This is when the Feast of the Dead truly begins. The captain of each clan gives the signal and his people climb the scaffold at good speed and tie their bundles of souls to the crosspieces. Once all the bags have been hung, the captains, now that afternoon has arrived, announce and give away the presents, each made in the name of the dead, to different living friends and relations. I witness these sauvages approach to receive their gift, some crying, others smiling, and still others with moods upon their faces impossible to read.
Once all the presents have been handed out, the most extraordinary sight occurs when the sauvages line the entire pit with the finest beaver robes so that the robes extend out of the pit a few feet from its edge. Hundreds and hundreds of beaver furs line the ossuary in a stunning display of abundance. In European terms, the robes alone would be worth a king’s small ransom, and this doesn’t take into account all the furs used to bundle the corpses that will soon end up in the pit.
As evening has arrived, designated individuals take the whole bodies that hang below the scaffold to the bottom of the pit and arrange them in an orderly fashion, the din of the people all around growing. In the centre of it all, three kettles have been placed, apparently to feed the dead in the other world. Once all the whole bodies have been thus carefully placed and arranged, the people build many fires to cook their food and pass the rest of the night here.
At dawn the next morning, I awake to the louder murmurings of the Huron as the men of importance return to the top of the scaffold and begin to empty the bags of bones down to others waiting in the pit. As the bones begin to fill the pit, the men below, using poles, continue to carefully mingle them in no order that I can understand. This is when the people begin to sing in such a lugubrious tone that one truly understands what utter despair is, hundreds and even thousands of voices rising up so that one can’t help but weep for the living whose souls certainly head for damnation. It is a sound the likes of which I have never heard before and don’t expect to again, one that filled my whole body with a great vibration of sadness.
There are so many bones that soon the pit is nearly filled, leaving only a few feet of space. And once the last bone has been placed, the beaver robes that still extend out of the pit are folded back over, and then mats and poles and eventually part of the scaffold, apparently to prevent animals from getting to the remains. After that, the excess dirt is mounded on, and women carrying dishes of corn sprinkle it onto the mound, doing so for a number of days following.
The rest of the day is passed in gift giving, and even I was offered ten beaver robes by an important captain. I turned this down, explaining that the only gift I desire is that he and his people begin to believe in Him, the Great Voice, the one who makes all things.
WASH YOU WITH MY TEARS
I hold you in my arms, my love. Since your passing to the land of Aataentsic and Iouskeha so many years ago, this is all I’ve ever wanted again. And I have wanted to cradle our daughters again, too, and now I finally do. We are all together once more.
The time for the Kettle has come, and the time for the village to move has arrived. I would never leave you behind. I sit here and cry and wash your bones with my tears. I hold you again as I hug you close to me. I watch over all of you this night.
The three of you aren’t heavy on my shoulders as I carry you to the place of the Kettle. I stop at some of your favourite spots along the way. The place where the river splashes into the Sweet Water Sea. The cliff overlooking where the waves crash below it. The field that blossoms with berries in late summer. I remember our life together in the village we have now left for good. I didn’t realize how sentimental I’ve grown over these last many seasons. I remember what it felt like to come home from a long journey, to walk into the longhouse and your arms, our girls hugging my legs. I’ve not been able to move on from you even though I know you want me to.
Many gifts are given in your names. Necklaces of polished beads, furs, quill tobacco bags, moccasins, and moose-hair barrettes dyed the colour of strawberries. In your death you still bring smiles to the faces of your friends, and they all tell me how they miss you, how they still dream of you, how they know for certain that you do well in the other world while you wait there for them and for me.
With my own two hands I place your bones into the ossuary and mingle them with the others so you will never be lonely. I sing your song as the tears flow down my face, my song weaving into those of the others until we are all one great voice. You are with me right now, my love. I can feel your hands upon my face and our daughters’ arms wrapped around my waist. We are one again, at least for now, and as we cover you with the warmth of beaver furs, I whisper to you that it won’t be too long now before we are finally together again.
