Lily's Story Page 4

  heard.

  From her cot near the board wall that separated the sleeping area from the main room, Lil tried to catch the meaning of the scattered words spoken by the men.

  “Them surveyors was through here again last week, Michael.”

  “I heard,” said Papa’s voice, barely recognizable.

  “Rumours floatin’ about, up an’ down the line. Talk of makin’ this here territory a county, they say.”

  “White fella draws lines in the bush,” said Sounder, making no attempt to disguise his disdain for the irremediable folly of the intruders.

  Lil dozed. Dreamed of water bigger than counties, borderless and infinitely serene.

  “It’s all right, I reckon they’re all asleep by now.”

  “Went to the meetin’ down at Chatham. Things is gettin’ worse, we hear tell. Some new law comin’ in over there about returnin’ the poor devils. All legal-like, too.”

  “Sun-in-bitch Yankees,” Sounder added.

  “Over a hundred come across since August. We’re lookin’ for a new route, Harry. Them raiders is gettin’ smarter by the hour. New houses, too. Reckon things could get real bad by summer.”

  “The committee can count on us.”

  “Damn right. None of us forgets what it was like to be a Highlander under George’s boot. What do you want us to do?”

  “Sun-in-bitch English!”

  Lil was swimming, her hair fanned out like a parasol in the blue wind.

  Once again they rose and were well on their way before sunrise. But this time Lil knew more about what lay ahead. From various overheard conversations at the Partridges she learned that the village of Port Sarnia sat less than two hours walk along River Road to the north; and that one was not to be surprised by periodic farms in lee of the road, though the spread of a dozen at what the locals called Bloomfield was the largest group below the Port itself. Here and there slash-roads were cut eastward through the woods so that one could imagine not merely strips of humanity but blocks or successive waves challenging the hidden heart at the centre of the territory, known only to the natives and the hibernating bears said to rule there unmolested. At the end of River Road the bush would relent and they would come to a huge clearing where the river eased into a wide bay, the site of the new town, and behind it to the south and east the Ojibwa, or Chippewa, Reserve where several thousand Indians lived in scattered equanimity. What they were heading towards, what Sounder couldn’t stop dancing about, was the arrival of the government ship for the annual dispersal of the presents given in exchange for lands of which the aboriginal owners had already been dispossessed. And Lil watched it all come about amidst the wonder of being eight.

  3

  Just moments before Lil and the others emerged from the bush into the misty dawn-light, the steamer Hastings weighed anchor and slipped from its overnight mooring in the bay towards the river bank below the town. Major John Richardson, of literary and military fame, who had joined the official expedition at Windsor on October 9, 1948, has left a vivid account of those gift-giving ceremonies at the Reserves on Walpole Island and at Port Sarnia. The weather was flawless: the sky unscarred by cloud, the sun brilliant as a rubbed coin, the wind at ease in the sea-grasses along the shoreline. As if the whole enterprise had been choreographed beforehand, dozens of parties of Indians, large and small, materialized from the forest of their Reserve at various spots along the two-mile curve that formed a parallel to the natural bend of the bay. Most walked, single file, the women and children behind; some, more resplendent, rode the motley ponies bred on the Island. At some undetectable signal, the Government contingent marched down a single plank to the shore – a sort of colour guard dazzling in blue and red and white, breaking off and standing crisply at attention while a larger platoon of regulars from the Canadian Rifles wheeled southerly just ahead of the navvies freighted with the Queen’s largesse. At the same moment five dignified Indians, obviously chiefs, moved towards the colour guard, stopped dead-still, and waited. Major Richardson, wan and aged beyond his years but impeccably turned out, stepped forward with Captain Rooke. While Her Majesty’s gifts were being carefully laid out in predetermined rows, neatly bound in fleece-white blankets tied at the four corners, White Man and Indian exchanged formal greetings, then sat down nearby at the doorway to a huge skin tent that had magically arisen – the officers awkwardly, the chiefs elegantly – and passed the ceremonial pipe. Major Richardson was seen to talk animatedly in Ojibwa to several of the chiefs whose smiles were all-encompassing. Meanwhile the more-than-one-thousand natives who had now reached the plain began to pick up their presents. The bundles were not marked in any way, but each individual or group knew, from custom and tradition, which kind of bundle was intended, and deserved. There was no rush, no confusion even though the scattered actions of the numerous families and several tribes appeared to be random. Bundles were carried off to the edges of the plain where most families had set up their cooking apparatus and blankets for the events of the day ahead. Fires sprang up, smoke lifted and hung, cards and dice gathered attention, fresh calico was paraded, Cavendish proffered and puffed; babies complained and were content. The Great White Mother had wafted her attention and grace across the world-sea and blessed them with this day.

