River City (18 page)

Three more Iroquois fell in a torment of blood and suffering.

The sound of the three harquebusiers firing reached the survivors’ ears.

What was that sound? How did noise and smoke kill their brothers?

Another two Iroquois clutched themselves in agony and collapsed upon the ground. Then the sound that charged their nerves with fright followed.

They could fire no arrow upon their enemy, who was too far away. The Iroquois fled and the invaders gave chase. The rout was on, and the day belonged to the French and the Algonquin. That night, they ate from the stores of Iroquois food. Iroquois women aimlessly roaming in the forest were taken to be their slaves, and in the morning their canoes were made heavy with produce and meat and furs and women to take back to their people, and upon the bow of each canoe hung bloody Iroquois scalps.

Champlain did not paddle, not even when the winds whipped up. He had much to think about and dwell upon. He indulged in pleasant thoughts of his child-bride back home in France. He maintained a grip on the handle of the knife given to him by King Henri IV, the same knife bequeathed to successive kings, and initially acquired by Cartier. Champlain had examined the knives in the hands and belts of every dead Iroquois. None had handles of gold
and diamonds, as did this one. That puzzled him. Nonetheless, the dagger had brought him good fortune, and the future of his enterprise, he believed, was now assured.

Champlain paid little more than cursory attention to the seafaring hands who had crossed the ocean with him. Seamen were adept in the rigging, brave and energetic in an ocean’s tempest, but nothing less had been expected. While he knew the name of every Frenchman in New France, including the few feral trappers who had settled way north on the river, at Tadoussac, before his own arrival, the youth who stood before him three years after his voyage was a puzzle. He recognized the name, but a thick beard, wild hair and an increase in muscle mass had changed him. Three years in New France had not only matured Étienne Brulé, but had also kindled in him a passionate spirit.

Onboard, the boy had been surly, unsure that he wanted to be cast upon the rolling waters on a voyage to the New World. Three years later, he bore little resemblance to that reluctant sailor. The New World had ignited his senses. He had despised only the dull grey ocean. He was now pleading with Champlain to grant him permission to take a canoe west with the Huron, to explore that unknown region where the lakes, they were told, were as broad as the sea. Determined to be the first European to map the waterways there, to discover the mines, he wanted to learn the Huron language and—or so he claimed, because he had studied Champlain’s ambitions and interpreted his actions—he would help to draw
les sauvages
into a closer military and trading partnership.

Champlain recognized in the youthful Brulé a version of himself at twenty. While the lad did not share his love for the sea, he did crave the indomitable quest. Whereas the older man had had his nature revealed to him on stormy waters, this young man had found his soul in the woods and on the rivers of New France. Still, Champlain needed to know that the youth could be entrusted with a task demanding so much fortitude, acumen and raw courage.

“The rapids around Montreal and around the Hochelaga islands,” Champlain proposed, then paused.

“The rapids, Captain?” Étienne Brulé inquired, curious.

“Let’s find our way through. Me and you, with our best men. If we survive, I will commission your journey to the land of the Huron.”

Brulé was so excited he clicked his heels and saluted.

Provoked to laughter, Champlain shooed him on his way.

Brulé took the stern of one canoe, Champlain the centre position in another, from which he could make quick navigational choices, and the slender vessels slipped onto the river. The Indians knew nothing of swimming, and so had declined to accompany the foolish white men on their escapade. After all, to reach their destination, they could simply walk. The canoes were manned by the strongest and most fearless of the French, for they would not be travelling down the rapids, but paddling upstream, against that relentless force.

Initially, they stuck to the shore where the current was weakest. Even here, they would be captured by a swirling eddy and one canoe would have to make it ashore and toss a rope to the other spinning craft and pull it from the spiral. In these surging waters, their boats felt fragile and small. Often, the canoes were turned back by the water’s propulsion, and the men portaged to a new location to try again. Still, they had not encountered the roughest water.

As the river intensified, Champlain coordinated the advance. He would select short jaunts, moving the boats from rock to rock, or from a promontory to a tree bending over the current, and the men, eight to each side of the canoe, would rest, then shout, then paddle with superhuman strength against the water’s force, and strap themselves tight to their destination, and rest again. Both canoes capsized often, Champlain’s once in front of Brulé, and it was the youth who dove into the current—not to rescue his flailing captain, but to save the canoe, swimming with it down the current until he could snag it to a rock. Then he intercepted the floating paddles and other rampant debris, and finally the men themselves as they whooshed down the current pell-mell and drunk on frenzy. Champlain stretched out a hand to an unknown arm, pulled to the safety of a midstream rock, and only after
he’d coughed up gallons of river water did he see that it was Brulé who had snared him.

