Scattered Bones (2 page)

As the convoy of six canoes travelled along, there was constant hollering amongst the war party. This grew louder and louder, back and forth from one boat to another. Since their language was foreign to me, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Finally, our steersman pushed backwards on his paddle and our canoe halted. My cousin and I were dumped on a reef. It was so small the water lapped at our toes. Then those brave, honourable warriors took off.

At first we were quite happy to have escaped what would have been a brutal life, particularly for me as I would surely have been made a sex slave – with revulsion in their voices, my people had sometimes talked about this horror. But as time passed, the panic set in. Slow starvation, exposure to the hot, hot sun, would be an even more hideous death then being shot or stabbed.

For a long time we sat on the tiny island, back against back, numb with terror. A group of solemn white pelicans sitting on a reef nearby peered at us, looking so sad, so sorry for us.

Evening approached. With our arms around each other, we tried not to think of the night spirits who would surely come to haunt us. Suddenly my cousin shouted out, “Look there!” Against a darkening sunset, in silhouette, a parade of canoes. We were frightened, sure that the Sioux had come back to kill us. But as the flotilla neared, the emerging shapes grew familiar. Quizzical voices shouted out. I jumped up and waved. Before I knew it, I was being held to my father’s chest.

He wrapped me in a caribou hide, and packed me in his canoe beside him. As we lapped along, I couldn’t stop shaking and sobbing. He tried to comfort me by relaying some good news. My cousin Wapun was alive and well.

The day before the massacre, Chachake and his group had headed south on Pelican Lake, turning into a large bay into which a creek meandered from the interior. The able-bodied rounded up logs and felled trees, heaving them across the creek’s mouth so as to hide the passageway – from what they weren’t sure, only that that was what the chief insisted on. After that they travelled into the interior, paddling their canoes as fast as possible. By late afternoon they felt secure enough to set up camp. They devoured a meal, and, exhausted, fell asleep.

The moment Chachake awoke the next morning he knew that something dreadful had happened. Quickly he made his way back to the Pelican Lake camp. “What I saw was so hideous I thought I would die of sorrow on the spot,” he told my father.

The only survivor was a young mother who sobbed out her story to him. When the attack came, she had plunged into the lake, right at the spot where spring debris – old branches, weeds, leaves – had accumulated. This provided her with an air pocket. She survived, but since her two children had been hatcheted to death, she doubted that this was any kind of blessing.

Not long after Chachake had discovered the massacre, the men of Pelican Narrows appeared, home at last from their trading venture. They had travelled from the north so they hadn’t encountered the eastbound Sioux. Hours later, after the howls of anguish had finally subsided, the means of revenge was carefully mapped out. In his mind’s eye Chachake could see clearly, like tracks in the snow, the exact course the Sioux had taken. Following it, that evening they found my cousin and I abandoned on our little reef.

After our rescue, our party travelled until it was quite dark. Then, leaving our canoes hidden in foliage, we quietly traversed a path that followed the steep bank above the water. When we finally spotted the fires of the Sioux camp twinkling in the black night, the young men wanted to attack immediately. They had to be held back.

Chachake silently signalled the place our party was to stop for the night. My cousin and I, exhausted by our ordeal, fell into a deep sleep, but at dawn we were awakened and led to a copse of white birch trees. “You are not to move from here,” my father commanded, but it was an order we couldn’t possibly obey. We hid in a clump of bushes high on a bank. From there we watched the drama unfold.

The Sioux seemed not to have noticed how the river had narrowed, how steep the banks sloped up on either side. They were surprised when the first gunshot rang out. The bullets had come from high up, across the bows of their canoes. They immediately fired back in that direction just as, from the rear, came a chorus of unearthly howls. A heavy volley of bullets and
arrows followed. The river stained red with blood.

All the Sioux were killed except the headman – Chachake had asked that if at all possible he be captured alive – and a young relative who had served him. They were gagged, their feet and hands bound together behind them, then hurled into canoes face down.

Back at Pelican Lake, the young people, my cousin and I included, were not allowed to watch the revenge meted out, and over the years we were forbidden to talk about it, but the tale was too important to remain buried forever. I eventually was able to piece it together.

