Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

by Tantoo Cardinal

  “Where are you going?” the Odauwau chief asked in Mohawk.

  “We’re going to the land of the Waendaut to inquire about the corn crop.”

  Neither Parisé nor Lebrun understood what was going on.

  “You got something worthwhile for us? If you have, we’ll let you pass. If not, you can get your buns back home.”

  By now the advance party was surrounded by Odauwau canoes. In each canoe were four warriors, their hair so arranged that it stood straight up, bristling like the quills of a porcupine.

  “Come with us,” the Odauwau war chief said, nodding his head to indicate the north shore. Then, looking at the two young bewhiskered men, he asked, “And where did you pick up these hairy banshees?”

  “Oh! Them!” the advance party chief answered. “They’re our guests. White men,” and he went on to explain how these men and their companions had come to this land from another land and that they were looking for a way to the Far East. “We brought them along to show them the country.”

  “Ever hear of anything as brainless?” one of the warriors interposed. “Going west to get to the east? To get to the east, you go east,” the warriors said laughing.

  “Are they really manitous?” another warrior wanted to know.

  “Do they look like manitous?” the advance party chief harrumphed. “Wah!”

  “Well! Never know. They can change form, I heard … and some of these manitous have hairy faces.”

  “I don’t think that these ones are manitous … too backward. Don’t know much, and what little they know about the woods, they learned from the people at Hochelaga where they spent the winter before. But they learn pretty fast.”

  “Ooohn!” the Odauwau chief muttered. “Is that so.”

  Upriver on the north shore men, women, and children gathered to see what the travellers had brought with them as payment for their continued passage. But when they saw the shaggy-faced White men, the men, women, and children were more taken with these “apparitions” than they were with the caribou pelts.

  “These figures on the sash, a man and woman, remind us of what happened next,” said the mazhinawae.

  As the traders from Stadacona and the Odauwau warriors were seated to bargain what toll should be paid, a boy reached out for one of the White men’s faces. Parisé, thinking that the boy was about to pull his beard, slapped the boy’s hand away. The boy yelped, “He hit me! he hit me!”

  The boy’s father was at Parisé’s throat and would have cut the man’s neck had it not been for the quick action of the warriors, who drew the man to one side. There were voices raised. “Serves him right.”

  The father of the boy raised his own voice. “He hit my boy! He’s not going to get away with it.”

  Parisé and Lebrun were paralyzed with fear. They looked wildly about them for some avenue of escape but there was none. They were surrounded by warriors. Silently they prayed.

  “Calm down! Calm down!” the Odauwau chief shouted to restore order and to settle frayed nerves that were rubbed rawer by demands “to bury a hatchet in their skulls” and “leave them alone.”

  “Get a hatchet! Get a hatchet!”

  “A hatchet! A hatchet,” an old woman spat out. “Thats all that you think of. A hatchet will not settle anything. A hatchet will only hatch ghosts … and more ghosts … These strangers came here not as enemies, but as passersby. We ought to receive them as guests.”

  This plea did little to quell the uproar. While the men argued for and against blood, the same old woman raised her voice to draw the chief’s attention. His attention gained, the chief raised his arm and in a loud voice called, “Quiet! Pitchinaessih has something to say!”The crowd settled down.

  “I want to adopt this boy,” Pitchinaessih said, pointing to Parisé. “Since my son died some years ago I’ve had no one to look after me. I’ve got no one to care for. I’d like to take this boy into my home. I would like all of you to look on him as my son, as your friend … as one of us.”

  “All agree?” the chief asked.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” the voices piped up in agreement.

  “Welcome, brother,” the chief said to Parisé, whose hand he took, and he led him to Pitchinaessih. Parisé went along willingly, not knowing what was going on. A thought that he might be married to the old woman might have flitted through his mind.

  Men, women, and children came over to welcome the newest member of the community and to congratulate Pitchinaessih on getting a son. Even the man whose son’s hand Parisé had slapped away offered a welcome, a lukewarm welcome. But at least it was a welcome. There was nothing that he could do to reverse the Anishinaubae custom of adoptions.

  The chief of the Stadacona advance party protested. “Don’t do this! What will I tell our chief? His chief? They’ll come after you with their thundersticks.”

  “Tell them,” the Anishinaubae chief answered, “that they ran away … captured by Mohawks … They drowned … They fell in love. Tell them anything, but don’t tell them that they are here or else we’ll never let you further inland ever again.”

  “But,” the chief of the advance party objected, “you didn’t ask the young man if he wanted to stay or to come back with us. His chief trusted us to take them back.”

  “Did you want to go further inland for your corn, or do you want to go back to your village now?” the Anishinaubae chief asked. “Your choice.”

  The advance party chief bit his tongue. He had no choice.

  The Anishinaubae chief didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to his people. “As chief and an Anishinaubae, I’ll adopt the other young man as my son and give him to Nauneediss, a young widow who needs a husband and a father for her two children.” Then, turning to the chief of the advance party, he said, “You’d better be on your way, otherwise you’ll be late.”

