Etienne spoke seriously and long.
“We got to do something. Our women can make their baskets but us men got to find wage work for money to buy food. Everybody says, ‘Be that whiteman guide for fishing.’ But that’s not enough.”
“I rather do guide for fish than hunt,” said Peter. “They can’t hurt you with that fish rod.”
“Only other work for us Mi’kmaw is woods work. Plenty work there.”
The whiteman timber kings were taking down the forests of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick. Hundreds of sawmills stood on every river and stream that could be dammed. Once again Sels took up axes, and although everything was difficult they continued to talk together, to look for ways out of their troubles. Etienne built a whiteman log house and named his newest son Joseph Howe Sel to honor the fair-minded Commissioner for Indian Affairs. This took some explaining and in the evenings the remaining Sels gathered in the warmer log house to talk, each bringing a few sticks for the fire. It was a confining, immovable box, but it held the heat better than ragged wikuoms made without good bark, tanned skins or correct poles.
“Joseph Howe is one of them good whitemen. He looked and he saw our troubles,” said Alli, who had shyly suggested the baby’s name. “He tried help us. He saw us danger, all us land taken, us push away from river. Can’t make eel weirs no more.”
“Yes,” said Etienne with something like a rare smile. “He saw we was cold, hungry, give us coats, blankets. He said these days we have to give up our wikuom as the bark gone with the big trees. No skin covers, them caribou and moose gone.”
“Plenty logs and planks for a whiteman house but we got to buy them. With whiteman money,” said Peter. He drew his face into a cruel mask. “Howe is a whiteman. If he is good to us it is to get something — more land — something. That is all I got to say bout that.”
Alli asked a question. “Édouard-Outger, is it better in that Penobscot place where you come from? You got people there? Mi’kmaq already there?”
“Not anymore. No, Maine people don’t like Mi’kmaw people. There are some Mi’kmaw people live there in Aroostook County. Good basket makers, not just women, men make those big baskets, too. But Penobscot? Same like here, woods all gone, whitemen got the land. My father, Francis-Outger Sel, had a sawmill”—he paused for a murmur of admiration—“but after he die in that sawmill somebody set it afire and it burned all down and the house. I was alone, family dead, went away out in the west. When I was gone the town took the property for taxes. My father he never pay taxes. He thought if you own property you own it. But you don’t own it. You have to pay money every year to that town or they can take the land.”
There was a hum of disbelief. “They took his land. Well, it was my land then but I didn’t know about the tax. I wasn’t there. When I come back it was all gone, you see. All gone. They laughed at me, said, ‘Indian, you don’t own no land here.’ ”
“Do whitemen here pay those tax?”
“I think so. Not know for sure. It is the way of whitemen that they must pay for everything, not one time but many many many times.”
“We never did this thing with land — own it, buy it and pay and pay more tax.”
“Yes, and that is why the Mi’kmaw people now have very little land. The whitemen get land with papers that secure it. You can see for yourself that now there are a hundred times more whitemen than Mi’kmaw people. If we want to secure any of our old land we have to do it the whiteman way with papers. And money. To learn those English laws we have to know how to read. Write. In English. The children must learn these ways if they live here. Or be wiped out.”
“No. If we had a canoeful of money they would not let us own our own land. That is why there is the reserve.”
There was muttering and a father in the back said, “It is true. We are so few in number that they can crush us with ease. One day of shooting and we would all lie dead. It is only a dream that they will someday go back to their old countries. They will never leave our country. They are with us for all time. And if we want to live we must be like them.”
“It seems life is better for Indians in the States country?”
“No, it is not better for us anywhere. But here near Shubenacadie I think it is worse. Here the whitemen hate us very much.”
Skerry Hallagher took the talking stick. “I know how to read and write. I know a little bit about the laws. If I can get books and paper I can teach the children and anyone who wants to learn this reading and writing. But it takes a long time. It is like learning to hunt.”
“I, too, can help,” said Elise.
Édouard-Outger cleared his throat and said softly, “And I. But where are all our children? I count only five.” And he decided that he, too, would marry. It was one thing to talk, quite another to act.
Skerry Hallagher stood up. His eyes were weary and red. “Also. It is not only that the children must learn reading. Mi’kmaw men must take jobs and be paid.”
“Jobs! What jobs?”
“The jobs whitemen don’t want, the hardest jobs. Work in forest to cut trees. Cut firewood for settlers. Carry things for surveyors who mark out ways to take more of our land. Make our hunting paths into roads for whitemen wagons. Dig potato in Maine. More woods cutting there. We can do this. We can do these things. They will not crush us.”
The young men agreed. They would go to the lumber camps and ask for work.
“At least in the lumber camps we will eat,” said Alik, Peter’s son.
“You are not going,” said Peter. “I need you on the boat. Passengers. Fishing.”
Etienne’s oldest son, Molti, took the stick and said, “We can bring money to everyone.”
At the end of the evening someone tossed the stick into the fire — it was only a stick. It was the last talking stick any Sel ever held. Talking sticks were the old way.
• • •
Alik said nothing to Peter, but slipped away in the night. In the end nine of the younger men went to lumber camps scattered across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine. It was easier for them in the woods camps. Men were valued and measured by what work they could do. And for Édouard-Outger that meant increasing Mi’kmaw numbers. He took a young wife, Maddil, and did what had to be done. Born in 1877, Lobert Sel was the oldest of Édouard-Outger’s six children.
62. barkskins
For three generations the Sels worked in the woods of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, down into Maine, falling and spudding trees, making booms, cranking booms from headworks, river driving, working the sawmills, building corduroy log roads, cutting cordwood, cutting pulp, cutting pit props. As Europe disgorged its people the logging camps, especially after the Great War, became polyglot assemblies of men — English, French, Americans, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, a few men from Greenland, First Nation natives, even one or two Inuit. Injury and death were common enough in the northeast woods, but since the first logging days the most dangerous work was river driving, and until it ended it was work apportioned to Indians, those considered born to violent water.
“I’ll tell you somethin, mister,” a camp boss said to a company bookkeeper who had questioned his bateau and grub expenses. “Company wants its logs? Wants to git them to the sawmill? Water is everthing. Water moves the logs, powers the mills. They want their logs in the saw house they better swallow the drive expense cause ain’t no other way to git ’em there.” He jerked his thumb at the river where two Mi’kmaq and a Montagnais were dancing over the sticks, jabbing them along like sullen sheep.