A log was laid on the shoulders of each victim, their arms strapped to it by leather thongs. The headman pleaded, “Do not kill me. I have many valuable gifts from the white man, tools and food, that I can give you.”

“No,” my father said. “You have inflicted a great horror on us and you will pay for it.”

With sharp, sharp knives, the Sioux flesh was amputated piece by piece, slice by slice. Chachake, as old and feeble as he was, was particularly vicious, slicing off the nipples, then the penis, and then the testicles of each hostage. With a honking, vicious laugh, he called the dogs. They were to savour the blood as it dripped to the ground. The captives howled with pain until, at last, death intervened.

Once the act of revenge was finally played out, the women and children were attended to.

A large shallow grave was dug in the centre of a copse of trembling aspen on top of the hill overlooking the beach where the slaughter had taken place. The bodies were placed side by side, the children lying close to their mothers and grandmothers.

Since my mosom was a revered medicine man, his resting place was separate from the others. His thick braids, which had been chopped off by his executioner, were placed beside his body. On top of this mound were assembled the contents of his precious medicine bag – a raven’s skull used to trick all manner of malevolent spirits; a crane’s bill painted in bands of moss green, bright red, and midnight
black which weakened the powers of the flesh-eating witigo; a hollowed
bone of a swan used to suck diseases – boils, serrations, puss – from the human body.

On his chest was displayed his beloved stone pipe, presented to him years ago by a white man, a North West Company trader he had befriended. Arranged above his head were five eagle claws. These were used as counters in the games of chance he loved, for, if Nanahewepathis was anything, he was a gambling man.

There was one other who was so beloved by her people that she too was given a special, separate burial. She was dressed in a robe made of the softest deer skin over knee-high leggings; a cloak decorated with clusters of reddish/brown seeds; moccasins embroidered with glass beads and porcupine quills into small circles, triangles, oblongs.

Her beautiful necklace, the very symbol of how much her husband loved her, was given a place of honour. It was made from red and green and blue glass balls brought from the fur trading posts, hollow bones, spectral white and polished, from the shafts of duck and warbler wings, the legs of rabbits and the backbones of fish; and, her favourite, beads made of red pipestone – “blood of mother earth,” she used to say.

Under her head was placed her birch-bark kit filled with her workaday utensils which she would need in the next world: a stone scraper used on animal hides; a steel-bladed knife with a moose-bone handle essential for butchering animals; an awl to punch holes in leather or birch bark; and a whetstone to keep her tools sharp.

In her right hand was placed her most precious possession of all –
a lump of graphite, flat and smooth from years of use, found long ago on the banks of the great river. She had drawn divine images – animals, people, plants – sketching them on birch bark, tattooing them our bodies, etching pictures on rocks. They had astounded, amused and surprised.

I have prayed every day of my long life that the other-world spirits honour and love my mother as much as we did.

July, 1924

The Arrival

Friday afternoon

Chapter One

A scorcher of a day,
hotter than hell. Florence Smith has already gone for her swim, diving off Chachake Cliff into the refreshing waters of Pelican Lake. The boys cavorting on the beach nearby had burst into laughter. “Hippopotamus, hippopotamus,
wini-papamtokowikakos
,” they roared. They’re obsessed with this creature, because they’ve been drawing pictures of it in Miss Wentworth’s class. Florence doesn’t mind; she‘s always been a big-boned, muscled woman, and these kids know how tough she can be. More than once, she’s grabbed an ear, twisting, twisting until the victim yells out, “Sorry, Miss.
Namaw kitom katetin
,” won’t do it again.

It’s 11:30 a.m., and since the store is shipshape, Florence decides she’ll relax for a few minutes. She settles herself on her favourite log situated in front of the store where she has a good view of the lake; the birch tree behind supports her back. The two pugs, Artemis and Athena, sprawl at her feet. She pulls out her pipe, lights up, settles in for a long and leisurely smoke. But on the very first puff, the heavenly peace is shattered.

