“IKWESENS, GEEYAWAAN! IKWESENS GEEYAWAAN! It’s a little girl! It’s a little girl!”
As the midwife held up the newborn baby for the happy mother, Mary Whiteduck, to see, the infant began to howl. That was the signal for Isaac, Mary’s husband, who had been nervously waiting outside the family cabin throughout the night, to push open the door and enter.
“A strong and healthy child,” the midwife told him. The beloved Anishinabe elder had been delivering babies at Cat Lake Indian Reserve in northern Ontario for as long as anyone could remember. “Someone to take care of you and Mary when you reach my age.”
The news travelled fast in the tiny settlement that spring morning in 1956 on the shore of Cat Lake, some one hundred and fifty miles upstream from the Albany river. Within minutes, relatives, friends and neighbours came to offer their congratulations, the men standing around outside the cabin to smoke their pipes and gossip and the women going in to drop off small gifts and admire the baby.
That evening, in honour of the addition to their community, everyone gathered around a campfire to laugh, tell stories, drink tea and eat country food—fish, game and berries harvested from the land. Several days later, a respected elder and long-standing friend of the family came to their home and, in a ceremony involving much meditation and prayer, named the baby Martha.
Four months later, the sky was filled with the cries of geese departing for the south, and Mary and Isaac prepared to join the annual fall exodus of families leaving for their traplines. Isaac fine-tuned the ancient, temperamental Johnson outboard motor, made some last-minute repairs to the family’s eighteen-foot square-stern freighter canoe, and loaded it with guns, axes, saws, traps, clothing and provisions. The couple closed the cabin where they spent their summers and said goodbye to the handful of people remaining behind, mainly the sick and elderly who would not be able to survive a hard winter on the land. They tucked their infant daughter into the beaded deerskin cradle bag of her tikinagan, the cradle-board that would serve her as baby carriage and crib for the first two years of her life, and took her on her first trip across Cat Lake and downstream to the small lake and trapping cabin that had been in Isaac’s family for generations.
Martha’s earliest years passed in a blur. Her first distinct memory was of playing on the shore in front of the family’s cabin in the bush when she was five. The wind changed direction, the sky grew black and great cracking sounds blasted out of the clouds followed by stunning flashes of light. She burst into tears and her laughing mother ran to pick her up and carry her inside just as the storm burst over their heads and giant raindrops swept across the water to soak them.
“Don’t be afraid, my daughter,” her mother said, as she removed her wet clothes and dried her off. “That was just the Thunderbird flapping his wings and shooting lightning bolts from his eyes. He does that when he is fighting his enemy, the giant water snake. Never forget that he’s a friend of the Anishinabe people, for he provides the rain for Mother Earth and all her creatures to drink.”
To cheer up her up, she added, “Now I’m going to tell you a story about Nanabush.”
Martha immediately stopped crying, for her mother had told her tales before about the exploits of this part-human, part-spirit son of the West Wind and grandson of Gitche Manitou, and she loved them. Some of them were serious, about how he helped the Anishinabe people by creating animals and plants for them to eat, and others made her laugh. Martha preferred the comical ones and her mother launched into a long, involved tale about the time he once invited the animals to a feast, and didn’t tell them until they arrived that they were the feast!
The little girl wasn’t sure the story was all that funny, especially if you were an animal, but she laughed just the same.
In a visit some months later that would remain forever etched in her memory, friends of her parents came to their cabin at the time of the Great Moon, when the fiercest and coldest winter winds blow upon the land. After snowshoeing through the bush and across the frozen lakes from their home on a nearby trapline, they pushed open the door and entered, smiling broadly.
“Bojo! Bojo! Hello! Hello! We’ve come to visit. We were going crazy over at our place, with our kids away at residential school and never seeing anyone from one moon to another, and we decided to come see you!”
“Ahaaw! Ahaaw! Welcome! Welcome! What a pleasant surprise!” said Mary. “Take off your things and make yourselves comfortable. I’ll have some hot tea ready for you in a minute.”
The guests took off their parkas, unlaced and removed their moosehide boots, and settled down to relax on the bed. Isaac dug out his can of Old Chum pipe tobacco, and soon the two couples were sipping hot tea, smoking their pipes and gossiping.
