I MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN what the 1918 flu was, but I knew that it made me very sick. Sick as I was, I was aware that many things, some good and some very sad, were happening on the reserve.
Agnes George’s mother stayed in our cabin until my mother was over the worst of her sickness. My mother was expecting a baby, and one day, when I was still in bed, this elderly woman came to me and told me that I had a new baby brother and that his name was Mark. Soon after she said this, Agnes George’s mother said, “Well, I’d better get back to my own home. Everyone is sick there too.”
A few days later, we heard that she was dead. Oh, the number of people who died on the reserve in those months was awful.
Our mission bell rings when someone dies. It seemed to me that, day and night, as the flu sickened more and more people, the bell never stopped ringing. I remember wishing that the ringing and the sickness and the deaths would end.
There was a doctor in Vanderhoof, Doctor Stone, but during this bad time, he hardly came to the reserve at all. He had to make his rounds with a horse and buggy and he travelled for miles in all directions out of Vanderhoof during the epidemic. Father Coccola, who lived on the reserve at that time, knew quite a bit about medicine, and as long as the flu lasted, he moved from cabin to cabin in the village, helping to care for the sick and dying.
The people of the village said that it seemed to be a matter of luck whether you lived or died. Some of the weakest survived and some of the strongest found their way to the village cemetery.
That cemetery—one of the things which filled me with horror during this time was the mass burial. When the epidemic was at its worst, a number of people died within two or three days of each other, and those who were left were too sick to lay out the corpses and make coffins. A large hole was dug in the cemetery, and seven bodies were carefully wrapped and buried side by side.
Many years later, some of my children were working with me at the cemetery. There were old boards scattered around, crosses which had collapsed over the years. I told the young people to gather up the old wood and put it in a pile for burning outside the graveyard fence. Then I noticed that the place where the seven people had been buried so many years ago was now a big hole and that the ground around the spot was very uneven.
I said to my children, “We should get a backhoe and make the ground level.” And I told them about the mass burial.
They looked at me and one of them said, “Oh, that’s gross!”
Finally the epidemic was over. The bell stopped ringing, and once again my mother and my stepfather were busy with fish and hides and berries. Life was good again.
After being a single child in my grandmother’s home, disowned by my real father, I now found myself with a stepfather, a stepsister, and a baby brother. Perhaps best of all, I was with my mother. And in the same village, I could see my Grandmother Ann whenever I wished—she had married the son of the hereditary chief.
I loved my stepfather. Johnny Paul was about ten years older than my mother and when he married my mother he was a widower with a daughter, Bella, who was just my age. Looking back now, I realize that it was a marriage of oppo-sites. Johnny was loud, loud—you always knew when he was around! My mother was different. She was quiet and even-tempered. I never remember her being cranky or irritated or annoyed about anything. She didn’t talk very much.
How I wish now that my mother and I had talked more to each other! But that’s the way things were, and wishing now doesn’t change anything—she was a woman of few words and I was like the other children, only interested in the day-to-day happenings around me. And yet, I know that I was closer to my quiet mother than to anyone else in the world.
Johnny Paul was one of the best trappers and hunters in the village. He was a good provider and would do anything to keep food on the table. He cut firewood for the people of Vanderhoof, he cleared land, and he acted as an auxiliary policeman sometimes, travelling to Prince Rupert and Bella Coola and south into the Caribou.
Looking back now, the thing for which I remember him best is that he never made any difference between me and his own daughter Bella. If Bella got a hair ribbon, so did I. From the day he married my mother, he accepted me as his daughter. Of course, I knew that he was not my father, that I had no father.
Nowadays, my situation would not be unusual, but in the years when I was growing up, I don’t believe there were other illegitimate children in our village. Some of the boys and girls teased me unmercifully about my father. One girl in particular, older than me, would follow me around calling, “Who’s your father? Who’s your father?” And then she would shout, “Charlie Pinker! Charlie Pinker!”
That was the only bad thing in those very early years of my life—some of the village people, especially the children, treated me as a person apart, different in some way from themselves. But never Johnny! Never!
The village of Stoney Creek was my world and I loved it. I loved the log houses all set out in rows and the little hillocks and the creek which ran through the village. Without that creek, the elders said, there would have been no village, for that was where the fish spawned. Years before, the Indians had lived further along Nulki Lake, but around 1890, families moved to the rolling land through which the creek flowed. In those years, fish was the staple in our diet, and wherever the fish were, there you would find the Natives.
Our day-to-day life, what we did, where we were located, the food we ate, all of these things depended on the season.
In the summer we were in Stoney Creek village. Oh, the village in the hot months of summer was an active place! Berries were picked and fish were caught. The men and women, and the children too, were busy with drying and canning and smoking. This work would go on throughout the daylight hours, and sometimes into the night—our central British Columbian winters were harsh and a family’s survival depended on a good store of food laid up for the months ahead.
My role in the family was established when I was still very young. I looked after Mark and the babies who came after him, and wherever we were, I spent much of my time indoors, looking after our home. Johnny, my grandmother, the elders, all used to say, “Mary is a real little mother!” Bella, my stepsister, worked with my mother and learned early to treat hides, to dry and smoke fish, to trap and shoot and do all the things which Native women have done for centuries, and which were so necessary for their families’ survival. I had to learn these things when I was much older
But it wasn’t all work. Once or twice during the summer, Johnny would harness the horses and we would jump into the wagon and travel to Vanderhoof, nine miles away.
How exciting it was when the horses reached the top of the hill and we could look down on Vanderhoof with its side-walks and buildings! Johnny drove the team of horses to the edge of town and, in amongst the willows, he tied the horses on a long rope so that they could graze.
When the horses were settled, Bella and I helped my mother to gather kindling for a campfire. We always had a campfire when we went to town—in those days there were no signs telling us that campfires were prohibited! Besides, we had no money to spend in a restaurant, and even if our pockets had been full of dollar bills, we weren’t allowed to enter any of the cafés in Vanderhoof. Natives knew that if they walked into a restaurant, they would be asked to leave, and if they refused, the police would be called. When I was a little girl, this didn’t bother me—I wouldn’t have traded the campfire and the willows and the sounds of the horses grazing for the most expensive dining room in the world!
When the campfire was ablaze, my mother put a kettle on to boil water for tea. She spread a tarp in the shade, and then we all went into the town. Sometimes we did nothing but walk along the wooden sidewalks, looking into the store windows and imagining what we would buy if we had money. Some-times, if my mother had a little spare cash, we might buy a loaf of store bread—that was a great treat for us—or some goodies from the bakery. Then we would go back to the campfire in amongst the willows and have our tea and treats. Sometimes we’d stay there until dark, driving home to Stoney Creek when the stars were out and the heat of the day was done.
I loved those trips to town! Tea never tasted so good as it did there on the edge of town, with our campfire burning and the horses snorting and grunting as they grazed in the long grass, with my mother and Johnny and Bella and Mark on the tarp beside me, our teacups steaming in our hands.
When I was a little girl, I believe I thought that the long hot days of summer would last forever. Then suddenly—as I grew older I came to know that it would happen but in those early years it was always a surprise to me—there was the first frost early in September and with it, the village emptied of people. One by one the families loaded their wagons with tents and bedding and supplies, and left for their hereditary hunting grounds.
And the village was silent.