The Last Beothuk Read online

  It was covered in the red spirit colour of his people.

  Tehonee gasped when she heard this, and Kop halted his narrative. But Tehonee would not be denied.

  “Speak again, Kopituk. Buka and the others. What did you see of them and have not told me?”

  Kop, visibly shaken by the telling of it, but seemingly now wanting to share the horrors he had kept hidden from Tehonee for a full season, continued.

  He whose face was covered with hair and stained red shouted at the two guards standing by, and the others gathered around him before strolling down the beach toward the boat. Now he was close enough to see clearly. His head and face and even his neck were covered with hair. Red hair. Where no hair grew, his face was covered in red blotches, as if he had done a poor job of staining his skin. Kop was astonished. One of the men who stood at the entrance to the mamateek began tying the deerskin flap closed, beginning at the top. Screams erupted from inside, and now Kop identified the voices of his friends. The red-haired man yelled what appeared to be an order at the men standing guard. The second of the guards, with hair the colour of bog mud, crouched into the opening and pointed the stick in his hand inside. It burst into a tongue of flame and smoke, accompanied by a muffled explosion. The screams stopped.

  It was followed by a yell coming not from the mamateek, but from the forest edge beyond the camp clearing. It was a cry that Kop knew all too well. It was Buka’s frightful hunting yell. Kop had heard it on countless hunting forays with his friend. The cry came again, fierce and confident, as if Buka had just made a great kill. The man who had fired into the mamateek seemed to be struggling with his black stick when Buka broke out from the trees with a blood-curdling shriek that was not his hunting cry. It was a cry of pure hatred. Buka stayed himself with obvious effort. He motioned behind him from the tree cover, and out stepped Yaseek, looking as defiant as her father.

  Buka was naked from the waist up. His lean, sinewy arms were raised, and the rub of his ribs showed against taut skin. He had lost weight since Kop had last seen him, and his face was drawn. Yaseek, too, for all of her courageous stance in the face of great danger, looked haggard. The girl had lost much of her fullness. Kop wondered again for how long Buka and his tiny clan had been under siege. Somehow Buka and Yaseek had escaped the clutches of the Unwanted Ones.

  Then, for the first time since their sudden appearance, Kop noticed Buka was not carrying his polished, iron-tipped spear. Kop had never seen Buka without it. Instead of his spear, in Buka’s hand, raised high above his head, was the top of a budding pine tree. Its cones were a purplish red and swelling with seed. Buka was presenting the Unwanted Ones with a sign of peace! He shook the treetop and spoke aloud. “Returning from hunting, I have watched you hold my clan captive in their mamateeks. For many long days and longer nights I have watched and anguished over what you have done.

  “You have carried no meat or water to them. Unlike the True People, you have shown much disrespect to your prisoners. Yaseek and I have not tasted food or supped water either, so we share the pangs of hunger and thirst with our people.” Buka took a step forward. Yaseek followed. The Unwanted Ones, watching, clutched their muskets in a flurry, and the snicking of cocked hammers was heard. Buka stopped again, and Yaseek halted by his side.

  The men shouted and laughed at Buka and gesticulated with their guns. None of it was understood by the Beothuk. To Kop it sounded like taunts. After the outburst had quieted down, Buka lowered the pine tree over his heart, to show sincerity, and spoke again. “Weak from hunger, the munes entered my head in the sleepless night.” Kop gasped as he heard these words. Buka had communed with the spirits! Buka was a man of few words. Kop had never seen him talk so. The spirits had truly instructed him.

  “Go with a budding pine, they told me, and offer it to the Unwanted Ones. But I am warrior and great hunter. I fought long against the munes, though it is not wise. To honour the spirits and to free my clan, I offer peace. I will talk to your chief, with hair the colour of fire; at the entrance to the mamateeks, where my people are your captives.” Buka’s voice was loud, stern and sure.

  “By me, Yaseek!” he cried. “And show no fear!” Buka stepped forward, his head high.

