The Expeditions (24 page)

They traveled only fifteen leagues in four days, Reverend Stone paddling for short stretches then reclining on the canoe’s bottom to rest. White sand hillocks and pine forests and sandstone cliffs slid past in the deadening heat. On the fifth day he stirred from a drowse to see tiny wooden houses set on a grassy rise. The minister wondered if he was hallucinating. The houses resembled half-breed shanties sized in miniature, as though for dogs. He asked Morel the dwellings’ purpose. “Cemetery for Chippewas,” the voyageur said, “to keep away animals.” Reverend Stone felt a prickle of shame at his initial speculation. He murmured a blessing as they passed.

Ignace Morel spoke little as he paddled, instead singing simple chansons to mark his pace. He was like a wondrous machine, the minister marveled, muscle and bone in place of crank and pinion. An engine designed expressly for pushing wood through water. In the evenings Morel landed the canoe then pitched the tents, kindled the cookfire, set on a stew. Supper finished, he scrubbed the cookpot, then took up his fiddle and played a string of hornpipes and reels, each night ending with “La Belle Susette.” Only after he’d stowed the instrument would the voyageur engage in grudging conversation.

He’d been born in Montréal, Reverend Stone learned, and came to Sault Ste. Marie as a young engagé of the North West Company, paddling through Canada during spring and summer and resting at the Sault during fall and winter. In those days their canoes were overloaded with peltry. Any fool could kill a beaver by skipping a stone across a forest pond. When the North West Company failed he joined the American Fur Company, and when the American Fur Company failed he joined the Hudson’s Bay Company. But slowly their canoes became lighter and fewer, the beavers became young and scarce. Now the furred animals were mostly killed. Voyageurs argued over petty, worthless jobs. Some days Morel worked as an interpreter for Edwin Colcroft, other days he ferried American tourists down the straits. Other days he did nothing at all.

Morel related his tale without bitterness or distress. Reverend Stone recognized the man’s character: unambitious but not lazy, unschooled but not slow-witted. Pious but unconcerned with doctrine or Scripture. Searching for comfort and pleasure in every aspect of life. In truth, the minister reflected, it was a difficult philosophy to refute. Hellfire and damnation were a preacher’s best strategies.

One evening after Morel had finished fiddling Reverend Stone said, “Your wife, Susette. Did you meet her in Sault Ste. Marie?”

They were encamped on a strip of stony sand at the edge of a dense spruce forest. The voyageur was silent as he returned the instrument to its case. At last he said, “Yes, at the Sault. Five years ago.”

“She must be a fine woman to have inspired such a lovely song. May I ask if you’ve been blessed with children?”

Ignace Morel grunted. Reverend Stone could not decide if it was meant as a yea or nay.

“‘Children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.’ Yes? I have often admired the wisdom of that passage. I recall my son Elisha, as a very small child, reaching for me and calling,
‘Abba.’
Abba! What a beautiful word! It translates as father, of course, but its true meaning is richer, and more affectionate. Part of parent-hood’s reward is how profoundly we begin to know ourselves through our—”

“No. We have no children. Do you know why?” Morel leaned toward Reverend Stone. “We have no children because she does not give herself to me. My wife. She tells me I smell like vison, like mink. She pushes me away. You understand? And I do not strike her, I tell her what she is—la sainte Susette. Susette the saint. That is what she is! She pushes me away, like a proud chienne. I tell her to go to her mother. She never goes! So. We have no children.”

Reverend Stone was silent.

“I know Scripture. ‘The head of a woman is her husband’—that is Scripture. It is she who does not know Scripture.”

“You suggest a narrow interpretation of the verse. Elsewhere husband and wife are described as a single flesh. Man is called to love his wife as his own body.”

Morel scoffed as he reclined on his bedroll. “You are right. She is a fine woman—that is why I write the song. But she is not without fault.”

“No woman is without fault. Nor is any man.”

