A Discovery of Strangers Page 9

  “The world is the way it is because it started that way,” Keskarrah speaks in the ceremony of his standing. “That was when Sky came to Earth and they lay together. Their joy began then, and all day they lay together and when they separated in the evening the ground appeared, because ground is nothing more nor less than their happiness together, born between them with rocks and sand and water running. On the second day their happiness grew, and moss and little trees appeared, and fish in the water. On the third day birds began to fly across the sky and the caribou ran along the tops of the hills, waiting for their antlers to grow so they could stare at each other, and on the fourth they were so happy that everything else burst out, even that miserable mosquito, and man too, leaping around on his two legs to get away from the woman on four legs, which is bear. That was when the great bear caught him anyway and dragged him to her den so she and her cubs could lick and suck all the six star points of him before they had him for a meal, which was the only way left for him to help them. But he ran away from her to begin the great river, and with it the Everlasting Ice. That, however, is another story.”

  Greenstockings’ hands fall motionless on the wet, knotted thongs; she has forgotten the brilliant sky eyes peering at her in the changing firelight because Hood’s sound plays a skipping harmony over her father’s chant, carrying her even farther into the birth of humanity:

  “This story is not about eating each other, no. It is about woman and man lying together, for ever if they could so they will never be separate, but at least all day long every day, like bears who grow into each other for three days or maybe four, forgetting to eat or sleep, their bodies one, and you can touch them wherever you wish and they will lick you tenderly because they want no more than what they already have, and when they lick you they are doing that to each other and themselves. But unfortunately —”

  And at this point in the story Keskarrah’s tone always shifts. It does so now, with such emphasis that Robert Hood looks up at him, uncomprehending but alarmed, the pencil stopping in his hand.

  “Unfortunately, man does not have an endless bone like a bear; though woman could happily hold him inside her for ever, something got mixed up for the man, somewhere, and he can’t. But in that first summer when Sky and Earth lay together, there was no human woman yet, and when man escaped from the great bear he had only a shelter of brush to run to. He was alone, and lonely; he had only berries and roots and leaves to eat and when winter came he grew desperately hungry. He sank deep in the snow as he watched rabbits and caribou and ptarmigan travel so lightly on it that finally he dreamed his feet were much bigger, and he was running over snow everywhere as easily as the animals, as swiftly as wind smoothing it, whispering among birch. So at last he turned to the trees, he peeled the white, thin birch and bent them into large hoops. He stepped inside them, and he knew his feet were in the right place — but he didn’t know what to do with the centre; there was no woman to see the strings of babiche possible in animal leather and so weave the webbing to hold his feet inside the wooden frames he had made.

  “The bent birch lay there, empty, and every day he travelled, hunting. But in deep snow every animal ran easily from him; every day he returned with nothing, and always hungrier. Then one day he heard a noise in his shelter, so he ran as fast as he could and a ptarmigan flew out of the opening at the top before he could get inside. The next day he hunted until dark, and then from a distance he saw smoke rising from his shelter. He rushed there and the beautiful ptarmigan flew out again, but inside he saw a fire burning and his snowshoe frames drying beside it, their sad emptiness half woven over with babiche.

  “ ‘The ptarmigan has done this,’ he said, amazed as the fire warmed him.

  “So next morning before leaving he covered the roof opening and did not go far; he returned early, breathing as quietly as he could, sinking deep in the snow. And there he surprised the ptarmigan starting the fire again in his lonely shelter, the snowshoes lying almost complete with babiche webbing. The bird darted around, tried to fly out but could find no way to escape, and when he caught it between his hands it turned into what he had often dreamed: someone like himself but o so different!

  “Woman, yes, who made everything beautiful happen, fire to cook meat and tanned hides for clothing and lying together hot as bears and children for ever, because she alone could fill the frames he had dreamed and bent. She changed when he held her, but her holding changed him as well: frame and woven centre, when she fastened the snowshoes to his feet he became a bird, flying over the soft, deep snow everywhere in the beautiful world, and she prepared the animals he captured, and they ate together, and lived. Long ago my mother told me this story of beginning,” sings old Keskarrah. “O my mother, long ago my mother,” he sings.