“Your help might have been more useful upstream,” Champlain carped, stranded and exhausted.

“First the canoe,” Brulé told him. “You can find another paddler. A good canoe in the wilderness is not so easy to find.”

“I am not,” Champlain informed him tersely, “just an ordinary paddler.”

But he was already thinking that the lad was up for the task he had set for himself, although he doubted that this first mission would be completed successfully, so it didn’t particularly matter. He wondered what his pretty wife might be doing back in France. Baking bread with women, skipping rope with girls?

The boy proved right. Canoes made survival possible. Having gathered their strength, the crew set out again, this time with both Brulé and Champlain in the same vessel. They eventually made it back to the first craft, and there, in the middle of the roaring river, strapped to rocks, they napped among their comrades.

And still, they had not reached the fiercest water.

At night, they made a fire on the rocks from driftwood and cooked perch trapped in a net.

“How much farther?” the young man asked.

“We’ll know that when we arrive there,” the older man responded.

“Tomorrow,” suggested the youth, “shorter advances. Longer rests. Rock by rock. Not only paddles. We must use the ropes. Some water we’ll traverse on foot, crawl along the shore if we have to, pull the canoes behind us.”

Champlain nodded. He said nothing further, but the young man’s advice, and his leadership qualities, were duly noted.

The river the next day had to be attacked. Often, they did as Brulé commanded, with men in the water pulling themselves towards rocks they’d lassoed, then stretching the rope for others to follow. Often, the canoes came last, and slowly, brutally, they struggled against the river and the river fought against their trespass. So loud was the raging torrent that they rarely spoke, and the company of men moved with an empirical grace, as though each step
might be their last, one hand before the other, short, rhythmic paddle strokes, hanging on for their lives, then staggering forward. Wet and cold and beyond exhaustion, they were eventually victorious, for Champlain discerned a route somewhat free from the torrent, and from there only quiet water lay ahead.

“For this,” Champlain noted, lying on his back on a patch of sand beach, “you will visit the land of the Huron. Live among them. Become as they are—a
sauvage,
a man of the woods. Speak as they speak, do as they do, think as they think, but do not forget who you are. Do not forget your mission. Bring back to us the knowledge of the Huron’s lands and great lakes.”

“Yes, Captain.” Too tired to be happy, the boy’s celebration would wait.

“In the late autumn of this year, I will hold a trading fair at Hochelaga.”

“Captain?”

“As you travel, tell the Indians you meet to bring their furs in trade. If they come, then I will know you remain alive. That will tell me how far you’ve journeyed.”

“I might travel,” the boy said, turning only his head to face Champlain, unable to move any part of himself below his neck, “too far for the Huron to canoe to Hochelaga to trade.”

“Good,” Champlain said. “Then I will know that, too.” Slowly, he dragged a hand from where it had rested on the ground above his head down to his side. He pulled his other hand across his body to meet it. “Étienne, you will travel with the Cartier Dagger, for your good fortune.”

“But,” the boy objected, “I might die. The knife will be lost.”

“If you lose it, do not bother to come back. If you are killed, then the man who possesses the knife condemns himself—someday we will avenge your loss. But I believe the knife will see you safely home. As long as it is in your possession, expect to see us again. Make certain, Étienne, that you return Cartier’s dagger to me.”

He untied the sheath and the knife from his side. Though it demanded the last of his strength, he passed it across to Brulé. The young man knew what Champlain was really doing. He was commanding him to stay alive.

He received the dagger into his hands, then slept.

Tepees were erected on a waterfront clearing where Champlain waited for the Huron to arrive, canoes laden with furs. This was the first fur fair in the New World. Although Samuel de Champlain was not a particularly religious man, he went down to his knees to pray for its success. He needed to demonstrate the colony’s viability. Since the collapse of the first settlement at Port Royale, selling the idea of the New World to the king and to the French people had been difficult. He needed to prove that life could be prosperous here. Yet October had arrived, and still there were no Indians, only disenchanted French and empty tepees awaiting visitors.

