The Last Beothuk Read online

  Now the fences had been broken in many places until they would no longer be effective. Someone had taken great effort to tear apart the carefully constructed fence materials. Kop saw signs where the deer were already using the gaps in the fences. The Unwanted Ones were becoming bolder, and they were moving into the interior, using Mi’kmaq as guides. Not only were the Beothuk deprived of their freedom and major food source on the coast of their island, they were now being pursued into the very heart of their homeland. The scenes he had witnessed by the ocean, and now the wanton destruction of the caribou fences, meant one thing: the Unwanted Ones were trying to starve them out of existence.

  Father and daughter walked down the ridge trace. The waving birches gave off a hissing sound in the cool breeze. The fading ferns brushed their clothing as they passed. The sun was still many hands high, and the day breeze was still strong. Through the trees, they could determine glimpses of blue water flecked with white. They were nearing the pond where Kop and Tehonee had lived and loved and where Kuise had grown.

  Standing still among the trees, they stared out at the campsite for a long time. Kop could see nothing amiss. There was no indication anyone had been here since he and his family had moved. Seeing her father was about to walk toward their mamateek, Kuise tugged on his arm and pointed to a tall white birch tree nearby.

  “See here, my ewinon, where my mother and I drained the clear sap in springtime.”

  Kop turned and saw Kuise was sobbing quietly. Her small hand was covering a hole carved through the inner bark and into the white wood. Kop looked around, remembering. There were other birch trees with similar holes in them. The Beothuk cut holes in the trees and caught the sap which ran out of them in the first days of spring. It was one of the joys which showed the long winter was over. The tree sap which poured out through the holes was as clear as the purest spring water. It had a faint woodsy taste, and after drinking, it gave a burst of energy.

  “Her spirit is all around. I will miss her more here, my ewinon.” Kuise’s voice was trembling with emotion.

  Kop looked at his grieving daughter and said nothing. He walked toward the lodge he and Tehonee had built. Looking inside, he saw a used sleeping robe, a basket made from birchbark, and some woven string, all that was left of Tehonee’s handiwork. His sigh was loud in the empty shelter.

  Kuise stayed among the trees until her father motioned to her it was safe to approach. She approached the open door timidly, not wanting to feel the emptiness of a home without a mother. She stood in the doorway beside her father until her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Then, with a sudden rush, she dived into the home and collapsed on the bedding of dried boughs where Tehonee had once slept. She buried her head in the caribou sleeping robe that had been left behind. It had patches on it, mended by her mother. There were new holes in the robe where field mice had chewed the hide and gathered some of its long hair for their nests. Kuise thrust her arms into the boughs.

  Holding a hem of the blanket, she said in an astonished voice, “I can smell her scent!” She turned toward the doorway, to address her father, but only the distant trees loomed in the opening.

  Kop was not at ease here. The memory of Tehonee was everywhere. He saw her coming from the tree shadows, her lithe form slipping through the trees, her arms filled with birchbark for basket weaving. She was shrouded in the wisp of smoke rising from their campfire. Her laughter was in the water as it tumbled down the rocky brook. Her voice, soft and gentle, was in the evening breeze which mourned the loss of day.

  And in the stillness of the night lodge, he longed for the passion they had shared.

  16

  Kop would have preferred to build another, smaller mamateek somewhere else, but the season was late. Already during the night, the cove was covered over with ice, and though by midday the sun had melted it, the season of cold was upon him. It was too late to start another camp. There was another, more urgent worry. The deer had not come down from their summer barrens to winter on the edge of the big timber. The deer had always come. Some years they came in great numbers, and some years they were fewer. But for some reason, this year their numbers were drastically lower. Even the winds had become contrary, and the migrating birds had rafted far out on the lake and seldom came to shore.

  He hunted farther afield and often brought only scant game back to their camp. More and more often his traps were empty, and Kop knew why. Almost everywhere he went he found evidence of the Unwanted Ones. At times he hid like a shadow as they lumbered past him. And almost always leading the trappers was the ever watchful Mi’kmaq. Kop found their traps of steel and threw them in the water or stamped them down bog holes, far from where they had been set. And when he found animals in the steel traps, he carried them back to his camp.

