Coppermine (9 page)

WITHIN AN HOUR
of their being on the Dease River, the weather closed gloomily in and stayed with them for two days. Unlike those of the Great Bear River, the riverbanks here showed little sign of life. Even the fish made themselves scarce and not one responded to the boy’s spinner.

On the second day they came around a bend in the Dease and entered a widening of the river that the rough map identified as Imaerink Lake—in Cree, “the place where people died.” What had compelled Hornby to build his cabin on this cursed lake was beyond Creed. On the far side, at the eastern end, against the dark green of the stubby forest, stood the rectangle of a cabin. As they approached the shore, Creed’s heart sank. The cabin was nothing but a burned-out ruin: the roof gone, rough doors and shutters broken open. In the sullen mists it had the morningafter look of a direct artillery hit. They landed the canoe in silence and Creed walked to the front door. The boy squatted on the shore beside the canoe, apparently wary of getting any closer to this place where spirits could remain. He began to sing a quiet song like a chant, a monotonous, meandering dirge in a minor key.

Creed approached the ruins. As he stepped across the threshold, a raven flew up through the open roof into the sky. Inside there were charred pieces of furniture and a scattering of notebooks, most of the pages ripped out to fuel fires on the dirt floor. There was a crude fireplace and hearth fashioned out of stones and clay. Broken dishes littered the floor. He picked up a handwritten page. In French, it recorded a meeting with trappers and Cree and some simple advice on finding the Eskimos. Creed poked around in the ashes with a stick for a while but found little more—a tattered magazine of French architecture featuring Notre-Dame, another of Vatican City, a few pages of a child’s picture book of Bible stories, and a hymnal.

The boy’s meandering song stopped suddenly and Creed was astonished to hear a clipped British voice call out, “I say, chaps! How goes it?”

Creed bolted out of the cabin to find a short white man in a tweed coat approaching. He had long, curly black hair, bright blue eyes, a full beard, and a face weathered well beyond his natural age, twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He had three tattered sweaters layered under his jacket, no hat, and his fingerless gloves held an ancient pair of binoculars. He carried a large-bore, long- barrelled rifle and his eyes were a bit wild. Creed approached the man slowly, cautiously.

“Good morning. I’m Corporal Creed of the Royal North West Mounted Police. This is Angituk.” The gun swung vaguely toward Creed. The man had a smile on his face, but Creed appraised the unsettling eyes. “Just point that gun away, friend, if you’d be so kind.”

“Oh, yes! Sorry. Of course.” The man lifted the barrel, leaned the weapon against a rock, held out his hand to Creed, and almost shouted his name. “John Hornby! At your service, sir, yes, at your service indeed.”

“Hornby! I was hoping to find you.”

“As you have. How are things ‘outside’? I don’t get outside very often.”

“Fine. Outside, things are fine.”

Hornby shook his hand for a full fifteen seconds before Creed could take it back again.

“Oh, sorry.”

Accompanying John Hornby was a small mixed-breed cur with large saddlebags across his back and a red paisley handkerchief around his neck.

“And this is Dawg.”

“Hello, Dawg. What brings you up here, John?”

John’s smile faded slightly as he pondered this question for a long moment. “My legs … mostly. Had a canoe for a while when I was on the Snake.”

“No, I mean what are you doing up here?”

John looked a little confused by the question. “I’m talking to you,” he insisted.

“No, I mean, are you hunting or trapping or trading?”

John nodded and smiled pleasantly.

“Which?” Creed asked innocently.

“Oh, no, I’m not,” Hornby told him solemnly. “We don’t allow witches here. I mean, we don’t burn them at the stake or anything, but you just can’t do that sort of thing around here. We’ve warned the shamans.”

Creed decided on a new tack. “Sorry about your cabin.”

“Oh, yes. Miscreants. Wish I could find them and teach them a lesson.”

“John, I understand you knew the two priests that rented this place from you? I’m looking for them.”

“Yes! Rouvière! I brought him up here … three winters ago. Lovely man!”

“I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Then we must have tea! Have you brought any tea? Been a dog’s life since tea. No offence, Dawg.”

WITH TEA IN HIS HAND,
Hornby proved a surprisingly clear and concise narrator.

