The Last Beothuk

by Gary Collins

  Winter was truly over. The birds flew up through the valley. They had come from a day’s fishing on the distant sea. Soon they would lay hundreds of eggs on the island, each day making the trip back and forth the valley flyway. They would continue in this manner until their young had fledged. The first were the black cormorants, their long necks stretched tight. Behind them came a large wedge of shell-ducks, whose beating wings made a whistling sound as they flew. The sound stirred Kop’s hunting blood. The birds promised good hunting. Now he relaxed. Turning, he stepped lively to where his family waited.

  “Did you see them?” he asked. “There are many more seabirds than last spring, and the lazy seagulls have not arrived yet.”

  “No, Kopituk, the seagulls will wait for the shags to lay their smoky blue deliiues first and then steal from them.”

  “They are much like us, then,” returned her husband. His easy mood had returned with the appearance of the birds.

  Five days Kop waited on the shore not far from the island now colonized by the noisy birds, waiting for the right time to approach the colony. The birds were flying around and over the island and swimming all around it. The trout around the island were soon exhausted by the birds, and each morning at the first grey of dawning, the black shags flew in small flocks down the valley, using it as a shortcut to the sea, which would take Kop and his family many days to reach. And each evening in the dying light they returned, their long necks swollen with saltwater fishes. Though their bellies were hungry, Kop waited. He knew he had to wait until the birds had settled down to egg-laying. This done, they would not leave the colony, no matter the disturbance.

  The beothuk campsite was on a gentle slope leading up from the lake. Virgin stands of spruce, fir, and birch grew there, green and dense. Towering above all other tress were the massive white pines, lording over the forest. High above the ground on one such pine tree, with footholds long since carved into its heavy bark, Kop made daily climbs. From this vantage point he could see the progress of the bird colony. For days he watched the shags erect their nests using small pieces of driftwood. Many of them were high up on the island, and he could see them against the sky. After a few days, the birds quieted down. The flurry of nest building was over. He knew the egg-laying had come, and the long time of devoted incubation had begun. He would wait two more days before visiting the colony.

  Winding through the valley bottom above which the birds flew was a small, rocky stream. Throughout the brook’s course, several beaver lodges, as well as many muskrat hubbles, were known by the Beothuk. Just upstream from the mouth of the brook was a beaver dam, built by the fat water rodents. It had raised the water level above the dam and had all but surrounded the beaver lodge. Below the structure, the water was slow and shallow. Kop slunk with great caution up the stream to the dam. He used the dam as a shield between him and the small pond where now, in late evening, the animals were swimming. It wasn’t the beaver Kop was after this evening. He was after the smaller water rats, which used the beaver ponds extensively. The flooded area provided them with the tender water plants they loved so well. The muskrats had actually burrowed a nesting lodge into the beaver dam itself and used an underwater entrance. Kop knew this. He had been here before.

  Peering above the dam with the setting sun to his back, he didn’t have long to wait. Several water rats swam by. They were so close to his hiding place, Kop could have easily killed them with a heavy stick. But this would raise alarm, and he would get only one of the animals. Most of the muskrat looked like last year’s young. Kop did not care much about their age. His family needed meat. His short arrows flew three times before the animals became aware. Flicking their scrawny tails in a puny imitation of the resounding slap issued from the beaver’s broad tail, the survivors dived under and disappeared. Kop retrieved two of the dead water rats by reaching them with the end of his bow. The other one he dragged ashore using a long alder branch.

  Back at the campsite, Tehonee was excited to see the animals, still dripping brook water. Kop handed them to her as if they were fat haunches of venison. The family loved the tender meat of the water rat. When they were done eating its flesh, only the white bones would remain. The muskrat fur was at its late-spring worst, so of little use for clothing.