  Kuise foraged for berries and the roots of plants and gathered firewood. She mended garments as her mother had taught her, and soon her stitching resembled Tehonee’s. She cooked food, mostly for herself, for each time her father returned from the hunt he was even more bitter and had resorted to eating most of his food raw. He was becoming as lean as the wolf and just as wary. It was the driest season Kop had ever seen. Without the rains to cool them, the rivers were showing their rocky beds. Brooks and streams dried up. Minnows were trapped in stagnant pools, where they died and rotted. Birds and foxes feasted on them, and when he found them, Kop ate the ones still alive. Here at the end of the pond, far from the sea, salmon had beaten their way inland and found the beds of their birth dry—as dry as the waiting weirs. The salmon schooled at the river mouth in deeper water, where they jumped and splashed and finned the water day and night. Black bears jumped after them in deep water, without much success.

  The few salmon Kop and Kuise managed to catch were black and as slinky as eels. Their flesh were without fat, and their bellies were slack and empty. Kop devoured the rich, pink spawn of the females. But Kuise, who could not stomach the slimy salmon eggs, ate only their smoked flesh. Hung to dry on the smoke rack, the salmon, exhausted from their journey upstream, did not give off the rich aroma they should have.

  The nights were cold and dry. Eels making their annual run to the faraway sea writhed over the dry river bottom or slithered through the damp night grasses toward deeper water. Kop, who knew their ways, sometimes waited in the dark and caught them. But it still wasn’t enough. Snow clouds made the short days dark. Leaves, still green, bent and drooped and wilted under the weight of snow.

  Even the hares were not prepared for the snow. They hid in balled bunches, thinking they were camouflaged. Kop shot the few he saw, their summer-brown bodies stark against the white snow. Snowshoe hare populations came in seasons of plenty, always followed by seasons of scarcity. For a season or two they peaked, and usually after seven seasons, their numbers dwindled. Kop had seen this happen before. He knew the seventh season had passed, and few of the tasty animals came to his snares, which he had made from the thin brown roots of spruce saplings. There were no young hares bouncing down the leads, and the few adults were alone and not paired.

  Kop fashioned snow walkers to make travel in the deep snow easier. He bent green alder into bows, laced their shanks together, and filled the centres with deerhide webbing. He made one of the pairs smaller for Kuise, who said her snow walkers looked like swallowtails. Rawhide cut into thin strips were used for bindings.

  Deep snow choked the trails early, and deer did not come down their forest traces like they had before. For days Kop concealed himself, waiting for them to come snorting and snuffling through the deep snow. He preferred a fat doe or a fawn or two. He knew the meat of the stags would be tainted, their strong annual sex drive sending their castor-like scent throughout their bodies. Kop and Kuise needed hides for clothing and footwear. But they desperately needed meat. He would kill whatever came down the trail. But though he waited for days and always walked parallel to them and never once stepped in the caribou leads, nothing came.
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  He kept searching for food. The ptarmigan he found walking over the deep snow jumped into sudden flight almost under his feet and flew away low over the ground, cackling. They seldom flew far. Seeing where they had landed, Kop crept after them. Sometimes he was lucky enough to get a brace. From the ground he shot grouse gathered high in the branches of spruce trees. Sometimes the birds fell down, and other times he had to climb up after them. Partridge and grouse were easily cleaned. Kop placed them face up, with wings spread. Then stepping on both wings and pushing his fingers through the flesh where the neck met the breast, he gave a quick pull. The plump, pink breasts came away from the carcass, free of feathers. But now every morsel of food was precious, and they ate the entire bird, including its viscera.

  It was necessary for the Beothuk to hunt farther and farther afield. And as he went farther away from the pond where they were camped, he left Kuise behind. Already the young girl was the true keeper of the lodge. She removed dry boughs from their sleeping platforms and replaced them regularly with fresh ones. She cooked their scant meals. She gathered firewood and tended fire inside the lodge. And to ward off the winter wind she packed snow on the outside lower walls of their shelter. Kuise remembered when she and her mother had done this chore. Tehonee had made it a happy time. They threw snow at each other and laughed while they carried out the work.

