The Beothuk Saga Read online

  Jean le Guellec travelled in the interior of the island, visiting all the Beothuk villages and clans. He was guided by Camtac, who also taught him much about the Beothuk way of life. First he taught the Malouin about survival. Le Guellec swiftly learned that if he were abandoned on this island he would soon perish from starvation or cold. He compared the extent of the knowledge of the Red-Ochre people with that of his own people, and discovered that Beothuk knowledge was put to use every single sun, not just on special occasions. He learned that true knowledge came from studying one’s surroundings, not from a school. The French had adopted an alphabet so that they could read and write. By so doing, it seemed, they had lost the kind of knowledge that came from their environment. They could no longer read the wisdom of nature and the elements. Only sailors could still read the sea and the weather. Mariners were the only ones left who were close to nature. There were many new inventions, such as gunpowder and firearms, but these were instruments of death, not aids to survival.

  Slowly but surely the Malouin learned the Red Men’s way of life. He learned which forest plants were needed to heal wounds, how to survive in the season of cold and snow, never to refuse aid to another, since life often hung by a thread when one was alone in the bush. The only way for people of nature to survive was to help one another. Together, anything was possible; alone, life itself was difficult. Wobee learned to respect the other creatures of the forest, the animals and the plants. He learned that plants and trees were living beings. He learned that the trees, the plants, and the animals were possessed of souls, and that they suffered just as human beings suffered. He learned many things of which he had been ignorant before coming to the island. He learned that here there were no privileged classes, no masters and no servants. All beings were equal, and women, although less important, were nonetheless equal to men. He learned that women had been taking part in the political life of the nation since time out of mind, and that the Living Memories encompassed all eternity. He struggled at times, but he learned. Camtac told him that his apprenticeship would last his entire life, and that his most important legacy would be what he could teach his children while he was alive. Total knowledge came only with death and reincarnation as a new being. That is how men accumulate knowledge. In one life, one learns enough for that life. After reincarnation, one teaches what one has learned to others, passing on to future generations the memory of those that have gone before. That is how a people, a nation, survives. All the knowledge one man has is worth nothing if it is not passed on. And knowledge that is passed on is worth nothing if it is not understood. That is why it is necessary to keep one’s ears open to listen, and one’s eyes open to see and to understand. That is the secret of Beothuk existence. That is why the Beothuk will live forever, according to Camtac, even after the last Beothuk has died. The Beothuk will continue to live through others. In the memories of others. In the teaching of others. Camtac said that the Beothuk were without end. The Beothuk were life itself. There will always be Beothuk in the world. As long as there was knowledge to teach and to learn. The Beothuk were the true men. There will always be something for true men to learn. Their need to learn, to know, and to give, is without end.

  The Malouin listened to the father of his first wife without once interrupting him, which was one of the first Beothuk rules.

  “If you want to learn, you must watch and listen. Do not ask needless questions. You might force a person to lie. Remember the words of Anin the elder about lying, which he spoke during his long voyage. Lying is bad and the liar deserves to die. Lying is death. Only the truth exists. Only the truth deserves to live. Lying kills, it kills from the inside by eating the guts of the liar. The ugliest truth is worth more than the most beautiful lie.”

  As they travelled to the many villages on the island of the Addaboutik, the Red Men, the Malouin, the former member of the crew of Jacques Cartier, thought that if lying killed the liar, then all Frenchmen would have been dead a long time ago.

  The journey was a long and exhausting one. The two men stopped at a food cache, where the Beothuk laid away provisions for the season of cold and snow. The caches were placed a half-sun apart between each village, so that travellers could eat without having to carry heavy loads. They served as the stages in a journey from one village to another. It was necessary to know the correct path in order to find them, because they were not always placed in plain view of any casual passerby. One had to know the ways of the Red Men to find them. Camtac knew these ways well. He was a cultured man. Even if he forgot all that he had learned in his life, his culture would remain with him, because culture is what is left when all learning has been forgotten. Culture is life. Culture is group instinct. The right way to prepare food. The right food to prepare. Culture is being. Without culture, without daily life, there would be no dancing and no singing. Songs teach. Dances teach. Culture lives. That was the teaching of Camtac, elder of the Appawet, of the Beothuk Nation, of the Addaboutik, of the New Found Land.

  The two men took caribou meat from the storehouse and cooked it over a fire using branches from the Beothuk tree of life. They were careful to close the entrance to the cache to prevent animals from stealing the meat that belonged to the humans of the great nation of Red Men.

  The two men, from different worlds, returned to the path leading to their home village on the Bay of Exploits, the scene of Anin’s triumph over the Ashwans who were pursuing Woasut. When they arrived, they were welcomed by their people as heroes who had come a great distance. The two men had been travelling for three whole moons, and were very glad to be back among their people, and their own families. When Wobee entered his mamateek, his three wives gathered eagerly around him. He thought he was going to be embraced, but as soon as she was close to him Ooish backed away.

