Algonquin Spring Read online

  Algonquin Spring is an engaging read, holding my interest throughout. A hallmark of good historical fiction is accurate scholarship and to me this content demonstrated respect for cultural accuracy. The attempt to embed cultural teachings within a work that engages and entertains was, in my opinion, quite successful.

  Willy Bruce

  Oshkaabewis

  Aboriginal Veterans Autochtones

  The modes of travel and the descriptions of the landscapes and vistas makes you want to go along for the ride. It gives the reader a glimpse of the appreciation of the lands that First Nations still occupy and interact with to this day, and shows how First Nations are still deeply intertwined with their lands through stories and adventures.

  Fred McGregor

  Algonquin Storyteller and Pow Wow Emcee

  As an Algonquin Traditional Elder, I can only commend you for your exceptional research and your writing creativity in bringing back our traditional orality to life again. My husband and I were amazed by your ability to bring to us as readers into a past that made us become spectators. We recognize that writing such a saga demands rigorous research of credible material and a cautious sense of reality in the fiction of your book.

  Annie Smith St-Georges,

  Traditional Algonquin Elder

  Robert St-Georges,

  Métis Elder

  Rick has provided a masterful description of survival, warfare, and relationships, both personal and tribal. His introduction of Glooscap, Crazy Crow, and others who connect with tribal legends and beliefs certainly tests the imagination. Once again, he has captured the culture of First Nations tribes in central Canada and the Maritimes.

  Robert A. Thibeau

  President, Aboriginal Veterans Autochtones

  This book is very vivid and written with enough detail to make you believe you were there alongside the characters throughout the amazing journey. Written as a fiction novel, but enough research done to show a side of Aboriginal people that is never shown enough. What a wonderful book!

  Silver Vautour–Wilmot

  Member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq Community

  Undergrad at St. Mary’s University

  I found the story interesting. It actually brought me vividly back to a time in my people’s past. I have often wondered what it must have been like before contact. I feel now I have been there.

  Joe Wilmot

  Mi’gmaq Language and Culture Coordinator

  Listuguj Mi’gmaq Community

  To the memory of

  Shanawdithit, the last Beothuk, and

  dedicated to my two Viking friends

  Jørgen (the Dane) Jensen and

  Edvard (the Norwegian) Strand.

  Great friends and good Vikings.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  AFTERWORD

  ALGONQUIN GLOSSARY

  ALGONQUIN PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  HURON GLOSSARY

  MI’KMAQ GLOSSARY

  MI’KMAQ PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  MOHAWK PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  OLD NORSE GLOSSARY

  SUSQUEHANNOCK GLOSSARY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES

  The First Algonquin Quest Novel

  Author’s Note

  Life on Turtle Island in the late 1320s, when this story resumes, had yet to taste the horrors of the “European Invasion” that was only a short two hundred years away.

  During the course of this book the reader is going to learn about an amazing jewel that very few Canadians know about, Anticosti Island (Natigòsteg, Forward Land in Mi’kmaq or Notiskuan, Where the Bears are Hunted, in Innu).

  Anticosti Island is the largest island in the St. Lawrence River, the twentieth largest island in Canada and ninetieth largest in the world. It is one and a half times larger than Prince Edward Island. Before the Europeans came, the indigenous mammals there were the red fox, river otter, deer mouse, American otter, and black bear. There are no longer any American martins or black bears on the island. The introduction of white-tailed deer in 1896 was the start of the extinction of bear from the island as they competed for the same food. The deer population on the island is now over 160,000. Brook trout, Atlantic salmon, and American eel swim up the island’s rivers, and grey and harbour seals inhabit the coastal regions.

  The island is 7,900 square kilometres (3,050 square miles), with a population of 281 people (2006). The island receives three hundred centimeters (one hundred and twenty inches) of snow per year. Twenty-four rivers and streams drain the island, and there are two small lakes and a waterfall named Vauréal Falls that has a drop of 250 feet, which is 165 feet taller than Niagara Falls.

  The reader will also read about the Beothuks of Newfoundland, an indigenous tribe that had made the island their home for eons. However, the coming of the Europeans was a death sentence for the Beothuk people. The last member of these island natives died in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in June 1829. Her name was Shanawdithit. Along with her died the language of the Beothuk. As hard as I tried, I could not find enough of this ancient language to use it in this book. With the Algonquin, Mi’kmaq, Mohawk, and Norse languages I am able to introduce the reader to nouns in their vernacular. Sadly, I was not able to do this with the Beothuk language. I, as a writer and Native Canadian, consider this a tragedy beyond reproach. The Beothuk did not deserve to disappear from the annals of history like they did. This was such an immense atrocity and a sad and unnecessary ending to a human race that had lived in peace for all of its existence — until the coming of the Europeans.

  I would like to thank my wife, Muriel, for helping with the editing and understanding my writing needs, and my son Andrew, who actually does read my books.

  Todd Labrador, a Mi’kmaq boat maker from Nova Scotia, who gave me his time and knowledge.

