The Beothuk Saga

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Map

  Part I: The Initiate

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part II: The Invaders

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Part III: Genocide

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chronology of Events

  A Beothuk Lexicon

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  I

  THE INITIATE

  About 1000 A.D., somewhere in the New World

  1

  Anin paddled with all his strength. The sky was darkening and he wanted to be inside the line of reefs when the storm struck. He knew how fragile birchbark was, and that his tapatook would not survive if the rolling waves that were already blowing in from the open sea were to push him against the jagged rocks that lined the shore.

  The wind rose. A wave came up suddenly, lifting the bow of his tapatook and throwing it towards the mouth of a narrow brook that emptied into the ocean between two cliffs. The reefs on either side were plainly visible, any one of them easily capable of tearing apart whatever the sea might throw its way. Anin steered away from the rocks and increased his stroke, pitting his tapatook against the strength of the sea. Could he make the brook without being thrown onto the rocks or against the cliff? If the storm was half as bad as he thought it would be, or if the creek turned out to be blocked, he would be paddling straight to his death. “I haven’t made all of these discoveries over the past two cold seasons just to die such a stupid death now,” he said to himself.

  He turned the tapatook away from the brook and tried to paddle along the cliff face, but a second wave, larger than the first, lifted him again towards the shore. The raging water took the tapatook and sent it sideways towards the creek. Anin instinctively stretched his body along the length of the tapatook, reducing the chances of capsizing, and felt the craft race down the slope of the wave, then rise up another until he was almost level with the shore. He could not hear an undertow. “The brook must come from far inland,” he told himself. “I might be able to touch bottom.”

  Gripping the sides of the tapatook, he raised himself to his knees and looked around. The brook forked away towards the setting sun, and he saw that he had to paddle quickly to keep from being flung on to the rocks. He grabbed his paddle from the bottom of the tapatook and plunged it deep into the water on the side opposite the shore, just in time to turn his craft towards the brook and away from the thundering boulders. Almost immediately he found himself gliding towards a sandy beach at the far end of a small, quiet pond. It felt like a place where waves came to die.

  He lifted his paddle from the water. The pond was surrounded on three sides by high cliffs. On the side towards the setting sun there was a small stretch of red sand through which ran the brook he had seen from farther out, dropping down from inland in a necklace of silver cascades. Higher up, the gorge was flanked by vegetation, paler than usual because shaded by the cliffs. There was only one other living creature on the beach: Obseet the Cormorant, as astonished to see Anin as Anin was to be there.

  A heavy rain began to pebble the surface of the pond. With a few strokes of his paddle, Anin ran the bow of his tapatook up onto the beach. He had spotted a break in the rock face, and removing his pack and dragging the tapatook high up onto the sand, he hurried to the shelter of the cleft. There he made a small pile of driftwood and dried spruce boughs, and using some of the birchbark he always carried for repairs, he lit a fire to dry his clothes. Then, worn out, his arms and legs leaden from many days of paddling, he unrolled his caribou skin near the fire and lay down. Within seconds, he was asleep.

  While he slept, thunder rolled above him and lightning creased the sky. Gulls landed around his tapatook and walked stiffly towards the fire. Even Obseet the Cormorant, always a prey to curiosity, edged along the shoreline to cast a wary look at the intruder. None of this, however, disturbed the sleep of Anin the Initiate.

  He was dreaming about the many things he had seen since he had left the village of his people. He had set out in the middle of one warm season, had travelled through two cold seasons, and was now nearing the end of his second season of thaw. At the feast held to mark his departure, he had said to his family: “I will return when I have seen all of our land. Not before.”

  He had often regretted his words. Many times he had wanted to end his voyage, but his pride had been stronger than his desire to return to his people. He could easily have travelled a few days’ journey from his village, kept himself hidden for a time, and when he returned, told everyone that he had visited all the regions of their vast land. His uncle had tried that. But one day, fishermen from the village had ventured from their usual fishing grounds and discovered the trick: they had seen his uncle’s camp and found several objects belonging to him. Being good hunters, they had also seen that the camp had been occupied for many seasons. When they returned to the village, they denounced his uncle as a liar, and his uncle, unable to live in disgrace, had killed himself by jumping from a high cliff.

  Anin was neither a liar nor a trickster. He feared nothing and no one. At least he had never allowed himself to show fear. He had endured bitter storms at sea and had been stalked by a bear. The bear, smelling food in Anin’s dwelling, had hung around his camp for six days; Anin had finally abandoned the camp and the food in it. Although his people had often told him that bears sleep during the season of cold and snow, Anin now knew that not all bears went into hibernation, or at least they did not go to sleep until they were no longer hungry.

