Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

by Tantoo Cardinal

  “Yes, we are fortunate,” the chief agreed. “I cannot imagine any man or woman of our nation bowing or taking orders from me or another man or woman.” Then he lapsed into silence, contemplating what he’d just heard.

  “Chief!” Nebaunaubae spoke to the chief. “For you and your people, who owns the land?”

  “It belongs to Kizhae-Manitou. Whatever the Master of Life has created belongs to the Master. The Master put us on the land that we live on. The Master gave it not to one but to all, including the birds, the animals, and the insects.

  “All beings created were born with a right to a place upon the bosom of Earth Mother, to a share in her bounty. Only by having a place somewhere can creatures fulfill their duties to the earth, to plants, to one another, and to humankind. Without birds, animals, insects, and fish, humans would not long survive.

  “When a person is born he is entitled to a place on the land and a share in the produce of the earth, and when that person is ready to settle down, he may select any parcel of land that is vacant for his own use for as long as he lives, or until he abandons it. He must choose a parcel that is empty. This land will belong to him and, if he is married, to his wife and his family. He can then say ‘ae-indauyaun,’ my home; his family will say ‘ae indauyaung,’ our home. The man’s kin and neighbours will say ‘w’ae-indaut,’ his home, his dwelling place, in recognition that the dwelling and the land that the building stands on belongs to that man and his family. Women have the same rights as do men. This is our custom, the way we do things. But the land belongs to all the people. For as long as a person occupies a parcel of land, it is his, but the moment that he abandons it and moves to another place, the land reverts to the people.

  “Birds and animals have the same need for a place that is their own, and they also have a right to the harvest of the earth.”

  “That’s the way it should be,” Pau-eehnse broke in, “but in our country the serfs work for the master. At harvest time the master takes a serf’s produce, as much as he thinks he will need. After him comes the priest to take his portion. Always the serf is left with less than will meet his own needs. You don’t have a similar practice.”

  “The chief can get his own. We’re not supposed to look after him; he’s supposed to look after us,” a listener added.

  The next figure on the sash was that of a man in black robes. It reminded the storyteller of Nana’b’oozoos first vision quest and how Nana’b’oozoo had not gone through with it. The story piqued Nebaunaubae’s interest in his adoptive peoples beliefs. “In my country,” he began, “we don’t have vision quests, we don’t smoke pipes, we don’t offer tobacco, we don’t drum or chant or have fetishes such as you have. These practices would be regarded as pagan. When our leader Cartier came over here the second time, he brought a priest. The priest was shocked and he felt sorry for the poor Indians. He said, ‘Those poor savage pagans, they don’t have churches, priests, or a holy book to read. They don’t know about God and, not knowing God, will never get to heaven. Instead they’ll all go to limbo or to the everlasting fires of hell.’”

  “What’s a church? What’s a priest? What’s a holy book? What’s prayer? What’s baptism? What’s contrition?” the listeners asked.

  Nebaunaubae explained.

  “No, we don’t have any of those things,” the chief said ruefully. “All we have is Mother Earth. She shows us birth, growth, life, death, and rebirth. She teaches us that life and being come from a seed that breaks its casement and grows and gives life, then dies, and its seed continues the cycle. Mother Earth shows us in her mountains, valleys, forests, meadows, lakes, and rivers that there is a Master of Life. She tells us through her other children, the eagle, deer, butterfly, whitefish, what we ought to do and what we ought not to do as we follow the Path of Life. We watch and we listen. The earth is our book.

  “It’s also our church. Every part is ‘holy,’ made so by the act of creation. Wherever we may be, we talk to the Great Mystery.”

  “How do you know what to say?” Nebaunaubae wanted to know.

  “We know. We just know. Our heart and, on occasion, our mind will tell us what to say. Only you know what you want and need; only you know what to say; no one else does. And so you talk to the Great Mystery or to one of your ancestors or to one of the manitous in your own words.”

  “Do you ever quarrel about your beliefs?” Nebaunaubae asked.

