Читать книгу The Champlain Road - Franklin Davey McDowell - Страница 7

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The ancient pine stood in lordly solitude on the crest of the Lookout, its broom of needles outspread to the suns and storms that for a century had beaten down upon Lake Isiaragui and Matchedash Bay. Skarontat the Hurons had named this lone tree and its roots drove deep into earth that was the heart of Huronia.

On the morning of July 4th, 1648, a black-robed priest stood by its great base and stared across the rolling panorama of forest and waterways, meadow and rockland. In the outline of his powerful frame there was that quality of unbending strength to be found in the mighty pine. Straight as the mainmast of a galleon, Skarontat stood as a landmark throughout the Huron empire.

Very Reverend Paul Ragueneau touched affectionately the rough girth of the venerable tree. To him Skarontat was something more than a landmark. Its resolute struggle for survival, its solid growth symbolized that solidity of the Kingdom of the Cross which was taking form under his direction in the depths of a savage continent. The Father Superior of the Mission to the Hurons, he was not building a New World domain for a day or a year. His vision of its future permanence was to be found in the stone walls and bastions, the palisades and outwork of Fort Ste. Marie. It was at once the administrative quarters of the Society of Jesus mission centres and a strategic outpost of the struggling settlements of New France, on the far-off shores of the St. Lawrence River.

Father Ragueneau looked with shining eyes at the cluster of white crosses set above the square, log superstructures of the five bastions and towered postern, the residence within the fort, and the wooden Church of St. Joseph, in the outwork. They stood in the drench of sunshine, four-square to a cloudless sky, on the flatlands at the edge of the long slope to the Lookout, 300 feet beneath him. He turned sharply at the rasping scream of an eagle and gazed northward where the inlets of Matchedash Bay lay as sparkling, emerald fingers reaching into the enchanting profusion of islands and wooded points, to melt in breath-taking beauty into that misty background ten leagues distant.

The Father Superior eyed the glorious, golden trail made by the morning sun down the wide channel to a river, which flowed lazily past the flatlands from lake to bay. Here was the end of the Champlain Road, that long, winding highway of lake, river and portage between Quebec, rock-girt capital of New France, and Fort Ste. Marie, unofficial capital of Huronia. Father Ragueneau sighed and tapped at an outcropping of rock. He thought of that summer, back in 1615, when Samuel de Champlain, founder and governor of New France, had journeyed 700 miles, through uncharted forest and over foaming waterways, from Quebec to Huronia, and in an evil hour linked the fortunes of the struggling French settlements with the Hurons. Champlain had never returned to Huronia, but memory of his adventurous exploration was kept alive by the Champlain Road and the implacable Iroquois hatred of all things French and Huron. For Champlain’s raid to chastise the Five Nation Confederacy in their country, south of the wide waters of Ontare, had been repulsed with loss and the great explorer was forced to retreat with his defeated Huron allies to nurse their wounds in the safety of the northern woods. Now, a generation later, the victorious Iroquois had closed the Champlain Road. Fort Ste. Marie, its missionaries, laymen and detachment of Musketeers were beleaguered as effectively as though a host of those Five Nations warriors howled about the walls.

The Father Superior loved every foot of this land of the Hurons, each bark chapel of its dozen missionary centres, every palisade of its score of Indian villages. Here he had lived for more than a decade as a simple missionary and as beloved head of the mission, and here he hoped to end his days in the service of the Cross. Huronia was ideally moulded by Nature to be shaped into a Christianized protectorate of New France. Ouendake, the Hurons called their empire, or the One Land Apart, a deft turn of speech to describe a vast neck of land, shut off at the shoulder by that natural barrier, the Blue Hills. It was thought of this southern frontier which had brought lines of worry to Father Ragueneau’s fine, strong face and high forehead, fringed by curls of grey hair that crept from under the edge of his black skullcap. Along this frontier Iroquois bands prowled with short-axe and firebrand, and no way had been devised to protect the Hurons against their surprise attacks.

The Father Superior rubbed a ruddy, clean-shaven cheek and fingered short-clipped, grey moustache, which bristled over full lips, humorously curved above a clean, square chin. He pivoted quickly, at the sound of scuffling feet and smiled, with a touch of apprehension, at a young, sun-browned officer, in the blue, undress uniform of the Musketeers, climbing the height of land. “Ah, Godfrey! it is so seldom you visit the Lookout these days. Any hint of trouble?”