  Claudia Syllibi, from Truro, Nova Scotia.

  Nikki Auten, a Mohawk linguistic.

  As always, my Mohawk friend Ed Maracle, who is now becoming a great source of knowledge and information for me as a result of his efforts to learn about his ancestors and their language.

  My friend Larry Porter, who has always been my go-to guy about all things East Coast and maritime, who I will write a book about if I live long enough.

  William Arthur Allen, who knows everything about eels.

  My special go-to person about hunting and fishing, Al Whitfield.

  Above all, Anne Holley-Hime, who is living proof that behind any good author is a great editor!

  Special thanks to my publishing editor, Allister Thompson, who had to put up with my firm stands on “Native Ways.” In the end Allister did a wonderful job to make this a novel to be proud of.

  As a writer, sometimes wonderful things just drop onto your lap during research, by luck or by chance. For me, finding the Listuguj Mi’gmaq Community website was one of those times. This talking dictionary of the spoken word for the Mi’kmaq language is a Canadian treasure. Any Native Nation that is thinking of preserving its language, I can only suggest you go to the site (http://www.mikmaqonline.org) and see what a wonderful job this community has done to conserve the language for their children and all who will follow in their footsteps eons from now.

  I want to thank some special schoolchildren:

  Janis Swaren’s 2013 Grade 11 Native Voices class from QECVI, King
ston, Ontario.

  Lindsay Scott’s 2013/14 Grade 8 class from Fairfield Public School in Amherstview, Ontario.

  Carolyn De Groot’s extra special 2013/14 Grade 5/6 class from Perth Road Public School.

  These pupils made me realize the power of the written word and amazed me with their understanding and exuberance for what I had written in my first book, I Am Algonquin.

  Finally, I want the reader to realize that the Haudenosaunee, even though they might come across in this novel as the “bad guys,” are not. They were no different from the Omàmiwinini, the Ouendat, the Mi’kmaq, or any of the other Nations talked about. They were just trying to survive in the same harsh environment as the others. The real problem was still two or three hundred years away.

  The Haudenosaunee would become the most powerful military force east of the Mississippi River once the Prophet came and pulled the Five Nations together. The Haudenosaunee would hold this power until the might of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) came from the Lake Huron and Lake Superior areas in the 1600s and proved they were just as fierce and powerful.

  West of the Mississippi at this time, a Nation called the Sahnish (Arikara) were the central power there. Sadly, though, in the late eighteenth century a smallpox epidemic wiped out 90 percent of the 30,000-strong tribe.

  Before contact by the Europeans, there were hundreds of Nations in the Americas. A few of them were able to make alliances, but at times it could be a very harsh environment of regional warfare and subsistence.

  This book takes place around 1330. During that era in Europe from 1315 to 1317, a great famine killed millions.

  In May 1315, it started to rain. It did not stop anywhere in northern Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe’s livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives — one eighth of Europe’s total population.

  The Hundred Years War started in 1337. The Black Plague killed one third of the population of Europe from 1347 to 1351.

  During that same time on Turtle Island, during what may have been as close to an “idyllic” era for the Native inhabitants as ever occurred in their past or future, there were no massive wars or pestilences. These horrors were still a couple hundred years in the future. Of course, there was starvation at times among tribes that may have come from crop failures and other problems, with the local animal population suffering generational dips in population. Disease was non-existent on a massive scale. Wars, well, they certainly did not ever encompass the continent like in Europe and Asia. There was always strife among neighbouring tribes, but never thousands of warriors marching across the countryside, burning, looting, pillaging, and murdering. During this time, in what would become Eastern Canada, an attacking force of four or five hundred would be a major undertaking in transportation and feeding. The most likely scenario would have seen a couple of hundred mobile warriors attacking an enemy to retake hunting grounds or for a mourning raid.

  In the Americas, disease was unknown. Starvation, the elements, and regional warfare were the forces that took their toll on the people.

  Pre-contact, there were 30 million Natives in South America and anywhere from two to 18 million in North America, depending on whose study you believe. By the seventeenth century, 50 percent had died from disease and warfare.

  During the course of the book, you will notice that different nations of Natives converse among each other. The reader may question how they can do this if they talk different languages. For as long as Turtle Island has been here, different tribes have been able to express themselves through sign language and uttering the word(s) they are signing. Nations that have been allies for many years will start to understand each other’s languages. When you read of different tribes talking to each other, picture them signing while they talk; it is the “universal language.”

  Finally, I would like to ask you, were the Native Americas discovered or conquered?

  It had been six years since the battle at the Magwàizibò Sìbì (Iroquois River, now known as the Richelieu River) waterfall. Both the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Omàmiwinini (Algonquin) had suffered irreplaceable losses. The Omàmiwinini had experienced huge losses of women, children, and warriors. The immediate family unit of Mahingan had lost a brother, Wàgosh, and his wife to the raid on the island (now Morrison Island) in the Kitcisìpi Sìbì (Ottawa River), which was the summer home of his Kitcisìpiriniwak tribe (People of the Great River), one of the eight Algonquin tribes of the Ottawa Valley.

