Chapter 14
Owera looked at the young people around her fire. She cut a length of tobacco* from the twist and put it in her pipe. Lighting it, she sat and watched them all feeling their way. She was concerned for her own people. She worried that the tribe’s adopted children would be drawn away from their families but she understood that in the end only the Great Manitou would decide their futures. She puffed away.
Around the fire, the teens seemed to be a bit at a loss of how to start the conversation. The young teens were processing the fact that not only were their siblings alive, but that they had willingly become Indians. The older teens were at a loss as to how to explain that the people they had been were dead.
It was Susannah who seemed to know how to start. Moving around she spoke quietly with Sawatis, Tawi:ne, Finn and Wahta. Then she moved over to her friends Lucy and Sally. She sat herself between them and took one of their hands in hers.
“Is it not wonderful to know that they live,” she started. “It has been a day of great revealings… some full of joy and others of great sorrow... and some which will make your hearts ache as you must let them go. It has been that way for me, as I have learned that my father John Morden was killed in the Lenni-Lenape raid. So much anger and harassement in Jaysburg and my mother had been a widow the whole time. So also was Hawk’s white father killed.
“Sally, I am very sorry to tell you that your father was very badly injured, as was Master Seegers. Both men made it here to the Fort, but the Medicine Woman, even with the Fort’s doctor’s assistance, and prayers to both Our Heavenly Father and to the Great Manitou, could not save them. They are buried here in the cemetery. If you would like, later we can go and pay our respects.
“Masters Blauvelt and Carpenter and Martin Carpenter also survived. They have joined the King’s Own Regiment headed by Sir John Johnson. They are currently away with their unit fighting the Rebels. Isaac and Lucy, your cousin Johan Ryckman also survived. He too is with the King’s Own Regiment. With prayers, perhaps all will come home again.
“The other boys who were taken have also survived – John and James Blauvelt, James Miller, Phineus Carpenter and, Lucy, your brother Martin. They all survived the raid, but they are all dead. They were all adopted by the Mohawk. They are members of the Tribe, members of the Bear, Turtle and Wolf clans. They are Haudenosaunee, people of the Longhouse. You must know this. They are no longer white boys but red men.
“They are hunters and warriors. They pray to the Great Manitou and will be pleased and happy to see you, but they are no longer the boys you knew in Jaysberg. For three years they have hunted the trails, lived in the longhouses, and fought the Long Knives. Finn is married and he and his wife, Onwari**, are expecting a baby. Their lives are here in the longhouses of the Mohawk. They will always be pleased to see you but their life is here now. Your lives is not. I do not know yet what is in store, but a life here in Canada will found for us all.”
Tawit and Capt. Morden had walked while Susannah was speaking. In the silence that followed, the heart-wrenching sobs of Sally could be heard. Owera came over and wrapped a 2 ½ point blanket*** around her. She nodded at the men who came and sat on the floor in front of the bench, flanking Owera, subtly re-enforcing her authority.
Wahta came over and crouched before her. In his breechcloth and leggings, his skin dark from the years of direct sun, his head shaven with only the top knot remaining, he was completely unfamiliar. Looking at him took hard work.
“Do not cry khe'kén:'a… do not cry Sally,” he said. “I miss our father. He was a good man, but he was injured in the head and his spirit could not find peace. Hold the love he had for us in your heart. He cried for us all and he gave his blessing to my adoption. Now tell me of my white mother and the two small boys? How is it that you are here and they are not with you?”
There was silence for a few moments as Isaac and Felix looked at each other.
“After the raid, after you were all taken, things in Jaysburg change,” said Isaac. “Some people thought that you were all dead, others taken by the Indians and others still that you had run away to join the British. The authorities hunted for you but could find no sign beyond the pony tracks into the woods. They did not know how to treat our mothers or us. Things changed slowly as the number of raida increased, field were burnt, people starved and the war dragged on. Slowly the opinion that you had joined the British grew. I do not know who fanned those flames but the embers of distrust and hate grew. When Susannah’s mother died and her uncle came to collect the children, it seemed a small fire of hate turned into a wildfire. The Treason Committee in Fort Augusta passed a verdict declaring our families, those of the Jaysberg Widows, which is what they called our mothers, to have been British sympathizers and that our properties were forfeit. They also declared that all children of sympathizers aged 12 and older were to be sent to the Continental Army for re-education.
“A man whose name I do not know arrived at Mistress Miller’s new tavern and told of what he had heard. There was no time for us to grab more than a few small items and disappear into the woods. Within the hour, eight of us had been gathered together and we were taken to Master Ryckman’s farm. He hid us until he had to join the posse chasing after Susannah’s family. We then moved through six more homesteads until the Mohawk came for us.
