Mattie Mitchell (5 page)

EARLY IN THE CHRISTMAS MONTH
of the year past, heavy frost
and snow had finally come. It was the last few days of the year
1899. A new century was about to begin, an event that appeared
to be of great consequence to the white people of Mattie's small
village in the Bay of Islands. It was the start of a new modern era.
Some of them were afraid. It would be the end of the world, they
said. Many of the self-righteous religious ones spent their “last
days” quoting Bible verses that supposedly verified their alarmist
thinking.

To Mattie, who didn't own a calendar but measured his days
and seasons by his wandering way of life, it was the end of
nothing. It was just the beginning of another wonderful winter of
trapping. Mattie always carried with him a brown, pocket-sized
Catholic prayer book that had been translated into his native
Mi'kmaq language. Mattie was literate enough to read portions
of it. Nowhere in his cherished book could he find a date for such
a foolish portent.

He had spent the short, glorious days of autumn trapping
and hunting along the many rugged coves and coastal plains and
tidal river valleys. The English demand for fancy beaver-skin
hats had taken its toll on the animals all along the coast. Mattie
would trap them on his winter trapline far inland, where few
others went.

A big part of his fall trapping along the coast was for otter.
Their rich autumn pelts were in good demand, but around the
windy coast they were harder to trap than they were in the rivers
and ponds. The otters that frequented the saltwater bays and inlets
were usually much larger than the freshwater variety and fetched
a better price when cured just right. Mattie used a short piece of
net obtained from a fisherman friend of his, with which he netted
herring for bait to trap the otters.

He was paddling along the shoreline in the middle of the
afternoon. The day had been too windy to chance paddling along
the cliffs that bordered the water. He had spent the time picking
ripened berries that grew on every bank above the tide line. He
had taken a good nap, too, with the cool breeze from the ocean
rustling the low bushes all around the place where he had lain.

Now with the wind dropping and showing every indication of
dying, he set off in his canoe. His net had been set yesterday just
around the bill of the point he was now approaching. When he
paddled around the point, he saw the shorefast net running down
to the water and the small wooden buoy bobbing at the outside
end of the net, but not one of the cork floats between shore and
buoy could be seen.

At first he thought a whale had become entangled in the
net—a minke or a pothead, maybe. He rested his paddle on the
narrow gunnel and waited. The imagined whale never surfaced
and, upon considering, Mattie figured one of these small whales
could have parted the mooring lines and swam off still entangled
in the netting.

He approached the net and, looking down into the depths, saw
what had dragged the floats under. From the foot-ropes to the head
yarkins the net was filled with silvery herring. Their combined
weight was too much for the cork floats to bear. Many of the fish
were still alive, and wriggled and twisted to free themselves from
the narrow meshes. Their struggling caused thousands of shiny
scales to break free and float away on the current, flashing and
glistening, only to vanish into the green depths.

The dead ones hung limp and motionless. Yellow, short-legged crab, and pink and green starfish with five fingers spread,
were feasting on them. Below the net, wide-mouthed sculpins
and squished-mouthed flatfish, their black eyes looking up,
waited for the carrion.

Mattie had seen nets sunk with herring before. It was a
common thing for the fishermen along this coast to witness. The
schooling herring swam along these waters by the tons, both
in the spring and fall. Mattie had seen them in the mouths of
streams, with the milky sperm from the males clouding the tidal
pools for days. At such times it was easy to scoop up hundreds of
the fish by hand or with dipnets.

Mattie suddenly remembered another time when a small
section of his net had been carried under, and it wasn't by herring.
An otter had been chasing herring and its paws had become twisted
in the mesh. Its frantic struggle for life had only entangled the
animal more. Mattie found the drowned otter hopelessly rolled
in the linnet a few feet below the surface. Looking down at the
hundreds of herring and remembering the otter, he had an idea.

He knew where to find several otter slides, where the playful
animals slid down over the rocks into the sea. Favourite slides
were used by the same otter families for years. In such places the
otters created a muddy run from treeline to the ocean edge. The
muddy “rub” or “burry” was their giveaway to knowing trappers.