As soon as she could, Mary excused herself and set about making supper.
“You’re in luck. I’ve got a rabbit stew already warming up on the back of the stove. We’ll have that with some bannock and fried fish.” With her kerchief holding her hair in place, she cheerfully mixed Robin Hood flour, Maple Leaf Tenderflake lard, Royal baking powder, Sifto salt and ice-cold lake water in a tin bowl to make fried bannock in a heavy, fire-blackened, cast iron frying pan. The first course prepared, she handed it around, encouraging everyone to eat it while it was still hot and greasy, and started work preparing a large, fresh pickerel she had caught that morning while ice-fishing.
“Let me help you,” the visiting wife said. “You shouldn’t have to do all that work yourself.”
“No, no, please sit down, you’re my guest,” Mary told her. “I can’t tell you how happy I am you’re here. The winter is so long and we never see anyone.”
Mary scaled, gutted and cleaned the fish, cut it into fillets and used the same pan to fry them in bubbling lard. When it was golden brown and crispy, she called everyone to the rough, handmade table and served a meal that Martha would never forget: rabbit stew, fried fish and more bannock on tin plates with mugs of sweetened tea and Carnation evaporated milk in a room lit by the soft yellow light of a coal oil lamp and smelling of freshly scraped and curing hides, wood smoke and pipe tobacco.
It was time to get down to some serious visiting and Martha climbed up on the always welcoming and comfortable lap of her father and listened attentively and quietly as the grown-ups talked.
Beginning with the subject that interested them the most, the men engaged in some low-key bragging about how many beaver, marten, mink and muskrat they had trapped that winter. They moved on to talk about blizzards that had blown up when they were far from home, about shelters they had thrown together to ride out storms, about waking up in the mornings to dig themselves out into brilliant sunshine, and about fierce wolverines, pound for pound the most powerful animals in the bush, raiding their traplines, stealing bait, springing traps and never being caught.
“But no matter how tough things are for us now,” Isaac said, “things were worse for the ancestors before the arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company. They had no market for their furs and no guns and axes and all the things we take for granted today. The summers when everyone got together would have been the best time of the year since there was fish to eat for the entire community at Cat Lake. But I don’t know how the families made it through the winters out in the bush all by themselves. Up here in the north, the people didn’t have any wild rice or maple sugar to store away like our cousins, the Anishinabe to the south. It would have been hard for the hunters to bring down enough moose and deer with their spears and bows and arrows in the deep snow to feed their families and they would have had to rely on rabbits, beaver, squirrels and any small game they could get their hands on. No wonder not many people lived more than thirty winters in those days.”
The women said nothing for a while and then asked the men whether they thought they would get enough money from the trader for their furs to pay their debts and outfit themselves for the next year. The men did not know and changed the subject to hunting.
“I got two deer last fall,” said Isaac. “They were pretty skinny and we don’t have much meat left in our cache. I guess we’ll have to live on rabbits and fish. We could have a tough time feeding ourselves before we make it back home.”
“I’m okay this year,” said the visiting trapper. “Shot a big bull moose some time ago and have plenty of meat stored away. Last year it was a different story. Couldn’t get any big animals and it was a bad year for rabbits. When the thaw came, we had no meat left. I couldn’t even go fishing, the ice was so soft and dangerous. Thankfully, I stumbled across a bear that was still hibernating and it was easy to kill him. Sure saved the family from going hungry or even worse. I offered a sacrifice of tobacco and a prayer to its spirit master to be sure he wasn’t offended.”
Isaac reflected for some time on what had been said, and puffing studiously on his pipe, told an old story about someone from the reserve who had not paid proper attention to the rituals he was supposed to follow when he killed an animal for food. The spirit of the animal had become angry, he said, and had placed a curse on the hunter making it impossible for him to bring down other game and his family had starved.
“The old folks were right,” the visitor said, “when they said there were two worlds, the one we live in, and the Skyworld—the one we can’t see, where Nanabush lives with the spirits of the dead.
“I know some Anishinabe people today don’t agree with the old wisdom. But they’re mainly people who spend too much time mixing with whites and believe everything the missionaries tell them.”
