Weekend voyageurs (page 2)
If Speer said anything about a massacre, I didn't take it in.
But lying awake in the dark, my ears are alert to the rumble of
the thunder.
MORNING BREAKS GREY and queasy, but at least the downpour
has eased. The windshield wipers slap fitfully on the hourlong
drive to our put-in point at Batoche's East Village. By the
time we hit the water, the clouds have begun to lift and the day
begins to fill with a tentative, grudging kind of promise.
Speer, the indefatigable Mr. CanoeSki, has done his best to
brighten up the scene. In homage to the voyageurs, each of the
paddlers is outfitted with a jolly Metis sash, and our small fleet
of boats is flying the historic red, white and blue ensigns of the
HBC and its arch rival in the fur trade, the North West Company.
One of the boats is even bedecked anachronistically with the
cheerful yellow and green of the Saskatchewan lily.
"My paddle's clean and bright,” I croon to myself, as the current
catches hold of the canoe and sweeps us along. The watery
world around us is a study in silence and silver. Cattle grazing
along the shore raise their heads to watch us pass. Now and then,
small flights of pelicans lift up in unison with their shimmering
reflections. Lulled by the river, I feel the anxieties of the night
begin to fade.
Following a shore lunch of sandwiches, fruit and homemade
cookies - voyageurs, eat your hearts out! - we paddle
along until, in mid-afternoon, Speer stands up in his canoe and
points to our destination, a high bluff on the east side of the river.
Someone is up there waving and I suddenly recall that we are to be treated to another burst of local colour. Speer has arranged
for a party of experts - archaeologists and history buffs - to
meet us at the trading post site, show us around and explain
what, apart from Thompson's cameo appearance, makes South
Branch House noteworthy.
Sure enough, once we beach the canoes and scramble up to
the top, we find ourselves surrounded by a welcoming party of
a couple of dozen people, with a kettle of tea on a camp stove
and large boxes of Tim Horton's finest. Apparently, we have come
the hard way: these folks drove up by land. But when terror
struck at South Branch House, it came on horseback.
THE PLACE WHERE the post once stood is now a grassy clearing
on the edge of a farmer's field. A modest stone monument
and a pair of plaques bear witness to its bloody history. The
inscription recounts that on June 24, 1794, at a time when
most of the HBC employees were away on their annual trip to York Factory on Hudson Bay, the post was attacked and burned
by Gros Ventre Indians. The marauders destroyed the buildings
and "savagely massacred old women and children and three
of the company's servants, W. Fea, H. Brough, and M. Annal.”
Several younger women were taken captive. The only person to
escape unharmed was trader John Van Driel, who survived by
cowering in a cellar for eight hours.
Maybe I'm hypersensitive, but I'm not prepared for this.
We have come to visit a place where people were murdered? Who
were these Gros Ventre Indians? What kind of barbarians were
they? And the women and children - all nameless. Why had
they not been accorded the same recognition as the company's
other "servants”?
Some of the answers I need are close at hand in the person
of David Meyer, an archaeologist with a long-standing interest
in South Branch House. The group stands in a circle and listens
as he retells the story of that tragic day, drawing out more of its
sadness and complexity.
By his telling, the trouble really began years earlier, in the
1780s, when the HBC and the Northwesters, impelled by their
rivalry, had pushed south and west into the Saskatchewan River
country. South Branch House was one result of that strategy.
Tragically, this intrusion disturbed long-standing relationships
among the Woodland Cree and plains nations such as the
Blackfoot and Gros Ventre. The result, in the 1790s, was what
some historians have described as all-out war. The attack on
South Branch House was one skirmish in a conflict that claimed
the lives of three white men and dozens of aboriginal men,
women and children.
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