  Two days later, Kop sat in the stern of their tapooteek, which had been fashioned with great care from the bark of a single large birch tree and fastened to alder ribs. Its seams had been smeared with hot pine pitch. It leaked some but was easily kept afloat. The cove was quiet. Only a few gentle waves lapped playfully upon the yellow beach. Tehonee, paddle in hand, was seated in the bow. Kuise squatted in the centre and could barely contain her excitement. She had long waited for this day when they would gather eggs. Aboard the canoe were a couple of birchbark baskets and one woven from cattail rushes.

  Kop pushed away from the beach, and the canoe rocked side to side as he did so. Kuise squealed with delight. Tehonee gripped the sides of the boat in fear. She did not like boats. Kop saw her tension.

  “Did you bring the water basket to test the deliiues of the black fish eaters, my woman?”

  Tehonee, knowing Kop was looking at her, loosened her grip on the canoe. Balancing her paddle, she dug it deep into the water and pulled her weight, her fear of boats hidden. “Yes, Kopituk. And also large baskets to carry all the eggs we will gather.”

  “The winter has been a long one, and my belly misses the taste of eggs. It will take many before it is full.”

  “I will help carry the eggs to the canoe and eat many of them every day, my mother,” said Kuise.

  “Maybe the smell of the bird droppings will turn your small belly from eating even one egg, Small One,” laughed her father.

  “Maybe the thieving seagulls have left none for any of us,” cried the always practical Tehonee, pointing her arm toward the island, where the raucous gulls could be seen and heard above it. As the canoe neared the landing, the noise grew deafening. The seagulls were diving down and screeching. The nesting female birds, with long necks stretched, were croaking and crying in fear and defiance, refusing to leave their nests. The male shags swooped behind and among the marauding seagulls, their voices adding to the cacophony now encompassing the rocky islet.

  With both adults paddling hard, the canoe soon crossed the narrow stretch of water and hove to under the rookery. Below the island, the smell of guano was overpowering. Kuise and Tehonee both covered their noses. Kop stared at the screaming birds, which were now in full panic, and ignored the stench.

  “I will shoot two seagulls before we leave the island and leave their bodies to rot. It will discourage the thieves from returning, at least for a few days. It will give us time to do our own stealing. When we reach the coast, we will take eggs from the thieving seagulls.” Kop spoke loudly. No need for stealth now.

  The treeless island loomed straight up out of the blue water for more than a hundred feet. Most of the cliffs were sheer, with narrow ledges well above the waterline. The sun glinted from a cloudless sky upon the water, and the cliff face was glazed with sunshine. Only one tiny cove, more an indentation than cove, allowed access from the water. It was here Kop steered the canoe, and the three stepped out upon the island. Though the exterior cliffs led straight up from the lake, leading away from the small cove, here was a steep, grassy slope up over the island. They lifted the canoe out of the water, and the three began climbing up.

  Now the birds circled the island in a great squawking wreath. Their droppings squirted at intervals and came raining down, sometimes landing upon the heads of the three humans who dared disturb the colony. The smell was acrid. The crying of the birds and the batter of wings were mind-numbing. Only a few female birds remained in their nests, black necks craning, eyes askance, deep croaking sounds pouring from their open beaks as they reluctantly battered away from the nest and jumped over the edge of the cliffs. Below, the shags splashed down in the wate
r and gathered in large rafts to swim around the island. Their necks looked even longer as they stretched to see what danger had come to them. Several adult ducks swam among them. And above it all, the raucous seagulls kept up their abuse, adding to the turmoil.

  Now Kop and his family had to step lightly, for eggs were in every available crevice, and nests on every ledge and level space. Some of the shag nests were as high as Kuise’s knees. The child’s cries of delight added to the din.

  “They aren’t black, as they looked from the shore,” she shouted to her parents in surprise. “They are blue and purple and have yellow feet, and they look at me sideways with their bog-coloured eyes without blinking. And their eggs are like a cloudy blue sky.” Kuise picked an egg from one of the nests. No one mentioned the stink anymore, and the egg gathering began.

