Mattie Mitchell

by Gary Collins

  Until one late summer day in 1943.

  THE LUSH, GREEN FARMLANDS ON THE coastal plain around the largely French-speaking town of Stephenville on Newfoundland’s southwest coast had been converted to one of the world’s biggest runways. War had come lording over the lands of the earth. Since 1939, the free peoples of Europe had been fighting against a tyranny unequalled in history. The isles of Britain, the plains of southern Europe, and the deserts of North Africa were fierce battlegrounds. On December 7, 1941, the richest nation on earth declared war against the far-off nation of Japan. And now the dogs of war scoured the globe, snarling and fighting as they went.

  Stephenville had become an American base of more than 8,000 acres. The airstrips created there on the edge of the western sea were 150 feet wide and stretched 6,000 feet toward the distant mountains. During the peak war years from 1943-1945, more than 30,000 American troops per year passed through the base at Harmon Field.

  Day and night the planes came in from the western gulf which separated the island nation of Newfoundland from the land mass of Canada. And just as regularly they flew away again, heading for distant battles that went on and on. And when it was over, all of the dead names could fill pages of books that would never be written. The Greek philosopher Plato said it best: Only the dead have seen the last of war.

  Mattie Mitchell’s bones had long since blended into the earth he so dearly loved when a young American airman came walking up the river valley. He was accompanied by another man who was little more than a teenager. The American’s nickname was “Stringer.” He was the leader of his squadron. When he came roaring in from the Atlantic for the airstrip at Stephenville, he always had a group of fighter planes in his “string.”

  Stringer had met and fallen in love with a local dark-haired girl. The young airman was an avid fly fisherman who until now had never tried his hand at fishing for Atlantic salmon. Stringer learned that his fiancé’s younger brother knew all about fishing for salmon. The brother and sister were of Mi’kmaq descent. And so it was that the two men made their way up the river where Mattie Mitchell had found gold so many decades ago. They headed toward a deep pool where the boy assured the airman the salmon always rested.

  For two hours the American fished the deep, dark water of the pool without any success, although the salmon frequently jumped all around him. He had changed his fly hooks several times, but it was all in vain. He just couldn’t get the hang of catching an Atlantic salmon. Walking a little farther upstream and pulling his hat from his head, he removed another fly hook from the felt band that ran around the quiff. He was tying the fly to the fine leader when he saw it.

  He bent his head down and placed the end of the barrel knot between his teeth. Turning his head sideways, he bit down and severed the line. A sparkle of yellow shone up through the shallow water at his feet. At first Stringer thought it was the sunlight on the water surface. More curious than anything, he bent down to investigate. With his rod held in the crook of his left arm, he reached into the water with his right hand.

  Stringer was surprised to feel metal. He pulled, and it came free from the gravelly bottom. There came a rattle of sound muffled by the water. What he pulled from the river bottom appeared to be a small metal can with only the upper edge remaining. Only rusted shards remained of the container’s sides and nothing of the bottom part. Looking down into the water, the yellow sparkle still remained. Stringer discarded the rusted can and reached into the water again. When he brought his hand out of the water, it was filled with rocks that glittered with gold flakes. When Stringer’s shouts brought his guide to his side, the young Mi’kmaq said with excitement, “You have found Mattie’s kettle o’ gold!”

  For days after, the story of the golden rocks was on everyone’s lips. It even made the local media. Many people still remembered the tale of Mattie’s kettle of gold. Several hurried expeditions travelled up the river to find more of the precious metal, but none was found.

  ANOTHER STORY INVOLVING MATTIE and a river is that of the “duckish water.” It shows the wit and humour of the man.

  For several days Mattie had been walking upstream from the coast, tending his autumn traps. Early each morning, whenever he approached one deep, muddy cove in particular, away from the main current—formed by one of the river’s many back eddies— he would disturb a small flock of ducks. At his approach, the ducks always battered away upriver and squawked in protest.