  “ ‘Greensleeves was all my joy,’ ” sings Robert Hood in echo, stippling the fur on Greenstockings’ arm, her white-fringed deerskin he has captured,

  Greensleeves was my delight,

  Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

  And who but my Lady…?

  And his sudden boyish soprano joins another melody in the round lodge where the smoke frays upwards into darkness. It is Birdseye, he realizes. Like a mound of the earth itself keening in ineffable sorrow. Beside her Greywing’s head emerges from under fur, black eyes staring at him.

  And then he notices Greenstockings’ face, and Keskarrah stooped out of his rhetoric — both crumpling as he looks from one to the other. And though he cannot understand a word, their wide eyes speak a gathering horror.

  “The Everlasting Ice holds him,” keens Birdseye, heart broken. “It will never give him up, the Everlasting Ice.”

  DOCTOR JOHN RICHARDSON

  Thursday September 7th 1820 Fort Enterprise

  A heavy snowstorm prevented us from observing the eclipse. Men employed in constructing Fort Enterprise, the name given to our rising buildings. Women splicing and drying meat.

  Saturday September 9th 1820 Coppermine Journey

  Lieutenant Franklin and I started this morning on a pedestrian excursion to the Coppermine River, under the guidance of an old Indian named Keskarrah, and accompanied by John Hepburn and Samandré, who carried our blankets, cooking utensils, hatchets and a small supply of dried meat. By noon we reached a remarkable hill named by the Yellowknives Agnaatheth, or Dogrib Rock. In the course of the afternoon Keskarrah killed a reindeer and loaded himself with its head and skin. The frozen ground and our small quantity of bedclothes induced us to sleep without undressing, but old Keskarrah stripped himself to the skin, and having toasted his body for a short time over the embers of the fire, he crept under his deerskin and rags previously spread out as smoothly as possible, and coiling himself up in a circular form, fell asleep instantly.

  Friday October 6th I820 FortEnterprise

  Today, the officers’ house being completed, we struck the tents and took up our abode in it. It is a log building fifty feet by twenty-four, the walls and roof are plastered with clay, the floors laid with planks rudely squared by the hatchet and the windows closed with parchment of reindeer skin. The clay froze as it was daubed on, and has since cracked in such a manner that the wind rushes in from every quarter. Nevertheless with the aid of warm clothing, and good fires, we expect to get comfortably over the winter.

  Last night a thin film of ice formed across the river. The lake is now firmly frozen over, the reindeer wander out on it.

  5

  SEAMAN JOHN HEPBURN

  I, John Hepburn, ordinary seaman born in 1789 in Newburn, Northumberland, and lately from the Orkney Islands, speak as truthfully as I do recall of events that took place October, 1820, at Fort Enterprise, which we built on the hill above the rapids draining Winter Lake, which lies southwest by south of Obstruction Rapids on the Coppermine River in those lands far west of Hudson Bay, during the land Expedition to the shores of the Polar Sea under the command of Lieutenant John Franklin, Royal Navy.

  I am a blunt seaman, but I trust my language is hereby
properly composed and written for your Lordships’ consideration. In giving this confidential account of the events at Fort Enterprise, it may seem strange that I do not also tell of what took place there a year later (for myself I would never call two such log buildings, and a small storage shed, a fort), or what happened on the horrid trek we had in trying to return to it after our summer exploration, horrid particularly when we succeeded after nine days in crossing the double rapids on the Coppermine. But that is not for me in my station to speak of. The proper officers have made their depositions long ago, and we few others who survived need only pray that God will give those who did not a sound and peaceful rest.

  Though as seaman I served all the officers of the Expedition, I of course never quartered with them. For the first sixteen months, and even during the difficult time when the Orkneymen at Fort Chipewyan, July, 1820, refused to accompany the Expedition farther for reasons they anticipated of danger (which later proved correct), I knew nothing of bad blood between Mr. Back and Mr. Hood.

