Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

“ Meegwetch, ” I said in awe, thanking Hausisse in my own crude Algonquian. I looked down at my hands in wonderment, for the pain had almost completely vanished, as though it had never been there.

She spoke again in Algonquian, calling me “stupid” or “foolish,” but in no way unkindly. She smiled and put the poultice back inside her buckskin pack, then shuffled off to join her putative “husband” by the fire.

The Indians regarded me with amusement as I continued to stare at my hands, but then made room for me when I went myself to sit closer to the flames. I found the smell of them comforting-that curious mixture of buckskin, sweat, dried lake water and smoke from the fire. In truth, their very presence was a bulwark against the terrors of the unknown and the unknowable. The darkness surrounding the fire was of an opacity the likes of which I had never known in France, or perhaps it seemed darker because, in France, I knew reasonably well what it might conceal. Here, in this savage Devil’s-land, God only knew what lay beneath night’s cloak, hidden and in wait.

As we lay down and prepared to sleep, I looked about me uneasily, for, unbidden, Dumont’s words had come back to me: There are worse things now walking in the forests at night than the Savages. I said a prayer for our safety and put myself in God’s hands as we slept. This time, I slept soundly and without dreams, surrounded by my Indian protectors.

The next morning, upon waking, I washed in the lake before my morning prayers. The poultice on my hands that had dried and crusted while I slept was rinsed off in the lake water. Miraculously, my hands had almost completely healed while I was asleep. Examining them in the pink light of the early dawn, I saw that the wounds were dry and had already scabbed.

I went to find Hausisse, the old woman who had acted as my surgeon, to show her this miracle, but when I did, she seemed uninterested. Hausisse looked away, muttering words under her breath in Algonquian I could not understand. After taking our morning meal, we packed up our rudimentary camp, loaded the two canoes, and again we set out across the water in the direction of Sault de Gaston.

The first few weeks passed without incident. They evolved into a backbreaking cycle of repetitive days that began at dawn and ended at sunset. The air had grown decidedly colder as the days shortened in anticipation of the coming winter. The hills and mountains surrounding the lakes and rivers were dappled in scarlet and saffron yellow, breathtakingly beautiful in the wildness of their colour. One morning, we woke to a light dusting of snow around the camp, but it melted with the sun, almost before we were underway again. The men shot wild fowl that the women would then prepare as part of our supper, and they fished the dark water with a dexterity at which I marvelled.

Though the work of paddling and camping became no easier, and in fact the land grew more rugged and forbidding the closer we came to our destination, making the portaging of the canoes and packs more difficult, a camaraderie of sorts seemed to have grown between us. I am under no illusion that the Indians saw me as one of them, and indeed they often mocked my seeming inability to master the most rudimentary of their skills, from paddling to portaging, yet we had settled into a peaceable accord.

My proficiency with the bow and arrow, however, surprised them, especially the men. Unbeknownst to them, of course, my father had hunted often on our family’s estate in Beauce, and he had drilled me throughout my boyhood in this one martial skill. Askuwheteau in particular took delight in my ability to shoot. On such occasions as we had time for recreation, which where precious few, he allowed me to practise with his own bow and arrow. While Askuwheteau was my unchallenged superior, I flatter myself that I won a measure of his respect in time.

I spoke my crude Algonquian with the other paddlers. With Askuwheteau, I spoke a mixture of Algonquian and French by which we both seemed to understand one another. We were not friends-the very idea seemed preposterous, especially then-but perhaps my utter dependence on him, coupled with my willingness to share a full portion of the work of our voyage and match the Indians effort for effort, had roused an answering kindness in him that made him more than merely my guide.

I came to find comfort in the sound of their voices, especially at night in the forest around the campfire. The sound had become a sort of lodestar of safety in the midst of the wilderness.

Blessedly there had been no sign of Hiroquois hunters along our route-in itself a miracle, for their appearance would have very likely signalled our doom. I realized that the Algonquians had been paid to protect me, and, as much as I might doubt their commitment to my safety, still I sensed that this group wished me no ill will, and indeed would safeguard me to the best of their ability and deliver me to the site of St. Barthélemy as promised, and wait there to return me to TroisRivières-either tragically alone, or in the company of Father de Céligny.

In the fourth week of our journey, we stopped in an Ojibwa village a week’s paddle or more from Sault de Gaston. It was apparently a village where Askuwheteau was known and respected, for the chief received him. The Chief and some of the Savages took my measure gravely, and with what appeared to be suspicion. Askuwheteau turned his back to me and spoke to them in a low voice. Over his shoulder, the Chief and the men with him continued to regard me with something I took to be either anger or fear, or indeed some mixture of both. Anger I had seen before, during my year in New France, but their fear was something with which I was unfamiliar.

Clearly, at Trois-Rivières the Indians were used to us, and even farther afield than the settlement there, we Fathers were more likely to be met with contempt than fear. And yet there it was in the eyes of the chief and his men: fear, or so it appeared to me.

Finally Askuwheteau turned to me and spoke in French. “Black Robe,” he said. “The Chief wants to speak with me alone. Go through the village, to the water’s edge and wait for me.”

I answered him in Algonquian, asking him what was wrong. I had a notion that the Chief might more kindly consider me if I spoke one of their languages.

Again, Askuwheteau spoke to me in French. “Go, Black Robe,” he said gruffly. “Go wait by the water. Do not answer me in Algonquian. Do not speak my name. Do not answer me at all. Go, now.”

Without a word, I turned and walked towards the village, which was not itself dissimilar to others I had seen: huts of birch-pole and tents, the whole place a seething, untidy coil of Savages, their filthy children, and their verminous dogs, all intermingling hither and thither in the mud, or squatting on their haunches, men and women both, in apparently earnest debate or parley. The acrid smoke from the wood cooking fires and the odour of the Savages themselves, combined with the noise of their squalling children and barking dogs, became almost overpowering. I was more eager than not to obey Askuwheteau, and so I went to the edge of the lake and waited for him there.

After a time, Askuwheteau came to where I was sitting. I had not heard him approach until he was standing behind me. I turned and looked up. The sun was behind him, so his face was hidden from my sight.

“Black Robe,” he said. “We may stay here tonight, but only tonight. And we are told we must stand guard over you until the dawn. Also, you may not sleep in the village. You must sleep here, near the water, away from the people.

“Why?” I queried, rousing myself to a standing position. “For what reasons?”

“They fear you,” Askuwheteau replied. He stared at me with no expression. It was as though the fact of the Indians fearing me was so entirely reasonable that it required no elucidation.