  One day Mattie was asked to take two English sportsmen hunting. The two hunters had been told that Mattie knew all there was to know about fish and birds. Mattie had overheard the conversation and as usual made no comment.

  The river valley where he always saw the ducks was easy going for the most part. It also happened to fall in the same general direction he wanted to take the two hunters. On the first morning out with the two Englishmen, Mattie stopped 200 feet or so before the spot where he expected to see the ducks. He approached the cool river water and bent down to take a drink. Sitting back with his mouth full, he rinsed the water back and forth several times before swallowing. Slowly and deliberately, he cupped his hand into the stream again and sucked the water through his lips, giving his two companions the impression that he was deep in thought over something. Apparently satisfied, he spat the water out of his mouth and announced to no one in particular that the water “taste duckish, maybe.”

  One of the sportsmen stood over him asked, “Whatever do you mean, my good fellow?”

  “The water taste like duck. Black ones, maybe. Dey not far upriver. Round next ben’, maybe,” Mattie said with a straight face.

  The two men turned away from Mattie and mumbled something about crazy natives. When they rounded the next bend in the river, sure enough, up flew the small flock of ducks, much to the delight of a smiling Mattie and the chagrin of the English hunters. As the ducks flew away without one shot fired at them, Mattie heard one of the men exclaim, “By jove! Blacks, too!”

  THE TALES OF MATTIE MITCHELL’S exploits—all of them adventurous—told by the men who visited the house of John Mitchell, Marie’s father, seemed endless. And always the pretty, black-haired girl with the dark eyes listened and remembered.

  MATTIE WENT ON ONE OF THE LAST of his adventures in 1910. He wasn’t searching for natural treasures but for something quite different: pirate treasure.

  From the sixteenth century the eastern shores of the Americas were a mecca for pirates. The “new” world offered fresh opportunities for those who dared to take their fortune rather than earn it. Today their names roll off the tongue of every schoolboy. They are all infamous. Edward Teach, or Blackbeard, as the world knew him, plundered his nefarious way all along the American coast of colonies. Black Bart and Captain Kidd were men whose very names brought dread to every honest captain. Henry Morgan was a Welshman who razed the city of Panama and terrorized the West Indies. He held command of an entire ocean for a time. They were all sea thieves from the past. But there was one other pirate whose daring outshone them all—Peter Easton.

  From his base in Newfoundland, Easton sailed as far west as the Barbary Coast of northwest Africa. He commanded a crew of thousands in as many as forty ships. Many of his crewmen were volunteers, but it is believed that he had taken the vast majority aboard his ships by force. He was the scourge of John Guy, who had established the first English colony in Newfoundland. By 1610, Easton was considered the most powerful pirate in the western hemisphere.

  Easton would steal a shipload of salted-down fish headed from Newfoundland to England just as soon as he would take a ship laden with rum and spices from the Indies. Stolen doubloons and pieces of eight from Spain, and beaver pelts from English merchants all meant the same to Peter Easton—money. Several countries on either side of the Atlantic followed and hounded the much-feared corsair, but he was never captured.

  It was said that Easton hid some of his ill-gotten wealth in several places around the Newfoundland coast. One such place was reported to be the small Shell Bird Islan
d, just upstream from the wide mouth of the Humber River. Mattie Mitchell had heard all of these white man stories. He had passed Shell Bird Island many times over the course of his lifetime. Once, he stopped there and explored the place, but found nothing.

  Another place Easton had supposedly hidden treasure was on another island, St. John Island, on the Newfoundland side of the Strait of Belle Isle. Local legend tells of a pirate ship that ran aground near the island while seeking shelter from a fierce storm that tore up the strait. Fearing their ship would founder, the pirates removed chests of gold coins and precious jewels from the tossing vessel and hid them on the island, well above the high-water mark. The storm abated without causing any significant damage to their ship, and the pirates hurried to catch the high tide and sailed away from the land. They had scratched an arrow into a boulder to mark the location of the treasure, for which they would return. The arrow and the boulder were visible only at very low tide. According to the legend, the pirates were besieged by another, more violent storm. The ship and all hands were lost.