  In the course of his travels, Anin had had his tapatook torn on the sharp edges of coastal rocks and had himself been severely wounded. It had taken him more than one whole moon to mend his wounds and make a new tapatook out of birchbark. He had endured hunger and cold. He had been terrified by things whose very existence had been unknown to him until his voyage of initiation. During the two cold seasons he had spent alone, he had learned to take c
are of himself. Had he merely hidden near his people’s village, he would not have lived through these dangers, and would have had to invent false exploits to relate to his kinsmen upon his return.

  No, Anin was no liar. He had told his family he would return only when he had travelled around all their land. He had given his word, and once a word was given, it could not be taken back until either the task was complete or those to whom the word had been given requested that the task be abandoned. That was the law. Anin would travel to the ends of his people’s land even if it meant never seeing his people again. But that, of course, was not possible. If the elders were right, the Earth had been made by Beaver in the image of his mamateek, and was therefore round. The male had built his mamateek below, and the female had built hers above, upside down, and the earth had grown between them, round as a rock but held aloft by the wind in the great realm of the spirits.

  If he followed the edge of the round Earth, it was clear that he would end up at the place of his departure. And so Anin would return; older, certainly, perhaps too old to find a companion with whom he could add to the number of his people, but he would return. He might not be able to tell all the new things he had seen so that his people would learn from his adventures, but he would return with his experiences contained in his spirit, just as his food and weapons were contained in his pack. And he might not bring new and curious things back to show his people, but he would teach them the truth about the things that were out here. Even if there was nothing mysterious or magical about what he told them, he would tell them the truth. There is nothing mysterious or magical about the truth: it is simply the truth, and that is all one can say or do or tell or think or teach about it. It is not right to show a child how to make a whistle and then tell him that he will actually be whistling. But it is the truth to tell the child that by blowing his whistle, he will make sounds that otherwise he would hear only from birds. The truth alone exists: falsehoods kill. Lies kill those who tell them. Those who tell or pass on lies end up believing them to be truths, and they become snared in their own lies. The elders say that lies come from those who do not know the difference between their dreams and their desires. Between their dreams and their longings. Between their dreams and their ability to realize them.

  Anin would return to his people. Perhaps by the end of the warm season, if he didn’t waste too much time sleeping in one place.

  He woke to the sound of footsteps. The sun was still up, but the sky was dark. Not a breath of wind. The rain had stopped. The only sounds were those of footsteps on wet sand. Even before he looked up he knew who was making them: Gashu-Uwith the Bear had finally caught up with him after all these moons.

  Anin leapt to his feet to face the animal, which was coming directly towards him. The bear stopped dead in its tracks. He sniffed the air deeply with his wet muzzle and, despite his poor vision, sensed that he had found the food source from the previous cold season. Anin had no doubt that this was the same bear that had pestered him earlier. Gashu-Uwith was a great hunter. He had picked up Anin’s scent when it was more than four moons cold. Anin had travelled by water while Gashu-Uwith had not left the land. The bear could not see very far, nor could he smell Anin when Anin was at sea, except when the wind was blowing in towards the land.

  Gashu-Uwith was either Anin’s enemy or his spirit protector; the problem was discerning the difference without making a mistake. Anin remained standing without showing his fear. Gashu-Uwith sat down on the red sand and, stretching his neck, sniffed the air. He stood up on his hind legs and sniffed again. Then he went down on all fours and walked slowly towards the brook, waded upstream, and disappeared over the lip of the first waterfall.

  Anin remained on the beach for a long time, trying to decide whether or not the bear was his spirit protector. How else to explain why the bear had not tried to kill him last winter, even though he had been hungry, and hungry bears were known to stalk and attack solitary initiates? And this time, Gashu-Uwith had moved off as soon as he had sensed Anin’s presence. By climbing to the top of the waterfall, had he been showing Anin a path? Often a spirit protector will lead an initiate along a certain path to avoid dangers that lay ahead.

  Deep in thought, Anin stirred the embers of his fire and took a portion of dried meat from his pack. When he had eaten, he lay down on his caribou skin again and slept. When he woke up, his decision had been made. He went to his tapatook, secured his pack to the centre thwart, raised the tapatook to his head, and walked towards the brook. He climbed up on the less rocky side, and in a short time was at the top. He found himself standing on a rocky ridge that, on the left, became a tongue of land that ran down into the sea. Beyond the ridge he saw a magnificent bay, wider than he could see across. To reach this bay by water, around the tongue of land, would have taken him at least two suns. By this short climb he had been afforded a beautiful view, and had also been spared the dangers that always lurk beneath the dark surface of the great sea.

  When Anin looked for a path that would take him down to the bay, he saw Gashu-Uwith sitting calmly at the base of a white spruce, as though waiting to guide him to a new discovery.

