Читать книгу Mine Inheritance - Frederick Niven - Страница 19

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Chief Peguis, when the time drew near for the great flitting, came to inquire anxiously of the Governor: “You go Pembina?”

“We come back,” Miles Macdonell assured him, not understanding the cause of the anxiety in his voice.

“I not mean that,” said Peguis. “I not like this thing. I think maybe good thing if you have some braves go along, some warriors. I think maybe all right, but I think also maybe trouble.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“Maybe other Indian,” explained Peguis. “Not good too many woman and papoose all alone. Maybe other Indian,” and with a gesture that was characteristic of his race he pointed off into the south-west. It was significant. It suggested that he was aware of the vastness of the land, aware of the curve of the world.

The Governor required no further elucidation of Peguis’s anxiety, and neither did I. We knew of what tribes the chief warned us. Captain Macdonell’s brother John had left a letter for him, on his way east that year, with one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men—they who should have had a store of pemican in readiness for us. That letter, which he showed to me, strongly advised adherence to the original plan of settlement, stated that not only did the best lands lie between “the forks or junction of the Red and Assinibouan Rivers and Lake Winnipic, a distance our canoe-men reckon twenty leagues,” but also that it was a stretch of country fairly safe from the incursions of the Sioux Indians. It was from these Sioux, otherwise the Dakota Indians, to the south and south-west, that Peguis thought it possible that the settlers, on their way to Pembina, might have to be protected.

“I would give your warriors something,” said the Governor.

“Oh, maybe some you give régale,” suggested Peguis, “if you want,” he added. “Some like scoutaywaubo.”

That was the word, in the tongue of his tribe, for firewater. The régale was the tot of rum given to boatmen or paddlers after an arduous portage or an arduous day.

The half-breeds at Pembina we had found friendly on our visits. They seemed eager to provide buffalo meat during the winter for the settlers, and their terms were not unreasonable. Of the half-breeds westward on the prairie Captain Macdonell told me he was doubtful, from various remarks made by his cousin Alexander that he suspected were very possibly not merely dissuasive—wet-blankets to settlement ideas—without foundation. He was, in fact, he said, more doubtful of them than of the full-bloods farther west. Of the local tribes—the Crees of the district and the Saulteaux (Chippewa)—he had no doubts. Their friendliness to the King George men was manifest.

So it was that with a convoy of Indians the party for Pembina set out; and it was on that journey events occurred which served as a nucleus for stories to be disseminated in Scotland regarding the terrorisation of the Selkirk settlers by the natives.

The journey was undertaken in rough carts, those two-wheeled carts made by the half-breeds of the neighbourhood without aid of any nail, without iron in any part: the Red River carts. Some of the immigrants were philosophical over this new move, others melancholy. At first the way was westward, beyond the North-West Company’s fort, to a ford of the Assiniboine. Thence it continued fairly direct south to Pembina. In the night camp on the way melancholy was apparently ousted. Beside twinkling fires the pipers strutted.

On the second day the caravan was strung out in a long line across the prairie. Despite the superficial aspect of flatness there, undulations existed. Carts far in advance disappeared, sank from sight, appeared again. The sound of their passage was deafening, a high, shrill squeal as the wooden axles revolved. As the long queue laboured on, the French half-breeds at Pembina must surely have heard us approaching before they had sight of us.

Long before we reached our destination, while we were thus strung out loosely, snaking across the plains, I noticed some Indians—or people that at the time I took for Indians because of hawk-feathers in their hair, paint on their faces—apparently agitating the occupants of one of the carts. I rode inquiringly closer and saw one of those in the painted and feathered group stretch a hand to a woman who sat beside the driver, pluck up the edge of her shawl, examine its pattern.

“You give me,” I heard him say.

The driver, who was her husband, turned his head doubtfully.

“You give me,” said the Indian again.

In the Gaelic, of which, as I say, I knew nothing save “Good-day,” husband and wife exchanged some words and then——

“I suppose,” said he to me, “it might be wise to let him have it, whatever?”