  Chalky blue cormorant eggs—the most prevalent eggs—filled the baskets. They found duck eggs and even a few small, speckled twillick eggs. All were brought to Tehonee. It was she who would decide if the eggs were good to eat or if they were addled. She placed them in a cone-shaped basket filled with water and skilfully crafted from a single piece of birchbark. It was watertight. Now began a simple process well-known to the Beothuk. If the egg inside the shell had not yet begun its embryo growth, it would sink to the bottom, thus proving it to be edible. If it floated to the surface, it was addled and would be returned to the nest.

  “We have come at the right time again, my hunter. Only a few of the eggs float to the surface, and even then do so very slowly,” said Tehonee as she bent over her basket.

  “No matter how slowly they sink, they must not be taken,” Kop said. “They will stink and cause much stomach ache and vomiting when eaten. Only the ones that sink quickly will do. We have more than enough to choose from.”

  “Don’t worry, my hunter. We will feast only on tasty eggs this night, without the fear of belly pains.”

  The gathering continued until they had enough. The rich protein would sustain them for many days. They left the island and paddled back to shore, and behind them, the frantic birds descended in great flocks upon the island. Above them the seagulls skirled once more.

  That night they celebrated their good fortune. The eggs were boiled in a clay pot placed in the centre of a small, well-tended cooking fire. They ate with much relish and enjoyment. Kuise ate more than five. They cooked dozens of eggs and stored them away. When hard-boiled and kept in a cool, dry place under a mossy bank, the eggs would last for weeks and would provide much-needed energy.

  Long after Kuise had fallen asleep inside the mamateek, Kop and Tehonee sat by the fire and stared at the starry sky. Their quiet talk was about the trip they would soon make to the sea. From close by on the lake came the high, rolling laughter of a male loon. The sound carried in the still night. It was a pleading, yearning sound. Before the echoing sound of the male had receded into the night hills, there came a response: the sweet, shrill notes of his mate somewhere out on the lake.

  Tehonee wanted to know more about the Unwanted Ones, but it was a subject Kop rarely broached. Reaching down, Kop gently took her hand in his. Out of the lake the calls of the loons blended into one. And from the dying fire the couple rose and walked as one shadow toward their waiting bed.

  7

  The days of spring lengthened into the first warm days of summer. And like the nomads they were, Kop and his family were on the move again. They had just reached the mouth of the river that ran out of the south side of the lake. Their small boat was loaded with all of their belongings. The spring runoff was over, but the water running down that river was still much too fast for a fragile boat with only a few inches of freeboard. Kop guided their small craft to the shore just before they reached the pull of the current. Tehonee stepped out into the water and pulled the tapooteek broadside to the boulder-lined shore. Kop stepped out knee deep into the deeper water and held it steady as Kuise got out and clambered up over the bank. Tehonee reached into the tapooteek for one of the hide bags.

  “Leave everything aboard, my woman, and follow along the bank with Small One. Meet me at the bend by the still water beneath the dead pine tree. From there we will float easily down to the woodum of islands.”

  “Take care, Kopituk. The water is deep and strong, and the rocks are slippery.”

  “Many rabbits have come to the water, my father. Their droppings are everywhere. And there goes one now! It is a baby one!” Kuise ran into the woods after the bounding little rabbit.

  “There is no time for hunting baby rabbits, Small One. Just follow your mother and learn the trail as you go,” Kop shouted in a voice that stopped Kuise from wandering farther.

  Grasping the bow of the boat, Kop allowed the greedy current to swing it around until it was headed downstream. Keeping the boat in check, he followed it down. It was hard going and very slippery. He sank to his waist in places, and in others he had to manoeuvre the boat around rocks brimming with river spindrift. He stayed as close as he could to the shore, avoiding the strongest pull of the current. He allowed the tapooteek to gently brush by the rocks. A rip in its sides would mean a lengthy delay.