“Those of us who live on the land know better,” said Isaac. “There are things out here that the people on the outside will never understand. I never feel alone because Gitche Manitou is present everywhere—in Mother Earth, Father Sky, Grandfather Sun, Grandmother Moon, the stars, the trees, the plants, the rain, the snow, the streams, the lakes, the trees and the rocks.”
“There’s something else. I’ve always thought the elders were right when they said the Anishinabe people were related to the animals.”
“I wonder what it’d be like to visit the Skyworld,” said the visitor.
“You’ll know soon enough when you die.”
“I mean, now, when I’m still alive.”
After several more puffs on his pipe, Isaac said, “Only the shamans had the power to travel to the Skyworld and come back alive. And the missionaries drove them away long ago. That’s too bad, because they helped people. If you were sick in your body or in your head, they could travel to the other world and find ways to cure you.”
“I’ve heard that,” said the visitor. “Did you know that the shamans were the people who painted those Thunderbirds, fish and animals on that rock wall on the other side of Cat Lake back home? Nobody wants to talk about it, but some of those pictures have great power. There’s one place, I bet you know it, where there’s a reddish-brown image of the ancestors paddling a canoe. It’s really spooky.”
“I know it,” said Isaac. “I believe you. I’ve been over there at night when I could’ve sworn I heard drumming coming from inside that rock wall. Gives you a strange feeling. I deal with it by putting tobacco in a crack in the wall under the canoe and by praying to Gitche Manitou whenever I pass by. Also helps with the fishing.”
Several long months later, the lake in front of the cabin was black with rotten ice and the sky was filled with formations of honking Canada geese flying north. One night as she lay between her parents in bed, Martha heard the sound of the south wind in the black spruce trees, and her father murmuring to her mother, “It won’t be long now. It won’t be long now.”
When she got up in the morning, the ice was gone from the lake, and grey, cold waves were beating on the shore. It was time to return to the reserve. With Martha helping the best she could, her parents pushed the canoe into the water, loaded it with furs, utensils and other things they would need back at Cat Lake, and attached the old outboard motor to the stern. Martha took her place in the bow, her favourite spot, her mother settled down in the centre and her father took a seat beside the motor, his loaded gun beside him in case he came across game. As they always did when departing for the reserve in the spring, they left their cabin unlocked and stocked with supplies to help any lost hunter in need of shelter who happened by.
Two days later, after forcing their way upstream to Cat Lake, they saw the reserve off in the distance. As they neared the shore, friends and relatives who had already made it home from their winter homes in the bush came out of their cabins to greet them.
“Welcome home.”
“How was the trapping?”
“There are still a few families who haven’t made it back yet.”
“Martha, how big you’ve become!”
“Come and see us when you get settled.”
After unloading the canoe and moving into their summer cabin, Martha’s parents, their daughter in tow, visited the Hudson’s Bay Company store to sell their furs. Martha looked on as the trader, a white man, graded the winter’s take. He entered a figure in a big black book and winked at the little girl.
“Looks like your daddy did really well this year,” he said in broken Anishinaabemowin. “Maybe he’ll buy you a treat!”
Martha nodded her head solemnly, acknowledging the attention the trader was giving her. She knew him well for he had lived in the small community for as long as she could remember and had married a local woman. Although he could be gruff at times, he was well liked by everyone because he had made an effort to learn Anishinaabemowin and was good to his wife and children.
“Another season like that,” he said, turning to her father, “and you’ll be out of debt. Now have a good look around. I got lots of new stock. All the usual traps, guns, ammunition, fishing gear, axes, clothing and food. I’ve also got something else that should interest you. Some new Johnson outboard motors have come in. You could use one. That old piece of junk you’ve been using could break down completely and leave you stranded some day. Or worse. It could conk out when you’re in the rapids. You could get yourself killed! Whatdyasay?”
“Maybe another year,” said Isaac. “When I’ve paid off all my bills.”
“Look at these sultana raisins and dried fruit,” the man continued, ignoring Isaac’s comment. “My wife tells me they go really good mixed in bannock. Better get some now before I run out. Take anything you want. Your credit’s good here.”
Isaac poked around for a while in the tiny building that smelled of furs, coal oil and chewing tobacco, and picked out a small bag of hard candy.