  “Yes, my ewinon!” came Yaseek’s shrill voice, and trying to match her father’s stride, she stepped forward and walked by his side.

  There was a shout from the man with red hair, and a volley of explosions rocked the cove. Smoke from several flash-pans burst into the air as the flintlocks opened fire on father and daughter. For a second it blocked Kop’s view. And when it cleared, Kop saw Yaseek’s lifeless body on the ground. Buka was bleeding, but his legs had carried him within reach of one of the guards at the mamateek door. His powerful fingers had closed around the man’s neck. Buka kept screaming and choking the man in his grasp. The man dropped his musket and flayed his arms at his attacker in a clumsy panic. His blows fell on muscles of stone. He was going to die. The red-haired man screamed again, and the other guard pointed his own gun at Buka’s naked back.

  A spit of orange flame and smoke erupted from the gun, and a hole appeared in the centre of Buka’s muscled back. His clutch of death was released, and his hands tried in vain to reach the terrible wound now spurting blood in runnels down his back. Without another sound, his knees buckled under him and he went face down upon the ground, framed in the closed door of his mamateek. Screams arose from inside the lodge. The man still nursing his throat got to his feet and kicked Buka several times. The other man went inside the lodge. Sounds of a struggle were heard. The gun spoke from inside. The screams stopped, and the man stepped away from the lodge opening. The one who Buka had in the throat hold pierced Buka’s body with the knife fastened to his stick-like weapon. And then they dragged his body and Yaseek’s just inside the flap and finished tying it shut.

  The leader nodded and crouched down, facing the mamateek with fire brands in his hand. Tendrils of smoke began to rise from the bottom of the birchbark sides. Flames rushed upwards, followed by dense black smoke and a roaring sound as the fire surged, feeding on the dry white bark. Pitiful screams of terror and panic went on and on from inside the mamateek. The Unwanted Ones ran down the beach toward the boat, where the red-haired man waited. One of them snatched some of the spitted fish as he passed the dead campfire.

  The cries were drowned by the roar of flames. The structure soon folded down upon itself, as soft as a bough under the weight of winter snow. Kop tore his eyes from the fire. The boat had reached the ship, and the men were clambering up its sides. Shouts from the red-haired man came again, and the cannon was once more pointed shoreward. Kop knew another explosion would be heard. He steeled himself for it. What followed was something he was not prepared for. At the same time as the shot came, thunderous and very close, the cliff above Kop’s head erupted with a small avalanche of talus and rocks, some of which rattled down and fell into the bushes next to his hiding place. Kop was stricken with fear, but he knew what had happened. The smoke and thunder from the ship had struck and shattered the very cliff above him. He knew this because it resembled the same smoke and fire which had torn the hole in Buka’s back. On his hands and knees, he clawed away from the cove until, deep in the forest, he stood on his legs and ran from the sea as fast as he could go. He stopped when he became winded and sat in the concealment of a tall spruce. All around him were forest noises and nothing else. There was no one following him. Without further consideration, he made his way toward the coast again. Kop suddenly wondered if the keen eye of the red-haired man had seen him and the last thunderclap had been meant as a warning.

  5

  Tehonee was weeping long before Kop had ended his tale. Her head was filled with questions. “Who are these savage people, Kopituk? Where did they come from? Why would they kill our friends? And to burn them in their mamateeks! And the one painted with the spirit mud! It must be an evil spirit, and not our gentle one.”

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nbsp; Then: “Were they alive when they fired their home, Kopituk?” she asked softly, afraid of the answer.

  “No,” he lied. But Tehonee had seen his shoulders twitch before he answered her, and she knew.

  “Be still, my woasut. I have few answers for you or for myself. We have heard of the Unwanted Ones for many seasons. They have been seen stealing salmon from our rivers in greater numbers than can be eaten. Killings, too, we have heard of, involving both sides. I did not believe all of it, thinking no one could be so evil. I know better now that my own eyes have witnessed things done by what must be evil spirits.” Kop held his head high and looked away as he spoke, not wanting to see Tehonee’s tears.