The voyageur turned away. Reverend Stone waited, his body taut, as the voyageur thrashed and twisted on his bedroll. Finally an airy snore rose from the darkness. With a sigh the minister drew his Bible from his jacket pocket. He thought to search for the passage Morel had quoted, but instead let the book lay closed on his lap. Perhaps I have misjudged the man, he thought. He wondered what this latest error might cost him.

Mosquitoes, sand flies, thunderheads, heat: July on the lake. Yellow warblers and blackbirds twittered in the violet dawn. Fog hung over the beach, then vanished as the sun splintered across the horizon. They paddled through the morning then rested during the noontime heat; to Reverend Stone’s surprise he felt strong enough to paddle into the afternoon. Evenings, he reclined on a bedroll while Morel performed his meticulous routine: supper, washing, fiddle, “La Belle Susette.” The minister said little, swallowed a pair of tablets then opened his Bible at random, like a diviner. The remaining tin of tablets was but half full. Reverend Stone acknowledged the fact but refused to consider its implications.

One day after lunch he unfolded Charles Noble’s map and traced his finger along Lake Superior’s south shore: the coastline ran from Sault Ste. Marie westward to a squarish bay, then undulated toward a horn-shaped peninsula. Reverend Stone presented the map to Ignace Morel. “Will you please tell me where we are?”

The voyageur glanced at the map, jabbed at a point just beyond the bay.

“Then! We are making a tolerable pace.”

“We should be here.” Morel indicated a region nearer to the peninsula. It was where Noble predicted the expedition would turn inland.

“Well, there is nothing to do but persevere. I am feeling stronger of late—I am better able to contribute to the paddling. You might have noticed.”

Morel grunted but said nothing.

They set out that afternoon in a warm drizzle, their paddles’ clap and drip muffled by the hush of rain on the lake. Near four the rain paused and they came into a region of strangely colored cliffs. Reverend Stone stopped paddling. The cliffs were knobbed sandstone faces streaked with orange and green and yellow, the colors as garish and blurred as a child’s first watercolor. He said, “Spectacular! How do you suppose the colors were formed?”

The voyageur did not respond. Reverend Stone twisted around to find Morel staring past him, his lips moving over a silent chanson. The minister resumed paddling.

Toward dusk they came to a strip of sand nestled among the cliffs. There were Natives encamped at the beach’s far end. Three canoes lay overturned near the forest edge, beside a pair of cookfires surrounded by figures. Chippewas heading to the Sault, Reverend Stone thought, most likely to beg for annuity payments. The canoe yawed slightly. He dug hard to correct the tack; then he realized Morel was steering them shoreward.

“What are you intending? Trade?”

The canoe surged forward on a swell’s crest. Now a group of Natives stood watching at the water’s edge: three tall, barefoot men dressed in deerskin and ragged broadcloth. The voyageur called out in Chippewa.

“Do you know these Natives? Answer me!”

Morel swung over the gunwale as the canoe slid into the shallows. He splashed alongside the bow, seized Reverend Stone beneath his shoulders and hoisted him into the freezing water. A cold shock gripped the minister. He stumbled onto the beach as Morel dragged the canoe ashore. The Natives hurried forward, took up packs of stores as the voyageur hoisted the canoe. From up the beach a child squalled.

Four young braves had approached from the Native encampment; now they stood prodding the bundled stores, their flintlock muskets laid in the sand. The smallest brave was staring at Reverend Stone. Morel greeted the Natives, then addressed a light-skinned Chippewa with fine, Roman features. The minister edged beside the voyageur and adopted an amiable expression. An odor of broiling whitefish wafted over them.

“Please tell me what you are saying,” Reverend Stone said quietly.

The handsome Native addressed Morel, then called over his shoulder. The young braves paused, listening. The smallest brave responded with a single word.

“You must tell me what is happening. Please!”