Placed upon the rocks well above the surf line, and near
the place where Mitchell had fastened his net to the land, were
several lobster pots. Many of the local fishermen, instead of
freighting their pots up the long bays to home after the season's
fishing, simply carried them ashore to a convenient site. It was on
this very coast where Mattie had seen his very first lobster trap
around the year 1870. At that time he wasn't sure what he was
seeing. But by 1873, a small lobster canning factory was started
by a Nova Scotia man and the handmade wooden traps or pots
were a common sight. By 1888 the fishery had expanded until the
English had established more than two dozen such factories along
this coast, and Mattie knew where a lone Frenchman had one.
Mattie's quick mind soon had figured a unique way of trapping
the otters. He would combine their love for chasing and eating
herring—with a lobster pot!

It took him a while to raise a part of the submerged net and
take from it several dozen herring before letting it sink to the
bottom again. It was a delicate task while sitting in the stern of
a shallow, narrow canoe. There was a danger of capsizing it, but
after he had wrangled a portion of the net across the centre of the
craft, the canoe was held steady with the net's weight. He simply
shook the net until all the herring he wanted fell aboard.

He gingerly manoeuvred the glistening net back over the bow
of the canoe and, paddling to shore, stepped out. Climbing the
sloping, sea-smoothed cliff, he knelt beside the neatly stacked
lobster pots and considered his plan. Several pots had been
discarded next to the stored ones. They had been damaged by
wave and prolonged use and were badly in need of repair. They
would do nicely.

The pots were close to three feet long and had two bent
spruce saplings on either end and one in the middle, fastened to
the bottom frame, giving the pot an oval shape. Both ends and
sides had separate lathes nailed to them. Inside the “parlour” was
fastened a sharpened “bait stick.” The working side of the pots
had tube-shaped netting for the lobster to enter, as well as a small,
easily removable door to retrieve them.

Deciding to use just one pot for his experiment, Mattie
removed part of the head or end of the pot and, using his axe
and knife, had soon fashioned a hole of nine to ten inches across
between the lathes. He secured one of his wire snares across the
opening and, with the pot loaded into the centre of his canoe,
paddled his way along the shoreline.

The wind had dropped away to a mere breeze. Black shadows
reached away from the high land. The canoe's faint wake left a
silvery crease in the water as it passed. An eagle perched atop
one of the tall trees eyed the herring in the canoe out of its reach.

Mattie picked up one of the herring and gave it a throw. The
eagle left its lofty perch as soon as the fish splashed into the
water. The bird soared on silent wings toward the herring, dived,
and stretched its mighty yellow talons toward the sinking fish.
It tried its best, but sped away from the water with naked claws.
The herring had sunk before the eagle reached it.

Picking up another herring, Mattie threw it as high as he
could. The fish shone and twisted and turned in a long arc over
the black water. The watching eagle dived again. There was a
swishing sound when its feet brushed the water. Without once
flapping its broad wings, it soared skyward again. Shiny water
droplets fell away as it rose with the silver herring firmly gripped
between one of its claws.

Mattie could smell the otter rub before he reached it. The
strong scent of the animals had permeated into the damp soil
where they played. He stopped paddling and let the boat drift
to the water's edge below the rub. There were no otters to be
seen anywhere, but the rub was dark and wet. Showing below the
mudslide and traced across the smooth cliff, just above where the
ocean quietly lapped upon the rocks, was a damp water trail. At
least one otter had been here recently.

Mattie skivvered three of the biggest herring onto the bait
stick inside the lobster pot, lifted the pot carefully out of his
canoe, and placed it into the water. He lowered the pot slowly
with the buoy rope and watched as it sank in the clear water.
He tugged it a couple of times to make sure it rested level on
the bottom just below the otter slide. When it was down and to
his liking he threw the line overboard with the small, wooden,
tapered buoy fastened to one end.

Just before dark, he paddled into a tiny cove where a small
brook ran through a narrow, crescent-shaped beach. He pulled
his canoe well above the surf line, got a fire going using pieces of
driftwood, placed his flat-bottom kettle over it to boil, and began
cleaning a meal of herring for his supper.