  2

  Anin walked down the hill towards the bay whose waters stretched as far as the sky. It was lined with a rim of sand that also ran off into the distance. Each time the waves retreated, he could see clams burying themselves in the wet sand; gathering them up, he thought, would be child’s play. Anin lingered on this beach for many suns, well into the growing season, bathed by the sun’s warm luminescence and nourished by the sea. When he was tired he stretched out on his caribou skin and slept. Finally, he woke early one morning and set out in the pale, predawn light, his tapatook on his shoulder, preferring to walk along the shore rather than paddle out to sea. He often thought of Gashu-Uwith. After showing, him the path beside the waterfall, which had saved him from who knew what dangers and dif culties in his frail, one-man tapatook, the “lord of the land,” as his people called the bear, had disappeared as suddenly as he had come. Anin walked for many days carrying his tapatook, sometimes setting it down in the shallow water and dragging it by means of a cord woven from caribou sinews.

  One day he saw a flock of large, orange-beaked birds flying out towards an island on the horizon. He knew this bird. His people called them godets. It was a calm day, and Anin decided to paddle out to the island and kill a few godets for food for the next few days. He put his tapatook down in the water and paddled towards the distant island. He had almost reached it when the water beneath his tapatook erupted in an explosion of foam, almost capsizing him: a whale had suddenly surfaced, curious to see what strange creature was invading his water. When Anin reached the island, he pulled the tapatook far up onto the beach and lay down to rest. The island had been much farther out than it had appeared from the shore, and it had cost him much effort to reach it, despite the calmness of the water.

  When he woke, he saw that the only place on the island where he could have landed was where he had, in fact, come ashore; the rest of it was nothing but sheer rock cliffs on which the godets made their nests. Armed with only his fish net, Anin climbed one of the cliff faces. The godets hardly took notice of him. They sat calmly on their nests, which they had constructed in shallow depressions in the thin soil at the top of the cliffs. Many nests contained young chicks, waiting for their parents to bring them food. When an adult puffin arrived with food, Anin snared it with his net, twisted its neck, and threw it down to the base of the cliff, near his tapatook. When he had killed ten, he climbed down again and spent the rest of the day skinning the birds so that he would not have to pluck them. Then he made a fire and hung them near the flames to dry and smoke. He soon had enough meat to see him through to the end of the warm season. He kept the fire going all night so that its warmth and smoke would penetrate deep into the birds’ flesh.

  The next morning, when the birds were sufficiently dried, he lay down and slept. When he woke, the sun was high in the sky and the wind was blowing sharp
ly. High waves made the sea too rough for him to reach shore safely. He ate some smoked godet, then decided to investigate the rest of the rocky island. On the sunny side he saw a group of seals, females and their young, stretched out lazily on the warm, flat rocks. “I, too, should be with my people when the warm season is here,” he told himself.

  He spent the rest of the day on the island. From the top of its highest cliff he watched a pod of whales blowing very close to the island. Farther out, he saw a tapatook that seemed much larger than his own. “I have heard the Bouguishamesh also visit this land,” he said aloud. “I’d best not show myself until I know what they’re after.” But the large tapatook, fitted with a sail, was too far out to sea for its paddlers to see Anin standing on the headland. That night, the initiate found a sheltered spot in which to spend the night, and slept like a child, feeling safe and confident.

  In the morning he rose with the sun. After eating, he wrapped the rest of the smoked birds in his fish net, placed everything in the tapatook, and began the long paddle back to solid land. When he reached the shore, he walked for several suns along the beach, dragging the tapatook with the cord. One rain-drenched afternoon, Anin came to a rocky ridge that seemed to close off the beach. He told himself that it was time to launch his tapatook and continue his voyage by sea. His spirit had been decidedly low for the past two or three suns, and he knew that such feelings were significant. The last time he had felt like that, he had almost drowned, taken by surprise by a sudden squall. Such thoughts would continue to haunt him, he decided, unless he confronted the ridge of rock that had loomed up so suddenly before him.

  When he reached the base of the ridge, he looked for a place to spend the night. The rain continued to fall heavily, colder now that the sun had gone down. “I must find a safe place,” he told himself. “If I do not dry my clothes, I will never complete this voyage to my people.”

  As he followed the wall of rock towards the interior, he came to an immense pile of boulders stacked one on top of the other. One of the largest rocks in the middle formed a kind of roof. Rain poured down on either side of it. It was not the best spot to wait for the weather to change, but it was more comfortable than staying out in the rain. After lighting a fire and spreading his clothes out to dry, he rolled himself in his caribou skin and lay down near the flames, too tired to eat. The night seemed interminable. The dampness penetrated deep into his insides. He shivered. He felt the clammy cold of fear, the dread that one who lives close to nature feels when he senses that something is about to happen but is not sure what it is. Several times during the night he heard voices.