Ignace Morel addressed the young braves, motioning to Reverend Stone. The smallest brave nodded solemnly. He was short but muscular, his chest and arms as thick as a pugilist’s, his hair drawn back by a fillet of yellow beads. He was listening intently to Morel. He motioned toward the minister and spoke; Morel responded and the boy smothered a bashful grin.

“These two, good fellows both of them.” Morel motioned toward the smallest brave and a second, taller boy. “They will help us paddle—we make a good pace. You pay them.”

“What is this? To what business are you are engaging these Natives?”

“We paddle too slow. Your son will soon be gone. So will my wife, you understand? You pay these fellows one dollar each for five days’ paddle. Very little money.”

“I cannot pay even a dime! I have no money.”

It was the truth: he had spent his last dollar at the mercantile in Sault Ste. Marie. His pockets contained a Bible, the Catlin book, a week-old
City Examiner,
and a tin of toothache medication.

“Of course you will pay. One dollar each for five days’ paddle. If you don’t pay, we take ten days. Twelve. Your son will be gone.”

Reverend Stone studied the second brave: no older than fifteen, with knobby wrists and a calm, hungry stare that reminded the minister of a boy from Newell, Byron Wills. He was a shy, pious child who had one morning walked into his father’s stable and shot six horses dead with a Colt revolver.

“Are they trustworthy fellows? Will we be safe?”

“Safer than with me.” Morel clapped his hands twice. “You pay and we go, tomorrow.”

“Eighty cents. I’m afraid I can afford no more.”

Ignace Morel laughed. He spoke a long, rapid phrase in Chippewa and the Natives grinned. The handsome Native nodded and the group started back up the beach.

“Come, we eat now. Tomorrow we go.”

“And the pay?”

Morel smiled. “One dollar.”

That night they took supper at the Chippewa camp, Reverend Stone sitting cross-legged between Morel and the handsome Native, a mug of stewed whitefish before him. Children dashed, squealing, through the ring of seated braves. The food was delicious but the minister had little appetite. Through Morel’s interpretation the handsome Native asked Reverend Stone about his home, but when the minister moved to speak his lungs convulsed in a wet cough. He wiped a bloody palm on his trousers. He looked up to find the handsome Native regarding him with a contemptuous expression. Reverend Stone smiled at the squaw tending the cookpot, then moved into the darkness.

He spread a bedroll beside the canoe and lay carefully on his side, concentrating on breathing. He refused to cough. Chippewa phrases floated over him, their rhythm soon merging with the rasp of his exhalations, the surf’s surge and pause. Reverend Stone sensed for a moment the utter vastness of the lake, its weight and pull, its gravity. The breakers crumbling against sandstone cliffs. The black swells pushing out to infinity. He felt sick and alone, as insignificant as a shadow. He said a prayer for strength and closed his eyes.

Five

He had found that sleep was the only remedy for his illness, so Reverend Stone willed himself into a constant drowse, perched on the canoe’s slender thwart, his head nodding forward until it touched the Native paddler before him. He woke to an unchanged shoreline: maples and bluffs and outcrops and beaches, nature stuttering on a word. The canoe skimmed over the glassy lake. When he turned to the horizon Reverend Stone felt distracted by wonder, a familiar tickle of amazement. The sensation never failed to drag him toward sleep.

Nights he sat awake, exhausted but alert. Ignace Morel lay beside the canoe, his pugilist’s face softened by sleep. The Native paddlers sprawled on pine boughs in the darkness. Reverend Stone hunched beside the cookfire, his Bible or the Catlin book tipped toward the low flames. Both volumes had been drenched near the Sault, and now the covers were splayed over thick, wrinkled pages.

On their third night from the Chippewa camp Reverend Stone sat searching through Catlin for a passage describing the Native conception of heaven. Again he was plagued by chills, his arms puckered with gooseflesh. The night was moonlit, silent. He found himself engrossed by a discussion of Native morality. Catlin’s writing had taken on a hysterical tone, as vehement as any abolitionist.