  The day warmed, and the sun was high before he reached the steady water below the rapids. He had made better time than his family. The boat had pulled him along, forcing him to move quickly, and he splashed ashore under the gnarled arms of a great pine, seasoned grey in death. Here the water slowed and ran deep and still. The land levelled, and the river made its way in gentle curves through a yellow bog. The riverbank gave up its boulders to gravely brown sand and grass as tall as Kop’s waist.

  There came a sound behind him which he sensed more than heard, and Tehonee stepped out of the woods with Kuise trudging behind. Around their heads swarmed blackflies and mosquitoes. Kop had been swatting at them while he waited, without paying much attention to the yearly torment. Now he noticed the misery in his young daughter’s face and the way she bore the scourge without complaint. It was a characteristic that didn’t go unnoticed by her mother.

  “We must have more red earth powder for Kuise’s face, Kopituk. Too many bites from the stinging flies will give her sores.”

  “I hadn’t noticed the bloodsuckers were so many. We will dab our faces with some of the red clay, though we must use it with care until we reach the saltwater coast, where I will get more of it.”

  “I know the place where the steep bank shows the small vein of red soil, Kopituk. It is many days’ travel yet. It is near the place where you heard the thunder sounds last season.”

  Kop ignored Tehonee’s last remark and said, “Kuise will not suffer too many bites.”

  From the leather pouch he always carried at his side, he shook a small amount of the dwindling red powder into his hand.

  “Come here, Kuise,” he said gently. The child came to her father’s side, her short arms swinging at the hordes of flies which followed her every move. The brook murmured, the flies hummed, and the sun sparkled on the moving water.

  Dipping his fingers into the brook, Kop stirred the red soil until it was a paste in the palm of his hand. Kneeling down, he beckoned Kuise closer. Tehonee and her daughter had walked hard along the shore strewn with boulders and overgrown with alders. The exertion had caused them to sweat. The voracious mosquitoes were drawn to their warm blood scent all the more. Especially to Kuise, whose small frame made easy prey. But she swatted at the flies without complaint.

  Her father spread the red dye on her upturned face. He did it so reverently, it was if he were anointing her. Kuise lowered her black lashes as Kop smeared the red ochre around her eyes and over her nose and neck. He rubbed the clay on her exposed wrists, too, but more sparingly.

  “This will not only protect you from the bloodsucking flies, Small One. It will also make you look even more beautiful.” Her father spoke softly, finishing his work on the face he loved so much.

  Kuise’s face,
her dark eyes staring and her white teeth shining behind her mask of red, was indeed beautiful. Tehonee beamed first at her daughter, then at her husband, loving his compliment.

  They continued their journey downriver. All three of them now sat in the tapooteek, and the water gently carried them along. At intervals the two adults bent their cupped hands into the river and splashed water over their faces and arms. The cool liquid was a temporary relief against the flies, which followed them in a grey cloud.

  Once, Kop lifted his head and sniffed at the air and grunted for silence. The tapooteek drifted with the tide as the three humans tensed as one, waiting. Kop spoke. “It is only a black bear that I caught the whiff of. He must be eating the new grasses. He stinks, as always.”

  “Maybe it isn’t a he, Kopituk, but a she, and she has two or more cubs still sucking at her tender nipples,” Tehonee said softly.

  Kop growled a response that didn’t require an answer from the woman. But she knew he hadn’t thought about hunting the fresh young bear meat. Tehonee also knew it wasn’t because of the danger involved in hunting for a bear cub with its mother. Kop feared nothing. But for some reason he was in a great hurry to reach the coast. And Tehonee feared it had something to do with their lost friends and the Unwanted Ones.

  The tapooteek gathered speed as it neared the mouth of the river, and the current raced to be one with the pond of islands. Kop steered for the vee of the current, knowing it was the deepest, and they were carried out into the pond, where a welcome breeze gave them relief from the flies. They paddled along the shoreline, among the many small islands to the eastern end of the pond. Once, a sleek black otter rose up out of the water, near enough for a shot, but before Kop could nock his arrow, the animal had gone down. When it resurfaced, it was well out of range.