The Expeditions (16 page)

Storm clouds lightened then dissolved as they passed the Miner’s River and Train River, Professor Tiffin shouting their location as he squinted at the Bayfield chart. Near dusk he spied the Chippewa village. It was a thicket of lodges set beside a stream, rows of cigar-shaped canoes strewn along the beach, a woman’s laughter and a dog’s yip and the
thock thock thock
of hatchet blows drifting over the water. A group of braves lay in various postures of repose near the water’s edge, muskets propped beside them. Professor Tiffin raised both hands and hollered, “
Bojou!
” The braves sat up without returning the greeting.

“He believes we should wipe them away, slaughter them,” Tiffin said. “Or exile them to the far forgotten corners of the United States.” Elisha understood that the man was speaking about Mr. Brush. “The Christian way is to raise them up! To improve them morally and spiritually, you see, offer them entry into the civilized world. To instruct them in mechanics and agriculture and the rule of law—of course you agree.”

Elisha grunted at the paddle but said nothing.

“Silas Brush would not admit even that Indians are human beings—he considers them a unique species, distinct from white men and Negroes! Imagine: if Natives are distinct from white men, then they are not descendents of Adam, and thus are not inheritors of original sin. It is utterly contrary to Scripture! And consider the case of half-breeds, such as Susette: is the poor woman half-saved, or half-damned? Analysis of the spiritual state of quinteroons and octoroons requires higher mathematics!”

Professor Tiffin twisted around and laid a hand on the boy’s arm. “You must choose.”

“Choose what?”

“Choose whom you intend to follow—Silas Brush or myself. I have seen the man instructing you, crowding your brain with minutiae. You simply cannot be trained by both him and me—your mind cannot abide such radical discord.”

Elisha stopped paddling and the canoe rocked crosswise over a swell. He could not determine if Professor Tiffin was serious. He leaned away from the man but Tiffin tightened his grip.

“Of course I choose to follow you. Of course.”

“Excellent fellow.” The man nodded solemnly. “Then we shall achieve this summer’s successes together.”

Tiffin stepped into the waist-high shallows and started toward the braves, arms outspread, speaking a halting mixture of Chippewa and English. The Natives hesitated; then they splashed into the lake and shouldered the packs, helped Elisha hoist the canoe and set it gently ashore. They looked to be near Elisha’s age, though taller and thickly muscled. They stank of deer grease.

“Bojou,” Tiffin said again. He spoke a few words in Chippewa, then said, “We are Americans. We would like to trade.
Trade
.” The braves remained expressionless. One of them spoke a single syllable and Tiffin said, “Yes, yes, oui.” The brave turned and started up the beach.

The village was larger than it had appeared from the lake, three dozen bark-covered domes in a grassy clearing, Native women working at tanning frames while a group of young girls looked on. A smell of smoked venison seasoned the air. Professor Tiffin and Elisha followed the braves through the lodges, past a sour-looking Chippewa smoking a clay pipe; his gaze tracked the pair as they passed. Elisha looked back to find the man squinting after them.

We’re in American territory, the boy told himself. The fact failed to calm his nerves. Chippewa men and women milled about the village, dressed in leggings and woolen breechclouts, trade shirts and cotton dresses: Natives in white men’s clothing, living on land they no longer owned. Their presence seemed bleakly absurd. The children’s shrieks unnerved Elisha.

The brave ducked into a lodge, emerged a moment later leading a squat, bald Native wearing a ratty pea jacket and striped broadcloth leggings. Black metal cones hung in wreaths from the man’s ears. He introduced himself in broken French as White Wing, then extended an open palm toward Tiffin and Elisha. “Pour faire du troc. Oui?” His earlobes wobbled as he spoke.

“Oui,” Tiffin said, “faire du troc.”

White Wing led them toward the village’s edge, past a group of braves working at the skeleton of a long lodge. One brave bowed a sapling into an arc while another lashed it with roots to the lodge frame. White Wing glanced back at Elisha, nodding as if to calm the boy. “Heureux,” he said. “Troc. Bon.”

The Native settled himself beneath a tall, solitary elm and motioned for the pair to sit opposite. From his seated position Elisha was faced with the interior of a nearby lodge: skins and pine boughs were laid around the dim perimeter, a low cookfire in the center trailing ash. A man was tending the fire. With a start Elisha recognized him as the Native that Mr. Brush had threatened during the expedition’s first days. The man sat heavily beside the cookfire.