“When Father Rouvière first came here, the poor man hadn’t spent a warm summer day in the Arctic, let alone an entire winter. He had few supplies, no cold-weather clothing or gear. He had a wool coat. Imagine. Wool. How long do you think a sheep would last up here in winter? One day at most. Father Rouvière had no hunting skills, had never even met an Eskimo, except for a few domesticated ones on the Mackenzie. He barely knew me. Imagine going up here with me? I even get scared thinking about it. But I got him set up in Norman. He loved to play Wisk and chess in the evenings.”

Hornby went on to explain how Rouvière was at first almost beaten by the physical demands. “He was a skinny little guy. The wind’d cut right through ’im. Never thought he’d last, but he did. ‘Perseverance triumphs,’ as they say. Do they still say that?” Hornby stopped and looked pointedly at the silent Creed.

“Yes. Yes, I guess that’s what they say.”

“There was the one time we found some of the Huskies.”

“Huskies?”

“Yeah. Eskimos. The Coppers. I call ’em Huskies. We were the other side of the Dismal Lakes, almost to the Coppermine when we found ’em. Father Rouvière looked like a kid on Christmas morning, he was so excited. They’d never seen a white man before. We might just as well have been men from Mars. You know, funny I should say that—because there’s a strong argument it’s true! There’s a professor at Cambridge that’s pretty much proven we’re descended from Martians. I mean, ask yourself—would you rather come from Mars or monkeys?”

“The choice is clear.”

“They landed long ago and left us here, don’t you think?”

“Certainly it’s possible. But what about the other priest, Father Le Roux?”

“Oh … yeah.” Hornby’s expression darkened. “He showed up the next year.”

“Tell me about him.”

“First-class son of a bitch! A scold. Five minutes after I met him he was telling me I was living in mortal sin and had to get rid of Arimo. She’s the Cree woman I live with in my other cabin on Dease Bay. Then he took some of my supplies and demanded I take them to the Coppermine. I told him to bugger off, and then I left.”

“You left them?”

“Yes, I did. I felt badly for Rouvière—he was a sweet man—but I wasn’t going to guide them if Le Roux was staying. Instead of going north, Dawg and I spent the season walking west to the Mackenzie River to see the land.” Hornby suddenly fell silent.

“And did you ever see them again?”

“No. But I did see the Mackenzie River.”

“But you believe the priests did go north after you left?”

“Yes. I heard they met a Huskie hunter who agreed to take ‘em north.”

“What do you think happened to them?”

“Oh, I think they’re dead. Starved or froze or killed. Rouvière tried, but he wasn’t so good on the land. I suppose the Huskies could be looking after them, but ... you see this cabin? I don’t know if it were Dene or Cree or even a hunt party of Huskies came this far south and did it, but whoever, they wouldn’t have torched it if the priests were still alive.”

“Where would you look for them?”

“Up the Coppermine, of course. There’s a gathering place for the Eskimos called Bloody Falls. Good fishing and hunting just ten miles from the Coronation Gulf. I’d head there.”

“You’ve been there?”

“No.”

“It’s in Samuel Hearne’s book. He witnessed the massacre of an entire Eskimo village there by the Chipewyans he was travelling with. So he named it Bloody Falls.”

“I know. Samuel Hearne is why I’d never go there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the Huskies who escaped those killings saw Hearne standing with the Chipewyans and thought he was their leader. All the Huskies heard was that the massacre at Bloody Falls was led by a white man. That’s why they hate us now. Long memories. One hundred and forty-five years. But that’s why I’ve never gone into the Coppermine. Don’t want to get my throat cut.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“There’s a well-known Huskie hunter up there I’ve heard of that usually camps near the mouth of the Coppermine. His name is Koeha. If anyone knows what happened to the priests, he will.”

“We’ll try to find him.”

“And I’ve done my best to spread the word.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ‘understanding.’ I told those Huskies on the Dismals the deal.”

“What deal?”

“Well, the deal that if an Eskimo kills a white man, then a hundred white men will come and kill them all.”

“I suppose a little terror goes a long way.”

“I believe it might save a white man’s life or two.”

John Hornby excused himself then. He and Dawg were on their way to Hudson Bay. Again he shook their hands, thanked them for the tea, and wished them well.