  “No, we don’t quarrel about prayers and beliefs. Prayers are between a person and the Great Mystery or one of the manitous; they are personal and confidential. Same thing with beliefs. We do have different understandings, but it is the Great Mystery who has given us these different understandings. For who is to say that one person has a better understanding and another less? Will the Great Mystery prefer the person to whom He has given more talent to understand and neglect the one to whom He has given less?” After a moment’s reflection, he turned to Nebaunaubae. “Why do you ask? How do your people talk to the Great Mystery?”

  Nebaunaubae told the listeners that God sent his only son down to the Holy Land to save mankind by teaching it the right way to live, and that the Holy Land people crucified Him for this teaching. “Why?” the audience wanted to know. “Didn’t God do anything to save His son, to punish His killers?”

  “Later Jesus Christs teachings were written down in a book,” Nebaunaubae continued. “Right from the start men quarrelled about God’s teachings. To put an end to these disputes a priesthood of wise and holy men learned in the hidden meanings of the Holy Book was set up. Only these men were competent to interpret the teachings of Christ and to guide the people along the path of righteousness. These wise and holy men built churches to which people were required to go once a week to hear the word of God. Learning and ever more learning didn’t put a stop to the disputes over the word of God. The wise and holy men disagreed. Even laymen drew different meanings from the Holy Book. The men who differed from the teachings of the Roman Catholic church founded their own religions and built their own churches. For starting their own religions, these men and women provoked the wrath of the Catholic church fathers who, along with the government, persecuted and killed the Protestant Huguenots.

  “France wasn’t the only country that wouldn’t put up with different beliefs. In England, the model of tolerance and enlightenment—the English church—persecuted the Catholics.

  “We heard our priest say that missionaries would reap a rich harvest among the Indians.”

  The chief harrumphed, “And they’ll sow seeds of squabbling, adding more fuel to the fire. As if we haven’t already enough to quarrel about.”

  Next evening Pau-eehnse asked, “I’m curious. What are these dreams, these visions that you talk about? Why are they so important?”

  The storyteller explained, going over ordinary dreams that most people have, some people more frequently than others. These had meaning. He said that the Houdenassaunee saw dreams as “the unfulfilled desires of the spirit.”

  “Dreams,” he went on, “are meetings of the spirits of the living and the spirits of our ancestors in the World of Dream. The spirits of dreamers may even meet manitous and other spirits of the living in that stage of existence.” The storyteller explained that some men could conjure up spirits and summon them to the presence of the world of men and women. When the storyteller had finished going over the “Shaking of the Earth” rite, he went over the ordinary dream that men and women indulge in, “the dream of a better life.” To illustrate this point he related the story of two young friends who, seeing the crimson hills in the horizon, were led to believe that the land in the distance was much more beautiful than their surroundings. They left their village to make their home in the crimson hills. Each evening, after walking the entire day, the two friends were no nearer to the crimson hills than they had been the previous day. The land of the crimson hills was always on the horizon, as distant as before. Years later the boys, now men, returned to their village. They had gone around the world. T
heir home and their land had been the land of crimson earlier that day.

  The storyteller told another story, a story of four young men who dreamed of a better life for their people, who were cold, hungry, destitute, as if they had been forsaken by their Maker.

  “The friends set out seeking a land where there was food aplenty and fair weather, and where there was no illness and the people were happy. They went on following the path of the sun. They came to a great river over which they were ferried by a riverman. Well beyond the river they came to the lodge of a bedridden woman. They looked after her until she recovered. When the friends were ready to resume their journey, the old woman told them to go back home to their people. She knew what they were seeking. And she would give them what their kindness deserved, medicine for their people. To each of the young men the old woman gave a small packet, which they were not to open and take until they returned to their village. They followed her advice, and taking their medicine was the first act the young men performed when they got home. But nothing happened, nothing changed during their lifetime. Their people were as poor as before, and the young men felt that they had been betrayed by the old woman. Only after they died did their graves yield the gifts that changed the lives of their people. The graves yielded evergreens, birchbark, flint, and tobacco that changed the lot of people who had once been cold, hungry, and sickly.”