Professor Tiffin placed a carrot of tobacco before White Wing, and the Native said, “Sugguswau, fumons.” He seemed acutely proud of his command of French. He withdrew a long reddish pipe and packed it slowly. His lips were puckered and grooved, shriveled by years of smoke. He drew a thick puff then gestured toward the cardinal directions, offered the pipe to Professor Tiffin. The man smoked then passed the pipe to Elisha; he sucked the wet pipe stem and hot smoke entered his lungs. The boy coughed harshly.

“Nous cherchons un guide,” Tiffin said. “Pour nous escorter vers l’intérieur des terres. Nous payerons avec de l’argent et du tabac.”

“Guide? Pas commerce?”

“Nous sommes des scientifiques. Scientifiques—nous recherchons des informations. Nous voulons un guide. Notre guide précédent nous a quitté. Nous pouvons vous payer avec de l’argent et du tabac.”

White Wing took up a pebble and tamped the tobacco. The man’s silence agitated Professor Tiffin. “Nous faisons un voyage important,” Tiffin said. “Envoyés par notre Grand Père le président.”

The Native’s reply was broken by long, moody pauses. Professor Tiffin responded rapidly; then White Wing grunted. “Difficile. C’est tout.” He drew on the pipe and puffed sharply skyward.

“I explained that we would like to engage a guide,” Tiffin said to Elisha. “He suggested it was possible, however when I described the image stones he claimed not to know their location. He is lying. He does not want us to visit the image stones.”

The Native fastidiously tamped the tobacco. He seemed to regard the presence of Tiffin and Elisha as of minuscule importance compared to the proper draw of the pipe. Were he a white man, Elisha thought, he might be a bank bookkeeper with watch chain and pince-nez spectacles, slowly checking his arithmetic while an impatient patron looked on. White Wing drew on the pipe and closed his eyes with pleasure.

“There is an event tonight—a feast dance, or perhaps a Midewiwin ceremony. That lodge is being constructed in preparation.” Professor Tiffin tugged at his shirt collar. He was perspiring despite the day’s coolness. “This man is lying! He would prevent us from visiting the image stones!”

A Chippewa woman had entered the lodge opposite, and now her conversation with the brave rose to shouts. He spat into the cookfire; then his glance landed on Elisha. The boy froze. The brave said something and the woman stared out at the boy.

“I explained that our aim is to assist his people, by studying their glorious history,” Tiffin said. “He claims not to understand. He does not want to aid us, at all.”

The brave stepped from the lodge and squatted beside White Wing, mumbling in the man’s ear. White Wing removed a particle of tobacco from his tongue. “Où votre frère?”

“He is speaking about Mr. Brush.” Elisha’s tone was deliberately calm. “This is one of the Natives from our parley near Point au Foin—the brave with the scarlet cloak. Mr. Brush nearly shot him.”

Professor Tiffin’s expression flickered; then he smiled stiffly. Elisha said, “Tell them Brush returned to the Sault. Tell them he deserted us, along with our guide.”

Tiffin addressed the Natives in crisp, measured French. Elisha understood the words
man
and
forest
then lost the sentence’s thread.

White Wing wheezed around the pipe stem. He spoke a phrase in Chippewa and the brave’s glare deepened; then the man offered a grudging nod. Professor Tiffin reached into his pack and placed a second carrot of tobacco before the men.

“I informed them that Mr. Brush is wandering among the pines,” Tiffin said, clambering to his feet. “I explained that we sent him into the forest this morning to hunt beaver, despite the fact that beaver appear only at night. I told them he is likely now hollering about the vanished canoe. Come, we must go. Immediately.” Professor Tiffin bowed to the Chippewas then turned away.

They hurried among the lodges. A hunting party had returned, four young braves clustered around a pair of does trussed to travoises while women bent over the animals with skinning knives. A drum’s hollow thump rose from the village’s outskirts. To Elisha the scene seemed familiar yet sharply strange: a Chippewa version of a frontier town on militia day. Natives paused to watch them pass.

At their camp on the beach Elisha raised a fire while Tiffin paced with a flask of Indian whiskey. “They will ruin me,” he repeated. “They will ruin me, both of them. They will ruin me utterly.” Elisha did not know how to comfort the man. He busied himself with staking the tents and gathering driftwood, fixing a meal of panbread and fried pork. The day’s light faded to a smear of stars. The drumming grew louder. At last Professor Tiffin dropped the flask and with a wheeze sat beside the cookfire. He stared at his mug for a long while before setting the food aside.