THERE IS NO MIDDLE OUT HERE
It is with the lightest and most joyous of hearts that I write you today, dear Superior, to report on the many successes of my current mission. These people are obstinate and childlike. They live in a sinful world of heathen worship and are certainly under the sway of Satan, which makes my work all that more important.
And so it is the pleasure of your most humble of servants to report that I am on the verge of bringing this entire village of some two or three thousand souls to finally kneel at the feet of Christ and accept Him as the true Son of God.
I put down my pen and tear the page from my journal, rip it up into small pieces. I cannot lie, not to You, Lord. The girl, at least, has accepted You, or so I can only guess, but she is most probably mad, and the insane don’t truly count as converts, do they?
At least this country is beautiful. We’ve completed our first day’s paddle on what I’ve calculated is the summer solstice. A coincidence, or do they truly comprehend some rudimentary aspects of astronomy? I sit on a rocky escarpment sewn with windswept pine, looking out over a great turquoise sea. If I didn’t know better on this day of bright sun and light breeze, I’d have guessed I was on a Mediterranean archipelago, my face warm with the day’s heat. I’ve taken to calling this body of water the Sweet Water Sea just as the sauvages do. My companions have explained that this coast we paddle along is simply a bay on a string of massive lakes that stretch west of here for hundreds of leagues. I’m not sure if I should believe them. They seem prone to lying when they don’t know the answer to something I ask.
Sixty-seven Huron, if my count is correct, currently accompany me back to New France. We left the village in a flotilla of canoes as the sun rose. It both impresses and confounds me that while I am, on the one hand, important enough to warrant such a large party for protection from the Iroquois, I also remain the constant focus of their derision and even outright anger.
Life did take a turn for the better in the spring when Bird sent me to live in another longhouse, whose members seemed intent on teaching me their language. I’m happy to report, dear Lord, that if those around me speak slowly enough, I can now understand much of what they say. And, most exciting, I am beginning to dream in their tongue, which I think is a sure sign of my progress. I’ve come to believe what I was taught before coming over, that to truly understand these people I must first learn their language. This is the only way I will ever be able to begin converting them to the true and righteous path and out of these dark days in which they reside. Satan might feel far away as I sit here on these rocks watching the sun set over the place they also call the glittering waters, though I must only remind myself that darkness is just a few hours away.
Making my way back from evening prayers, I see they’ve set up their shelters and have eaten, I assume, as most of them are already asleep. A handful of men sit by the fire and talk amongst themselves, stopping when I approach. Two of them mimic the sign of the cross and laugh. Another scowls at them and makes an eating gesture. When I nod and sit beside him, he hands me a birchbark plate with a small serving of sagamité mixed with smoked fish. Despite my fear that it’s rancid, I scoop it up with my fingers.
“You like this place?” he asks me slowly so I
can understand him. He’s a very handsome young man, high cheekboned and with a frame like Michelangelo’s David.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I do.”
He hesitates for a moment, not sure, apparently, how to say what he wants to. “You must make the decision,” he begins, “either to paddle or not to paddle.” He looks into the fire and I can sense he’s being as genuine as he knows how. There’s none of the joking in his tone that I’ve become accustomed to with so many of the others.
I nod for him to go on.
“You will be respected only if you make a firm choice,” he says. “You can’t choose in the middle. Paddle or don’t paddle tomorrow. If you don’t paddle”—he looks at me—“then maybe tell those in your canoe a story about your god. If you do paddle, don’t talk, just paddle. Paddle until the rest of us stop paddling.” He studies my face to see if I understand. “There is no middle out here.” He lifts his arms, as if welcoming the world to him.