  “At home,” Pau-eehnse remarked, “we could never indulge in such dreams. My father and my mother were serfs. A serf I would be, and to die in servitude was my destiny. That is not a dream; it was the reality. I dream that I remain here, never to go back. But I do wish that I could see my parents.”

  Nebaunaubae nodded. “I don’t want to go back. I wish that our people had what we have here.”

  During that storytelling season the chief and his people were absorbed by the master-slave relationship that Pau-eehnse and Nebaunaubae had described. They found it hard to believe that in a country as civilized and Christian as France, one man and his family owned all the land, and that his friends owned men and women and made them work, and that men, holy men, quarrelled about their beliefs and even killed those who differed with them. None could dream of a better life, except after death.

  On the Wampum Belt was a fleet of ships. With these figures as his cue, the storyteller resumed his narrative.

  “It was not long, no more than ten years since Parisé and Lebrun had been adopted by the Odauwau, that, unknown to them, what Daebaudjimoot had foretold was coming to pass. Shipload after shipload of bearded White men and white-complexioned women came to the Land of the Great Turtle. Most came because of a dream. They dreamed of a land where they could practise their beliefs without persecution; they dreamed of land, of a better life.”

  Next on the Wampum Belt were two stakes with the totems upside-down, the sign of death.

  “The Indians in the interior heard rumours of the influx of aliens in the east and reports that the aliens were squatting on the lands of the People of the Dawn, as the Anishinaubae called anyone who lived east of them. Nebaunaubae heard these rumours and, fearful of capture by his countrymen, moved further inland to Nipissing with his wife, five sons, two daughters, and twenty-five grandchildren. There he died in his seventy-fifth year. Pau-eehnse also moved inland, to Lake Simcoe, with his family of six boys, brown- and grey-eyed, light-complexioned youngsters. By the time he passed away, there were eighteen grandchildren. In addition to grandchildren, they left behind them stories of their heritage that their descendants kept.”

  Abeedaussimoh highlighted soldiers firing their guns at warriors. There were bodies on the ground.

  Now the aliens were moving inland. They were moving in on the People of the Dawn’s lands, massacring the people who defended their lands and their freedoms. These aliens had no sense of right or wrong. They had no respect for the People of the Dawn or their rights or their lives.

  And so it went. Chiefs complained, “When the White people came here, they were few and weak. All they wanted, they said, was a little space. Our ancestors gave them space, fed them, and gave them clothing. Soon they became many and strong. They wanted more land, more space. Before long our people were crowded off their ancestral homes and penned in enclosures.”

  Abeedaussimoh paused and looked up. “I am done,” he said. “I have told you what our Wampum Belt has recorded of our people in the Lake Simcoe area up to this time and what fates await our people in the future.”

  There were shouts of “How! How! How!” (comparable to “Hear! Hear!”) throughout the assembly as Abeedaussimoh rolled up the Wampum Belt before sitting down.

  Aissance, the chief, held up his hand for quiet and attention. The crowd settled down. “We will now hear from Wauwunoosh, Tecumseh’s courier.”

  Wauwunoosh, lithe, lean, tall, took his place beside Aissance, who drew back to sit with the other chiefs.

  “Neekaumisseedoog, N’dawaemaudoog!” the mazhinawae began. “I am Wauwunoosh, Pottawotomi, Tecumseh’s courier and brother in arms. I come to you from Tecumseh with greetings and his apologies for not being able to come to deliver his own message. But just as he was about to come away, couriers from his own people living in southern Ohio came to him with word that the Long Knives were encroaching upon their lands. As he was leaving, Tecumseh asked me to come to you, to ask you to join our cause in Ohio and to keep the Long Knives on the east side of the Ohio River … Otherwise the Shawnee, Miami, and Illiniwuk, and the Ottawa, Pottawotomi, Chippewa, and Maumee who make up the Anishinaubae peoples will suffer the same fate as our brothers in the east. Tecumseh asks, Where are the Pequot now? Where are the Narragansetts? The Passamaquoddy? The Massachusetts? The Mohicans? Once great nations, they are now but remnants of a once proud people, without land, without home, disdained, unwelcome in the villages and towns of the White people. How their fortunes have changed.

