The Last Beothuk Page 8

  Kuise ran around the encampment as Kop studied the grounds for more signs. Tehonee lifted the door covering and went inside. She let the hide fall behind her. In the semi-darkness, Tehonee’s eyes searched around. Kop was right: they had been here in the spring, but not long after. Kop was right about something else, too. Thievery had taken place. To take something unattended and not guarded was accepted by her kind, but to steal from a functioning camp filled with the full pursuit of living was unacceptable and unheard of.

  Opening the door and peering outside to make sure Kop was not coming, Tehonee crawled around the camp floor on her hands and knees. The sleeping pallets had been stitched with new pine boughs. The green colours were fading, but the boughs had not been pressed as they would have been had they been used. Tehonee pushed her hands under the boughs farthest from the firepit, in the centre of the mamateek and hard against the bark wall of the structure. She found what she was looking for right away.

  It was a small rabbit-skin pouch cured to fine soft leather and tied at the mouth with a thin thong. Tehonee crept to the door again and peered out. She could hear Kuise playing down over the bank where a small stream flowed. Kop was walking around the perimeter with head down, searching for spoor. Seated with her back to the bark wall inside the shadowy mamateek, Tehonee opened the pouch and pushed her hand inside. She pulled out several swaths of soft rabbit fur without the hide and several handfuls of goose down. It had been carefully woven by a woman’s hand to attend to her monthly moon bleedings. No woman would leave without it. Those who lived here had fled without warning or time to prepare. Tehonee placed the pouch back where she had found it and left the mamateek. As she exited, Kuise came running up over the bank with great excitement. “I have found a tapooteek in the bushes by the brook, my mother! But it is filled with holes and will not carry us on the water.”

  Kop heard his daughter’s cry and joined her and her mother. Kuise led them to the bank of the fast-moving brook. The tapooteek was small, used by no more than two paddlers. Kop grasped it by the bow. The centre of the craft folded down when he pulled on it. The boat had been brutally damaged. It had been done intentionally. Its sides had suffered long lateral gashes. Its tender ribs had been broken, and it was beyond repair. Kop, who had studied the sign with great intent, told Tehonee that those who had lived here had fled. The looting and the insult to the boat had been done since then.

  “The Unwanted Ones!” said Tehonee.

  Kop said nothing. And because he did not, Tehonee knew he agreed with her.

  “I have seen their sign all around. Footprints without moccasins which dig deep into the earth. When they last walked here, the ground was wet and soft. Their sign remains,” Kop said.

  Kuise was very excited to be a part of the investigation, but her father was not pleased.

  “You should not have wandered away on your own, Small One! There may be danger all around us.”

  Kuise’s small face fell. His stern look had taken the glory from his daughter’s discovery. Bending down to her level, Kop said in a gentle voice, “But you have shown much courage. We will look more at the tapooteek only you have found.” They had walked back up the bank as they talked. Kuise’s face beamed again with pride, and back to the brook she ran, her parents following.

  The tapooteek, what was left of it, had not been pulled ashore. It had been washed ashore by the waves inside the mouth of the brook which ran into the sea. With steely, knowing eyes, Kop studied it for signs. He knew they were there. He just had to find them. He instructed Tehonee to keep watch all around, especially to the open bay, while he searched for clues.

  He found a birchbark bailer half filled with water floating upright inside the damaged tapooteek. Kop tasted the water from the bailer. Though fresh water from the brook was present in the boat, the water from the bailer tasted salty. Whatever had happened to the boat and those aboard had happened in the bay. What he had first mistaken for red ochre on the upper edges of the tapooteek, and showing everywhere above its waterline, was blood. It was not the thick, dark blood of seals or the bright, thin blood of fish. It was human blood!