“These are for you,” he said to his daughter. “We’ll come back later to stock up on food and other supplies for the winter.”
Spring turned into Martha’s last summer of innocence before she was sent off to residential school, and she experienced to the full the uninhibited joy of shouting and laughing with children she had not seen since the preceding fall. Every day, she ran, played tag and spent endless hours in the water swimming and splashing. At times, she joined her friends on canoe rides. Occasionally, an adult would take her with him when he went fishing. She was never home until after dark but her parents never worried.
Then it was time for the annual visit of the Indian agent. More than half a century before, a flotilla of canoes, each one flying a Union Jack from its bow, had arrived at the summer encampment of the Cat Lake people. The boats were filled with Mounties, in full ceremonial dress, and self-important white officials wearing pith helmets and draped in mosquito netting as if they were on an expedition into the heart of Africa.
“Your great father, His Majesty King Edward VII,” they told the people, “is concerned about the well-being of his Native children who reside here in the northern wilderness. As a sign of his immense compassion, he has asked us to come here to sign a treaty with you that will protect you for all time. In return for ceding your rights to this land, every man, woman and child will be immediately handed a cash payment and a reserve will be set aside for your exclusive use.
“All you have to do,” they said to the people who did not know how to read and write and who had no concept of rights and land ownership as interpreted by the commissioners, “is to put your mark on this document and each year a representative of the Crown will visit you and give you more money.”
The people did so, unknowingly authorizing outsiders to take the mineral and forest wealth of their lands and game wardens to enter their traditional territory to interfere with their trapping and hunting way of life. And every year that followed, the people of Cat Lake held a celebration to mark the anniversary of the treaty and the visit to their community of the Indian agent to pay the treaty money.
Preparations for the festivities of 1962 began when the men draped sheets of canvas over a frame of birch saplings to make a tent big enough to accommodate everyone and moved stoves and tables into place. The children collected kindling and firewood and picked blueberries and raspberries to make into pies. The women set to work, preparing in advance communal meals of boiled moose meat cut into strips, venison stew, fried fish, berries, bannock and tea as well as local delicacies such as boiled tripe de roche, a gooey favourite made from dry black moss mixed with berries and well-cooked fish pounded into powder with everything liberally drenched in fish oil.
On the morning of the big day, the children gathered on the shore and scanned the sky for the arrival of the float plane carrying their guests. Eventually, someone with sharp eyesight saw a speck far off in the sky.
“It’s them. The zhaagnaash are coming! The white men are coming!”
As the float plane approached the lake, the Indian agent, a short, trim, red-haired bureaucrat in his mid-forties with a handlebar moustache and nervous, pale blue eyes, was sitting beside the pilot trying to pick out, from the mass of green foliage along the shore, the cluster of log cabins that comprised the settlement.
A self-made man, the Indian agent had left school and home in the depths of the Great Depression when his father lost his factory job and could no longer feed his family. After years of riding the rails looking for work and living by his wits, he joined the army when war broke out in 1939, discovered he had a talent for managing men, progressed through the non-commissioned officer ranks, and was eventually ordered to report for duty as a drill sergeant at Camp Ipperwash, a newly constructed recruit training base on the shore of Lake Huron in southwestern Ontario. He had relished converting squads of awkward farm boys and factory workers into polished, well-drilled soldiers who responded like puppets to his shouted commands on the parade grounds.
It was not his fault he had never made it overseas to participate in the actual fighting. He had volunteered to go, but his superior officer had taken note of him, had liked him and had blocked all efforts to ship him out, afraid he would not find anyone as competent to replace him. When the war ended, that same officer, who had joined the government department responsible for Indian Affairs when he was demobilized, remembered him and told him that his employer was hiring former military personnel to work as Indian agents running Indian reserves across the country.
“You probably don’t know anything about Indians, but that’s not a requirement,” he told him. “You don’t even need a high school education to get one of these jobs. Veterans are given preference and we’re looking for tough, well-disciplined managers to deal with childlike people who are still living a hand-to-mouth existence and need help to prepare them to join the modern world.
“Just get yourself the proper forms, fill them out and put me down as a reference. I’ll make sure you get taken on.”