  Nor suspected it, though I served both. Until October, 1820, I verify that I knew they had since our departure from England on May 23, 1819, worked companionably together. In fact, the last week of August, 1820, Lieutenant Franklin dispatched the two with a single guide and canoe to ascertain the distance and size of the Coppermine River.

  That week of August was when the Indians refused to guide us farther (as it proved, wisely, for in early September winter was fully begun) and we began to build Fort Enterprise in the post-and-beam fashion of Canadian voyageurs, in whose company I slept. I would have preferred to sleep by myself, or with a companionable woman or even a dog at my feet, either one of which warms you wonderfully. But Lieutenant Franklin would allow none of that, which the traders of the country do as a 150-year custom. He performed matins strictly every evening, and divine service every Sabbath wherever we might be. At Winter Lake he attempted to use the occasion of the partial eclipse of the sun (foretold in his calendar) to prove again the superiority of Christian knowledge, and to again impress the Yellowknives with the necessity of minding the Supreme Being, who orders the operations of nature, and therefore of paying strict attention to their moral duties by obedience to His will as revealed to us. By which he meant providing provision for us. But clouds obscuring the possible eclipse all day, the desired effect was not achieved.

  Moreover, the interpreter St. Germain told me that the old man, Keskarrah, who had an extraordinary influence on the band, had expressed grave doubt regarding the event. If Lieutenant Franklin could foresee the passing darkness of the sun, how was it he did not understand the approach of winter? Winter was now so much more powerful than any daily sun, he said, it was obvious the sun would very quickly be forced below the earth into total darkness. I urged St. Germain to relay this conversation to the officers, but I don’t believe he did, and it was not for me to report servant talk. And the sun did lie lower and lower on the horizon until it disappeared altogether and we lived in an endless darkness for over a month (by the chronometer), relieved only by stars and moon and the aurora, or firelight. I think foretelling an eclipse is not as impressive in arctic regions as in the tropics, where day and night alternate most regularly.

  Though I slept in separate quarters with the voyageurs (three of whom had their women with them for household service — and one so large she might have warmed several of us had we been allowed near her, but her husband would have none of that), any dissension between the four officers could not be kept long from me. Nevertheless, Mr. Back and Mr. Hood were so secretive that it was only on our removal from the tents into log quarters that I noticed problems. The first hint was that Lieutenant Franklin, very oddly, ordered me to place Mr. Back’s bedding and kit in his own (the larger) bedroom and Mr. Hood’s with Doctor Richardson in the smaller. That happened between September 30, when sleet drove the mud off the roof of the officers’ quarters, despite its already being frozen hard, and October 7, when the lakes sealed over for the winter, and the repaired roof also. The young officers, who had shared one tent, now had the common mess between them, and a senior officer each to note their nightly perambulations, if any.

  At first I thought it was their drawing. Since sailing from Stromness, June 16, 1819, I had noted their (I thought then friendly) rivalry, Back being more adept at landscapes, while Hood caught the grace and countenance of human figures, even animals, better. In fact, they returned from their Coppermine River journey with a co-operative sketch, where Back drew the landscape around Dogrib Rock for background and Hood an excellent white wolf turning to snarl in the foreground. (The picture is in Sir John’s first book.) But their rivalry had nothing to do with their Expedition duties or possible promotion. It was the usual matter of white men in primitive lands: a woman of the country.