  The boat had been slashed vertically and laterally several times by something very sharp. There were a few small, perfectly round holes on one side of the tapooteek, but not on the opposite side. Kop had seen such holes before: in the dead bodies of the friends he had buried. He instinctively knew the wounds in the bodies, like the wounds in the tapooteek, were caused by the shiny black staffs of the Unwanted Ones. It was clear to Kop that the little band who lived here had fled in their boat without taking any of their belongings. It puzzled him for the longest time, for in times of danger, his kind would always retreat into the forest, where they could easily hide. He found the answer on the edge of the forest behind the mamateek.

  The deep prints of boots had come from the forest. He backtracked. It took a while. The spoor was old and had been made long ago. But to one born of the forest, whose life depended upon his ability to read spoor, the signs were there. He just had to concentrate. The tracks he followed were not of woodsmen. They had left a trail of broken branches and heavy footprints which showed their direction of travel. They had walked parallel to the coast from the long point of the cove beyond the mamateek.

  There the print of a heavy boat drawn above the tidemark was still visible in the cloying mud of the cove. Some of the men had waited by the boat. Their tracks, tramping around in the same place, as if impatient, were impacted, and though faded were still clear to Kop. In his eye, Kop knew what had been carried out here. It was a guerrilla tactic used by native peoples everywhere. The Unwanted Ones who had gone through the forest had rushed the mamateek, shouting and screaming, making great noise to frighten the family of Beothuk. It had worked all too well. The Beothuk had fled for their lives, paddling furiously out the cove and rounding the long point where the others were waiting, guns in hand.

  Those in the tapooteek had all been killed or drowned, or had escaped with grave wounds. Kop was sure of it. He would search the shoreline for them. Though he would search diligently, he did not expect to find them.

  “I will go with you, Kopituk,” said Tehonee, her voice hopeful. “My eyes are sharp as the hawk who sits on her eggs, and my step is almost as light as yours. And Kuise will not delay us.”

  “No, Tehonee. The trail will be long and need feet as stealthy as abideshook the night cat and will demand my greatest skill. I will best do it alone. With Kuise, here you will stay and wait for my return. I will return after the second sleep.” Kop’s voice had taken the stern edge Tehonee knew so well not to argue with. She tried another ploy.

  “What if the Unwanted Ones return, my hunter?”

  “They have done the deed of the cowards and have taken all that is of value to them. Their way is one of senseless murder and greed. They will not return to ground already ravaged. Of this I feel sure.”

  With Tehonee and Kuise confined to a campsite well away from the mamateek and hidden among the trees, and with Tehonee instructed to use no cooking fire, Kop began his search. As he travelled, he seldom showed himself but kept to cover, all the while searching, hoping for some sign of his people. He knew those he sought would leave little trace of their passing. Their trail would not be as brazen as that of the Unwanted Ones. And because of this, and knowing after being attacked they would be even more cautious, he kept all the more alert. But after two nights of little sleep and days of fruitless search, he bent his way back to his family, who were waiting anxiously for his return. The sun was low in the sky on the fourth day when he neared the place where he had left them. Despite his search being a failure, he lengthened his step, eager to see his family.

  10

  Tehonee had watched with trepidation as Kop left on his quest. The wilderness was her home, and she feared little in it, but the events which had taken place this season on the coast caused her to fear a wilderness bot
h strange and unknown to her. Her world was being invaded, and a change vile to her way of life was coming unchecked. Tehonee sensed this and would talk more of it to Kop, if he would allow it. From her earliest memory gathered around the campfires inside the winter mamateeks, Tehonee had learned there may be others in the broad world apart from her own kind. The elders, seated at their place of honour closest to the fire and away from the smoke spiralling for the smoke hole above, had kept the ancient tales alive. Lying against the wall of the shelter in her warm robes of caribou, Tehonee had listened well, and she had remembered the fear she had felt at the telling of such tales. One tale in particular had stayed with her. She remembered snuggling closer to her patient mother, and when attempting to question her about what the seer was saying, she had been silenced with a stare from her mother’s gentle eyes.