The former sergeant jumped at the chance to move up in the world and become a federal public servant with its job security and guarantee of a good pension. And it wasn’t true that he didn’t know anything about Indians. He had met plenty of them living in hobo jungles and working in lumber camps and tobacco fields when he wandered the country in the 1930s.
In those days, he considered it unfair that Indians, even war veterans, were legally prohibited from buying beer, liquor and wine in government outlets and from drinking in beer parlours and bars like white Canadians. So when he had a little cash, he would sometimes do a little discreet bootlegging, buying a few bottles of cheap wine from a government liquor store to sell to his Indian acquaintances, at a good profit of course, to compensate himself for the time, effort and risk involved. Sometimes, to show that he was not prejudiced, he would even accept an invitation to have a little drink with them.
Once he had even spoken up for the Indians, even if none of them knew about it. Like everyone else on the base, he was vaguely aware that Camp Ipperwash had been built on land seized from Indians at the beginning of the war. He had no problem with that. After all, everyone had to make sacrifices for the war effort, and Indians were having their lands taken from them all the time anyway. But when he caught some recruits using tombstones and crosses for target practice in the abandoned Native cemetery, he was furious.
“There may just be a bunch of dead Indians buried here,” he told them, “but how would you like if some strangers came along and shot up your family graves?”
After joining Indian Affairs, the new bureaucrat was pleased to discover that the hierarchical work culture of his workplace was similar to that of his beloved army. Only instead of drilling green soldiers on the parade grounds, he was ordering Indians around on their reserves. Like the recruits, the Indians could do nothing about it. They had few rights, not being allowed to vote in federal elections or even to keep their children at home to be educated. As an Indian agent, he had the authority to decide whether his charges could leave their reserves, own property, attend university, sell their livestock or even organize themselves politically. Although he sensed there was something indecent in that, he actually enjoyed lording it over so many people.
Now, as the plane landed, he looked forward to celebrating another Treaty Day. In the seats behind him were a Mountie decked out in a scarlet tunic sprinkled with badges, striped breeches and polished knee-high boots and spurs, and a clerk, who sat with one hand on a cash box.
After disembarking from the aircraft, the Indian agent shook hands with the chief and introduced his travelling companions. The chief formally presented the band councillors, and everyone moved to a table set up in front of the Hudson’s Bay store by the trader.
“How’s the wife and kids?” asked the Indian agent, trying to make small talk.
“They’re okay.”
“Someone told me the winter up here wasn’t too bad. How did your people make out? Get lots of fur?”
“Everyone’s done okay, I guess.”
The clerk bustled around opening his ledgers and checking the cash box as the Indian agent asked the chief if the water had been high in the spring, if the fishing was good, if the elders were receiving their old age pension cheques on time and if many babies had been born since his last visit. The chief, who had met the Indian agent many times on other Treaty Days and did not like him, continued to answer in monosyllables.
When all was ready, the two white officials sat down and the Mountie took up a position behind the table, standing at attention, when not swatting mosquitoes and black flies, and doing his best to lend an air of formality to the occasion. The people, dressed in their best store-bought clothes—calico dresses with colourful floral patterns for the women and plain white shirts and trousers and braces for the men—waited patiently as the clerk checked their names off a list and handed over their treaty money: four crisp, brand-new one-dollar bills to each member of the band.
Afterwards, the chief asked everyone to gather around, and as he did every year, officially welcomed the visitors to the community, speaking in Anishinaabemowin for the benefit of his people, with the trader translating his words into English for the delegation.
“I thank the people who have come such a long way to be with us today to celebrate the treaty signed by our grandfathers so many years ago. We are always happy to receive our treaty money. But the money is not the important thing. Having the opportunity to celebrate the treaty itself is what counts. We don’t want it ever to be forgotten that our grandfathers were promised by the white man that the treaty would last for as long as the rivers flow, the sun shines and grass grows.
“The treaty, however, is being ignored. We are a patient people but the mining, lumber and pulp companies are taking minerals and wood off our traditional lands and we get nothing, not even jobs. You are our friend and we ask you to tell the big chief in Ottawa to help us.”