  “You stink,” she said to him. “Have you not bathed for three months?”

  The Malouin admitted that it had never occurred to him. “It has not been warm enough since we left,” he said.

  To which Ooish replied that if all Beothuk refrained from bathing except during the warm season, then the foreigners would smell them from across the sea, and have no desire to land on their island.

  “And you would be the first man I would refuse to make love with. Go and wash yourself. I want a man who smells like a man, not one who smells like sweat. Go wash in the river and come back to honour the three of us. We have been waiting for three months.”

  Wobee made his way to the river moaning and groaning that this Beothuk habit of washing was going to be the death of him. He could catch a cold and die from an infection of the lungs. No one should take their clothes off during the winter, when it was cold.

  When he was clean, he returned to the mamateek where his wives were waiting for him. He told them about his journey with Camtac and everything the elder had taught him. The three women were astonished at how much he had not known. A nation of warriors like the French, able to construct huge ships that could withstand the worst storms at sea, a nation that knew how to make fire by striking small sticks against a rough surface, that could make guns that killed from a great distance, and yet did not know the beneficial properties of a birch tree? Unbelievable! The Beothuk women were shocked at the apprenticeship this Malouin sailor had had to undergo in order to enter the Red Men’s world.

  When the conversation died down, the women said that it was time for Wobee to honour them. The Breton-turned-Beothuk was able to satisfy two, but to perform the act a third time was too much for him, and his third wife complained loudly that she had been neglected by a husband who had been away for three months, so loudly that the people in the neighbouring mamateeks could hear her complaints, although they did not interfere in any way. When their husband, exhausted, fell asleep, the two wives who had been satisfied consoled the wife who had not, so that peace would return to the family of four.

  In the morning, Wobee awoke with the intention of satisfying his third wife, but he found himself alone in the mamateek. All three wome
n had already left to assume their daily tasks.

  “Too bad for her,” he told himself. “All she had to do was stay behind. She scolds me for not honouring her, and then when I am ready to honour her, she is no longer here.”

  He put on his dingiam and his moccasins and also left the birchbark mamateek. The sun was very warm and bright, even though it was the season of falling leaves. It was the time for hunting. Wobee had to learn the methods the Beothuk used to prepare for the season of cold and snow. The young people of the village told him that they were leaving to hunt caribou. Realizing that he must prepare for the hunt by making arrows and hunting spears, he went into the forest to look for straight trees that would serve for spear shafts. As for arrows, he had seen the elders cut wood and dry it so that the ashwogins would be light and yet strong. He had also watched them make the strong bows needed to hunt the larger animals.

  He had already become proficient in the use of such weapons, since his blunderbuss was no longer useful, having run out of powder and shot. He had practised pulling the bow for many suns before he was able to rely on such primitive but essential tools for survival on the Red Men’s island. After much practice, he had become skilful enough that he no longer invoked the laughter of the children, who were always eager to make fun of the smallest mistakes. He had not yet acquired the skill of his first wife, Ooish, who could hit a moving target with her hatchet from fifty paces.

  When he had cut a dozen good trees for making spear shafts, he tied them together, lifted them to his shoulder, and returned to the mamateek. Using a very ancient tool consisting of a metal blade with two wooden handles, which the village had received in trade from a ship that had come for fresh water, le Guellec began to shave and smooth the round shafts of the spears until they were small enough to fit comfortably in his hand. This operation took him almost two complete suns. When the shafts were ready, he took them to young Bashubut the Scraper, who was the most skilled in the village at splitting flintstone to make spearheads. From Bashubut he received ten points, whose wide ends were grooved in such a way that they could be attached to the spear shafts with thin cords cut from sealskin. When he had tied the points to his ten shafts, he secured a length of thin cord to each point. When the point entered the animal, it became detached from the spear shaft. If the animal died right away, or very soon, the point could be retrieved from the carcass by pulling on the cord. If the animal did not die immediately, by pulling on the cord and removing the point from its body, the hunter caused the animal to bleed excessively, so that it would die rapidly rather than suffer for many suns.

  Satisfied with his new weapons, Wobee entered his mamateek to attend to his three wives and his son.

  37

  When the moon of the falling-leaf season was half dark, thirty hunters left the village of the Seal Clan for the interior, travelling towards the mountains that ran the length of the island, from south to north. It was time for the herd of woodland caribou on the island of the Red Men to migrate to the highlands, as it did every autumn, to return to the moss pastures in preparation for the season of cold and snow. Some of the women, children, and elders would follow the hunters later, to skin the animals they killed, seal the meat in birchbark containers, and build caches in which the provisions would be stored for the winter. The hunters’ first task was to locate the herd and to make a barrier across its migration route, in order to direct the animals into an enclosure where the hunters would be waiting for them.

