Coppermine (52 page)

A rich white man from the South had contacted her: he wanted to kill a bear. Someone had recommended her as a guide. But why would he want to kill a bear? They were brothers to humans, only to be killed if you were starving or if the bear was starving and about to kill you. To seek out and kill a bear was, as the priests at the mission school would put it, a sin. She could take the rich white man out and make sure he didn’t find a bear, but probably she would just avoid him altogether and establish a trapline in the winter up near Great Bear Lake instead. The fishing would be good in the spring. Maybe she would even cross that great freshwater ocean and make her way through the Dismal Lakes as far as the Coppermine. If that far, why not all the way to the north coast? Would her mother’s spirit follow her home?

Her mood lifted, thinking of that distant land of spirits where you put your ear to the stone earth and it asked you the question,
Il-viunna-hugi-vit?
Are you who you appear to be? That would be the best place to bring up the child, among her people. With Kingagolik helping her. But it was too far to go alone this year. She had to find a safe place to have the child and she had to have someone to help. There was Bessie Fish, George’s kind wife, who helped mothers. She would ask her to be with her when the baby came.

Angituk rubbed her belly again. This child would become her world and she would never be lonely again. It was what he had given her, and she was thankful for the gift. But she had decided she would never take another man. She could never give her heart again like that, to a lover or to a father. She refused to experience that pain again. It was, at its simplest, a survival instinct. And so she would live free of men, with the child, as her mother had done for the most part. And that was fine. Now, in the North, away from Edmonton, she felt again the company of the spirits. She sensed that her mother was near. She and the child would be protected.

Angituk tossed another fresh pelt into the tub of water beside her. George had brought her two big beaver to do and she was pleased to have the variety. Thicker pelt, different cut pattern, and a nice rich, glossy texture. She hauled the first up on the stump, turned him over, and selected a wider-bladed knife, when she heard her name spoken. Often in the wind she heard her mother’s voice speak her name, but it was not her mother who called her this time.

She turned and slowly rose to her feet, the broad-bladed knife in her hand, her wide-brimmed hat back on her head, hand to her eyes to block the glare of the low sun. Twenty yards away, near the tannery shack, he stood in civilian clothing, a tentative look in his eyes. Creed did not say her name again, he just looked at her, unsure of how she would react after what he’d put her through. The knife slipped from her fingers to the ground, and with everything she had, she ran to him.

IT WAS LATE FALL
by the time they reached the Coppermine in two canoes on the broad, handsome river. A light snowfall defined the rocky banks. Creed had located two more sixteen-foot Peterboroughs at a mining camp on the Mackenzie downstream from Fort Norman. He and Angituk took the lead with Uluksuk and Sinnisiak behind. The baby was growing inside her but was still not big enough to diminish her paddle stroke or reduce her loads during portages. Whenever Creed’s eyes found her, she was smiling, her face radiant as she sang little songs to the child.

Once they left Fort Norman behind them, the transformation in Uluksuk had been dramatic. The old shaman began hungrily eating the meat they killed, made special charms, and chanted for their safety and success. He spoke to the spirits and happily reported the good tidings: they were welcomed back to this land.

All was well when they came to the smooth, quickening waters above Bloody Falls, and there was a short debate as to whether to portage or shoot the tubular rapids. The water was really too wild and cold to risk a dunking, so by mutual agreement they unloaded just upstream before the current became too powerful to resist. It was on the west side, the side where the priests had died, though no one discussed this choice. They each did two carries of equipment and supplies high on the cliff path above the turbulent waters on the loose, flat black rocks, slippery with frozen snow, and they put in below at a place where the frenzied waters spread out and calmed over a wide, rocky riverbed before their final nine-mile float to the sea.

There, on the pebble beach, they reloaded the canoes, including the delicate little leather sack with the bow and arrows Uluksuk had made for the child. Creed took a moment to survey the place all around him. This was where Samuel Hearne’s Chipewyans had massacred an Eskimo camp of men, women, and children in 1771 as Hearne looked on. Franklin had reported still seeing many human bones here in 1821, but there were no bones now; all had been dissolved or washed away.

They had accomplished the portage almost completely without speaking, for even Creed felt the presence of the spirits in this place. They all hummed or chanted with each breath to keep any bad spirits out.