Florence has lived so long at Pelican Narrows that she can follow the bedlam’s progress with her ear. The first explosion comes from the Northern Lights, Arthur Jan’s fur trading post, located at the northwest limits of the settlement. Out for a walk earlier that morning, she spotted the manager of that establishment, that devious rat, Bibiane Ratt, hammering away at a loose plank on the store’s dock. She scowled at him as she marched by; he gave her a raspberry. She pictures him now shooting off his beloved Spencer carbine.

The next outburst comes from the Whitebear compound located up the hill from Arthur Jan’s establishment. The chief’s five sons have obviously fetched their rifles and are blasting away. That’s where she was headed when she snubbed Bibiane. On her way to see how the dear old man was making out. She found him, wrapped in a blanket, sitting in his wicker chair on a rock overlooking the lake. He was humming Anglican hymns, but stopped and waved when he spotted her. His wife was nowhere in sight, so Florence was able to whisper to him, “I think of you every minute of every day.” She loves Chief Cornelius Whitebear with a passion that she knows is ridiculous for a large, homely woman in her sixties.

Next comes an explosion further south. Thirty or so Cree trappers have emerged from their wigwams or log cabins, and at this instant are ejaculating as many bullets into the air in as short a time as is possible. Their kids, including those who think Florence is a hippo, are jumping up and down like grasshoppers.

Florence spots Father Bonnald pushing carrot tops into the rabbit cages located in the yard of St. Gertrude’s Catholic Church. The priest is a little hard of hearing, so it takes a while before he realizes what’s going on. Then he runs for his revolver, which he keeps under the bed, and joins the uproar.

Florence’s husband Russell emerges from the house attached to the Hudson’s Bay Company post. He’s all spruced up, wearing his old naval jacket with two medals attached to the lapel and his captain’s hat.

“They’ve arrived, Flo,” he calls out.

“My heart’s just a thumpin’,” she replies.

Ignoring her sarcasm, he aims his rifle high into the sky and joins in the boisterous greeting.

The Anglican priest Ernst Wentworth refuses to engage in the uproarious welcome – he thinks that it’s ungodly nonsense – but his wife Lucretia Wentworth comes running down from the vicarage. All week she’s been babbling on about The Distinguished Writer, driving Florence and everyone else mad. “He really is
the
most famous author in the entire world,” she told anyone who would listen. “
His books have sold everywhere, millions of them.” She has read both
Main Street
and
Babbitt
and thinks they are “the most brilliant literature ever produced by any writer at any time,” Now she’s chirping at Florence like an excited chipmunk. “Is he really here? I can’t believe he’d actually come to this wretched backwater. I’m so embarrassed thinking of all the uncouth people he’ll run into here. How will he be able to stand it?”

Florence controls an urge to take an axe to the silly woman’s head.

Finally, around what is laughingly called The Island, travelling from the southwest, glides the caravan of four canoes, their Evinrudes purring like some kind of proud water cats, their Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes fluttering from the bows. As he does every year at this time, Russell Smith stands rigidly at attention, ready to salute the Canadian government’s official Treaty Party.

Pelican Narrows, Saskatchewan, is now on full alert. The entire
village, everyone, young and old, heads for the Hudson’s Bay Company
dock. The white people are eager to set eyes on the celebrated author about whom Lucretia Wentworth has jabbered so much, but the Cree know nothing of the American’s eminence, and so care not a dog’s fart. It’s the government representatives they’re happy to see, come to hand out treaty money.

Everyone watches as they disembark – officious Bob Taylor, the long-time Indian Agent; the physician, Douglas Mackenzie on Treaty Party duty for the first time and whom everyone calls Doc Happy Mac; the fur trader, Arthur Jan; the cook; the eight Cree paddlers; and the two paying guests, Dr. Claude Lewis, and his brother, the famous author, Sinclair Lewis. Who almost falls into the lake. After securing the dock with his left leg, he pushes too hard on the gunwale with his right so that the canoe drifts sideways while he slowly does the splits. One of the paddlers runs to his rescue, grabbing him around his skinny middle and bundling him onto land. After he has steadied himself, he straightens his back and strides forth, trying to ignore the crowd gawking at him.