Champlain was alone in believing that young Étienne Brulé might somehow survive. When the French spoke his name, they’d genuflect, as if over his grave, while Indians remained mute. He’ll never be heard from again, was the gist of general opinion, killed by distant Huron who had never heard of white men, or killed by the rough waters, or animals, or spirits, or starvation. If he survived all that, winter would consume him. He was a boy doing a man’s job, and Champlain had dispatched him to his death.

Champlain waited, and believed, and the days went by, without contact and with lessening hope.

They were now a week into October. An early winter howled in the night air. The French milled about during the day and discussed passage home to France on the ship Champlain had waiting upriver at Quebec. He had considered the name Cape Diamond ironic, and discouraged its use. Cartier’s men had received gold and diamonds there, yet upon reaching France they learned that the diamonds were quartz, and that the yellow metal they’d lugged along on their passage held no value—mere coloured rock. A disappointment, unlike the Cartier Dagger. Forevermore, that rock would be disparaged as fool’s gold. So Champlain brought the Indian name of the place, Quebec, into use, to dispel Cartier’s obsession with diamonds and to forget that sad comeuppance.

Now it was the second week of October, and the leaves were vivid in their dance of colours, while the winds carried cold air down from the north.

“They will arrive,” he told the traders.

“On the first canoe, look for Brulé’s scalp,” one replied.

“And hang on to your own,” suggested another.

The third week of October came and went. A few traders were beginning to pack their supplies to make the return trip to Quebec and passage home. One of these, up early to prepare his canoe, noticed movement on the river at first light.

He sounded the alarm, and the French reached for their harquebusiers. Champlain broke from his tent and scrambled down to the riverbank.

“Indians!” a man shouted.

“Are they Iroquois?” another asked.

“Not likely, from that direction,” Champlain noted quietly.

“Iroquois can come from anywhere.”

“That’s a lot of canoes.”

And Champlain smiled and said, “That’s a lot of furs. They’re loaded down to the gunwales. Gentlemen! Today, we trade. Tonight, we celebrate like kings!”

The fair became a party, with much food and no small amount of wine and brandy enjoyed by the Hurons, and the next day the Algonquians showed up with their canoes heavy-laden as well. The party continued for days with feasting and exchange and barter, and the French traders loaded their canoes for the journey north and each man mentioned that he’d never forget these five festive days, for they were the wonder of their lives.

Champlain was the last to leave, waving his hand from shore as the Indians departed. None had carried with him the Cartier Dagger, which would have signalled Brulé’s death. Champlain had listened to their stories and learned that his protégé had travelled deep into Huron territory. Brulé moved in the company of the young Hurons he’d befriended, and they had made it to the great inland waters and were bound south, exploring rivers below the Iroquois lands.

The inaugural fur fair had been a significant success. Traders were delighted with the furs they’d collected and would ship back to France, but they would also be returning to the maternal nation with words of enthusiasm
and praise. Through them, an opinion would progress that the colony could be economically viable, that in New France, the courageous might find their fortune.

Even for the three Huron travelling with him—two his own age and one younger—the beauty of the Allegheny River, as it flowed south through rolling mountains in the majesty of their autumnal colours, moved the young men in ways that altered their appreciation of the world and their attitude towards themselves. In commencing their southbound trek, they’d been excited by the adventure. They had expected to fight, to be beset by wonders and to return with astonishing tales. They had not expected to be apprehended by nature’s lore. The rising, falling hills laced by the meandering stream. The wafting mists at dawn. Clear light on a crisp day. Songbirds gathering for the migration south. The soft gibber of water along the stony shore. They felt themselves becoming a part of the forest and the river and sky, as though their paddles could no more fail to break the surface of the water than the wind could refuse to create its ripples, as though they could no more avoid canoeing south than the birds could decline to fly in advance of their passage. So the four young men were united in a different communion than they had expected as they achieved the place where the Allegheny met the Monongahela River to form the Ohio, a place foretold by friendly natives upstream, and they were not in the proper frame of mind to respond quickly enough or wisely enough when they fell into the view of a party of wandering Iroquois who were also distant from their usual lands. Knowing that he had lost the advantage of time and surprise, Étienne Brulé slipped his harquebusier into the stream, to keep it out of Iroquois hands.