  As Sir John writes in his book, the young woman was certainly the beauty of her tribe, and that not only for a sailor long at sea. Though the Yellowknives often treat their women with great kindness, generally they hold them in the same low estimation as the neighbouring Chipewyans (south) or Dogribs (west), to the point of considering them a kind of property that the stronger may tear from the weaker by threat or fight or killing, though the latter is seldom necessary. The women appear unconcerned by such conflicts, since the winner can usually provide better for them and their young offspring. The loser slinks about until he finds a husband weaker than himself to assault and rob of his wife or, failing that, disembowels a dog and persuades his friends to raid a distant Dogrib camp where he may more easily (Dogribs are much milder people than Yellowknives) steal another woman, hopefully a good worker and possible son-bearer. Such theft and marriage is, I was told, common, for they believe it impossible for a man to live without a wife in their country (and after three winters there I believe them), and the more powerful have two, or three. The Yellowknife Matonabbee, who guided Samuel Hearne to the Coppermine River fifty years before us, is reported to have had nine wives, though perhaps not all at once. The number depends on the hunter’s ability to provide for and defend them, and when necessary several men will also share one wife, if no mature woman is available to be stolen and they agree not to fight over her.

  Sir John noted in his book the endless hospitality we received from the Cree Indians of the Hudson Bay forests. I would say the Yellowknives of the far north were even more considerate and humane, especially in our great distress later where their delicacy and care cannot be overstated. During the winter we lived with them I saw many examples of tender attachment between couples, particularly between the old map-drawer and his wife, whose ulcerated face Doctor Richardson treated at that time. I call them old because their land ages people very rapidly; they were at most forty-five, since their two daughters who lived with them were, so St. Germain told me, twelve and fifteen years old. The younger would, within the year, be married if someone could persuade Keskarrah (who was feared for his powers) to surrender her.

  But it was the older daughter who set Midshipman Back and Hood against each other, and it became the greater problem because of both her shaman father and her husband. For she was already married as the Yellowknives see “marriage”; that is, she had already lived with two men, and the third who had her when we arrived was, excepting only St. Germain, our best hunter, a muscled, handsome specimen of young Indian who could easily have maintained two wives if he had not wanted one so difficult to keep as Keskarrah’s daughter. Not only was she strong and skilled in woman’s work, but she also had an independence of mind amazing in a female. Upon the growing illness of her mother, she simply left Broadface and returned to her father’s lodge, where he continued to visit her when not hunting. She was not yet sixteen years old, but already a full, mature beauty, the belle of her tribe. Our name for her was Greenstockings.

  I asked St. Germain: “A woman can simply walk out of her husband’s lodge?”

  St. Germain shrugged. “Man has strong arms, woman strong head, she can.”

  When I first realized a woman was
in the case, I thought it was the girl, her younger sister. She had that perfect, unused copper skin and enormous black eyes that Indian females display on the verge of womanhood, before the burdens they carry and the endless labour of their lives destroy them into wrinkles and scars. Worn faces are all one usually sees in that cold country, their sagging shapes covered by layers of worn hide, but we all saw the girl as good as naked on an island in Winter Lake when the Yellowknives bellowed their grief over the death of two hunters by destroying all their property, including their clothing. (Such is their custom of mourning, and the harshness of the country provides enough tragedy to keep them more than destitute.) No slender beauty could affect Lieutenant Franklin, who is beyond any possible reproach in his behaviour towards women, his thoughts concerned with nothing but the performance of his Christian duty and service to His Majesty’s Government. The same is true of Doctor Richardson. In four years I never saw him except he had his medical kit or notebook in his hand. If he knew the female species existed, he gave little indication of it, even when he examined them for medical purposes, as he was sometimes required. Some women came to him openly suckling infants, or bared their most privy parts seemingly without shame. If it were not for the cold, I suppose Yellowknives would wear no more clothing than the inhabitants of Fiji.

  You require my account as my duty, which I perform gladly, and will express here in plain honest confidence to your Lordships what I saw that winter, 1820–21. I have spoken to no one of this, not to Lieutenant Franklin, who might have asked it of me but did not, nor to Doctor Richardson, though in October, 1821, we spent those hard days alone together on the barrens and I was finally able to carry him on my back, back into Fort Enterprise. And I didn’t speak of this to St. Germain either, though in that winter he became almost a friend, explaining frankly much about the Yellowknives and their land that would otherwise have remained a mystery to me. He was a mixed-blood, very shrewd and observant, and it is unfortunate he cannot give his account of these matters, which cannot be spoken of without frankness, for which I pray your Lordships’ pardon.