I fearlessly assert to the world, (and I
defy
contradiction,) that the North American Indian is, in his native state, a highly moral and religious being, endowed with an
intuitive knowledge
of some great Author of his being and of the Universe. He constantly lives in apprehension of a future state, where he expects to be
rewarded
or
punished
according to the merits he has gained or forfeited in this world. Morality and virtue, I venture to say, the civilized world
need not
undertake to teach them.

A pity, Reverend Stone thought, that such outrage was required—for surely there were as many virtuous Natives as there were dissolute whites. He flipped to the frontispiece and studied Catlin’s portrait: thin, sloping nose, pinched chin, eyes drawn down in modesty or fatigue. A noble, melancholy countenance. The minister wondered if Catlin had taken a Native bride, then immediately was convinced that he had. The fact seemed written overtop the man’s angry words.

Reverend Stone glanced up to find the small brave watching him. He smiled at the brave; then the boy rose and paced around the cookfire, sat against a humped boulder beside Reverend Stone. He was short but thick-chested, his skin tanned nearly black. He whispered a slurred string of syllables. After a moment the minister realized his words were English.

“English? Do you speak English?”

“Small Throat,” the brave said solemnly.

Reverend Stone frowned, waiting; then he understood the phrase to be the boy’s name.

“William Stone. That is my name.”

The brave nodded.

“Perhaps you were taught English by a gentleman named John Sunday? Do you know the fellow—John Sunday?”

The brave’s gaze fell, his lips moving silently over the words.

Reverend Stone waved a hand as if clearing away smoke. He pointed at himself. “Father, William Stone. Son, Elisha Stone.”

“Father. Big Throat. Son. Small Throat.”

“Yes!” Reverend Stone grinned, struck by the name’s literal-minded poetry. He supposed his own Chippewa name would be Coughing Stone. “My son—have you seen my son? Elisha Stone?”

The brave glanced uncertainly toward Morel’s sleeping form.

“No, no.” Reverend Stone gestured toward the surrounding forest.
“Son.”

Small Throat whispered a phrase in Chippewa and glanced hopefully at the minister; then the boy’s expression faltered. The cookfire crackled, sparks swirling like gnats into the black sky. Reverend Stone shivered, a fever chill.

“Elisha Stone,” he pleaded. “Have you heard the name?”

As if in response Small Throat took up the Catlin book. Reverend Stone recalled reading that books and newspapers were considered medicine by some Natives, the pages viewed as magical talking leaves. Small Throat opened the book to its middle: an illustration of an Osage named Ee-tow-o-kaum dressed in a pink beaded jacket and headdress, Psalter in one hand and cane in the other. On the facing page was a Native named Waun-naw-con. His hair was clipped short, like a white man’s; he wore a black frock coat and white shirt, a black cravat knotted beneath a high, stiff collar. The portrait was unfinished, the Native’s face and shoulders watercolored but his torso a hollow sketch. Small Throat pointed at the image. “Son?”

Reverend Stone felt overwhelmed by fatigue. He seized the book and tossed it aside, then immediately regretted his brusqueness. He touched the boy’s wrist. “I am sorry,” he said, “you must excuse me. I am very tired.”

But instead of retiring to his bedroll he rose and trudged toward the lakeshore. Small Throat’s hopeful gaze followed him. As the minister passed the camp’s perimeter he was consumed by darkness: a familiar bodiless confusion, the world gone black then mellowing to coal-gray shadows. Beach sand skittered around his feet.

A grudging calm moved through Reverend Stone as he paced along the water’s edge. He had always thought himself happiest in an empty meetinghouse, alone with sunlight and silence and his own tranquil thoughts—yet here he was among strangers, sickly but exhilarated, surprised by life. How amazing, to learn such a thing about oneself, at such an age. Like meeting a foreigner on the street and finding him your brother. With a nudge, Reverend Stone realized, I might have been a missionary among these people, a Catlin portrait with Psalter and cane, dressed in buckskin and beads and cravat. The thought was unsettling, both attractive and deeply strange.