  * * * * *

  The teller of stories stood and huffed aloud, signifying the importance of what he was about to relate. The same elder had told the same tale many times, but each time he was paid heed as if it were the first telling. Tehonee looked through the grey smoke at the man, who shimmered and looked ghostly. The fire crackled and snopped and flicked shadows around the sides of the lodge. The seer had the attention of them all, and he began, his voice hypnotic.

  One of their great Beothuk hunters, fearless and ever adventurous, had led his clan far to the north, the elder told them. They had ventured beyond the deep forests and up over the plateaus where the deer were beyond number. On they trekked, ever northward, guided by the stars, following the coast and skirting around mountains, through deep sylvan valleys, hunting and fishing as they journeyed. The hunters led them up over the last huge point of land, far to the north where the tuckamore grows. And all throughout their sojourn, the sea to their right hand, from which comes the morning sun, was endless; but on their left hand, where the sun carried away the light each day, a distant land appeared up over the lip of the sea, from where it was said people of their own skin colour lived. On they journeyed for many days: hunting, fishing, gathering, and exploring.

  And then one bright day, hidden and peering among the dwarf spruce, the wanderers beheld a great panorama. The point of land over which they had travelled for weeks was at last swallowed up by the salt sea. And upon the grassy, undulating plain leading to the water’s edge were men dressed in a strange garb. They all appeared to be big men. But as the Beothuk watched, children appeared. One of the newcomers, obviously a woman, held a child to her naked breast, white as snow. The adults were dressed from head to toe in what appeared to be leather hides braced and crossed with shiny lashings. The faces of all the men were covered with hair the colour of winter grasses and earth. The hair of one of the men was the colour of new snow, and he walked with a limp. Many of them, including the women and children, wore pointed headpieces which shone in the sunlight.

  The activity of the strange people was centred on high mounds covered with green grass, into which they frequently entered and reappeared at will, without bending down. Partially drawn onto the beach below the mounds of earth were two boats which defied the Beothuk imagination. As they looked on in rapt wonder, another boat with even more wonders appeared around the point to the west. It flew before the waves as though a great spirit carried it before the wind. Flying obliquely above the centre of this huge boat was a billowing sail filled with a free wind.

  As the boat neared, the sail with rectangular stripes of faded brown and dirty grey snapped and yawed at its holdings. Reaching high above the boat’s prow was the carved figure of a strange beast with bared fangs. The boat came nearer. Men appeared, standing above its sides. Shouts came from the boat and were answered loudly from the land. The sail was dropped around the feet of the boatmen, and without further ado, the huge boat was run aground upon the shore. It listed over on its side, and those aboard—men, women, and children—jumped into the water and ran upon the shore, where they were greeted by the others. As the astonished Beothuk watched, strange animals were unceremoniously thrown over the sides of the boat. Then, bleating in fear, with their small, pointed heads and long, twitching ears barely above water, they floundered to shore, where they stood and shook the water from their thin sides. They looked like caribou fawns. Some of them even had stubs of antlers. Two of them had swollen teats hanging between their hind legs. While standing and looking all around at their new surroundings, they allowed their young to suckle.

  But they were not deer. This the Beothuk knew. The Beothuk, still in hiding, stared until their eyes watered and their muscles cramped. Then they heard a loud yapping from below. It was followed by the appearance of a fox-like animal, which promptly hopped over the side of the boat and swam ashore with apparent delight. Standing on the beach, the animal shook itself violently. Droplets of sea water from its body flashed in the sunlight. The animal was not much bigger than a dog fox, but its hide was white with tawny wolf-like patches. With the water dislodged from its coat, the dog raced after the goats, barking and nipping at their heels. The animals pranced and cried and jumped to avoid its teeth. One of the men roared at the dog. With bowed head and drooping tail, it approached as if knowing what was to come. A long leg, booted in leather, smote the dog viciously in the ribs. Crying in pain, it sprang toward the woods. At the edge of the tangled trees, it suddenly stopped. Its cry of pain changed to one of discovery. It barked and yapped loudly, with its head pointed toward the woods. The man who had kicked the dog yelled at it again, but the dog stood its ground, barking and howling at the wondrous scent emanating from the empty woods.