  Mattie Mitchell knew St. John Island very well. It was a part of his hunting grounds. He had erected a small shelter there. He had also been there many times at the request of people hoping to recover the pirate treasure. Those who paid the small fee for his services hoped the old woodsman’s eyes would reveal what so many others had failed to see. But Mattie could find no trace of the treasure. Eventually, he refused to take any more fortune seekers there again. Like everyone else, he figured the pirates and their gold were a myth.

  Then, one cold winter’s day near the end of 1910, while travelling along his trapline far inland from his home in Bonne Bay, he met an old man who had a map to the pirate gold.

  Mattie was accompanied by one of his wife’s relatives. The young boy from the Webb family was learning the ways of the wild from the best of hunters and trappers. The short winter day was late and the sun had gone. Night was near, and there was no warmth upon the land. Suddenly, across their trail, an old man staggered and abruptly fell. Mattie and his young companion half dragged, half carried the emaciated man to their camp, which fortunately was nearby.

  Mattie fed the man with hot caribou broth and, as he grew stronger, caribou meat. He laid the old man in his own warm bunk and covered him, where he slept on his back without stirring for twelve hours. The man’s hair was wild and snow white. He was balding in front. His exposed brown scalp furrowed a path through a patch of unruly long hair that fell to his narrow shoulders, so that the man’s face appeared to be staring out of a tangled bush. He looked to be very old, but the energy behind his bright blue eyes contradicted his age.

  For several days Mattie and the young boy nursed their patient back to health. In all that time they never once asked him how he had come to be in these northern woods. The man had tremendous resilience; he soon recovered and appeared to be strong enough to travel. When Mattie invited him to accompany them to the coast, he very politely declined. The stranger thanked his two rescuers, but he said he would be all right now and prepared to leave.

  Standing in the dim light of the small cabin, the old man produced a faded map. He explained to Mattie that if he followed the map precisely he would find enough gold to provide not only for him, but his entire family for the rest of their lives. The map revealed the location of the pirate treasure of St. John Island. The man handed Mattie the map, shook hands with him and Webb, and wished them a very Merry Christmas before walking out the door and disappearing down the snowy trail.

  The very next year, Mattie and a friend made their way up the Northern Peninsula to Eddies Cove. Tucked safely inside his pack in a waterproof satchel was the treasure map given to him by the old man of the hills. Upon reaching the small village of Eddies Cove late in the evening, Mattie finally persuaded Joe Offrey to take him and his companion across to St. John Island. They had enough supplies for an extended stay. This time Mattie—armed with the old man’s map—figured he would find the fabled pirate treasure.

  Using the old man’s yellowed map, Mattie found, at low tide, a small arrow etched into a boulder. He found other marks, but none of them were easy to find. It took a keen and very observant eye to follow the aged map.

  But it was not to be. The old woodsman suffered a stroke and, with the help of his friend, returned home without ever finding the treasure. He would never return to St. John Island again. The island with the pirate treasure is still a legend.

  FOR MARIE MITCHELL, THE WINTER NIGHTS when the men talked their trail talk were openings into the world of her grandfather, one she would never see with her own eyes. But inside her head the tales would forever remain as vivid as the nights when she had first heard them.

  Marie remembered her first movies about cowboys and Indians. The Indians were always the bad guys and never won any of the battles. Around her in the theatre all of her friends had shouted “Shoot the redskins!” All she could do was stay quiet and wonder why.

  Remembering the days of her childhood, Marie still felt the sting of prejudice. The taunts of “Marie is nothing but an Injun” coming from her peers was anything but funny to her. But through it all she remained steadfast to her heritage. Nothing would sway her from the pride she felt of who she was. And she was proudest of all that her grandfather was the one and only Mattie Mitchell.

  In 1946, Marie was ten years old and in the fifth grade. One day, as she sat in her classroom in Corner Brook, she heard the teacher speak the name of Mattie Mitchell. She timidly raised her hand and in a quiet, shaky voice said, “That’s my grandfather, Miss.”