  The chief of the advance party ground his teeth as he and his party boarded their canoes. Just before shoving off they pitched on shore the satchels belonging to Parisé and Lebrun. Only then did the two young Frenchmen awaken to what was taking place. They sprang forward, but the warriors held them back. They struggled to break free. They yelled, “Our guns! Our guns! At least leave us our guns!” But their outcries were as useless as their struggles.

  Abeedaussimoh went on to the next images on the sash, men lying on the ground sick, with a medicine man standing among them; then men up on their feet.

  “The advance party,” said Abeedaussimoh as he picked up the thread of his story, “went on inland, made their request for corn and the amount from the Waendaut, then returned to Stadacona. The chief of the advance party told the chief of his community what had happened to their two White companions. When the chief of Stadacona told Cartier, by means of gestures, that the two men who had accompanied his advance party had run off, Cartier blew his top. He cursed, yelled, clenched his fists, and kicked a sawhorse. He was a picture of frustration, trying to get the chief to understand.

  But while the chief couldn’t understand what Cartier said, he understood the White mans wrath. After he’d endured Cartier’s “maudites,” “mardes,” and “enfants d’chiennes,” the chief shrugged his shoulders and walked away, leaving Cartier to fume and rail at the heavens. How would Cartier explain this when he returned to France?

  Back to supervising the construction of their buildings and the fort went Cartier. Meanwhile the chief of Stadacona sent a trading mission inland to obtain a winter supply of corn from the Waendaut.

  For those who remained behind, there was nothing more fascinating than to watch the construction of the fort. They gossiped and marvelled at the size of buildings such as they had never before seen. But the building of such dwellings wasn’t the only aspect of the bearded White men that drew the attention of the Indians. They could not get over how these men could get along without helpmates. They asked one another, “How do they get along without women? Do they care about women? Do they have wives? Girlfriends? Brothers? Sisters? And if they have families, loved ones,
how can they leave them behind?”

  When Cartier and his men finished construction of their buildings and erected a palisade around them, they retreated inside, coming out only once in a while to fish for cod or to ask the Indians for meat. The north wind blew, bringing snow and cold. None of the people of Stadacona were invited or allowed inside the fort.

  At home the Indians complained. “We let them in our land and let them come into our homes and villages … but they won’t let us into their homes.”

  Before too long the bearded White men came into Stadacona to say that their fires were going out and that they were cold. The Indians showed the stick-wavers what kinds of wood made the warmest fires and brought them warm clothing, jackets, mittens, moccasins, leggings, and caps made of buckskin and beaver; they brought warm comfortable bedding, bear rugs, rabbit blankets. The Indians brought these struggling “civilized” bearded White men dried and smoked and fresh meats, but the bearded White men continued to eat their salted cod, boiled.

  About mid-winter most of the White men began to bleed from their noses and ears. The men who had not yet fallen sick came to the Indians with their tale of woe, asking for help. Yes, these civilized men asked the Indians for help.

  The medicine men were invited into the fort to look at the sick. One glance was all the medicine men needed to know what ailed the stricken men. It was scurvy, a condition brought on by an insufficient intake of greens in the system. It was an ailment easy enough to remedy.

  Near at hand were stands of cedar, balsam, pine, and spruce rich in vitamin C coursing through their roots, trunks, limbs, and needles, bearing the life-giving “strength of the earth” that no living creature can do without. The medicine men made a beverage from the greens and gave it to the sick men to drink. Within a week the men stopped bleeding and recovered.

  Abeedaussimoh went on to the next set of figures, two bearded men in the company of Indians listening to a storyteller.

  For the first two years of their adoption, Parisé and Lebrun were kept under pretty close watch, but after that, in their third year as members of the community, they had as much freedom to come and go as any other member of the village. Both were married and the parents of children, and both were quite proficient in the Anishinaubae language. When asked if they ever wanted to return to their country, both said, “No, never would we ever return to a life of servitude and hunger.”

  In the meantime both had received Anishinaubae names, really corruptions of their real names: Parisé became Pau-eehnse, an elf who dwelt on the shores of the lakes; Lebrun became Nebaunaubae, a merman. They wore loincloths, moccasins, leggings, jackets, like any other Indian. The two men were as good woodsmen as any Anishinaubae.

  By the third winter the two men were in demand as storytellers; people wanted to hear about their country and what had brought them to the Land of the Great Turtle. After three years both men were enough in command of the language to enable them to take part in the storytelling sessions.

  The storytelling season always commenced with the account of creation told by one of the leading narrators in the village. This long story was followed by a recitation of the history of the nation.

  Two weeks went by before the storyteller came to the prophecy that foretold the coming of bearded White men to this continent. It was this narrative that many older people wanted to hear, to see what their adopted White men would say and do. Then they could hear Pau-eehnse and Nebaunaubae talk about what life was really like in the old world.

  And this is the story that he told. I’ve heard that it was Daebaudjimoot, our nation’s first storyteller, who first told this story. The muses who foresaw the future put the story in his mind. He told his listeners: “One day bearded men with pale complexions will come to our land. They’ll arrive on board great wooden canoes ten times longer than our longest canoes. At either end of these long canoes will stand tall timbers. From the limbs of these timbers will hang blankets for catching the wind that will whisk this great canoe along as quickly as a cloud. The White man’s canoe will not need paddlers.