The following morning, before the wind came to the bay,
Mattie paddled to where the lone lobster buoy tugged and bobbed
on the tide. He reached for the buoy and, pulling in the slack,
was soon directly over the sunken trap. He peered down and was
surprised to see the dark brown body of a dead otter lying half
in and half out of the lobster pot. His trap had worked perfectly.
Over the next few days he pulled eleven otters from four lobster
pots all carefully placed in the water below a fresh otter burry.
When he returned home with the eleven pelts he was asked how
he had done so well in such a short time. Mattie Mitchell simply
replied, with an air of mystery, “I jest use ol' Indian trick.”

MATTIE LEFT THE COAST WHEN THE NIGHTS
turned cold and
the frost came. He headed for the long, sloping hills and the high
mountain valleys beyond. These were the places he truly loved
best. He had prolonged his winter trapline trip to correspond with
the right travelling conditions.

Before he had reached all the way into the high country
beyond Bonne Bay, he realized he had waited too long. The
snows were much deeper here, and before the first day of hard
walking was through he had donned his homemade snowshoes.
All of the belongings he would need for the entire winter were
towed behind him on a small wooden sled, or carried on his broad
shoulders in a packsack.

He spent the first night in a makeshift shelter that he had built
just before the early dark, and dozed through the long winter
night beside a small fire he kept burning. The second night he
sheltered in a temporary tilt situated along his trapline route.
The close of the third snowy day found him at the door of his
wigwam.

The spoor of game was not as prevalent along the way as he
had hoped. In the coastal valleys he had left behind, many of the
white settlers were augmenting their lean summer fishing with
fur trapping. But few white men came here to the mountains.
Many of the places he trapped were exclusive to him alone. He
seldom saw anyone, Indian or white. Still, from his observations
along the way, good signs of the fur-bearing animals he hunted
and trapped were scarce.

From his pack and sled he carried the scanty provisions inside
his winter teepee. A small bag of tea—which wouldn't last him
the winter—and a smaller bag of coarse sugar, along with a quart
tin of blackstrap molasses, he put inside and hung from the rafter
poles. These three items, he knew, would be used up first. It was
his one weakness for the white man's food: Mattie Mitchell had
a sweet tooth. About fifteen pounds of flour and a small bag of
pale white salt crystals that would need some crushing completed
his supply.

As was his wont, Mattie patrolled around his immediate
camping area the very next morning. He was eager to scout
around the outlying valleys and hills. He travelled along on
snowshoes over the virgin snow. Down each hidden forest glade
and unmarked trace he stepped joyfully along.

In his left hand he carried a long-barrelled Martin Henry rifle
that had seen much use. In his pocket were four brass bullets for
the gun. They were the only ammunition he owned. In his right
hand he held a sharp axe that he frequently swung at low-hanging
limbs that were in his way. He paid careful attention to every
detail as if he were seeing it all for the first time.

He was crossing a small stream. Its snowy banks, now well
above the running water, indicated that over the years it had been
well used to a deeper, swifter flow. Directly across the brook
from him was a recently foundered gravel bank that the slowly
moving water had only partly washed away. When the cut-bank
had occurred, probably during last spring's melt, it had exposed
a large, brown, rust-stained, jutting outcrop of rock, its base not
yet washed clean by the low water levels of the stream. For years
Mattie had used this stream for crossing. He had not seen the
rock formation before.

The different and out of the ordinary always drew his eye. He
crossed the brook in a few quick strides, the frigid water leaving
a wet mark halfway up the calf of his leather boots. Standing at
the base of the jagged cliff, Mattie tried to understand what it was
he was seeing and immediately knew where he had seen it before.

IT WAS DURING HIS TIME SPENT GUIDING
for the Newfoundland-born geologist James Patrick Howley and Howley's mentor,
Scottish-born Alexander Murray. Both men treated Mattie with
respect. Just three years Mattie's junior, Howley treated him as
an equal.

Howley held Mattie Mitchell in such high esteem as to
recommend his delightful Indian guide to the Newfoundland
government as the finest of men and the best of guides. Mattie
called Howley “Sage,” the Mi'kmaq word for James. James
Howley always called Mattie “Matthieu.”

Mattie had been a single young man of twenty in 1864, yet
his remarkable skills and wilderness knowledge were well-known, from the tiny villages of Halls Bay on the northeast coast
of the island to the mountain fjords of the west coast. Murray and
Howley were in the employ of the Newfoundland government to
determine and document the island's resources.