He sat at the lake edge and trailed a hand through the cold water, wiped his face and neck. Lake Superior was flat calm, a runny pane of glass. A low howl rose from the forest. He turned toward camp to see Small Throat bent over the Catlin book, his face lit by firelight. The boy slowly turned a page.

Better, perhaps, to have remained ignorant of all this, Reverend Stone thought. I do not understand this life.

They passed quickly along a stretch of marshy cedar flats, the weather hot and clear, the sky dotted with hawks circling for prey. Mosquitoes swarmed their campsites. Ignace Morel burned moss in smoky smudges, but this only provoked the insects’ attention: Reverend Stone’s face and hands were soon speckled with tiny red welts. He looked like he’d been shot with a load of pebbles.

One afternoon they landed the canoe to find a bald eagle perched on a deadwood log near the forest’s edge. The bird regarded Ignace Morel as the man furiously charged his rifle. At last the eagle unfurled its enormous wings, rising in a slow flutter as the voyageur shouldered his gun and tracked the bird’s ascent. The rifle’s blast echoed as the eagle tumbled with a splash into the shallows. They fried the meat with wild onions, ate it with wedges of smoking panbread. Reverend Stone thought he had never tasted anything more delicious.

That next afternoon they did not put ashore at all, instead coasting slowly while they chewed strips of smoked venison. The Native paddlers were as tireless as voyageurs, pausing only when Morel withdrew his pipe to smoke. They encamped that evening exhausted but cheery, Morel pouring gills of whiskey for the Natives and a half-pint for himself. Supper finished, he took up his fiddle and twisted the tuning pegs, then began a driving reel that was nearly too fast for dancing. Reverend Stone clapped with the tune’s rhythm as the braves chuckled with bemused pleasure. Finally Small Throat rose and began an awkward, shuffling jig. The second brave cackled with glee.

On the fifth morning from the Chippewa camp Reverend Stone woke from a nap to see black strings of smoke rising along the beach. He squinted through the lake’s glare: it was a Native village, two dozen lodges like overturned bowls along a river, a few figures moving among the cookfires. A group of braves was dipping for whitefish at the river’s edge. The party’s canoe angled shoreward. A pair of skinny, fox-like dogs trotted up the beach, barking; then the braves dropped their nets and ran into the village.

“Chocolate River band,” Morel said. “They are fools and drunkards. We leave the paddlers then continue on the river. Half-day paddle, then we go on foot.”

“On foot for how long?”

“Four days.” A moment’s pause. “For you, maybe more.”

“Yes. Perhaps five.”

They coasted toward the beach. The Natives swung overboard and guided the canoe to the lake’s edge, then Morel stepped out and hoisted Reverend Stone onto his back, lowered him gently onto the shore. Small Throat and the second Native hefted packs of stores and dropped them on the riverbank, past a sandbar blockading the stream’s entrance. Morel hoisted the dripping canoe over his head and set it beside the stores. “One pipe,” he called, untying his tobacco pouch. “One pipe and we go.”

Reverend Stone drank a mugful of lake water then poured a second measure over his head. He swabbed his face as a group of Native women emerged at the village edge, chatting merrily, bearing a gutted deer carcass on a travois. They paused to stare at the minister; then they dumped the carcass beside a tanning rack and set to work. Curious, Reverend Stone thought, that there exists no square or meeting place in Native villages, no attempt at order among the lodges. He wondered what it might suggest about their society.

Small Throat and the second brave were standing a few paces up the beach. With a start Reverend Stone realized they were awaiting their pay. He approached the pair, palms outspread to suggest patience and goodwill.

“One moment, please. Yes? Wait here?”

He hurried past the braves as Small Throat nodded uncertainly. At the river’s edge, Ignace Morel was squatting on a flour keg, scraping his pipebowl with the tip of a clasp knife.

“Monsieur Morel.”

The voyageur did not look up from his work. His hat was tipped sideways, his hair raked forward in a lank black veil, obscuring his eyes. The sight inexplicably irritated Reverend Stone.