  Only one element seemed out of place on a morning described by Richardson as having ‘all of the softness of mellowed autumn.’ One of the chiefs, a wrinkled and scarred veteran of the Battle of the Thames who had stood beside Tecumseh as the Yankee bullets ruptured the great man’s heart, did not smile, did not sit, did not sip peace with his brothers, did not take the gifts offered, did not bend his gaze away from the badges and brass before him. He was Shaw-wah-wan-noo, the Shawnee or Southener, the only one of his race known to inhabit these tragic grounds so long after those cataclysmic events. Richardson, at an age when romanticizing is either foolish or profound, says that this man ‘notwithstanding five and thirty years had elapsed since Tecumseh’s fall, during which he had mixed much with the whites, suffered not a word of English to come from his lips. He looked the dignified Indian and the conscious warrior, whom no intercourse with the white man could rob of his native independence of character’.

  Lil was dizzy. She had to sit down near the fire-pit and close her eyes. Never had she seen such an open space, so many variegated objects in that space, and so much colour and motion freed from necessity. The Indians’ regalia took two forms: the outlandish harlequin suits of many of the younger Chippewa – complete with scarlet sashes, blue leggings, black and white ostrich feathers, and an English-made beaver hat; and the traditional deerskins, rabbit furs and eagle feathers of the older males and of most of the Pottawatomies. At first Lil could look only at the natives, since, when she had stepped out of the bush that morning, the plain was dotted with them. Only later did she venture forth behind the slow-paced Acorn towards the bay and the ceremonial party. Here she saw the soldiers she had heard about only vaguely from the tales of the Frenchman who had been in the War. Their scarlet uniforms caught the mid-morning sun, imprisoning it; the bright steel and gilt of the swords flashed and darted at any who dared look their way. Never had she seen men – uniformly attired – prance in step, swing their arms unnaturally high in unison, let their motion be driven by the panicked hammering of drums. She saw too the sleek rifles carried by some of them and the bayonets thin as a wish-bone: these weapons, she knew, were not for hunting.

  About noon-time Lil found enough courage to go down to the River. The paddle-wheel steamer blocked her view. From its iron stack clots of soot shot periodically upwards, smudging the sky. Several men were tossing whole logs into a square stove-like affair; the flame inside blew white and venomous. Suddenly a man in a blotched uniform gave a shout; a metallic thing whined, the wooden sides of the boat shivered, something almost-animal shrieked as if mortally wounded, and, beating frantically at the calm water, lurched northward along the bayshore towards the townsite.

  After a while, Lil opened her eyes. Th
e River was now hers. She could see the other side, but the trees over there were faded and shapeless, so vast was the blue torrent pouring past them. To the south she could trace its surge for miles as it swept through the bush with power and disdain. This was no creek, however magnified in imagination. No shadow touched its translucent face save that of the welcome herring-gull or fish-hawk; it was forever open to the sun and the stars; there was an eternal earth-light in that blue tidal twisting – even in the depths. It was the enemy of darkness. It diminished whatever it touched. It rejoiced in its flowing.

  To the north, beyond this brief inlet, the near-bank bent slightly west, and Lil strained to see through the autumn haze the place where the Freshwater Sea of the Hurons fed its own waters into the River. She felt its mammoth presence behind the mist. I will be back. I will see you. I will. In the direction the boat had gone Lil saw the outlines of what she knew was a genuine town. Like Chatham. Perhaps there were even black people with charred faces and cavernous eyes. From here she could see only the white splotches that were cottages, not cabins. Tendrils of the purest smoke rose from their stone chimneys. Somewhere amongst them was Cameron’s store. For the first time she was aware of her sack-cloth chemise, her improvised leggings, her straggling reddish-blond hair unadorned by flower or feather. She sat down by the fire-pit, in the midst of laughter and joyous commotion, and wept.

  She did not hear Acorn squat beside her. When she had stopped crying, she became aware of his presence, and noticed he had been holding out his hand towards her.

  “For you, little fawn,” he said, averting his eyes.

  It was a gift. A buckskin jacket with intricate configurations of beading that might have been inspired by the Big Dipper or the Pleiades.

  Papa spent a lot of time talking with the officers and other white men from the boat and the town. Many times he laughed, out loud. Sometimes his eyes would cloud over the way they did when he talked about Mama. Twice his gaze had searched Lil out among the comings and goings, looked relieved, and then twinkled. Sounder hopped and skittered, chattered and horse-traded, threw the dice and snoozed beside her in the afternoon grass.

  I’ll give you a half-dollar for it, ancient one.” The officer held the piece up to the sun as if it were a jewel or a talisman. The old Pottawatomie chief followed its flight, tempted. His hands unconsciously rubbed the black walnut warclub they had polished with their affection these many years since the wars ended.

  “This club belong to my father,” he said, more to himself than to the pot-bellied Canadian before him.

  “Two half-dollars, then.”

  The old one looked momentarily puzzled, then hurt. Finally he said, “One half-dollar,” letting the officer reach across and draw the club from its accustomed grip.

  Papa was about to step forward when something in the Indian’s expression made him pause. Papa watched him put the silver coin into his pouch without examining it, and turn towards the river. Lil saw the look on Papa’s face; it was the one he used just before he swung the hatchet at the beaver or muskrat not drowned by the trap.

  “Sun-in-bitch Canadian,” said Sounder behind them. Then, after a decent interval: “They start dancing now.”