—
BUT NOTHING IN this world, their world, is idyllic for long. All morning the sky’s gushed rain, and I’ve taken it upon myself to bail out the canoe with my birchbark plate. Shivering in the wind that gusts waves, rocking us and making me feel as sick as I was back on the ship that carried me to this continent, I try to be useful to them. Rather than being morose or angry to mimic the weather, the eight men in my canoe keep their heads down and paddle hard, as if they are in some magical trance, and, just as they do when the sun is shining, they bend to their task with a cadence that’s both madly redundant and hypnotizing. I give up my weak attempt at helping for a short while, exhausted by their energy.
I listen to the rain hiss on water, the grunts of breath, the slosh of paddles dipping into the water in unison, the creaking of this canoe made, like my plate, of bark and resin and sinew, the scent of their bodies sharp, as musky and repellent as their food. I cannot comprehend how they live like this, an existence that to me is like hell. And yet, as the lightning flashes and I look to the canoe beside me full of frightening men, they are lit with such a dangerous beauty that I immediately know Satan must control this land. What am I doing here?
In the canoe ahead, now just a stone’s throw from ours, the young girl rides with Bird. Two other canoes are far enough in front that I can’t see them, acting as lookouts and guides. I know I am the fourth of ten canoes. As the rain turns to a steady and cold drizzle, I’m left here sitting in my soaked wool to contemplate. They have put me in a place where I’m considered precious cargo, squeezed in among the tightly bundled beaver and marten and rabbit furs. The canoes are so weighted with them that the gunwales dip dangerously close to each wave. These Huron have certainly mastered their universe in a way that keeps them alive. I want the rain to stop.
—
TODAY WE REACH what appears to be the mouth of a river pouring into this inland sea. The canoes, one by one, slow like great birds coming in to land. There’s no discussion, or any other visible communication. It’s as if these people act more like animals than humans. They seem to speak as if by some unseen communication.
Once the canoes have all beached, I ask the young man who spoke to me last night, the one named Tall Trees whom I’ve decided to call David, how it is they all know what the other is going to do before he does it. “How did everyone know to stop at this place?” I ask him.
He looks puzzled. “Did you not see the signs?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Pay more attention, then,” he says, lifting a heavy bundle from the canoe that he swings onto his back. He pulls a leather strap attached to the pack over his forehead to help support the weight. He turns and walks into the forest that crowds the banks of this river.
I bend over and attempt to lift a pack from the canoe but can barely get it over the gunwale. I drop it back in and search out a lighter one.
The sauvage beside me pushes me aside and throws the pack onto his back and the leather cord over his forehead. “Damage my canoe,” he says, “and I’ll kill you.” I watch as he, too, slips into the forest.
Not knowing what else to do, I take out my rosary and pray while the men, like a line of worker ants, take pack after pack from the canoes and disappear into the darkness of the trees dripping with rain. Wandering over to Bird’s canoe in hopes the girl might be somewhere close by, I realize that if I stand here much longer, I’ll be left alone. The thought of huddling against the wind and staring out at this grey sea, the fear I still hold of an Iroquois war party emerging from around the bend in their own canoes or, worse, from the trees is a fear I cannot bear, and so I find a hide pack I recognize as Bird’s that’s quite manageable. Cradling it, I walk into the forest.
At first the path isn’t hard to follow, but not very far in, the trees swallow the light until it’s like dusk and I’m seized by panic, pushing through the thick forest without knowing if I should turn back or keep going. Stopping for a moment to look around, I realize that it will be impossible to retrace my steps. Thinking I hear voices just up ahead, I push deeper into the woods. Maybe the sauvages are teasing me, hiding and watching from behind the trees.
Now certain I can hear voices, I move as quickly as I can. Holding my arms and the hide pack up to protect my face from the branches that claw at me, I step out and into air, my feet scrambling to find some purchase. But it’s too late, and I tumble and tumble, rolling down what must be a cliff until, my head spinning and my ribs bruised, I end up on the bank of a creek.
Sitting up, I look around and see the embankment is so steep I won’t be able to climb back into the forest above. It wasn’t their voices I was hearing but this burbling creek.