“I was the last to join everyone,” said Felix. “I watched as they arrested our mothers and looted our belongings. That weasly Martin Heinz was even in on it. I saw him taking mother’s rings. He took them right off her hand.”
“He has been dealt with,” said Hawk. “He and George Smith will never corner another girl or steal from others again.”
“Are you sure?” asked Felix.
“I drew the blade,” said Hawk simply.
“Their scalps hang from our pole,” said Tawit.
Felix gluped and looked slightly green, so Isaac continued.
“There were four Mohawk warriors who came and got us. We rode two to a horse. The Seeger boys – Hyrum and Aaron, Felix’s brothers John and Ben, and the four of us.”
“The boys are here?” Finn said with an excited look on his face. Felix nodded.
“The younger ones are sleeping on Miss Molly’s floor.”
“Mama kept the girls with her,” said Isaac. “They were all marched off to Fort Augusta. Just before we left with the Mohawks, a message was received that Master Williams and his wife had been ordered to appear before the Treason Committee. They saw our Mamas and said they had been sore abused but that some of the Committee members were very angry about it and had given them back their houses and sent them home. The was all fine and well but they went home to nothing – no food, no furniture, nothing… and no one would be seen to aid them. So they are all living together in the Carpenter house as it is the smallest and takes the least amount to heat. Also their garden was the least damaged. Can we go and get them?”
All along Capt. Morden and Tawit had seen this question coming and the truth was that the women could not be left there. At some point someone would see one of their husbands amongst the guerilla fighters. A guide would have to be sent, but who?
“We will discuss this further,” said Capt. Morden. “For now we need to house you all and I think that putting you all in my house with Susannah to run the house and Abigail to assist will be the best solution. Susannah, I have arranged for your things to be taken from the warehouse up to the house. My wife has gone back to England for an extended stay. She could only take one trunk so most of the house is still there. The Rev. Bethune supervised her packing and saw her onto the mid-day boat to Lachine.
“Susannah could you please take these youngsters and your siblings back to Miss Molly’s to find the other children and then go over to the house. Abigail should be there by now. These young men and I have some talking to do. We will let you know the decisions.”
“Before you all go,” said Susannah. “I want you all to meet Tawit. He is my esices, my father. He and my mother were married before when she had been an adopted daughter of the Bear clan and a daughter of the longhouse. The story is long and their separation involuntary, but I am blessed to have had two fathers who loved me. Owera is his mother, my grandmother.”
Lucy looked over at her in disbelief, “Do you mean to tell me that you are a half-breed?”
“Yes,” said Susannah, “and you have two brothers who are Indians, you have a father and cousin fighting as Loyalists and a mother and two sisters under arrest. Be careful before you go throwing rocks. You stand inside a glass house. Life is complicated and takes you unexpected places. Come on, let’s get moving and go find the others.”
Susannah rounded them up and after giving Owera a hug and a quiet thank you.
*****
With the young people gone. Tawit and Capt. Morden snipped some of the tobacco twist for their own pipes. The three sat quietly for some moments enjoying the peace after all the swirl of emotion. The pipe smoke rose and joined that of the fires before going out the smoke hole in the roof.
“Your daughter has grown into a fine young woman, Tawit,” said Owera. “She has much wisdom. She will soon be sought by many. Have you thought about that? She has not been raised in our ways and already she is catching the eyes of our young men. It may be best that she not stay here for long.”
Tawit gave an uneasy laugh. “I have had the same conversation with the Fort’s Commander. He is concerned that his men are not focusing on their tasks when fine young women walk amongst them. Miss Molly has suggested that they all go to school in Montreal, but I suspect that much of that will depend on what is decided about the Jaysberg widows. For now, Susannah will be busy and Abigail will act as chaperon.”
Capt. Morden agreed. “There is talk of a new community being founded down river from here at Pointe Maligne. It is to be settled by the families of soldiers from Sir John Jonson’s regiment. I have heard it referred to as New Johnstown¤. If they bring the widows out, that would be an ideal place for them all to go. Lawfully, the decision about Susannah, Sarah, Mary, Davy and Jane is up to me. Certainly the younger ones I can settle in New Johnstown with ease, but Susannah’s heritage is going to be an issue. It may be better to apprentice her to a dressmaker in Montreal and letter her finish her training there. The French are not as concerned about a mixed heritage as the English.”
Owera hummed and Tawit nodded.