  The Beothuk had waited with drawn bow as the dog approached. The hunter could have easily killed the mammassmit, which barked like a fox in the moonlight and howled like a lone wolf in heat. But fearing the alarm it would raise, he retreated instead. Well away and upwind from the camp of the strangers, the Beothuk prepared their campsite in a small valley by the side of a pond, where trout jumped after flies, ducks skittered, and the leads of fat hares made their way through the brambles.

  The Beothuk returned the next day, and from a hiding place downwind of the dog, they kept a vigil and studied the strangers. The hunter who led the Beothuk was as stealthy as the black fox. Keeping under cover, he crept closer than the others. And that night at the campfire he told of all that he had seen close up.

  He had watched in fascination the people whose face and hand skin were almost the colour of his own, yet their arms and necks, when he caught glimpses of them under their clothing, were the colour of birchbark. The women brought water to their cooking fires from a nearby stream in leather buckets similar to the ones the Beothuk used. But the black cauldrons hanging over the fire were like nothing he had ever seen. Dozens of seabirds, barely plucked and not cleaned, just as many fish and baskets of eggs, animal hearts and livers were dropped into them, all at the same time. And though the fire rose all around them, the great pots were not consumed. The mixed odours of the cooking food smelled good to he who watched. The goats ran free around the campsite and nibbled on the grasses. Two of them whose milk bladders were swollen tight bleated and stopped eating. Their teats were elongated and oozing milk.

  A young woman with long, yellow hair and clad in a tight-fitting leather skirt, with a leather container swinging from her hand, ran toward the animals and herded them together. The goats were suddenly docile at the woman’s approach and stood as if waiting. Dropping to her knees, the woman grabbed the nearest goat. Reaching under the animal’s belly, she grasped two of its swollen brown teats, and milk came squirting into the leather vessel she had placed underneath. This continued for a time, until the first goat was freed and the second one endured the same indignity, seemingly without any dispute. Both animals bounded away and commenced eating again. Then the woman who had drained the milk from the goats did another strange thing. Still on her haunches, she raised the leather container to her lips and drank the warm milk. Her thirst quenched, she wiped the corners of her mouth with one
hand and stood up with the amphora of milk in the other hand. With her hips swaying and her sun-coloured hair bending in the wind, she walked back to one of the earthen mounds covered in green sods and disappeared inside.

  All of this was a marvel to the Beothuk. But what their leader had to tell them next both upset and angered them. He said he was sure the dog had caught his scent and barked while looking his way. One of the men yelled at it, and the animal cowered away but kept yapping and looking toward the copse where the hunter lay hidden. The dog was always yapping.

  Fish were spread and drying on every boulder up from the shoreline. Fish hung on racks above smoky pits. Seal skins and beaver and marten pelts were stretched on wooden frames to cure, and the remains of rotting seal carcasses were rank in the air. There was more. Pulled high up the beach was the huge carcass of a blunt-nosed whale. Men with long knives were cutting the rich blubber from its sides, revealing enough tender dark meat to feed an entire tribe. Whales were a dangerous animal to hunt from a tapooteek, and the Beothuk seldom managed to kill one.

  All of the men carried bigger knives wrapped in sheaths hung from their sides. The knives were as broad and as long as a man’s arm. Frequently they pulled the long knives out of their sheaths, spat on them, then rasped them again and again against boulders until they were honed. They tested the sharpness of the knives by wielding them against shrubs and grasses, which collapsed like waves on a beach. Deer hides, green and fatty, were scattered around, and hides already cured were stacked against the green shelters. Baskets of berries—red, yellow, and blue—were laid by. And haunches of deer were spitted and roasting over glowing charcoals.

  When they who had observed all of these things on the shore and had finished telling all they had witnessed, it was quiet for a while. The campfire crackled, and flankers sprang into the air. A night bird crooned. The stars overhead beamed. Then a woman, who should not have spoken until a hunter had spoken first, exclaimed in a fearful voice: