I had to kneel in the corner holding up the Bible for the rest of the afternoon. It was her favourite punishment. My arms would be sore but I dared not let that Bible fall, for her wrath was worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. I used to believe there was no worse sin in this country than to be poor.

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  One afternoon, a couple of wagonloads of people arrived, driven by one of Mom’s uncles, Jeremy, who weighed over three hundred pounds, and a friend, Chi Pierre, who was very small. They brought their wives and twenty-one children as they were out of grub and came to Dad so that he could feed their families and take them hunting. Although I was pretty young I had gone on many hunting trips with Dad, so he took me with him on his horse. Elk were calling when we arrived at dark in the National Park and made our way to our usual camping place. Suddenly Dad motioned for everyone to stop, but Jeremy and Chi Pierre were arguing loudly in French, Cree and English and didn’t hear him. Dad jumped off his horse, threw me beside a tree and told me not to move. I looked up in time to see a huge bull elk heading straight for us. He looked twice as big and black in the dark and he was mad. Dad fired a shot and I could feel the elk rush by me toward Jeremy and Chi Pierre, and then fall. He was snorting and bellowing. Dad ran past, yelling for the two men to get out of the way. However, they were nowhere to be seen. Our horses were running away. The elk was stumbling and trying to get up. Suddenly I heard loud voices and as I reached Daddy he started to laugh and pointed to a scrubby tree in front of us. At the very top was Jeremy and he was shaking the tree and yelling in Cree and French, “Get off, it’s my tree.” Chi Pierre, who was trying to climb the tree, kept sliding down and cursed in the same mixture of languages, “I’m your brother-in-law. He’ll kill me.” The elk was under the tree, bellowing and falling down and getting up. Dad shot it again, then he pulled me down beside him and laughed and listened to them. Finally Jeremy’s branch broke and he fell off. He landed on the elk and Chi Pierre climbed to the top. Poor Jeremy, he was in a state of panic and didn’t realize the elk was dead. Dad and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t talk. When Jeremy finally realized the elk was dead and saw us, he picked himself up, brushed off his pants and said, “Ye Christe my Nees-tow, we almost had trouble here.” It was one of the funniest hunting trips I was ever on.

  I remember another elk we raised practically from birth. He would come into the house until his horns grew so big that Mom refused to let him inside anymore. We called him Bannock because he loved bannock so much. Poor Bannock would go mad when he knew we were eating and he couldn’t come in and join us any more, so Daddy made the window bigger and he would hang his head inside and be with us. Then one day he left and we didn’t see him for over two years.

  Daddy was out in the barn one afternoon when he heard Mom screaming, so he raced to the house. A huge elk was trying to get inside. We were all crying from fright as there were two more elk directly behind it. Daddy saw us all and started to laugh. When he finally recovered himself, he opened the window and the elk put his head through. Sure enough it was Bannock. Wild animals are funny and smart—like Bannock returning and bringing his friends, almost as though he’d said, “Come along, panhandling is good here.” Bannock and his friends stayed for a couple of weeks but then some hunters shot them.

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  Sometimes in the evening when people were visiting, we children listened to them tell ghost stories, and because we lived beside the cemetery those stories would keep us awake long into the night. Daddy always seemed to run out of tobacco about eight o’clock in the evening and Jamie or I would have to go to the store. To get there we had to take a foot path down the hill, climb a barbed-wire fence into the graveyard, walk between rows of graves, climb over another fence, and go around the blacksmith shop to the store. We knew every single person buried in that graveyard for we had listened to so many stories about each one.

  One grave in particular, right beside the fence, had a horrible story associated with it. Grannie Campbell used to tell us that the old man buried in it was called Ke-qua-hawk-as, which means wolverine in Cree. He was just as mean and as ugly as the animal, and never allowed anyone near his house, not even relatives. They all died before he did and because there was no family left, the Halfbreeds got together to build his coffin. They held a wake for him at Grannie’s house. The men didn’t finish digging his grave until quite late. Old Mrs. Vandal was outside, alone, when she heard someone talking. She listened and it was coming from the empty grave. The spirit of Wolverine was standing there complaining about the size of his grave and how useless those people were. So Mrs. Vandal got very angry and told him he should be happy that someone was kind enough to make him a grave after having always been so miserable. The men found her beside the hole shaking her fist. Grannie said every so often on certain nights you could still hear Wolverine complaining.

  Whenever I had to go to the store in the evening I would jump the fence and run as fast as I could, feeling sure that Wolverine was behind me. I would jump the other fence and arrive at the store completely out of breath. And then going home through that graveyard again I would nearly die. It was worse climbing the hill as I couldn’t see behind me. Daddy’s youngest brother, Robert, was a terrible tease and was never afraid of ghosts. He would lie beside old Wolverine’s grave and when I came back from the store he would make scratching noises and talk in low gruff tones. I would be stiff with fright and would walk by the grave looking straight ahead. As I climbed over the fence he would groan louder and scratch harder. I would pee my pants from fear while running up the hill, and he would pound the ground to make a sound like footsteps right behind me. When I burst into the house babbling and screaming, Daddy would go out and see nothing. This happened several times and one night I couldn’t stand any more. I came through the graveyard and heard those noises again, the groaning and scratching, and as I climbed the fence there was an awful scream and noises like someone falling and running towards me. I crumpled down and fainted.

  I came to, at home, with Mom rubbing my wrists. Uncle Robert sat in a corner with a most terrified look on his face, all scratched up and bloody. He said that he was coming from the store behind me and Wolverine grabbed him and knocked him down, bawled him out for using his graveyard and chased him away. He was too frightened to go home alone, so when Daddy came back he went with him. After Dad returned he laughed until he cried, then told us what had happened. He had followed Robert to the graveyard one night and watched him scare me, so this night he asked Mom to send me to the store again while he went ahead and hid in the bushes be
hind the grave. Then, when Robert came sneaking down, he waited until I had gone by. Robert was so absorbed in making his noises he heard nothing. Daddy had on an old fur coat and hat and he grabbed Robert’s arm and groaned in his face. Poor Robert nearly died. He screamed and started to run, so Daddy grabbed his feet and when he fell, climbed on his back and berated him for sitting on his grave. He said he would haunt him forever if he came near again. Poor Uncle, he finally got away and raced to the hill, but forgot the barbed-wire fence and ran right into it. He picked himself up, and ran past me, racing to our house. Mom came and found me and carried me home. I had no more trouble with Wolverine after that, but I was still frightened of that graveyard. In a way I liked being afraid, and if Jamie had to go to the store instead of me I was disappointed.

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  Like many other kids, I ran away from home. Once Mom had a sheet of writing paper, and because money was so scarce the paper was precious. When I asked for it and was refused, I stole it. Caught by Daddy and given a good licking, I sat up in my tree and planned to run away. I was eight years old then. I would go to St. Michele, a small village nearby, which was like a city to me, get a job and make lots of money. Then I would buy a new car, a red satin dress and red shoes, and I would drive by the house, toot the horn and everyone would come out. I would not speak to them and they would all be sorry. So down the tree I climbed, went home to pack my clothes in a grape basket, and sneaked out. This was about ten o’clock in the morning. By noon I reached the river, where I met Robert (my idol and secret sweetheart) riding to our place to visit my aunt. I told him I was leaving home and said good-bye. He laughed and rode on. By four o’clock I was starving and scared and wanted to go home, so I turned back. Arriving at the river after dark, I saw lanterns and people everywhere. Some were calling me, so I crawled behind a boulder and listened. I heard Uncle Robert say he had found my scarf by the river and that Daddy thought I had fallen in and drowned. I crept off and ran the rest of the way home crying. When I got there, I saw wagons and people all around so I crawled in a window and found Jamie crying in bed. He promptly hugged and kissed me and said everyone was sure I had been drowned and Daddy and all the men were looking for my body. We heard Mom and Grannie crying, and then the men came back and said they were going for the RCMP to drag the river. Everyone was crying so Jamie and I started to cry too. We went back to bed and talked about what would happen when they had a funeral for me. I became so upset when Jamie said I would have to lie beside Wolverine I couldn’t stand it any longer. I burst into the kitchen, yelling that I didn’t want to be buried beside Wolverine, and scared all those people half to death. Mom grabbed me and hugged me and cried, and so did all the women. Dad gave me a licking and a half, and said that if I ever ran away again he would see to it that I became Wolverine’s partner.

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  When someone died, the funeral wake was held at our house because we were beside the church and graveyard. The body would be brought in and the women would wash and dress it. The men would build the coffin and dig the grave. Everyone had to help including us kids. When the coffin was completed it would be covered with black broadcloth with crosses made of white satin ribbon on the top and sides. We all wore black arm bands. The wake would last three days. The women cooked lots of food and then we sat around the body all day and night saying rosaries every hour. As each person arrived he was given something to keep from a pile of articles owned by the deceased. Then Mass would be held and the body buried.

  Our funerals were never like the funerals here, where everyone cries and carries on, or goes into a state of shock. We grieved, but in a different way. The women cried, but they accepted death, and when it came, met it with great strength and kept their grief inside as they did with so many other things. Funerals were like weddings as far as seeing old friends and relatives was concerned. People would come from miles and miles away to visit.

  The pallbearers wore suits and it was the only time in my life that I ever saw my father or any of our men in suits. There were six in our whole country and the owners were very special people whom we children regarded with awe. To own a suit and hat was a real status symbol. Of course we always believed that they were only for funerals, just like black broadcloth and white satin ribbon and waxed crepe paper flowers. When I look at the old pictures of funerals now, I have to laugh. Two of the owners were small men, three were really tall, and one was really skinny with a big belly. The suits were dark blue and black with stripes and wide lapels, old and out of style even when I was little.

  The pallbearers’ pants were halfway up their legs and their sleeves far too short or too long, jackets too big or so tight the wearer would have to be careful. No one had a big belly so that one pair of pants was always bunched up with a belt and held up with suspenders which we called braces. They looked grand to me then, but now it is funny and sad. It was the only thing no one made jokes about. As far as everyone was concerned the suits were holy.

  I was never afraid of those bodies at our house, because I helped Momma with the preparations. However, I remember one time when I was really scared. Daddy had gone trapping, when Gene was killed, at a fight after a party in St. Michele. Someone found him the next morning, and instead of reporting it, a burial was held and we had no wake for fear the Mounties would come. A few months later someone told the RCMP. They came with doctors to dig up the body and examined it at an abandoned house. Everyone was worried and meetings were held all over so that our stories would be straight. Because Dad had been absent he was called upon to identify the body and help with the investigation.

  Jamie and I were dying of curiosity and as no one would say anything in front of us, we decided to investigate. The house had sheets over the windows and a Mountie stationed at the door. We sneaked behind the house and climbed through a hole in the roof and looked down. The body was on a table, naked, with the head over the edge. Gene’s hair was hanging to the floor. He had had short hair when he was buried. A doctor was sawing the top of his head off and we felt so sick that we climbed down and raced home and jumped into bed. That evening when Daddy came home he had to go to bed too. Two young constables were left behind to put the body back in the grave. It was getting dark, so they came to get Daddy to help. When they were lowering the body the rope slipped and the cover fell off the casket and jarred the bandages off the head. One Mountie started to go down to fix it but was afraid. They asked Dad to do it while they held the lantern. So he went down, but as he straightened the bandage, his hand slipped and he touched the brain. He quickly threw the lid on the coffin and climbed out. For weeks we all had nightmares and no one ever went near the house. Someone finally burned it. The case came up in court but no evidence could be given. The Halfbreeds needed interpreters so if an English-French interpreter was called they would say that they talked only Cree and when a Cree speaker was brought in it was vice versa. By the time the stories were translated, they were so mixed up that the case was closed.

  Chapter 8

  THE CCF PARTY WAS IN power in Saskatchewan for a long time. I remember our people got into some good fights over it. Some things stand out in my memory. A member of the provincial legislature lived down the road from us. When he ran in the election he promised our people relief work for which they would be paid.

  One of the projects was clearing land for a huge pasture. There was very little money for fancy equipment but plenty of manpower—the Halfbreeds from the MLA’S riding. He told everyone who wanted jobs that a truck would pick them up at the store on a certain Monday. Daddy and I drove over by buggy that day to see them. When we arrived the men were in harness like horses, pulling up stumps and trees. Dad started to laugh when he saw Alex Vandal coming towards us pulling a tree, sweating and panting. He looked at us and said, “Danny, did you know the new government felt sorry for us because we’re called ‘Halfbreeds’? They passed a law changing our name and now we’re CCF h
orses. The Americans are going to pay good money to come and look at us.” All the CCF horses soon quit, and that was one CCF tourist attraction that went broke!

  This same man used to come to our house, and once in a while he caught my Mom frying meat. We weren’t afraid as he was one of Daddy’s better customers for both meat and homemade whiskey. Both he and his wife were drinkers and would go off for two or three days, leaving their kids to run the farm. Mom never approved of them but Dad got along well with him. However, after he won the election, he and his wife changed and became very active in the Baptist church. He painted his old car bright blue and started wearing suits.

  One day he drove up and Dad invited him in for something to eat and a drink. He said no, he didn’t care for a drink or food, and then gave Dad a lecture about the evils of alcohol and poaching. Cheechum was worried when he left and urged us to hide the meat and whiskey.

  The following morning the wardens and the Mounties came. They turned the place upside down and found nothing. Daddy was furious, so on Saturday night he went over to the store where the informer was giving a speech to a group of people. He walked over and kicked the box out from under him and gave him the beating of his life. No one tried to stop him as they all felt it was deserved. When the next election was called the MLA lost his seat, and he and his wife went back to drinking Campbell whiskey and eating the King’s game.