  “When the White people first came to these lands, they were few and weak; though they knew a great deal, they knew next to nothing of the land, how to hunt, what to eat, what to wear. They told the Indians that they were looking for goods that would obtain for them a better life at home. Where they came from, they were slaves with masters. Masters made them work and took part of their harvest, leaving them with less than met their needs, so that they were ever hungry and often sick.

  “There were deer and wild boars and pheasants in the forests, but they belonged to the King. For a man to kill one of them to feed his starving family was a grave offence. If a man were caught killing one of the King’s animals, he could be put away in prison or in a grave. The animals in the forests were better off than were humans. These itinerants told the Indians that the King owned their bodies and their labours and that preachers owned their prayers, beliefs and souls.

  “The Indians felt sorry for these hapless itinerants. They gave them some land, showed them how to hunt and grow corn and potatoes, and how to store meat and berries without salting. The itinerants took up land and many of the ways and attitudes of the Indians. Their numbers grew, and as their numbers increased they took up more land by fighting and killing the Indians to whom the Great Mystery had given the land. Now it is the Long Knives who own land, come and go as they please, and take their places by the side of other men and women as our people are accustomed to do. The White people have now what the Indians had. It is now the Indians who have no land, nowhere to go; they look up to army officers and governors and listen to preachers to guide them along the right Path of Life. This is the lot that the Indians of the east coast have come into.

  “Unless we, the Shawnee, Kickapoo, Miami, Sauk, Illiniwak, Anishinaubae, Menominee, Winnibego, and all the nations to the south stand up to the Long Knives, we will all suffer the same fate as did our brother Indians along the east coast. Tecumseh wants you to know that the Shawnee will not give up a foot of their land that the Long Knives have demanded. They will not suffer the fate that the Pequots, the Narragansetts, and the other Indians went through. They are going to fight it.
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  “We, the Pottawotomi-Anishinaubae of Lower Michigan, are going to stand with Tecumseh and the Shawnee. We are asking you to join with us in the Niagara region, there to meet the Long Knives with bullets, arrows, clubs, and courage. We, all of us, must unite as one people if we are to repel the invader and to keep our lands and our way of life.”

  “How! How! How!” the warriors cried out, then rose to their feet and uttered war whoops. Mingled with the hoots were shouts of defiance. “We will not back down! Blood! Death! Wounds! Drive them out. Send them back to where they came from! The war dance, the war post!”

  That night the warriors performed the Dance of War. Next day they were off with Wauwunoosh, leaving behind apprehensive parents, wives, and children.

  In Niagara they joined other warriors to fight by the side of a ragtag collection of conscripts to defend Upper Canada against the Long Knives. Without the Indians the defenders would have lost and Upper Canada would have been seized by the Long Knives. But, in the main, it was the Indian warriors who stemmed the Long Knives, and if General Isaac Brock had listened to Tecumseh and the other war chiefs, the defenders would have inflicted an even more decisive blow. Unable to break the Indian resistance, the Long Knives fell back.

  Not long after the Battle of Queenston Heights, a courier from the St. Clair River region brought word to Tecumseh that the Long Knives had crossed the St. Clair River and were believed to be making their way toward the small town of London. Tecumseh and his war chiefs made straight for London. Learning that the invaders were still camped well downstream on the banks of the Thames River, Tecumseh and his chiefs prepared a trap. Some days later the invaders walked into the trap. The battle was fierce, both sides suffered heavy losses, but the greatest loss to the Indians was the death of Tecumseh. The invaders turned tail and went back to their country. The Indians won and they lost. Though they drove the Long Knives back to their own country and saved the fledgling nation from falling into the control of the United States, victory wasn’t enough to fulfill their own dreams of keeping their lands and their way of life.