*****
Susannah was happy and busy as she sorted out the children. In the end she turned the two upstairs bedrooms into one for the girls and the other for the boys. Her uncle, she kept undisturbed in his downstairs bedroom. The box bed from home had been put in the kitchen and she claimed it for her own.
Charlotte Morden may have been happy to leave, but she had made a right real mess of things on her way out the door. She and Abigail and the two girls had been forced to work hard to fix the mess she had made. The slitting of the pillows and down covers was just plain mean, and after the down had been collected, Susannah had done some quick stitching to get everything properly contained again.
In the kitchen, they found that Charlotte had dumped the cone of sugar into the water bucket and the brine had been let out of the beef caskets. Abigail was furious. There just wasn’t enough food to waste it in such a manner. Susannah just found a clean copper kettle and poured the contents of the water bucket into it. She then set in on the crane over the fire. Slowly the water boiled-off until the thick syrup solidified into crystals. Susannah then put it into a wooden box. As for the brine, using river water and more salt, she filled the caskets back up.
April was often such a hungry time of year as they waited for the next season’s growths to round out their diets, but Susannah took a piece of the brined beef and chopped it into a potage with corn and chunks of dried squash and made dinner for them all.
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*Tobacco is a sacred plant among most aboriginal peoples, and tobacco growing pre-dates the arrival of Europeans in the New World. Different varieties were grown in different regions across what is now the United States and southern Canada. As the fur trade expanded, processed tobacco imported from European-run plantations became an important trade item and gradually supplanted Native tobacco cultivation. The NWC purchased at least five varieties of tobacco for the trade, most of it from South America or southern United States. The most popular was North West Twist which came in a rolled form - lengths of tobacco spun into "ropes" and wound onto a roll or spindle. For an image of a North West Twist, please see The Fur Trade Museum
http://www.furtrade.org/museum-collections/provisions/ -look at image 2.
Plug tobacco from Virginia was a compressed brick or cake, flavoured with molasses and licorice, and considered inferior to twist tobacco. Carrot tobacco, also from Virginia, consisted of whole tobacco leaves pressed into a carrot-shaped bundle. Like plug, it was of lesser quality and traded only when twist was in short supply or unavailable. (Source: Fort William Glossery) For information about tobacco carrots -
http://www.wired.com/2009/06/gallery_snuff/2/
**Onwari – Mary
*** Point blankets were the wool blankets traded by the fur traders from the 1650s on. The word point is believed to originate with the French word emporter. When a blanket was finished a slingle dark thread was woven into the side to show its completion. The blankets then went to the Guild where they were inspected and the Guild added a second line. So originally all blankets were 2 point blankets. The meaning of the points the shifted to indicate size. Karl Koster of Grand Portage studied old trade goods lists/inventories, and charted the sizes and colors - when indicated. This was for the Great Lakes, New France, and the Haut Pays fur trade areas. The most common sized blanket from all the lists was a 2 1/2 point blanket, with 3 point next. Trade blankets were woven up as double long blankets - two full blankets woven together. And they were often sold/traded as a pair. If a single blanket was to be sold/traded, one of those doubles would be cut/torn into two individual blankets.
Colors. That white blanket with the multi-stripes of the HBC red/blue/yellow is mainly an early 1800's and later blanket. The earliest reference that anyone has so far found is 1795.
Mr. Koster’s research indicates that the most common "trade blanket" color was white with a dark blue or indigo stripe at each end. The next most common color "trade blanket" was red with that dark blue stripe (almost black) at each end. And then you start to see some White with red stripe, and green with dark blue/black. Trade blankets woven at one hand looms in the weaver’s home could vary by each blanket. By the end of the 18th Century increasingly trade blankets were being mass-produced in the big woolen mills, and were therefore becoming fairly consistent in their sizes and colors.
¤ Pointe Maligne had been a French settlement on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. In 1784, it was renamed New Johnstown and settled by the soldiers of The King’s Own Regiment. In 1834 it was renamed for the Duke of Cornwall and Cornwall was incorporated as a city. The construction of the Cornwall Canal between 1834 and 1842 accelerated the community's development into an industrial centre. In 1958, the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which permitted the passage of the huge lake tankers from Thunder Bay though to Montreal, caused the submersion of a number of small communities and farms settled by the United Empire Loyalists. Many of the historic homes were saved and moved to the living history museum of Upper Canada Village, outside of Morrisburg, Ontario (
http://www.uppercanadavillage.com/index.cfm/en/home/). If you are ever up here on vacation, the trip is well worth the drive.