“Did you ever dream you would find yourself in such a circumstance? At the edge of the white world, without a guide, a profound discovery just beyond your grasp?”

Tiffin was drunk. Without waiting for Elisha’s response he began a rambling monologue about his wife. Her name was Minerva. He had met her in Buffalo at the Hudson Street fish market some seven years ago. Her grandfather and grandmother had been slaves in Savannah but her mother and father were free in Buffalo. He had been stripped of his pew in the First Congregational Church for marrying a Negro. She was the most beautiful woman God had yet formed, her skin the color of cocoa, her lips as sweet as maple sugar. Her elder brother had been killed in a sugar factory in Manhattan, her younger brother had been killed in the Second War for Independence. He would someday stroll into the First Congregational Church with Minerva and their children, take their seats in his pew and smile at the minister. The minister’s name was Howell. He owned slaves in Savannah.

Tiffin’s tone was flat, as though he were narrating the misfortunes of a stranger. Elisha felt a tug of sympathy for the man. Minerva was the woman in the wedding portrait that Elisha had seen in Sault Ste. Marie, when he’d entered Tiffin’s room at the Johnston Hotel. He tried to recall her face: beautiful for a Negress, with high, proud cheekbones and a delicate nose, an expression of grave determination. As though she understood that her marriage would be both a blessing and a severe trial.

A wailing chant rose from the village, and Tiffin cocked his head like a pointer tracking game. “The ceremony,” he said. “It is beginning.” He swallowed a pull of whiskey and hauled himself to his feet.

“What are you intending to do?”

Tiffin started toward the village. Elisha called again, “What are you intending to do?” Then he rushed after the man.

Cookfires glinted like wildflowers among the empty lodges. At the village’s edge a bonfire threw globes of light into the sky. The drumming grew to a loud pulse. A dog bayed, plaintive and wolflike, then a child began to cry. The air smelled of tobacco smoke and burning hair. Tiffin stumbled forward, groping before himself like a blind man. They emerged at the massive elm, and then they were in the midst of the ceremony.

A cold shock gripped Elisha. An open-ended lodge stretched before them, crowded with braves and old men and women and young boys, their faces streaked by shadows as if with war paint. A bonfire as tall as a man burned near the lodge’s end. White Wing sat beside the fire, smoking his red pipe, pea jacket buttoned to his throat. Before him a brave scuffed in the lodge’s center, naked save for a beaded breechclout and leggings. The brave’s face was painted with red stripes, and an otter-skin pouch was slung across his chest. His chant rose to a falsetto then dropped to a low mutter. Dust billowed from the brave’s tracks and glared pink in the firelight. His eyes were pinched shut, as though he were struggling through a terrible dream.

“A Midewiwin ceremony.” Professor Tiffin’s voice was an awed whisper, a drunk man startled to sobriety. “Most likely it is the last night of an induction ceremony, in which the public views the initiates. This brave is an initiate! He is singing an incantation, he is saying—What is he saying?—‘I take life from the clear sky.’ Something…‘The spirit is coming into my body.’ Yes.”

The brave’s voice pitched like a kite in a gale. He stepped with stiff precision, bending double then throwing his head back, running forward in a dash before slowing his pace. Tiffin strained forward, among a row of children. A Native woman cradling an infant glanced back at him.

“We should not be here,” Elisha murmured. “Please, Professor Tiffin, I beg you—”

“‘The spirit has dropped medicine from the clear sky. I have the medicine in my heart.’”

Elisha could not drag his eyes from the brave. The man’s body glowed, sweat shimmering on his neck and chest, strands of black hair scrawled across his face. He was the howling red savage of countless engravings, the image Elisha had feared as a child. A feral-looking dog ran into the circle and snapped at a cloud of smoke. The man did not open his eyes.

“‘I have the medicine in my heart. Listen! I have the medicine in my heart.’”

White Wing stood with a fist held to his lips, tracking the man; then the brave suddenly screamed, his arms thrown wide as though he’d been shot. He collapsed in a sprawl as a cry rose from the crowd. The dog feinted at the fallen brave. After a moment the Native rose, eyes closed, and resumed scuffing around the fire.