  “In the beginning only a few ships will arrive, on board not many men. For this reason our people will not take them as threats. They’ll accept the strangers’ word that they are bound for another land lying well beyond the western horizon and that they will resume their journey once they have found a passage and replenished their provisions.

  “However, in no time these White people will forget that they were going to the Far East to find its riches for which they had sacrificed so much. They’ll find something on our land far more precious than fine textiles, shiny stones, or spices. But wait. Wait for a few years. Then our ancestors will see ship after ship, bringing shiploads of men and women to our shores. They’ll come like flocks of geese in their fall and spring migration flights. Flock after flock will arrive and set down in our lands. There will be no turning them back.

  “Some of our children and grandchildren will stand up to these strangers, but when they do it will be too late, and their bows and arrows, war clubs, and medicines will be no match for the weapons of the White men, whose warriors will be armed with thundersticks that will sound like thunder as they unleash thunderbolts that kill. Their warriors will need do no more than point a thunderstick at another warrior, and that warrior will fall and die the moment the bolt strikes him.

  “With weapons such as these, the White people will drive our people and our descendants from their homes and hunting grounds to lands where deer can scarce find room or food to eat, and where corn can barely take root. The White people will herd our people into pens as our kin, the People of the Weirs, channel trout and whitefish into cages. The White people will then take possession of the greater part of the lands and build immense villages upon them.

  “Over the years the White people will prosper while our people will grow ever poorer. Though our people and our kin and other nations of our race may forsake our heritage and take up the ways of the White people, it won’t do them much good. It will not be until our grandchildren and their descendants return to their values and traditions and beliefs that they will regain the strength and the heart to master new challenges … otherwise they will vanish as smoke vanishes into the sky.”

  “Preposterous!” the listeners snorted.

  “Is that true?” some listeners asked Pau-eehnse and Nebaunaubae.

  “No. Our people are just looking for a passage that would serve as a shortcut to the Far East and save months of travel.”

  “Why would you want to go to the Far East?” a questioner asked. “Why not stay at home with your families?”

  “Our commander was commissioned by the first chief of our country to find a shorter way to the Far East than by going south. If our commander found a way, he and those of his crew would receive a reward …that would make life easier for us.”

  “What is a reward, and what would you have done with it?”

  Pau-eehnse and Nebaunaubae had difficulty explaining what reward and money were; the listeners had equal difficulty understanding what the terms meant.

  “What would ‘reward’… ‘money’ have done for you?” the questioner asked again.

  “I could have moved to a city and learned a trade and had a better life,” Pau-eehnse explained.

  “Why’d you want a better life? Wasn’t your life at home good? happy? … Are you happy now?”

  “Yes,” Pau-eehnse rejoined quickly. “Since living here with you I’ve been happy. I have everything that I never had in my home, everything that I could never have.”

  “Tell us what your life was like in France.”

  “I was born in the country,” Pau-eehnse began, “the son of a serf working the land for my master. We were peasants, poor people.” Pau-eehnse went on to describe how the dwelling that was his home was a hovel compared with the homes of the well-off. “Like other serfs, my father worked the land and looked after his master’s flocks and did other work as required by the master. Work, work, work. Ye
t for all his work my father could never provide enough for us. Always we were short of something, especially food and clothing; we were cold, sick … miserable. My parents never went anywhere. The master of the manor would not allow his serfs—his slaves, really—to leave the land. They were rooted to the land as the tree is planted in the earth and cannot move. Most of the people in our country were serfs, chattels that belonged to the land that belonged to a master. Our masters were of the upper class, the rest of us belonged to the lower class, worthless. You, my friends,” Pau-eehnse said to his listeners, “are lucky. You don’t know how lucky you are. You can come and go as you please. You don’t have masters to tell you what to do, what not to do. You are your own masters. You are free.”

  “How then did your masters become masters?” another listener wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” Pau-eehnse said with a shake of his head.

  “I’m not sure,” Nebaunaubae broke in, “but I heard a priest say that God gave all power to the King and mastery over all the land and all living creatures dwelling upon it. The King then subdivided his kingdom into several provinces over which he placed members of his families and relatives to govern on his behalf.”

  “Not many masters, then?”

  “No, but they are very powerful, almost as powerful as the King. They live like kings in palaces where they eat fine meals, drink fine wines, sleep in soft beds, wear fine bright clothes, dance to fine music. These men and women are free.

  “They look down on the rest of us as backward and unworthy, while we must look up to them as our superiors. We’re not allowed to speak to them unless they speak to us first or give us permission to say something. And we must bow, genuflect, kiss the hands of our masters, and lick their boots if they command us to do that.”

  Turning to the chief and looking at each of his listeners in turn, Nebaunaubae continued, “You are fortunate. You talk to your chief as if you were of the same rank. You walk, work, and eat with your chief. You go to him as he comes to you. You argue with him as if he were no better than anyone else. You don’t bow down to him or kiss his hand. He doesn’t command you to do this or forbid you from doing that. No one is greater, no one lesser. You’re all equal. My countrymen would envy you. You are—we are—fortunate.”