  Day after day her father returned empty-handed, always after dark. The long tramp on snow walkers and the lack of food, coupled with the despair of unsuccessful hunts, were taking their toll on the hunter. Kop was lean to the point of being gaunt. Still he hunted. He had to. They were running out of food.

  One night, Kop was repairing a broken snow walker binding by the light of the fire. Kuise bent over the fire and added dry wood. It was very cold outside the lodge, and inside there was a white rime of frost from the floor to the lower half of the walls. The fire snopped and sizzled, and where the smoke spiralled upwards to the smoke hole and met the cold air, creosote was forming in shiny black smears.

  Kuise had finally caught a buck hare in one of the snares she herself had set in a dense alder bed nearby. Its fur was a mottled white and brown. It wasn’t fat and plump but long and lean. However, it was good food, and when her father entered the lodge, she was roasting it on a spit above the fire, with only its front paws missing. Kop made no comment about the meat spitted over the fire.

  Kop was thinking his daughter was a better hunter than he. It made him all the more bitter. The hare dripped its juices onto the hot coals, and the tantalizing aroma wafted to his nostrils. Despite his feelings, he was salivating. He finished his snow walker repair and was about to place them against the lodge wall outside the door flap—he had long since learned that snow walkers left in the warmth when first exposed to the cold air quickly gathered snow—when Kuise spoke to him.

  “Wait, my ewinon.”

  His daughter rose from her place by the fire with the cooked hare, still on the spit, dangling golden brown from her hand. The hare was very hot. Handling it nimbly, Kuise grabbed the hindquarters and tore both of them away. Part of the animal’s broken spine came with it. She handed the choicest piece to her father. Kop took the meat from his daughter and began eating ravenously.

  Kuise lodged the remaining meat down, and without eating, she crawled to the shadowed side of the mamateek. When she came back under the light again, she held the two front paws of the hare in her hand and stood beside her father, who was still tearing at the flesh of the roasted hare with his strong white teeth. He looked up when his daughter spoke again.

  “The spirit that walks unseen through the forest sent the hare, front feet first, into my withy snare. It was still alive and waiting for me to end its time. I replaced the bloody snare with a new one, as you showed me. In my first memory of snow, I saw you wear the front paws of a hare on your snow walkers. Then you always brought meat on your shoulder. Can I tie them to your snow walkers again?”

  She showed her father the tufted paws. Kop swallowed a mouthful of meat, wiped grease from his mouth with his shirt sleeve, and was about to deny Kuise’s request. But the sincere look on his daughter’s face stopped him, and he suddenly remembered who had tied the front feet of a hare to his shoes. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Tehonee had added the tassels for show. They bounced with every step he took. Kuise was right about one thing: he had always brought game home when he wore them. He didn’t tell Kuise who had tied them to his snow walkers. Kop never spoke Tehonee’s name aloud.

  “It is good to tie them to my snow walkers, Kuise. But you must make sure to tie the right paw to the right foot and the left one to the left,” he said.

  Kuise looked at the paws in her hand and the snow walkers on the floor. She could not see any difference in either of them. But Kop, who had made his own snow walkers, could tell them apart at a glance. He showed Kuise the difference. Then he took the two paws from her hand and spread them apart until the bony toes were splayed.

  “See the small bend of the foot inwards. One to the left and one to the right.”

  Kuise, who was delighted to have her father show her something, sprang to work while she still remembered how to do it. She tied the paws, one to each snow walker as directed, with a thin leather thong. When she had finished, Kop took the snow walkers and placed them outside the door. When he drew back the hide flap, a wisp of cold air sucked inside the lodge, where it met the warm air inside to create a thin, cold fog. For a moment, stars were framed in the door opening. It gave the lodge a little more light. Kop drew the flap closed, the fog dissipated, and the shelter was draped in shadow again.