  Her teacher hushed the other children, who were laughing at Marie. Marie finally convinced the teacher that her statement was true. The other kids stared at her in awe: she had a connection to a figure in their Newfoundland history school book!

  Bursting with pride, Marie raced home and informed her parents of the sentence in her Newfoundland geography book, the one that said her grandfather had discovered the mine in Buchans. Her parents, who of course knew about Mattie’s discovery, were thrilled to learn that Mattie Mitchell’s name was living on in Marie’s generation.

  From that day forward, Marie started a lifelong quest to record all known information about her legendary grandfather. Her dedication to the task ended only with her death.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE HIGH GREY MOUNTAINS WITH their wondrous mystery were silent. Their vast, white, flat-topped plateaus draped behind dark evening clouds. It was late March, but the hills and valleys on Newfoundland’s west coast were still choked with heavy winter snow. A mist had drizzled from the low-hanging clouds all day. It was a sly, sneaky moisture that seeped through a man’s clothing and soaked the skin almost without his knowing. Now with night shadows climbing up through the deep-wooded valleys below, the rain got colder.

  Mattie Mitchell was soaked to the bone. His coarse, black woollen clothes, most of it showing sparse herring-bone patches of his own careful stitching, were plastered to his tawny skin. Despite the cold rain, Mattie was sweating. The mild temperature along with the rain made the snow soft underfoot, and although the trail he followed was well packed, he sank through in places. The trail wound its twisted way through a mature virgin forest. At intervals, open spaces between the trees allowed Mattie a view of the distant ridges. They showed blue against the slate sky. Tiny tendrils of steam emanated from beneath his worn coat collar and, like the last rising images of heat from a dying campfire, vanished into the air.

  The worn thin straps from a dirty grey canvas pack bit into his tired shoulders. Inside the pack were the pelts of three fox— two with thick red hides and one with a shiny black coat. One fawn-tinted lynx and three brunette beaver skins, the lush hide of one partly cured “marten cat,” several pounds of cured caribou meat, and a few meagre personal belongings filled his pack to its laced mouth. Lashed securely to the outside of the pack was a large unskinned beaver with its broad tail dangling below.

  More than two hours’ walk behind, Mattie had pulled
the furred rodent from its watery grave beneath the ice of a small pond, reset the steel trap, and walked on. Running under the heavy pack, angled upward and crossing his forehead ran a two-inch-wide leather thump line. It was a simple and practical native design that relieved much of the weight from the lower back and transferred it to the neck and head.

  Now, standing on the edge of a high, snow-covered alpine meadow, he paused. He had not stopped for a rest since he had shrugged the dead beaver into place onto his broad shoulders miles back. Weary and nearing the place where he would find rest, Mattie scanned the deep, white valley below him. He couldn’t see the river that ran the length of the winter valley, but he knew it was there, even without hearing the sound of its waters rising and falling on the evening breeze. What he could see of the distant elevation through the misty rain showed a dark blue. It was another sure sign of a mild spell. Maybe it was time to leave for the coast, he thought.

  The man who stood looking down into the wet, misty valley was tall. He was several inches taller than six feet. His small, far-seeing eyes were dark, like the deep colour of a perfectly cured pine marten hide. His face was long and angular, and his full head of thick black hair fell matted below his ears. His jaws and well-defined cheekbones were clean of facial hair, though he seldom shaved. His mouth was full, below a straight, full nose that belied his ancestry. Mattie Mitchell was a handsome man. He looked as if some hidden gene had been lodged in his veins, producing in his features, for all to see, the link of his mysterious lineage.

  Mattie was of Mi’kmaq/Montagnais Indian descent. He was a revered chieftain among his people. He had “royal” blood in his veins. His bloodline reached back into the realms of pre-recorded history. The tales of his breed had been passed down through long generations beside countless campfires in wonderfully told accounts by those who knew and who believed.