The Beothuk Saga Read online

  The child was frightened and trembled all the time, and cried whenever anyone tried to touch him. He would not let any stranger come near him. He was tied up with a cord that cut into his wrists and ankles so badly that he would bear the scars for the rest of his life. Since it was impossible to tame him, he was sold to a fur trader who brought him to England, to live with the trader’s brother in Liverpool.

  A terrible anguish engulfed him when he saw the ship was pulling away from the coast where he had once played with his mother, happy and smiling. He felt his insides being torn apart when he realized he would never see her again, nor ever again have anyone who would love him. If only his father would come back, he thought, he would stop these strangers from taking him away. He had seen the face of the man who had killed his mother, and never would it leave his memory. Nor the face of the man who had eviscerated his aunt Basdic, at the beginning of the warm season. That is what he said later to Tom June, and what Tom June told me.

  All during the long voyage to St. John’s and later, during the crossing to England, the child heard the name with which he had been encumbered: John, John, John, August, August, August. The two words pounded in his head like the drum that is beaten when a Beothuk is buried who has had the fever for which there is no cure. John August had terrible nightmares. Someone would cut his stomach open and take out all the Beothuk people he knew, one after another, and stick them on lances and let them dry in the sun. When he was able to calm himself and go back to sleep, he would rest peacefully, dreaming that he had found the two murderers, the men who had killed his aunt and his mother, and had cut their skin up into long strips and made snowshoes out of them, and put them on his feet. He smiled, thinking that at last he had found a use for the English.

  Suns passed, nights passed. He found himself in England, in a large village, bigger than any he had ever seen before. He was placed with a family by the name of Gardener. The Gardeners already had three sons of their own, the oldest of whom was fourteen. The Beothuk boy was put in his charge. As he soon discovered, the English boy was cruel and violent, and greatly enjoyed every chance he had to kick and punch the newcomer. John August, however, did not take this treatment without fighting back. He would pick up anything he could find in the house and throw it at his tormentor. When Gardener senior had had enough of this, he whipped the boy, and told his oldest son that he could whip him as well, as long as he did not mark him too badly. The little Savage would have to be sold, and they wanted him to fetch a good price.

  The next year, in 1769, the English king, George III, became uneasy about the turn of events in Newfoundland, and issued a proclamation “forbidding the colonists of Newfoundland to molest the Beothuk.” But Newfoundland was out of sight and far from the control of royal sanctions. Life went on, and the massacres continued. We heard rumours of this royal proclamation, but we knew that there was no cure for those who came to exploit our island’s natural resources. They were just words, nothing but words, words written on English paper.

  45

  John August told Tom June that he was kept in a cage and exhibited to the public, who paid money to see him. The newspapers described him as a Red Savage from Newfoundland, and his owners painted his skin with watercolours so that the people who paid tuppence to see a young Savage would not feel cheated when they saw a boy who looked like any other boy. They tied his hair up on the top of his head like a sheaf of oats, in the manner of Beothuk women. They made a loincloth for him of cowhide, one side left rough, with the hair on, and the other side lined with suede, in the European fashion. The loincloth was also painted red with watercolours rather than red ochre; it gave him a grotesque but artificial appearance. He looked nothing like a true Beothuk from the island of the Red Men, and he knew it, despite his young age, because he spoke to Tom June about it when he was no longer a child.

  He remembered that they gave him a stuffed animal for company. It was a tiger; he did not know what it was until one day he saw a picture of one on an advertisement for a circus. He would amuse himself by throwing the toy at the bars of his cage to frighten visitors who came too close. When he tired of this, he curled up in a corner, his thumb in his mouth like an infant who has been taken from his mother too early, and refused to move until Mr. Gardener took a stick and poked him sharply in the ribs with it. This was to show visitors how ferocious he could be.

  He told Tom June that he learned to speak English by listening to the visitors. His adoptive parents rarely spoke to him. Whenever he did something that displeased them he would be harshly, but wordlessly, beaten for it. Mr. Gardener kept a leather razor strop for that purpose. John grew quickly, and always nurtured his plan to return to Newfoundland and avenge the death of his mother. He also hoped to see his father, Bawoodisik, again. But he was closely watched, and the elder Gardener boy, Peter, reminded him constantly that he was in their power. The young John August saw how true were the stories told by the Living Memories, that the English are a cruel people. He grew up with a single idea in his head: to escape and return to his homeland.

  He managed to escape three times, but each time he was caught. He did not speak English well enough to get by on the street. Although they did not become rich, the Gardeners lived well off the revenues of exhibiting John to the public. They took him on tour throughout England, and finally in London one of the visitors was Sir Joseph Banks, who successfully petitioned the King for his release. John was then fourteen years old. He had been in a cage for eight years. He had all but forgotten the language of his people. Sir Joseph paid for his passage back to Newfoundland and even gave him some pocket money so that he would not be destitute when he arrived in St. John’s. He told John that he was sorry he had to leave for the Indies and could not accompany John on his journey back to his people. John later said that Sir Joseph was the only Englishman he had ever met who showed the slightest sympathy for him; he was sorry that he never saw Sir Joseph again.