As his companions repacked the canoes on the rocky beach north of the falls, Creed hesitated. Then he turned suddenly, and with no explanation made his way down the hill and across the snow-tinged heather some distance away from the falls to find the wooden cross above the graves of the priests. Angituk followed him. Creed stood at the site for several minutes, considering the hopes and dreams that had brought the two men here, the character and passion of Father Rouvière, and the misfortune of their end. He wished them peace.

Angituk urged him in a whisper, trying unsuccessfully to keep the apprehension from her voice, “Let’s go now.” And they turned and, without looking back, made their way to the others.

They pushed off into the swift, smooth current, which bore them north, away from Bloody Falls, hardly having to dip a paddle, savouring these last hours of sensuous, effortless, burdenless travel toward the mouth of the Coppermine and home.

EPILOGUE

In 1919, the Royal North West Mounted Police established a permanent post near the mouth of the Coppermine River with the help of “Special Constables” Uluksuk and Sinnisiak, who lived out their lives in the Coppermine area.

With the complicity of a Hudson’s Bay Company ship, which turned down the Catholic missionaries at the last minute, the Anglican Church was able to get construction materials to the mouth of the Coppermine ahead of the Roman Catholics, build a church in 1919, and baptize every Copper Inuit they could find. The Roman Catholics hired their own ship and built a church a year later to engage in a robust competition with the Anglicans, but the town of Coppermine, now known as Kugluktuk, remains predominately Anglican, the Christian religion folded well into the ancient, non-exclusive, and adaptable beliefs of the Copper Inuit who still live in tune with their own metaphors and love of the land.

a cognizant original v5 release november 02 2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In order of contributions, I would like to first thank Professor Gordon Moyles for his finely researched and written book about the case of the two Copper Inuit hunters,
British Law and Arctic Man,
which directly inspired this novel. My appreciation goes to Diane Lamoureaux and the Missionary Oblate Archives in Alberta for Father Rouvière’s journal and letters. Credit also goes to the archives of Yellowknife and Edmonton. I wish to thank Deborah Bernstein and Slawko Klymkiw for commissioning the first development of Coppermine, which allowed me to travel, research, and craft the story Thank you to the many who helped in those travels to Kugluktuk and the Coppermine: Becky and Luigi Torretti, Larry and Helen Whittaker, and Allen Niptanapiak and family, with whom my son Sean and I travelled to Bloody Falls and camped. My gratitude and respect to the elders of Kugluktuk who showed us the old ways and shared their stories.
“Quanaqqutit!”
Script editor John McAndrew was a strong early influence on the structure of the story. Kelly Dignan was instrumental and inspiring to me as an editor on the early draft of the novel. The project then came under the influence of the dynamic forces of my agent, Bruce Westwood (a man equally at home negotiating a book deal or an arctic river). My commissioning editor, Adrienne Kerr, at Penguin, was both a passionate cheerleader and a major creative force in the work. For the finer points, I’d like to express my appreciation to my friend and fellow writer Ernest Hillen, and for the geography and methods and terminology of navigating rapids, Toban Leckie and Bruce Hodgins. To my daughter, Katelyn, thanks for your inspiration in creating all my young female characters. For the exquisite reference map, my thanks to Susan and Gordon Turner. Shirley Leckie gave me Edmonton in 1917. World War I historian Dan Murphy guided me through the Canadian trenches of 1915. I wish to thank Emily Angulalik of Cambridge Bay for her Inuinnaqtun translations and advice on the characters and story, and Monique LeRay for the sensitive translation of Father Rouvière’s journal. Thanks also to George Wally for additional translations of letters and the journal. On becoming a writer, I am forever grateful to Stanley and Nancy Colbert for their guidance, and also to Timothy Findley, who supported my early funding applications and gave me great encouragement and inspiration.

There is a small library of arctic books that have influenced me in writing this novel. A few are
Inuit: Glimpses of an Arctic Past
by David Morrison and Georges-Hébert Germain;
The White Dawn
by James Huston;
People of the Deer
and others by Farley Mowat;
Prisoners of the North
by Pierre Berton;
Living Arctic
by Hugh Brody;
Coppermine: The Far North of George M. Douglas
by Enid Mallory; and
Afterlands
by Steven Heighton. My thanks to these and other northern writers. The Arctic is another world.