  The dancers were not human. Against the squandered tangerine sun they were silhouettes freed from gravity, embodiment, the etching of light. They moved to the will of the drum only. You could see the dancers’ feet strike the ground like the skin of a living tom-tom, like the heartbeat of the hunted, like the music bones make when breaking. The air above the performers shook with their cries. They danced towards enchantment, expiation, communion – but the sun flattened and gave out behind them. The drum ceased.

  Lil’s heart was like a sparrow’s. She skipped across the field, letting it flit and sail at will. She squeezed her eyes shut and dared the earth. She reached their spot, unscathed.

  “We’ve been asked over to the Reserve,” Papa said, ignoring her exhilaration. As they packed up their few belongings, Lil turned for a final look at her River. No doubt she observed the last image recorded by Major Richardson as the Hastings swung round in the bay to head south: the old Pottawatomie seated on the river-bank, unmoving, his single eagle’s feather brittle against the horizon. The Major waves. The figure remains still. The Major, remembering Tecumseh and the mist of blood along the Thames, waves again. It is too dark to see whether the shadow has responded.

  4

  The Indians’ homes were scattered across the fifteen square miles of their allotted territory. The wigwams were grouped in threes and fours as family size or friendship dictated. The area that Lil, Papa, Sounder and Acorn were led to was probably the largest of such communities with six ample bark-and-skin wigwams arranged in a rough circle with some cleared space behind each dwelling for the gardens, still swollen with late pumpkins, squash and marrow. This was the home of the Pottawatomie clan, whose fathers had taken in the dispossessed Attawandaron and then themselves been driven off their lands.

  Small fires were lit in the wigwams and a large one in the circle among them. The night closed in, quick and black. No stars, no moon. Each fire held its adherents captive; food was heated, shared, consumed; brave talk floated over the pipe-smoke, languished and was revived. Lil dozed against a shoulder. She was dreaming. Her fingers detached themselves from her hands, and without her consent began to tap upon her belly, filling it with distant music.

  She opened her eyes, squinting through the smoke-haze. The air quivered. There were tom-toms singing out of the dark spots – not the steady war-dance of the daylight hours but the wild, a-rhythmic, celebratory beat of the all-conquering. This time everyone was dancing, it seemed, whenever the moment called for it. Lil caught the frayed outlines of men, women, children twisted into grotesque forms by the uncertain flames, made insubstantial by the sculpturing smoke, lifted to momentary frenzy by the intoxicant drum.

  Lil rose, drawn into the melee, and felt her feet take off, seeking out the cadence, finding it with astonished ease, letting her body sail over them, swing free, the heart launched like a swallow at dawn.

  Dizzy, coughing, and exhausted from the physical effort of the past two days, Lil groped her way to one of the wigwams. She crept to the rear of it and retched into the ragweed. Chills ran up and down the length of her body, though she could still feel the sweat pouring off her chin. A few feet away she heard a sort of mellow grunt. As her eyes grew used to the dark, she saw, in the weeds, the outlines of what could have been several bodies – unclothed, fastened together, it seemed, like a pair of earthworms after a sudden rain, sweat like a mucous bonding them to some mutual appetite. Lil took little notice. She felt the night-air cooling her. She was glad she had danced. She had never felt anything so wonderful. Not even the sound of her River.

  She crawled back into the firelight. Papa was nowhere to be seen. Nor Acorn. Sounder had gone into one of the wigwams right after their arrival. She was alone, and very tired. She would find a blanket and sleep – anywhere. Out there, the dancing was diminishing as the participants retired, mostly in twos, to a wigwam or to some sheltered place behind the circle out-of-earshot.

  A strange feeling came over Lil. Her eyes came wide open. All fatigue magically drained from her.

  A huge shadow passed between her and the nearest fire. Someone was beside her, still and silent. No words were exchanged. After a while a small group of Pottawatomies came out of the next wigwam. From their laughter Lil guessed they had been drinking some of the whiskey brought in by two or three of the Chippewas from the town. They appeared to be members of a single family – a somewhat pudgy mother and father, some grown sons and a slender girl on the brink of puberty. As they gathered near the central fire, the news spread and several dozen others stopped to watch what was about to happen. Two of the girl’s brothers or cousins stood, one on either side of her, gently lowering her to her knees. The girl showed no sign of fear; her face was, if anything, radiant with sweat and reflected flame, her eyes alert to every movement arou
nd her. The tom-tom had stopped. At a signal from the girl’s father it started up again, subdued and throbbing. Stepping towards the kneeling girl, he placed a garland of some sort on her head. She looked up and out – straight at Lil. Her eyes had devoured last night’s moon.

  The father, responding to the increased tempo of the drum, began a long incantatory song in Pottawatomie. Lil could catch none of the words, but she knew it was a joyous chant, full of affection and hope.

  “She has changed her name, little dancer.” It was the voice of Southener, the Shawnee, seated beside her. “Her name was White Blossom. Tonight she’s no longer White Blossom. She is Seed-of-the-Snow-Apple. It has been proclaimed before all of the tribe. Now she must strive to live up to the name bestowed upon her.”

  Not once did Southener look over at her. He said nothing else, as the ceremony ended and the fires grew smoky and fickle. But Lil knew all she had to do was let her head droop onto a waiting shoulder. And she did.