  That is how young John August returned to the island of the Red Men. All he remembered of it was the name of the place where he had been taken on the first night of his captivity: Catalina. He also remembered the face of the man who had murdered his mother. Sometimes, in his dreams, he also saw the man who had killed his aunt two moons before he was captured, and when he awoke he would be uncertain which of the two men he most wanted to kill. But it did not matter, for both were in mortal danger as long as John August was alive. He had sworn to find each man and identify himself to him before killing him, after having made him suffer as much as possible.

  In St. John’s he learned that a boat was leaving for Catalina. He was able to secure a position on board as the captain’s cabin boy. This captain made the journey to and from Catalina once a month, and it was arranged that for the five days that the ship was in port there, John would be at liberty to roam the town. Although only fourteen, he was able to frequent the taverns in Newfoundland. He was looking for two faces. He did not know the names of the men he was seeking, or their size, or their ages. Would he still recognize them after eight years? He did not know, but he lived for nothing else. He spent so much time in the taverns that he soon became dependent on alcohol. He drank beer, also rum and sweet wine. Within a few years he became an alcoholic. He suffered from terrible nightmares. One night when he was drunk he got into a fight with four men from one of the ships in the harbour, and was beaten up quite badly. The next morning he decided to leave Catalina to look for his father.

  He left on foot. He walked along the coast, heading first west and then southwest, looking for the area where he had been raised. He went as far as Trinity Bay, in Smith Fjord, but recognized nothing. He returned to Catalina and then crossed the peninsula to continue his search in Bonavista Bay. At King’s Cove he met an old man who had worked on the cod boats who remembered hearing of “a Beothuk savage who lived on Fogo Island.” This Beothuk had been captured in 1770 and raised on Fogo, and eventually he became master of a fishing boat that sailed from the island. John decided to g
o there to meet this man, who was Tom June, my brother. He left Catalina again, once more on foot. Fogo Island was situated off the southeast point of Notre Dame Bay, in the mouth of the Bay of Exploits. It took him thirty days to walk to Dildo Run, from where he was able to make the crossing to Fogo Island. On the way he begged meals from colonists and fishermen. He never told anyone that he was Beothuk, and he was taken for a young Englishman. He therefore did not know whether the people who helped him were kind people, or whether they were only kind to other Englishmen. It was autumn, and the weather was turning cold.

  We were now nearing the end of the century, and young John had been searching for his mother’s murderer, or for someone who knew his family, for two full season-cycles. He had no difficulty locating Tom June. Tom June was very tall, with dark skin and black hair with hints of red in it. One side of his head was shaved, “my initiation to the life of a sailor,” he said, laughing.

  Over a pint of beer, John August told him how he had been taken prisoner when he was six years old. He told him about the death of his mother and the murder of his aunt. Tom June was saddened by the tale.

  “The colonists are very powerful,” he said. “They are also very ignorant. They honestly believe that we are monsters, and that we are only waiting for an opportunity to kill them. The men you are looking for are Albert Fenton and Guy Jersey. I don’t remember if it was Fenton or Jersey who killed your mother, but one of them still brags about how he shot her from a great distance.”

  Young John instantly became so furious that he had to be held down by the patrons of the tavern. He wanted to kill all Englishmen. Tom June, who was well known in the place, was embarrassed and excused himself to the other patrons. Then he literally dragged John to his cabin on the beach near the Fogo wharf, laid him out on his own bed, and wrapping himself in a woollen blanket, slept on the floor beside him.

  When he woke up, John was still incensed that his Beothuk brother had apologized to the English for his behaviour. Tom June made him listen to reason: in the first place, a tavern filled with English drinkers was not the best place to announce that they were Red Men, Beothuk. Suddenly recalling the name of his father, Bawoodisik, John asked Tom to take him to the land of their people. To calm him down, Tom promised to take him to the interior of the island on his next shore leave.

  Tom June had been taken prisoner at the age of ten season-cycles, when he still spoke the language of the Red Men fluently. For the first few years of his captivity, he escaped several times and returned to live among the Red-Ochre people on the coast, but after a few suns he always returned to Fogo. He did not feel that he belonged in either world. He was a visitor among his own people, and also a visitor among the people who had taken him prisoner. He was not happy in either place. He himself said he was nothing, not Beothuk, not English. No English father would let him call on one of his daughters. And when he was among his own people, he was not allowed to speak to a Beothuk girl for fear that he would try to persuade her to leave the community to live among the invaders, the very people who amused themselves by killing Red Men.

  And so when the English asked him to teach them the Beothuk language, he told them it was too difficult for civilized people to speak. And when his own people asked him to give them English lessons, he told them he could not find the time. The elders remarked on how much he had come to resemble the English: not enough time, not enough time … as though time was something you could make and use to cause pleasure or joy. Time was an insubstantial thing, an invisible thing, no one could hold it in his hands. It was like the cycle of the seasons, uncontrollable. But the whites cherished it as they cherished their own children. That is what becomes of a young Beothuk when he is taken to live among the Bouguishamesh: he learns to worship time instead of Kobshuneesamut. Both are insubstantial, and both have their uses, but they are different. Time was all that the Beothuk had left, they did not need to work to find it.