“I do not see it so,” I replied. “The chief offered that his Indians should accompany us for our safety. I shall see Peguis. He is riding somewhere ahead with the Governor.”

At the name Peguis these intimidating fellows wheeled away, laughing as over some private mirth, and then suddenly letting out wavering whoops put their horses to the gallop and went riding across the prairie with a dull drumming tattoo of hoofs. Their conduct puzzled me greatly.

After we arrived at Pembina I saw another woman weeping bitterly and the two Chisholm girls, Mairi and Agnes, among others, trying to comfort her. The Governor at that moment rode close to discover what was amiss. It seemed the woman had, fearfully, given her wedding ring to an Indian who admired and demanded it. Captain Macdonell requested details. Her husband answered him.

“What could we have done? What else could we have done?” he asked. “I did not want to bring trouble on the whole party. All might have been murdered. I am no coward,” he added, because of the way Macdonell looked at him. “No, I am no coward, but I did not want to precipitate trouble. Besides, the cart in which we rode had fallen behind those in front a considerable distance. The one behind us was lagging so as to let others overtake it. These painted savages surrounded us.”

“Could you not have shouted?” asked the Governor.

“The scream of these damned wheels,” replied the man, protestingly, “would prevent any shout for help being heard.”

They were in the midst of that discussion, the woebegone woman leaning against the side of the cart from which she had alighted, drying her eyes, when it was clear the Indian chief as well as the white chief had troubles. There was Peguis surrounded by several of his warriors and braves, all excitedly talking. Governor Macdonell looked at him reproachfully, disappointed in him. Peguis had offered to accompany us lest we were attacked by a prowling band of Sioux and it looked as though he lacked control over his own people.

Miles Macdonell was then afoot. He had given his horse into the care of one of his servants. He walked slowly towards Peguis. The chief, dismounting and leading his horse, walked towards Miles Macdonell. Without rancour—for he had no desire to alienate Peguis as I knew—the Governor told what had happened to the woman who stood there. Expressionless the chief listened. He waited for Captain Macdonell to finish. Then he shook his head.

“No, not my people,” he said. “My people tell me now some white people”—to him half-breeds were evidently white people but next moment he realised they were not so to us and corrected himself—“some half-white people put feathers in head, paint face, make look like Indian, come and try to frighten your people.”

As if to prove the truth of what he spoke there came then from the distance shrill yelping and wavering cries. We all looked round, out to the prairie, in the direction from which they came. There, on one of those low ridges of the superficially seeming flatness, was a line of mounted men. They were aware, no doubt, that at that place they would be seen against the sky. The wavering, yelping cries came shrilly on the wind. Then the riders all galloped out of sight.

“Not my people,” said Peguis again.

“Dakota?” asked the Governor.

“No, no. White people—half-white people. Nor’-West Company half-white people.”

The Governor turned to me.

“As far back as at Stornoway,” said he, “we had evidence of the North-West Company instigating actions against us, and now——” he ended there.

“You do not think, sir, that Mr. Willis would incite the métis against us?” I asked.

“No, not Willis,” said he, “nor Frobisher either, but——” and again he left a sentence unfinished.

I knew he was thinking of his cousin Alexander, strong partisan, as had been clear at that dinner-table in Fort Gibraltar, of the North-West Company. Alexander Macdonell’s trading post was out on the prairies westward beside a considerable body of métis whom, no doubt, he could easily influence.

As for that wedding ring—lest any wish to know—it never came again to its owner. Captain Macdonell spoke to his cousin about it later, tactfully, when Yellowhead visited Pembina—spoke not as though impeaching him of having any faintest responsibility for the affair but to have his opinion as to whether the woman might hope to have her ring again. Alexander expressed aloof sympathy with “the poor thing” and said that when he went out to Qu’Appelle again he would “speak to Cuthbert Grant out there.” Grant, he explained, had “considerable influence” over the bois-brûlés and might be able to recover it. But no, it never came again to its owner; and one may fancifully invent what future history one will for that wedding ring.