  Even though the Algonquins and their allies, the Ouendat (Huron), Nippissing, Wàbanaki (Abenaki), and Maliseet (Malècite), had defeated the Haudenosaunee at the waterfall, their own fatalities had caused great hardship among the tribes. Now, six years later, Mahingan, with his small family unit, is greeting a new spring on the lower part of the Kitcisìpi.

  They had spent the winter on a riverbank on what is now the Rivière du Nord below a kishkàbikedjiwan (waterfall). Now near present-day Lachute, it was a day and a half by canoe from the Kitcisìpi (Ottawa River).

  However, events that were taking place that spring 2,400 kilometers away, on what would become Newfoundland, would set in motion an adventure Mahingan’s followers would recount in the glow of many fires for years to come.

  1

  WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

  Tall Man

  “Shh, what is that?”

  We stopped and listened to what sounded like a huge animal running through the underbrush, snapping small branches as it went. It was a bright and cold spring day, with large patches of snow that the sun had yet to reach in the depth of the woods. In the forest, sound seemed to travel in cascades when there was sharpness to the air, and whatever was running through the woods was blazing a trail of broken limbs, small trees, and making enough noise to announce its arrival akin to thunder and rain.

  The community called me Tall Man. We identified ourselves as the Beothuk (the people). My name came naturally since I towered over my fellow tribesmen by a foot and a half. Standing over seven feet tall, I am an imposing figure, held in wonderment by all of the Beothuk.

  Three companions and I had been hunting seals on the northwest part of our lands (present-day Newfoundland). The shore ice was starting to break up, but this did not hinder our ability to harpoon a couple of seals to take back to our winter village a day or so away.

  The sounds were getting closer and we could make out the snorting of a caribou, plus what sounded like men yelling and dogs howling. Then, before we could react, the animal rushed out of a huge thicket in front of us, knocking over two of my travelling companions. Two arrows were sticking out of the animal’s front withers, blood and phlegm spurted from its mouth, and a pack of five or six of what looked like wolves snapped at its legs, trying to hamstring it. As the animal neared me, I could see a look of total horror in its eyes. At that intense moment, a whish, whish sound passed my head. A spear embedded itself in the beast’s neck, and with one dying bellow he spurted blood and saliva onto my face, took a few more steps, and fell with a sudden rush of air gusting from his body. The smell was horrendous, a mixture of rotting vegetation and gases.

  Then, sudden silence. I had dropped my harpoon to wipe the assortment of stomach contents from my face. My two hunting companions that the beast had run over were slowly getting up; one was bleeding profusely from a neck wound that had occurred when the caribou sharply grazed him with his horn. Our fourth hunter was standing with his harpoon cocked back in a threatening manner.

  Then, to our astonishment, three men unlike any we had seen before emerged from the thicket. Men with coloured hair, clothes the vividness of ripened berries, and weapons that were strange to us. One was holding what looked like a stick, but it gleamed in the sun. Another had a shaft with a sharp-lo
oking grey shale head on it, but it was not shale. There we stood in a standoff over a dead caribou, one of our warriors slowly dying from a neck wound, me weaponless, and another on his hands and knees.

  One of the strangers pointed at the animal and said a word I could not understand: “rheindyri,” and then pointed at himself and said something else that gave me the impression he was saying the animal was his. Our companion with the harpoon was young and reckless, and I was concerned he was about to do something foolish that would result in sudden carnage. One of the yellow-haired men raised his weapon in anger, as if this unexpected meeting was wasting his time. Then he let out a bellow that caused my skin to rise.

  At that precise moment, a harpoon sailed through the air and embedded itself in the man’s neck, causing a sudden end to his yell and blood to spurt onto our friend on the ground.

  Retribution was like summer lightning. The man with the sharp-looking weapon that gleamed in the sun took our young companion’s throwing arm off with a mighty swing. I was just about to react when I heard an abrupt noise at my back, and a crushing blow to my head sent me into a world of darkness.

  I do not know what woke me first, the bouncing that my body was enduring or the eye-burning stenches of urine, fish, and body odour of the men who were carrying me. My head was throbbing and I was trying to resist, without much luck, losing consciousness. After awhile I was able to stay fully conscious.

  Now I was able to understand the predicament that had befallen me and my fellow warriors. They had tied me up like a gutted animal on a stick, with my arms and legs bound by vines, and I was carried hanging from a stout sapling by two very smelly and strange-looking men.

  I was able to look around and see only one other of my fellow tribesmen in the same predicament as myself. He was the eldest of our hunting party, one of the two men whom the wounded caribou had knocked down. His name was Whale Bone, a great hunter, but at this moment the fear in his eyes showed a weakness I had never seen in him before. Two men were carrying the slaughtered caribou in the same tied-up position as us. By the looks of things, this was not going to turn out well for my companion and me.