“Now you be careful. There are some bad actors up there,” Hornby cautioned.

“So I’ve heard. It’s good to meet you. Appreciate the information.”

Creed delighted Hornby with three bags of English Breakfast tea, which he put carefully in his knapsack.

“That’s so wonderful, because you know English is exactly the language that Dawg and I speak when we’re having our breakfast!”

“Right.”

Dawg and the little man in the tweed coat went off through the stunted woods, due east, toward Hudson Bay.

CREED AND ANGITUK CAMPED
for a night outside the gloomy burned-out cabin and Creed read more of the letters. Father Rouvière had spent several days in camp with the Eskimos after that first encounter.

On the 17th of October my Eskimos left to go back north to the Coppermine for the winter. I had showed them the coloured pictures of Heaven and God and His angels, but I don’t know how much they understood. I was able to note a few words, see a little into the language, but it was very little that I could gather this year. Eskimos have never farmed, so how do I teach the proverbs with no gardens, no deserts, no vineyards or seeds, no sheep or shepherds, no bread, no trees for the Crucifixion, no notion of God? It is a labour so slow that I can scarcely see if I am getting ahead. But souls cost dear and they have to be gained one by one.

I tried to get some of them to stay with me for the winter. This way I could have learned their language fairly quickly, an indispensable step toward ministering among them, but they would not. Next year I must follow them north. Once I have established myself with the people, the chances of setting up a permanent mission base on the Arctic coast will be vastly easier. But so far away. It would be so lonely. If only I had a companion to keep me company and share this work.

In a later part of this letter to Father Ducot, Rouvière seemed for a moment to lose heart.

Would such a church on the Arctic Sea be successful? What do you think? Would such a base be a good idea or would it be useless? If they want me to abandon this mission and return to Fort Norman, I’d be happy to take up the community life again as soon as possible.

Did he believe this? Were his doubts this deep, or was he looking for reassurance and support from his Church? Creed wondered.

THEY PADDLED UP THE DEASE
for three days. They picked blueberries on the banks and shot two wild geese for their dinner. They reached the pot-shaped lake that was the river’s source. There near their camp they found a place where a copse of black spruce had stood and been cut down, but not with axes or saws or any metal tools. The small trees had been bludgeoned down, smashed and hammered with blunt blades.

“Copper Eskimo. Stone tools,” Angituk explained.

Creed was struck by the brutality of the tree harvesting and wondered at the fact that a people so primitive, without forged metals, could still exist.

They were only a dozen miles beyond the priests’ cabin when Creed realized they had passed the treeline. There had still been fingers of forest following the river into the barren lands, but now the smooth rock rose up from the shore to touch deposits of tundra between the granite undulations. The black spruce were gone. The sporadic clumps of trees had been replaced by dwarf willow bushes and grass and great stretches of open tundra where all arboreal effort had ceased. The cold had won.

The second evening at their camp on the little lake, they found a small herd of caribou and Creed shot a young female with the .38-55. Before Angituk butchered it, he quickly made a small incision to cut out a portion of organ meat, still warm, for them to eat on the spot. Creed found it very good once he got past the soft, bloody texture. A little salt helped. The boy tossed a portion of the liver onto the ground. Creed asked him about this.

“An offering to the animal spirits who granted us this food.”

The boy quartered the animal with his larger knife and they found enough dried brush and twigs to slowly cook a haunch on a stick. As barely cooked as it was, Creed had never tasted finer meat. They took a package of it with them to sustain them for the next two weeks, and the rest of the caribou Angituk cached in a hole within the permafrost, with rocks on top to stop animals getting to it. He piled more rocks overtop as a marker for their return or for any other traveller in need.

When they could paddle no farther on the eastern edge of the lake, they climbed the ridge, carrying the Peterborough several miles over smooth rock. They had some difficulty finding the best way over the top of the watershed and had to retrace their path twice after coming to dead ends in valleys and creeks. They camped west of the high ground one night and the next morning made it to the top of the ridge, where they could see a thin promise of water in the distance. Several more hours of carrying the canoe beyond the high ground took them down to the beginning of the Dismal Lakes chain. According to the sketch map, they faced another portage beyond that to the Kendall River and finally reached the Coppermine.