  Tom June had been raised by an Anglican pastor who had come to Fogo Island to Christianize the savage Redskins. He had not had the courage to travel deep into the forest to meet these Savages, and so he had contented himself with raising this captured child. He was helped by his wife, Elizabeth, who taught Tom to speak English and to read and write, and in four years she transformed the young Savage into a little English gentleman. But he still lived in Newfoundland, and there was nothing of the gentleman in the other children on Fogo Island. He adopted the manners of a young lout, much to the dismay of the good Elizabeth. The children on Fogo ran completely wild, and the dual personality of her young charge discouraged the frustrated teacher. Saving the young Beothuk’s soul was her only mission in life.

  He remembered his true name, which was Deed-Rashow the Red and had been given to him by his father, Doothun the Forehead. However, Doothun was not his real father, because he had been orphaned by the fever for which there is no cure. The elderly Doothun, whose young wife would bear him a daughter the same year that the young man was drowned, raised Tom until his capture by the colonists when he was digging clams on the beach. As a young man, Tom would visit his adoptive father whenever he had the chance. I did not know Deed-Rashow personally, but I have heard him spoken of so often that I feel as though I know him very well. It was my father who first told me the stories of Tom June and John August. When Tom June took John August back to his people and introduced him to his uncle, the old man told the boy that his father had died about ten season-cycles after John had been captured. He had been unable to live with the shame and the sense of guilt that haunted him.

  John August had no family and did not speak the Beothuk language. He had no way of communicating with his people, and could not hope to be able to resume his life among them. With a sad heart, he returned to Catalina and continued to drown his sorrow and despair in the taverns. Before he died, a certain Albert Fenton was found floating in the Catalina harbour. As for Guy Jersey, he was found hanging from a tree not far from a tavern, also near the Catalina wharf.

  It is said that one night, after a bout of drinking, John August became very sick and choked on his own vomit. It is also said by malicious tongues that he suffered such a violent fit of delirium tremens that the crew members aboard the ship he was working on had to knock him hard on the head to calm him down, and he died from the blow. However he died, his reputation as a troublemaker was well-known and it was not difficult to convince everyone that death came to him as a result of his drinking. He was the first Beothuk child to be exhibited in England like an animal in a zoo. At the age of seventeen, he had had six years of freedom, eight years of captivity, and three years of hell. A hell worse than death, a hell of not knowing who he was, of never seeing his own family, of losing even his language, of having no friends in whom to confide.

  Thus died the last descendant of the hero of the island of Newfoundland, Anin the Voyager. John August was the final chapter in a sad family saga, a family that had influenced the whole culture of the island for nearly eight hundred season-cycles.

  What I find the strangest thing of all, however, as the Living Memory of my people, is that the colonists of the island of Newfoundland did not try to use these two young men as go-betweens, or even as interpreters, when they sent their military expeditions into the interior of the island to establish contact with our people.

  Tom June lived another five years on Fogo, always in the same job. One autumn morning they found his body floating in the water of the harbour, beside his overturned tapatook. There had been no storm or strong wind for several days. He was a little over thirty years old and was an excellent swimmer. His death remains a complete mystery. As he had neither close friends nor mortal enemies, it was put down to an accident. No one seemed to mourn his disappearance, and no Beothuk came out of the forest to claim his body. Two days after his death, his tapatook also disappeared. It had been recovered by the owner of the boat on which Tom was working, but no one knows who came to take it away.

  I, Wonaoktaé, his younger sister, gre
w up and became the Living Memory of my people. I am the first woman to whom the memories of so many others have been given. I am the daughter of Doothun. I was taught at a very early age how to use my memory to learn about the past and to recall the present, so that future generations will know where they came from. The world is a series of worlds. Life is a series of lives. I will never forget the lives of Tom June and John August.

  46

  Bawoodisik was not dreaming. He had heard a musket shot. The sound worried him: a musket firing had been a bad omen ever since the English first came to the island of the Red-Ochre people.

  Still troubled, he decided to give up his seal hunt and return to the land, to Adenishit and the boy. The child was the first-born of Bawoodisik and Adenishit, and was the last of the line descended from Anin the Voyager, the hero of the island and the first to travel completely around the Addaboutik land. It took him three season-cycles, and his voyage united the clans and created the Beothuk Nation through his marriage to four women: one Beothuk, two Vikings from Ice-land, and one Scotswoman. His progeny had been great: he had fathered more children than any Beothuk that followed him. He was a wise man, who saw his people expand their territory until they occupied the whole island, so that they could protect their land and keep it intact. He withstood great hardships and much danger, which until that time had been unknown to the Red-Ochre people. Protected by Gashu-Uwith the Bear, he had established his own clan and the Beothuk Nation.

  Bawoodisik thought it was time to give a name to his son, so that he would perpetuate the unending tradition of the Beothuk people in the vast reaches of the universe. He must take good care of this child to assure his own continuity, make him into a man strong of body and of spirit. It meant instilling in him a sense of his great responsibility.