As the chief spoke, the Indian agent stood stiffly erect, his hands clasped behind his back, staring off into the distance as if he were back on the parade grounds listening to a report from one of his corporals. When the speech was finished and the translation rendered, he turned to the chief and gravely delivered his judgement.
“You know I tell it as it is and I don’t mince words. Of course I’ll pass your message up the chain of command, just like I’ve done with your other ones over the years, but I gotta tell you now, as your friend, that no one’s gonna listen. For one thing, you should read the fine print in this treaty before you start complaining. Maybe you’d see that you don’t have as many rights as you think you have.
“Another thing you gotta realize is that the world has moved on since your treaty was signed. Two world wars, the Great Depression, and the arrival of the motor car, airplanes, lots of things. Just this year, the government put a satellite up to explore the skies and paved the highway across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
“And no one, not even way back here in the bush, can stand in the way of progress. Maybe you’ll find it hard to understand, but nobody in Ottawa believes in these old treaties any more, and the day is coming when there’ll be no more reserves, and you Indians will be just like the Italians, the Dutch and the Chinese—no better and no worse off than anyone else.”
As the people applauded without conviction, the chief handed each visitor gifts of deerskin moccasins with rabbit fur lining, beaded moosehide winter gloves with beaver pelt trim and birchbark needle boxes embroidered with porcupine quills and sweetgrass.
“My people would be honoured if you would stay and help us celebrate Treaty Day this evening,” said the chief. “I’d love to visit,” was his answer, “but I’m a busy man with many other reserves to visit and we just got time for a quick bite.”
The visitors, led by the chief, walked over to the big tent, ignored the tripe de roche and wolfed down generous helpings of fried pickerel, bannock and venison stew. After a few sips of hot tea, they hurried to their waiting aircraft, promising to spend more time with the community the next year.
The first evening, the people got together in the tent to eat, to drink endless mugs of tea and to talk and laugh, just as they did every year after the departure of the white people from Ottawa. When the feast was over and the dishes cleared away, everyone pitched in to remove the tables and make ready to dance and sing. Two men pulled out fiddles and began to play and step-dance to the rhythm of country music. Delighted men, women and children took to the floor, singing the words to the tunes, dancing jigs and forming themselves up into groups of eight to square-dance.
After the sun had set and it was dark, the people made their way to the beach to sit around a great campfire and listen to the old stories. Anxious not to miss a word, Martha worked her way through the crowd and found a spot at the feet of the elders who had pride of place on logs drawn up around the fire. She sat spellbound as the storytellers related the great myths of the Anishinabe people: how Muskrat created the world, how Frog brought the seasons into being, how Dog became the friend of man, how Thunderbird shook the heavens, how Nanabush came to be the messenger of Gitche Manitou and played tricks on humans and animals, and much, much more.
The second night was reserved for a traditional celebration and the mood was solemn. The people stood silently in the tent after the feast as the chief pounded rhythmically on a water drum. Fashioned out of an empty metal nail keg, half filled with water and tightly covered with a water-soaked moosehide, it throbbed out hauntingly for miles across the lake, summoning the ancestors to come join the celebrations. Other drummers joined in, striking smaller drums with their hands and shaking rattles made from discarded Carnation milk cans filled with small stones. Someone called out that the spirits had arrived, and the people began to chant the old songs and to shuffle solemnly in single file around the inside of the tent.
Afterwards, around the campfire, an old man, entrusted with the evening’s storytelling, asked the children to sit on the ground in front of him, promising to tell them a few things they would never forget.
“Last night,” he said, after taking a seat, “you heard stories about Gitche Manitou, the Great Spirit, and his supporters and the good things they do for the Anishinabe people. Tonight, I’m going to tell you some things normally too awful for kids to hear. About monsters and bad things. Anyone who doesn’t want to listen should leave now.”
Of course, no one left, and the old man leaned forward and earnestly whispered to the children that an evil spirit, almost as powerful as Gitche Manitou, was at that moment hiding in the shadows disguised as a toad and secretly listening to what was being said.
“That spirit’s name is Madji Manitou,” he said, “and it has many wicked followers. The water serpent that chases away the fish and upsets the canoes of fishermen in storms and drowns them is one of them. It is the master of the bearwalkers, the witches who arrive in a ball of fire and take possession of the minds and bodies of people. Everyone is afraid of bearwalkers because they cast spells on people they don’t like and make their hair and teeth fall out. They even cause sickness and death. They’re easy to recognize because they dress in black, are really old and are always in a bad mood.