  The hunters split into five groups and went off in five different directions to look for the caribou. As they were travelling lightly, carrying few provisions, they had to hunt small game along the way for their food. Rabbit snares set the night before provided their morning meat. Fine-meshed nets were set to catch the willow ptarmigan. And beaver from the inland lakes provided the hunters with excellent meals. Sun after sun, the hunters watched the animal trails, waiting for signs that the caribou herd was on the move.

  Early on the seventh morning, a hunter ran into one of the camps to tell his companions that he had seen the herd heading straight for the great clearing, which was only a sun’s march from Red Ochre Lake, where the Bear Clan had its village. The messenger and the others of his group had to tell the four other groups to meet at the clearing. The Bear Clan hunters would surely be the first on the scene, and it was important that all the meat be evenly divided between the two clans. Two men left to go towards the cold, now called the north, and two others went south, to find the rest of the Seal Clan hunting party. Wobee was left behind to make his way directly to the great clearing, to arrive there before the caribou, and to begin constructing the enclosure. When he caught up with the herd, he made a wide detour around it, so as not to frighten the animals, who were moving in a leisurely way and grazing on tree moss. It took Wobee two suns to reach the clearing. Many hunters from his own clan were already there and had started to build the pole enclosure. The next morning, hunters from the Bear Clan arrived to help the Seal Clan. The enclosure was completed in two suns. There was an opening on one side. When the caribou entered the enclosure, the hunters had only to place more poles across this opening, and the slaughter could commence.

  Then the beaters left and formed a huge circle around the caribou herd. On the morning of the third sun, they began to walk simultaneously towards the herd, making as much noise as they possibly could in order to drive the animals into the enclosure. Hunters with their bows and lances waited for two more suns before the first caribou trotted into the clearing. Wobee had been placed in a group of beaters, so that he could learn from the more experienced men on either side of him. The job of his group was to prevent the caribou from leaving the clearing once they saw the enclosure. Several times, at great risk to their lives, they ran in front of the animals, especially the females, to prevent them from breaking through the line of beaters. When the first caribou, a female, arrived at the end of the fence, it hesitated before entering the enclosure. Three hunters were posted at each end of the enclosure, a hundred arrows piled beside each of them. Four lance-throwers stood behind the section of the enclosure called the cap. Their job was to finish off the wounded animals that were slow to die. At the edge of the forest, twenty young, strong men were ready to carry the dead animals from the enclosure to the skinners and preservers, where the animals would be dried and smoked, ready for the birchbark containers. One container for one caribou, complete with its tongue, brain, heart, kidneys, and liver.

  Some of the women had laid fires, and near each fire was a drying rack. Others had made smokehouses covered with birch-bark, and had lit small fires inside that would produce great amounts of smoke. They had also readied piles of wood shavings, which had been soaking in birchbark containers of water. When the fires were lit, they would throw the wet shavings on the flames, and the resulting smoke would do a better job of preserving the fresh meat when it was placed in the storehouses.

  At first, everything went well. Then the main body of the herd, frightened by the beaters, charged as one to the end of the enclosure, running right over the animals that were already dead, so that the young carriers could not remove the carcasses. Two of them were trampled by the panicking animals’ sharp hooves, and were seriously wounded. Panic spread to the hunters surrounding the herd. Caribou carcasses piled one on top of another, live caribou were charging back and forth, and finally the wall of the cap collapsed. The four lance-throwers behind the cap were crushed by the wall, and two were killed, their faces pounded by the hooves. Many animals escaped into the forest.

  Unaware of the catastrophe that was taking place at the end of the enclosure, the beaters continued to drive more caribou through the opening, making as much noise as they could and thereby making the situation worse. The wounded carriers and bowmen were taken out as quickly as possible, and other hunters took their places, but by then the entire caribou herd was in a panic. Animals ran about in all directions, charging the walls of the enclosure until one whole side collapsed. The herd then rush
ed towards the opening, forcing the carriers and skinners to flee. The smokers also ran to get out of the way of the stampeding animals. Only the driers remained at their fires, and they were kept busy because they were attending to the wounded, whose number was constantly increasing. When a runner finally reached the line of beaters to tell them to stop, there were thirty gravely wounded men lying on the ground. A hundred caribou were dead, but four hunters had paid for them with their lives.

  Work went on around the wounded, for the animals had to be cut up and the meat carried to the fires to be smoked and dried. The survival of the Beothuk people depended on it. No matter how many setbacks hit them, they could never lose sight of the fact that the nation’s survival depended on the annual caribou hunt. Some of the wounded hunters had been trampled by the caribou’s sharp hooves and had open wounds in their chests and abdomens, and on their legs, arms, and faces. Others had suffered broken legs and arms. One of the younger hunters was so disfigured that he was almost unrecognizable. Two of the dead had had their skulls crushed, and the two others had smothered to death under the collapsed wall when the caribou stampeded over them. Never in Beothuk history had a caribou hunt turned out so badly. A fatal error had been committed: the enclosure walls had not been reinforced by poles angled outwards to hold them up. Also, the walls had not been built high enough; the caribou had been able to see over them.