“Monsieur Morel, sir. I seem to be in a difficult position. I must pay the braves for their labors, however my coins and banknotes have vanished.”

“Your money is gone.”

“My money is gone. Yes. I suspect the coins must have fallen from my pocket while boarding the canoe, or perhaps while I was asleep—”

“You think the Chippewas steal?”

“Of course not! The coins were simply lost—they fell from my pocket, or something equally ridiculous.”

“You think I steal?” Ignace Morel rose with the pipe clamped between his teeth. “You think I steal, maybe when you sleep I take your coins?”

“No, no—certainly not!” Reverend Stone heard a note of irritation in his voice. He drew a calming breath. “My money is gone. I must pay the braves for their labors. I hoped I might borrow a small sum from you.”

Morel worked the pipe between his wet lips. He smelled powerfully, of onions and sour wood smoke. “How much do you want?”

“Two dollars, to pay the braves. You would be doing me an immense service.”

The voyageur seemed amused by the minister’s proposal. He drew sharply on the pipe, folded his arms over his thick chest. “No.”

Reverend Stone nodded wearily. “If you loan me two dollars now, I will pay you four dollars when we return to Sault Ste. Marie. The additional two dollars will serve as interest on the loan.”

A flicker passed through Morel’s eyes, like a wave beneath a lake’s surface.

“You will earn two dollars in but a few weeks, without labor or risk. I will repay you the moment we return to the Sault—I have a standing offer of credit from Edwin Colcroft.”

A lie. One easily made true, but a lie nonetheless. He had lied when hiring the braves and now he was lying to pay their wages. Sin in service of sin. Sweat slid down Reverend Stone’s neck.

Ignace Morel untied his pouch and pinched a wad of tobacco, thumbed it into the pipebowl. A grin twisted his lips. At last he said, “No.”

Despite himself the minister chuckled. Ignace Morel looked up with a furious expression and Reverend Stone rubbed his face to quell the laughter. “My apologies,” he said. “It does not matter, I suppose. I could offer you ten dollars and you would not assist me. Would you?”

“You think I steal.”

“Of course not. Monsieur Morel.”

“You think I steal because I am Catholic, and this is how Catholics are. Yes? Now who is the thief? You go pay the paddlers with air, you see who is the thief! You pay them with Scripture, you see who is the thief!”

“Monsieur Morel.”

“You think you know how Catholics are? You are wrong. You will burn in hell as a thief. You will burn in hell while I am fiddling in heaven.”

Reverend Stone gestured aimlessly. “I apologize if I have offended you.”

Ignace Morel’s jaw tightened in a clench; then he glanced away. “We leave in ten minutes. Go.”

Reverend Stone turned away from the man, suffused with a strange lightness. He had taken a risk, and failed; now he would face the consequences. It was nothing more than fair. For the first time in weeks the minister felt utterly calm.

Small Throat and the second brave were watching him from the beach. Reverend Stone approached the pair and grinned stiffly.

“I believe it is time to pay you fellows!” He patted his jacket pocket. To Small Throat he said, “No coin. Not this time.”

The brave stared at him.

“Do you understand? No coin. No dollar.”

“No dollar.” Small Throat murmured a phrase in Chippewa, and the second brave nodded gravely. They seemed neither angry nor surprised.

Reverend Stone withdrew the Catlin book from his jacket pocket:
Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians, Written During Eight Years’ Travel Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America.
The pasteboard cover was creased and stained, the pages corrugated by rain. Reverend Stone held the book in both hands, and with a bow offered it to Small Throat. He said, “Please accept this volume as payment for your labors.”

The spine crackled as Small Throat turned back the cover. He gazed at an illustration of a Mandan chief in an eagle-feather headdress and ribboned tunic, posing stolidly as Catlin painted his portrait. Braves and squaws and children crowded around the half-finished canvas, their expressions equal parts fascination and dread. Small Throat carefully turned the page.