  When kop came down over the ridge the next evening, night was behind his shoulder, and upon it was the full carcass of a deer. His step was laboured and clumsy. Kuise, who was longing for her father’s return, heard him coming. She squealed with delight when she saw his catch. So great was the girl’s delight at seeing fresh meat draped across her father’s back, she paid little mind to the way he staggered. Kop had not stopped to eat all day, and his muscles were drained of energy. He let the carcass slide from his shoulders near the mamateek door. The sudden relief made him stagger all the more, and he fell backwards upon the deer. He was sweating and looked done in.

  Kuise ran to his side, and seeing his weariness for the first time, she ignored the bounty of meat and helped pull him to his feet. She had never seen the need to aid her father in anything before, and it startled her. She noticed the bag Kop always carried on a sling over his left shoulder was damp with blood. She took it from him and drew out what she knew would be there. The deer viscera fell from her hands onto the snow. She bent down and with her own knife cut a piece from the heart muscle. She handed it to her father, and Kop took the meat and stuffed it into his mouth. Blood ran down his chin as he chewed, and Kuise bent to cut him another piece.

  That night, Kop and Kuise feasted on the deer meat. Their bellies were satiated for the first time in days, and father and daughter were in good spirits. Kop was so relaxed when Kuise asked him about the hunt, he told her how it had gone. It is the way of hunters to relive the hunt, and the telling of it, even to an audience of one, relieved much of the stress. And Kuise was the best of listeners.

  “It was late, with only one hand of light left, when I saw the spoor,” Kop began. “The track was deep in the snow, and though I could not yet tell if it was stag or doe, I could see the kosweet was struggling hard. I followed the track. The deer was keeping to the heavy trees, where the snow was not so deep. Hunger betrayed my step. My snow walkers clicked together. The sound was loud in the deep woods, and the kosweet heard me. I could tell by its broken stride.”

  Standing, Kop warmed to the story. The four haunches of meat hung above the campfire just above his eye level. Smoke drifted among them, crusting and curing them. He reached up and cut a small piece from one of the quarters, then gently wound the quarters till their hanging thongs were taut.
When he released them, the deer haunches slowly turned in the smoke. Kop chewed on the meat with relish and not from hunger. The smell and the taste of the fresh venison—dark, smoky, and juicy—spurred him on, and he continued to tell Kuise of the hunt.

  He had removed his hide coat and left his spear behind, preparing for a long hunt. It was the only track he had seen for weeks, and he fully intended to run the deer down, no matter how long it took. But the Great Spirit was with him, he told Kuise, and when the deer broke out of the woods into even deeper snow, he caught his first glimpse of it. It was a doe, and it was foundering badly in a deep snowdrift at the bottom of a deep ravine not far away. Kop experienced the hunter’s flush, and for the moment, all of his recent deprivations were forgotten. The thrill of the stalk surged through his veins, and thus buoyed, he ran after the deer.

  He could see plumes of steam spouting from its nostrils and jaws. It turned to see Kop running on its trail and frantically tried to break free, but its efforts only drove it deeper into the drift. There was no need for stealth now. Even with the snow walkers, his feet sunk deep. His calf muscles were burning, and he rasped for breath. He wished now he had brought his spear. The light was fading fast, and he wanted a quick kill. Twice Kop stumbled, once when a snow walker became snarled in the other, and he fell. Getting to his feet, he forced himself to take more care. The caribou had sunk to its neck in snow. It was winded and going nowhere. He suddenly realized he had never been so hasty on a hunt before. He had never been so hungry, either.

  The stricken doe’s eyes rolled, and the whites of them showed streaks of red. Kop drew his knife. It was one he had taken from the Unwanted Ones. His favourite. The long, straight one. He had honed it daily. He jumped astride the deer. The animal bleated piteously and tried to get its hooves above the snow, but it was no use. Kop’s weight on its back prevented it from ever rising again. He grabbed the animal by its tines. Its throat skin stretched tight, and its final cry was halted by the knife drawn across its throat. Blood poured from the wound, and Kop released his grip. The doe’s head fell over. Its tongue fell sideways out of its mouth. The teeth clenched upon the pink tongue, and with its eyes wide open, it let out its final breath.