“Madji Manitou is also the ruler over the Wendigo, the monster I am now going to tell you about tonight. And you better pay attention and not make me mad because maybe I’m a bearwalker. After all,” he said, as the children laughed nervously, “I’m an old man, I dress in black, I’m bad-tempered, especially to little kids, and I know all about Madji Manitou.
“The Wendigo,” he continued, “is a half-human, half-devil monster at least ten times the size of a man, with breath that reeks of rotten human flesh.
“You kids have all smelled animals who have been dead a long time in the bush or in the lake. Well, the Wendigo smells even worse. It stinks and it isn’t even dead! Its favourite food is fresh, living, human meat. During the spring thaw, human-hunting is really good. The snow is deep and wet and it’s hard for people to get around. The moose and deer can wait for the snow to melt, holed up in the swamps eating cedar branches. But the food supplies put away in the fall by the trappers are low by then and sometimes their families have nothing left to eat.”
The old man suddenly leaped to his feet and lunged at the children as if he were the Wendigo, gnashing his teeth, snarling and beating his chest. And as the children screamed in terror and ran off crying and stumbling over the rough terrain beyond the light of the campfire, he cried out, “Watch out for the toad! Watch out for the toad!”
Barely able to contain their laughter, the parents went to bring them back, telling them the old man was just pretending.
“Oh no I’m not,” he said, frowning and picking up a hemlock bough that he hurled into the fire, releasing a shower of sparks that flew upwards like fireflies in the night sky and a cloud of smoke that left the people downwind choking and coughing.
“Just imagine the scene, kids,” he continued, addressing himself directly to the children whose frightened eyes reflected the flames. “Just imagine the scene,” he repeated, leaning forward again, his voice barely audible.
“The poor trapper is struggling through the snow. Each step is pure agony since the wet snow sticks to his snowshoes, and they become harder and harder to lift. His rifle and pack get heavier and heavier, and he becomes weaker and weaker, and soon he can barely move.
“All of a sudden, he smells something so horrible it can’t be described! He hears whistling and bellowing that shatter the winter silence and freeze his blood. The earth begins to shake under his feet.
“What’s this? It’s the Wendigo itself rushing at him, crashing through the bush, thumping the snow with its giant feet and hurling trees high up in the air.
“The trapper raises his rifle and fires off a clip of .303 steel-jacket bullets. They hit the Wendigo.
“Splat, splat, splat! They go right through its body, leaving great wounds and covering the snow with chunks of torn flesh and blood! But they heal right away and the monster keeps on coming.
“The trapper can now see its huge, ugly fangs and the dirty slobber that hangs from its mouth. The stench is unbearable.
“He doesn’t have time to reload. He throws his gun away, grabs his axe and hurls it with all his might at the Wendigo, burying its razor-sharp blade deep in its hairy chest. The fiend stops, but only for a moment, then pulls the axe from its body and tosses it far off into the distance.
“Grabbing hold of the luckless trapper, it rips off his arms and legs. Just like you kids tear off the arms and legs of deerflies! And as the victim lies watching, helpless and in unbearable pain, the Wendigo gobbles them down on the spot, without even putting salt and pepper on them!
“Usually the trapper dies and there is no more to be said. But if, despite his horrible wounds, he manages to escape and makes it back to his cabin, the story gets even worse.
“For never forget, kids, if someone is bitten by a Wendigo, that person turns into a Wendigo with a great hunger for fresh human flesh. If the family does not get away in time, the new Wendigo will eat them for dinner and not even cook them first!”
After a pause to let the children relish the horror of the old man’s tale, the other adults joined in to exchange stories handed down over the years about times of great hunger and starvation in the bush, and about people known to their parents and grandparents who were supposed to have been Wendigos. However, before going too far, the parents told their children that it was time to go to bed, warning them that if they did not obey, the Wendigo would get them!
Martha and the others had heard enough in any case, and satisfactorily thrilled, returned to their homes to have nightmares about human-eating monsters until dawn.