“Only in my fears, mon père.” Captain Godfrey Plantagenet Bethune removed plumed, beaver hat by its wide brim and wiped a perspiring face with a wet hand. “It’s the south that worries me and we know the Iroquois are out in force.”

Father Ragueneau looked across the wide acreage of the fort, sown to corn and meadow hay, and pastures wherein browsed fat cattle and sheep. “A land so fruitful and so promising, and our only road to Quebec closed.” He stopped, then gestured toward the bay. His voice was deep. “Only four weeks ago I sent Father Bressani and his flotilla of 15 score warriors out there to try and force the Iroquois blockade. Father Bressani! His mutilated hands and scarred body bear testimony to Iroquois ferocity. I wonder, if this time, I have sent each man to his death—even worse, the stake and slow fire? What is your mind, Godfrey?”

Godfrey thought of Annaotaka, war chief leading the fifteen score Huron fighting men. Unrepentant pagan, face drawn into ferocious twist by tattoo needle, with six eagle feathers rising from a ridge of bristling hair, following the centre of his plucked head, from brow to nape of neck, Annaotaka looked as he was, a warrior who gloried in war. “Annaotaka fears neither Iroquois nor Hinonaia.”

“Hinonaia! The Little Thunder of the Hurons. The Iroquois claim she is the daughter of their war-god, Areskoui. Truly she is a spawn of the evil one come to earth!” Father Ragueneau sat heavily on a bench at the base of the big pine, and studied the eight-furlong flow of the river beneath him.

“We must be on watch,” Godfrey cautioned. “The Iroquois have attacked on the east and south. On the east, they destroyed Contarea, near Couchiching Lake. We beat them off on the south; but what happened? The big village of Cahiagué, by the Fish Spearing Lake, moved away. Too exposed to attack. Teanaostaiaë is the new frontier. And they have come again—in strength. If we only had more intelligent chiefs like Annaotaka and Thodatouan, even women such as Arakoua, to watch the trails!”

“Arakoua!” The Father Superior’s face clouded at the name. He dismissed thoughts of her for more pressing problems. “The flotilla must get through to Quebec—and return. Supplies are urgently required. Axe-heads, long knives and iron barbs for arrows. The Hurons must be armed—and we require powder and lead for our own men. The hour of crisis has come. Should we not emerge victorious ...” The sentence was left unfinished. His capable fingers crushed the worn black serge robe beneath their thick tips, eyes fixed upon dormer windows of the big, log-squared residence over the walls of Fort Ste. Marie. This was his House of Ste. Marie, the “Abode of Peace” to the missionaries, and to which they returned thrice a year to renew their strength in meditation, rest and prayer.

Father Ragueneau leaped to his feet. “No! It cannot be written that all this should pass!” The cry was wrung from the sores of his heart. “We will remain and triumph. This fortress is the stronghold of Christ in a pagan land, a bulwark of New France, whose Christian people must have time to strengthen their defences against the Iroquois.”

Instinctively his eyes focused on the threatened frontier. It lay concealed behind a dark bank of clouds that had gathered ominously from the south. As he looked a spiral of white smoke seemed to float upward and vanish. The Father Superior’s voice arose in sharp alarm. “Did you see smoke in the south?”

Godfrey turned quickly. “I can see nothing, mon père. It may have been one of those heavy, white clouds that sometimes steam from the damp hills. I have seen them as thick as white smoke.”

“You may be right,” Father Ragueneau said slowly. “I have seen such myself. Yet, I cannot forget Father Brébeuf’s vision, when he saw that vast, dark cross float over Huronia from the Iroquois country. ‘Big enough to crucify all of us,’ he said at the time.”

“That was eight years ago, mon père.”

“And the situation has grown steadily worse. I trust that my fears are without cause.” The Father Superior answered heavily and sat anxiously watching the south.

Godfrey scowled. Father Ragueneau’s words worried him more than he cared to admit. No one knew better than he the peril to New France once Huronia was obliterated. The Iroquois would mass their strength against the French settlements of Quebec, Three Rivers and Ville Marie de Montreal. The island outpost of Montreal, less than six years old, was an especially feeble effort of colonization and with it overwhelmed, the other two might well be ruined in a welter of blood and fire. He stared at the stump lots across the river, where Master Builder Charles Boivin and his workmen had felled elm saplings to strengthen the palisades of the fort, and then looked beyond the shadowy tangle of forest stretching to Nottawasaga Bay.

