The animals of the forest held no secrets for Saint-Jean, nor did the different stages of hide preparation: cleaning, degreasing, brushing, lustring… His great weaknesses were those of the gourmand, namely the food and wine brought by the French ships that put in at Ruisseau. He had given himself over to these pleasures often since his wife’s death. But he’d been a gourmand since childhood, and his years of forced labour had only served to increase his appetite. He was obese, not a good thing given his health problems.
Joseph, too, had risen early. He pulled on a coarse linen shirt and baggy seaman’s pants cinched at the knee. He took his knife from where it hung at the entrance to the tent and headed in the direction of the great birch tree next to Saint-Jean’s house. Saint-Jean, whose survival had necessitated developing a biting sense of humour, called out, “Ready to make your getaway to Quebec?”
Pulled out of his revery, Joseph gave a start. “I want to write a letter to my mother, and mornings are my best time,” he answered.
His mother had taught him to read and write using old books from Normandy that told stories of Joan of Arc and William the Conqueror. The books also told his favourite tales – the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor – carrying the whiff of perfume from the Orient. Having leafed through the yellowed pages of the books hundreds of times, he knew all the tales by heart.
“Do you plan on telling her about Angélique?” Saint-Jean asked casually.
He viewed the relationship between his daughter and Joseph favourably, but he wanted to make sure Joseph would not be clearing out at the first snowfall. Joseph would rather not talk about it, but he decided to be open with the old man.
“That’s why I’m writing.”
“If you’re not sure, you should take some time to think about it.”
Joseph felt great affection for Saint-Jean; another man might not have trusted him so easily.
“No, my mind is made up. Sometimes I miss my family and the excitement of life in Quebec, but I feel at home here. The surroundings are beautiful, the people hospitable… and I love your daughter and I’ve begun to connect with Membertou.”
Satisfied, Saint-Jean lit his pipe and didn’t push the matter further. Joseph headed toward the huge birch tree and tore off large strips of bark for his letter to his mother concerning his future.
Chapter 3
“Suffering,” he said, “was nearly the sole occupation of those poor people; they were stricken by illness, and death took away many of them. Father du Marché had to go back to France; Father Turgis resisted for a while, comforting his small flock, listening to the confessions of some, giving strength to others through the sacraments of the Eucharist and Last Rites, burying those whom death spirited away. But eventually the work and the unhealthy air he breathed around the sickly felled him as they had others. He fought until the last breath, though. He had himself carried to the bedside of the sick and the dying, he inspired them, gave them strength, encouraged them, and after having buried the captain, the clerk, and the surgeon, in other words all the other officers and eight or nine other working people, he himself succumbed, leaving only one sick man to face death, whom he accompanied to that point before breathing his last. …He was the first of our Company to die of illness in this land. He was sorely missed by the French and the Savages who held him in high regard and loved him dearly.”
–“Account” of the Jesuits in Miscou in 1647, quoted by W.F Ganong in The History of Miscou and Shippegan
In late August, the Jesuit Ignace de la Transfiguration, wearing a tricorn hat with a wide, turned-up brim, arrived in Ruisseau. The news spread like an autumn fire through a pile of dead leaves. The missionary had devoted his life to bringing the gospel to the native peoples, and no weakness of the flesh had any hold over his asceticism. Not even a love for good food and drink. In fact, suffering made him happy, and mosquito bites replaced the hair shirt for God’s greater glory. Come from Quebec by water, he navigated the St. Lawrence and the Matapedia rivers then, after a halt at the Restigouche post, he entered the Baye des Chaleurs. During the ten long days the journey took, the missionary meditated on the difficulties he encountered. Only a few baptisms in ten years of evangelization. Why? How can I make them understand good and evil? As for transsubstantiation and the Trinity, the three persons of God, and the two natures of Christ, I’ll never get that across… he thought.
What the Jesuit did not realize was that even St. Peter would not have been able to teach the catechism, with its abstract concepts that had no connection with the daily concerns of the Mi’kmaq. “Black Robe has arrived! The patriarch is here!” Such were the names some used to designate the missionary. Several Mi’kmaq, without actually abandoning their own beliefs, had converted to Catholicism and venerated the priest, whom they saw as having magical powers. Not everyone did, however; several found his religion incompatible with their beliefs and maintained in front of the missionary that the laws of the Great Creator were written in the rivers, the trees, and the nature of human desire, which was pure… “You’ve made it into something evil!” They were surprised to see white men acting like rutting moose around native women when Black Robe was absent. The Mi’kmaqs’ own sexual freedom meant they felt no need for such excess. “Your men desire our women so badly it makes one wonder whether they’ve never seen a woman before.”
The shaman was among the priest’s detractors. As the tribe’s high priest and magician, he had a tacit agreement with Saint-Jean on authority regarding earthly matters. Saint-Jean always consulted him and gave him credit for provident decisions. As well, Angélique in her healer’s role – a gift the shaman did not have – often called on him for healing rituals. His nickname was Fiery Elouèzes because his eyes threw off sparks when he was angry. He harboured intense hatred for those he called “fat pigs covered in dirty hair”; to make matters worse, the missionary was also a competitor. The shaman s head was shaved bare except for one strip running from his forehead to the nape of his neck. His nose was painted a bright blue and his eyes were ringed with yellow ochre. He was careful to tend his terrifying look.
The shaman’s faithful disciple was a giant, the warrior Foaming Bear, a strapping fellow: as dark as a crow, fierce, and impermeable to any influence from the whites and Catholics, whom he accused of destroying the Mi’kmaq way of life. At fifteen, on Anticosti Island, he had had to choose between dying under the claws of a huge white bear or slaying the monster with his tomahawk. He chose to fight, and the effort caused him to foam so wildly at the mouth that his hair turned white, earning him his nickname. “Those damn white men and the missionaries who represent them say we’re poor and ignorant, faithless and lawless, like wild animals. They say their country is paradise. If so, why did they abandon their families and make the difficult ocean crossing to come to our snowbound lands to steal our worthless beaver pelts and eat nothing but cod morning, noon, and night? They waste their time accumulating useless things while we enjoy the seasons fishing and hunting. Paradise is here, and they want to turn it into hell,” he proclaimed.
Fiery Elouèzes had just as many complaints. “Their beliefs are stupid: they eat the body and blood of their god and then accuse us of cannibalism. They claim the earth is the kingdom of darkness; yet if they just opened their eyes, they would see the sun and if they opened their ears, they would hear the rivers, trees, and animal spirits. Their idea