  “He who wears the red soil upon his head and face does not wear it upon his skin.” Kop spoke this last, as if he had just realized it. Tehonee wiped tears from her eyes as Kop continued. “We can no longer erect our summer meoticks upon our own shore, but will do so hidden among the trees, away from the beach, like thieves. We must be vigilant at all times and keep our guard when hunting and fishing. The Unwanted Ones do not fight as men, but will slay be’nam and children by fire. They are worse than animals. Even the wolf kills only for food.”

  He bowed his head in thought for a moment. Then, as if he had come to a great decision, he looked directly into Tehonee’s eyes and said, “We must go back to the cove of death where they were slaughtered! Their bones must be painted with the sacred soil and then buried as True People. We must do the ceremony of the dead and say a se’ko over them.”

  Tehonee’s breath caught in her throat. Her hand flew to her heaving breast at the prospect of visiting the place where so much evil had been, but she knew her husband was right. She walked away, nodding her head in acquiescence and much sorrow.

  When Kop had finished telling Tehonee what he had seen, he left abruptly, telling her he was going down the valley in search of their friends. He had borne the terrible secret inside his heart for far too long. Kop was glad he had told Tehonee. He felt better, now that he had someone to share his grief.

  Tehonee watched him go. He walked with his head down, and his legs did not stretch his full step, as was his way. She had known all season there was something Kop was keeping from her. Instinctively she had also known it was bad, but she had never thought it could be this bad. She felt as though their world was being taken away from them. And that for them there would be no refuge.

  With sharpened spear in his right hand and with bow and quiver filled with arrows across his back, Kop walked east down the trace. The long, green valley through which he walked and where a small brook ran was hemmed in by forested slopes. There were game trails on both sides of the stream, and Kop made good time. In places the shadows of trees laddered the scant trail. The day was growing short, and night was near when he reached his destination. He came out of the heavy timber and walked up the slope toward the dead pine tree. The brush was waist high and made a faint swishing sound as he passed through. Somewhere far away he heard a loon call as it flew toward a pond. Birds twittered and sang and a snipe hunted, its wings whooping in high-pitched skirls. The trunk of the great pine pollard, above its massive, twisted bole, was as broad as two men were wide, and stood alone. It was grey and stood like a sentinel on the hill overlooking the valley’s end. Its shadow, long and black, dominated the knoll. The first of the thick grey branches, long since bereft of its green, scented needles, stretched horizontally far above Kop’s head. Hand- and footholds carved and chopped in the soft wood were well used, and with their aid, Kop climbed the tree to the first of the branches, upon which he crouched and sat down.

  The view was commanding. Long marshes, their grasses turning yellow, their deer trails darker and plainly seen in the evening, showed the wakes of swimming ducks. Moths, slowed by the cooling autumn, flitted around the pollard. A pair of woodpeckers hammered their beaks against the tree below Kop. They paused in their work long enough to listen at the hole they had chiselled out. As Kop watched, one of them jammed its beak inside the tree and withdrew a clammy white grub, which it swallowed before resuming its hunting. Its drumming on the hollow tree filled the evening air. Kop gazed long and carefully all around. He had seen no sign of humans during his long trek to the pollard. No one had walked the trail. He was sure of it. From this height he could see the glint of the sea many miles away. No rising smoke from an evening campfire. No soft sound of children talking as they came up the trail—nothing but the stir of birds and the drone of insects in the waning light. Kop waited and stared until his legs grew cramped and the light diffused his sight. Only then did he climb down the tree.

  Casting all around, he searched for anything he might have missed. This place was well-known to the Beothuk as a lookout spot, and no one passed without stopping here. Kop could find no grasses bent, not one branch broken, nothing. With an aching heart, he bent his way homeward through the dark forest. Above him the snipe still hunted in the starry sky. When he drew up to his campsite, a glowing fire eased the dark. With an effort, he passed the empty lodges without looking at them. When he entered his own shelter, for a moment his tall figure was etched in the bright opening he had made. And in the still, cold night air, stark against the warm glow inside, his breath was visible.