On its shores, three leagues away, was Ossossanë. That village was the home of Thodatouan, war chief of the Bear Clan, a spirited leader, second only to Annaotaka, war chief of the Cord. With Annaotaka leading 250 warriors somewhere on the lower reaches of the Ottawa River to open the Champlain Road, Thodatouan was the hope of Huron defence against Iroquois invasion. But his active assistance to the threatened southern frontier was problematical. So ineffectual was the Huron communal system of government that it was impossible to delegate supreme authority to any leader even in a time of gravest peril. Godfrey swore softly at the fatuousness of the Hurons.

He pictured Huronia as he had seen it ... villages with unguarded palisades ... long bark houses, roofs rounded to meet at a central opening ... clan arms rudely painted above the vestibule entrance ... the sign of the Bear, Cord, Rock or People Beyond the Morass ... groups of maidens laughing and lounging in filthy alleys ... old women squatted in the dirt grinding corn ... naked brats crawling in dust and refuse ... that was Teanaostaiaë, Keeper of the River, largest village in Huronia ... and the haughty figure of Arakoua, daughter of Annaotaka ... Arakoua named after the sunbeam, who on ceremonious occasions wore wealth beyond dreams of avarice in white wampum ....

He thought of his last meeting with her and smiled cynically. She had stood before him, an uninhibited child of the forest, perfect of form, rounded of flesh and stormy of emotions. In her sight he was not Godfrey Bethune, Captain of the King’s Musketeers, but Teanaosti, Guardian of the Beautiful River, a warrior to whose judgment great chiefs paid deference; and her eyes were appraising, possessive. He knew the danger that lurked behind their devouring light. A white man was an irresistible lure to Indian women and generous latitude was given them in their amours. He had only to think of the admirers—mates for a convenient season—who had adorned Arakoua with her wealth of white wampum to comprehend the easy morals of the Huron maidens.

Arakoua was no wanton to be treated lightly. She was a product of the national lack of discipline, no better nor worse than her pagan clanspeople. Godfrey thoroughly understood the Huron character, its strength and its weakness, and she was a perfect example of the national characteristics at their best and their worst. Arakoua would war to the death against the Hodenosaunee, or the People of the Long House, as the Iroquois were known, and she would battle as fiercely against her own people, did she fancy an affront given. Arakoua, he decided, must be suppressed without mercy should the necessity arise.

She was one of the two women to be considered in this hour of crisis. The second was that mysterious figure whose shadow fell over Huronia as a black blight. The Hurons associated her with the reverberating war cry of the Iroquois and spoke in bated breath of Hinonaia, or the Little Thunder. Godfrey knew not whether she was of flesh and blood, or a figment of terrified imagination. No Huron had seen Hinonaia and lived to tell of what he saw. Tales of her supernatural origin and power filtered through the length and breadth of the land and Huron sorcerers declaimed that she was a sister of Etienne Brulé, Champlain’s interpreter, murdered by the Bear Clan, in 1634. To avenge his death, they averred, she took spirit form and flew over the country scattering seeds of pestilence and epidemic. Now, she had openly allied herself with the traditional enemy, as a golden-skinned maiden, whose eyes and hair burned with the fire of the sun; and nothing would placate her vengeful spirit but extinction of the entire race.

Godfrey swore under his breath at the credulity of the Hurons. He could find nothing definite which they knew of Hinonaia, except that heard from the Algonquins. From these futile chatterings weird patterns of disaster had been woven. To his mind all Algonquins, no matter what nation stemmed from their stock,—Ottawas, Nipissing, Ojibways, or any other of the numerous strain—one and all they were accomplished liars, almost as notorious as the Hurons, themselves. Both the Ottawas and the Nipissings had been driven from their hunting grounds into the maze of Muskoka waterways the year before, when the Champlain Road was closed. They had spread the Hinonaian myth, he was satisfied, to explain the ease of their overthrow.

He started at a faint shout from a sentry on the river-front palisade. The Father Superior pointed to the far corner of the stump lot, as a messenger, four feathers upright in the brush of his hair, strode from the Ossossanë trail in a long, tireless swing that ate up the leagues quickly. “A messenger from Thodatouan, a pagan but trustworthy.” Father Ragueneau frowned. “Come, we must meet him at the landing basin. I would that the chief had come himself.”