Pioneers in Canada

by Harry Johnston

"Englishman, your king has never sent us any presents, nor entered into any treaty with us, wherefore he and we are still at war; and, until he does these things, we must consider that we have no other father, nor friend, among the white men, than the King of France; but, for you, we have taken into consideration, that you have ventured your life among us in the expectation that we should not molest you. You do not come armed with an intention to make war; you come in peace, to trade with us, and supply us with necessaries, of which we are in want. We shall regard you, therefore, as a brother, and you may sleep tranquilly, without fear of the Chipeways.... As a token of our friendship, we present you with this pipe to smoke."

When Minaváváná had finished his harangue, an Indian presented Henry with a pipe, the which, after he had drawn smoke through it three times, was carried back to the chief, and after him to every person in the room. This ceremony ended, the chief arose, and gave the Englishman his hand, in which he was followed by all the rest.

At the Sault Ste Marie, on the river connecting Lake Superior and Huron, Henry spent part of the spring of 1763-4, and engaged with a few French Canadians and Indians in making maple sugar, the season for which—April—was now at hand.

A temporary house for eight persons was built in a convenient part of the maple woods, distant about three miles from the fort. The men then gathered the bark of white birch trees, and made out of it vessels to hold the sap which was to flow from the incisions they cut in the bark of the maple trees. Into these cuts they introduced wooden spouts or ducts, and under them were placed the birch-bark vessels. When these were filled, the sweet liquid was poured into larger buckets, and the buckets were emptied into bags of elkskin containing perhaps a hundred gallons. Boilers (probably of metal, introduced by the French) were next set up in the camp over fires kept burning day and night, and the maple sap thus boiled became, by concentration, maple sugar.

The women attended to all the business of sugar manufacture, while the men cut wood and went out hunting and fishing to secure food for the community; though, as a matter of fact, sugar and syrup were their main sustenance during all this absence from home. "I have known Indians", wrote Henry, "to live for a time wholly on maple sugar and syrup and become fat." The sap of the maple had certain medicinal qualities which were exceedingly good for persons who had previously been eating little else than meat and fish, so that the three weeks of sugar-boiling in Canada was, no doubt, a splendid assistance to the health of the natives. On this particular occasion described by Henry, the party returned, after three weeks' absence, to the Sault Ste Marie with 1600 lb. of maple sugar, and 36 gallons of syrup.[4]

Henry returned in the summer of 1763 to Fort Michili-makinak. The place was then held by a British garrison under Major Etherington. Shortly after Henry's arrival, an Ojibwé chief named Wáwátam came often to his lodgings, and, taking a great fancy to the Englishman, asked leave to become his blood brother. He was about forty-five years of age, and of an excellent character amongst his nation. He warned Henry that he, Wáwátam, had had bad dreams during the winter, in which he had been disturbed "by the noises of evil birds", and gave him other roundabout warnings that the Indians of different tribes were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of speech is so extravagantly figurative".

The King's birthday was celebrated with, no doubt, somewhat tipsy rejoicings in the summer of 1763. The Ojibwé Indians outside the fort pretended they were going to have a great game of La Crosse with the Sāki or "Fox" Indians. This game was got up to find a pretext for entering the fort and taking the British officers and garrison at a disadvantage. Some of the officers and soldiers, suspecting nothing in the way of danger, were outside the fort by the waterside. However, the sport commenced, and suddenly the ball was struck over the pickets of the fort. At once the Ojibwés, pretending great ardour in their game, came leaping, struggling and shouting over the defences into the fort as though "in the unrestrained pursuit of a rude, athletic exercise". Once inside the fortifications, they attacked the unsuspicious and unarmed soldiers and officers, of whom they killed seventy out of ninety.

Henry had not gone with the others, but had stayed in his room writing letters. Suddenly he heard the Indian warcry and a noise of general confusion. Looking out of his window he saw a crowd of Indians inside the fort furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they could reach. Meantime, the French Canadian inhabitants of the fort looked on calmly, neither intervening to stop the Indians, nor suffering any injury from them. Realizing that all his fellow countrymen were practically destroyed, Henry endeavoured to hide himself. He entered the house of his next-door neighbour, a Frenchman, and found the whole family at the windows gazing at the scene of blood before them. He implored this Frenchman to put him into some place of safety until the massacre was over. The latter merely shrugged his shoulders and intimated that he could do nothing for him; but a Pani Indian woman, a slave of this Frenchman, beckoned to Henry to follow her, and hid him in a garret. Then the Indians burst into the house and asked the Frenchman if he had got any Englishmen concealed, the latter returned an evasive answer, telling them to search for themselves. Henry hid himself under a heap of birch-bark vessels, which were used in maple-sugar manufacture. The door was unlocked, the four Indians dashed in, their bodies covered with blood, and armed with tomahawks. The hidden man thought that the throbbing of his heart must make a noise loud enough to betray him. The Indians searched the garret, and one of them approached Henry so closely as almost to touch him; yet he remained undiscovered, possibly owing to the dark colour of his clothes and the dim light in the room. Then the Indians, after describing to the Frenchman how many they had killed and scalped, returned downstairs, and the door was locked behind them.

But the next day the Indians insisted on a further search, and, regarding every attempt at concealment as vain, Henry, by a desperate resolve, rose from his bed and presented himself in full view to the Indians as they entered the room. They were all in a state of intoxication and entirely naked. One of them, upwards of six feet in height, had all his face and body covered with charcoal and grease, but with a large white ring encircling each of his eyes. This man, walking up to Henry, seized him with one hand by the collar of his coat, and in the other held up a large carving knife, making a feint as if to plunge it into his breast, his eyes meanwhile fixed steadfastly on those of the Englishman. At length, after some seconds of the most anxious suspense, he dropped Henry's arm, saying: "I won't kill you," adding that he had often fought in war with the English and brought away many scalps, but that on a certain occasion he had lost a brother whose name was Musinigon, and that he would adopt Henry in his place.

One would like the story to have stopped here at this happy turn of events, but Wenniway (as this saviour of Henry was called) entertained a very fickle regard for his adopted brother, and, though he once or twice intervened, subsequently took no great pains to see that his life was spared. However, for the time being he was reprieved, and regarded Wenniway as his "master". Nevertheless, he was soon haled out of the house by another Indian, apparently coming with Wenniway's authority. This man ordered him to undress, and then took away all his clothes, giving him such dirty rags or strips of leather as he possessed himself. He frankly owned that his motive for stripping him was that, as he wished afterwards to kill him, Henry's clothes might not be stained with blood! With the intention of assassinating him, in fact, he dragged Henry along to a region of bushes and sandhills, and then produced a knife and attempted to execute his purpose. But with the rage and strength of absolute despair Henry wrenched himself free, pushed his would-be murderer on one side, and ran for his life towards the fort.