  6

  The month of new leaves had come with all of its promise of new life and warm days ahead. Snow still filled many of the deep valleys and clung to the north-facing slopes, but the back of winter was broken, and the scent of spring filled the air as the earth warmed for the coming season. New smells arose from the awakening soil. The treetops leaned and bowed to the warm south winds sighing down over the high, forested ridges.

  Kop led his family up and over one of these ridges and enjoying the first of the long, sun-filled days. They had journeyed here from their winter house, having paddled down the long pond to its easternmost ends in their tapooteek. There, up a faint trail from the beach and nestled in a small clearing with a great view of the pond below, a mamateek stood waiting. It had been built years ago, and though it showed its age, only a few repairs were needed for the Indians’ short stay. The pond waters were part of an age-old, much travelled route which would eventually lead them to the ocean.

  They settled into their new lodge. After resting for a day, they made their way to a barren area, high on the ridge, pushed out of the dense softwood forest by some long-ago disturbance. It provided the travellers with wilted red partridgeberries, which had survived the winter. Their juices were now concentrated and, when gathered quickly, made a sweet meal. Tehonee and Kuise were busy gathering the berries and placing them in birchbark baskets. Kop heard the mother’s happy giggles and the child’s cries of delight as she popped the rumpled berries into her mouth. But he had led his family here for another reason. The barren rock gave him a masterful view of the pond, long and blue, as well as the sylvan valley below. He stood on a boulder on the edge of the clearing. It gave him a great vantage point to see the full length of the valley stretching away from the bog at the pond’s east end. His black eyes were searching for something. They had crossed the bog below an hour ago, keeping to the high points to avoid most of the water. To the east and his right, the long valley reached far, the bog giving way to forest green. Heavy stands of trees sloped up over the ridges from both sides of the valley, hemming it in. Kop stared long, his eyes intense, hopeful.

  To the west, the blue pond, down which they had travelled only two days ago, was now streaked with white as the warm spring wind raced over it. Trees were bending and urging the wind farther down through the valley. The same wind, which in winter moaned with cold, now hissed and soughed in pleasant gusts. A short canoe paddle out from the near shore of the pond was a small, rocky island with a sparse growth of low bushes and twisted tuckamore. Kop’s gaze shifted up through the valley and always ended on the island. Searching.

  The day waned and the sun moved farther up the pond, darkening the water and hushi
ng the wind. Still Kop kept his vigil. His eyes missed nothing. A red fox, trotting across the valley in its criss-cross pattern with its head down, checked every bush and rock. Once Kop thought he saw the flash of a caribou on the edge of the bog on the north side of the valley. He looked away, then glanced back again. Seeing nothing more, he convinced himself he was mistaken about the caribou. His eyes were becoming tired from his long search.

  “The day will soon be gone, my hunter, and the trail is long to our lodge,” Tehonee called softly, sensing his concern. “We have filled our baskets with the red berries that have waited through the long winter for us. Their juices soak the bark and will soon turn sour.”

  “Fill your belly, woman, and glean what you can, and don’t bother me with the sun’s leaving. I can see its journey into the west. There is still time for our return, even after the light goes. Or are you afraid of the night?” His voice was harsh, his irritation plain.

  Tehonee was silent. The tone of her husband’s voice had hurt her. She knew he was uneasy. She went back to securing the baskets of shrunken and overripe berries for the long walk home.

  Bending to sit on the boulder which he had stood on all day, Kop had hardly settled himself when he caught a sure movement just over the treeline to the east of the valley. And then they were there! The object of his searching eyes: several long skeins of them, the lowering sun glinting on their flashing wings, hundreds of seabirds clearing the trees and flying low through the valley. They were headed for the rocky island out in the lake, as he knew they would. The seabirds always came in the spring, not only to roost, but to nest on the island. It was what Kop had been looking for.