The rain’s picked up since the beach, coming down hard enough that I have to squint my eyes. My cassock is slick with mud, and when I try to stand, its weight is too much for me. Racked by the stupidity of what I’ve done, I collapse into a heap and hold my head in my hands. I know I’m crying because the water on my face is warmer than the rain. Curling up in a ball, weeping and shivering, I’ve finally reached my breaking point, and the voyage is only a few days old. Weeks more of this will follow, and that’s if I ever manage to find them. What if they don’t notice I’m missing and just paddle away? Or worse, what if they try to find me and can’t? Who could find me here? Even if I scream as loud as I possibly can, in this wind and rain and down in this depression, no one will hear.
My breath comes in hitches as I consider my options. Should I climb the bank and somehow find the trail again? Or do I choose a direction and walk along this creek in the hopes of stumbling upon them? Or do I just simply sit and wait for someone to find me? Please, Lord, tell me what to do. I turn my face up to the sky and feel the rain, and I beg of You, dear Jesus, to please show me a sign.
Lightning cracks so close by that the hair on my body stands up and my skin prickles, making me jump as if I’ve been thumped in the chest, and before I know it I’ve slipped into the frigid creek, banging my knee hard against a submerged rock. The current tugs me downstream, and the mud from my clothing turns the clear water all around me brown. I can feel the weight of it slipping from me like clay. Standing, shivering, I splash handfuls of water over myself, rubbing my cassock. If I’m to die in this cruel land, I will not die like some dirty animal. I begin to scrub, violent in my actions, angry now that I’ve foolishly allowed myself to end up in such a dire place, and in the anger there’s a bit of warmth.
I lift my heavy black robe up my body and struggle to pull it over my head. It makes a sucking sound as I finally wrench it free, so soaked and filth-encrusted that it weighs as much as a child. I swing it over my head with all my might and it smacks the water with a satisfying crack. I do it again, then again, releasing the frustration and miserable depression that these people have placed on my shoulders. I beat my cassock clean, so exhausting myself that my arms are too weak to lift it another time.
Holding on to the cassock, I allow myself to drift down the slow-moving creek, my body now warmer from the exertion as I bu
mp into the occasional rock. I consider where I might be floating to and stare down at my pasty body encased in soaked cotton underclothing. I’m more gaunt than I’ve ever been. The length of my legs, of my torso, surprises me. I’ve not looked at myself for a long time. I’m too much a skeleton and make the decision here and now that, if I survive this day’s stupidity, I’ll force myself to eat more. Is that all right with You, Lord? My work of bringing these lost children to You might become a little less burdensome if I have the physical strength to do it.
It strikes me then as my cassock snags on a submerged bit of fallen tree that this creek must run somewhere, possibly to the big river I’m told we are to paddle up. It must. If I follow this creek I will, God willing, find the river they call the Snake, and hopefully find them as well.
I stand up shivering and wade to shore. There I squeeze what water I can from my cassock and pull it back over my head. Wool isn’t the worst material for this land. The sauvages are fascinated by it and ask all the time what animal it comes from. I try to explain what a sheep is, what domestication and livestock are, and the best I can do is try and explain that where I come from we keep animals the likes of which they couldn’t imagine in great numbers for our use. It is God’s plan. They laugh at this, the idea that one might keep herds of friendly deer or elk that walk happily to their slaughter whenever it’s time for the human to eat meat. Some ask openly if there aren’t consequences of a life so easy to live. The question fascinates me.
At least the rain has slowed to a drizzle. My teeth chatter as I hug myself, the black wool heavy as I begin to wend through the bushes that line the shore. I imagine returning to New France, stepping at last through the threshold of a real house and heading straight for the hearth. I can see the cast-iron pot hanging over the flame, smell the scent of mutton stew. I hope, dear God, that this path is the right one. I am at Your mercy, but only say the word and I will accept that I am to die alone and will do so, with happiness, here in this wild place.