The last time any serious inquiry into the natural resources
of this, tenth of the world's largest islands, had been done was
back in 1839, when the geologist Joseph Beete Jukes had done
preliminary work here. Jukes had primarily conducted coastal
surveys with few forays into what the white men considered—
because they hadn't ventured there—the “fearful” wilderness of
this remarkable island.

One of the few interior expeditions Jukes did make was up
the mouth of the smooth Humber River as far as the long, narrow
Deer Lake. This had been a relatively easy exploratory excursion
for the geologist. It had been made all that much easier by the
expert guiding skills provided by the west coast Mi'kmaq Indians
which Jukes seldom named.

Murray and his eager protege, Howley, would do more than
explore the coastal regions of this unique North Atlantic nation.
They were tasked by the government, and quite willingly intended,
to traverse as much of the landscape as possible, including the
hinterland. They loved their job. It would take the two paid
pioneers many years of diligent, meticulously documented
surveying, and even then they had only skimmed a few places of
the vast interior of this intricate island.

Alexander Murray was a geologist born on June 2, 1810,
in “Dollierie House,” Crieff, Scotland. He was the very first
director of the Geological Survey of Newfoundland. He came
to the island in 1864 and was enthralled with all of its largely
unspoiled, unexplored—at least by the white population—
territory. It was as much unlike his country as it was possible to
be. Murray stayed here until 1884, when he returned to Scotland.
He died in Belmont Cottage in Crieff, Scotland, the following
year at the age of seventy-four.

Mattie Mitchell, at twenty-two years of age, met the fifty-six-year-old Murray in 1866. They were joined by Newfoundland's
own geologist, James Howley, two years later. The two geologists
would walk the hills, scale the cliffs, walk and sometimes float
downstream, and make their difficult way against river currents
for more than twenty years. And guiding them on all of their
major forays was the Indian Mattie Mitchell.

Up the Indian River from Halls Bay he led them in the month
of June, when the flies feed in swarms. Or, as Murray put it: “The
black buggers have voracious apatite, and tek a mon's bluid so
that I wonder the greate horrads of them aire not redd.”

South, and away from the waters that run east into the Notre
Dame Bay, Mitchell led them to the west- and south-running waters
of the huge Humber River system, which pours into the Bay of
Islands on Newfoundland's west coast. Murray and Howley kept
carefully written records and mapped their expeditions. They
took note of great tracts of timber that took days to walk through,
and the rivers to get them to potential sawmills and markets.
They noted powerful waterfalls and deep waters, and fish stocks
as well as their spawning beds. The explorers came upon veins of
coal, copper, lead, zinc, and traces of gold. The host rocks of the
minerals, and in come cases their compass bearings, were entered
accurately into their well-thumbed ledgers.

They talked about their findings as they wrote them down at
the end of every long day. The men showed Mattie how to identify
minerals, realizing early on that his incredible eye for detail was
a valued asset with their work. They showed him what to look for
and told him, “Rocks never rust. Only metals rust.” And always
their tall, quiet guide listened and would forever remember.

Mattie held the Scotsman in high regard and some reverence.
At almost every evening meal, Murray would clasp his hands
together, bow his head, and say the grace of Scotland's greatest
bard, Robert Burns: “Some hae meat and cannae eat, some would
eat that want it, but we hae meat and we can eat, sae let the Lord
be thankit.” And when he finished, Mattie always said “Amen.”

Mattie also considered Alexander Murray to be the toughest
white man he knew, and with good reason.

They were working in the Cape St. George area of the Port
au Port peninsula. Murray was doing his usual detailed mapping
of every brook he found and recording the potential resources.
They had been in the area for a few days and had walked the
entire sandy length of Long Point. Standing alone at its naked
northernmost point, with a brisk summer wind rising from the
gulf with the evening tide, Murray breathed deep of the sea air
and quoted his beloved Robert Burns again: “Nae man can tether
time or tide.”

That next morning, it rained. They were making their sodden
way to the narrow isthmus of the small peninsula late that evening,
where they planned to spend the night. The men were hurrying,
longing to get there. They had crossed it on the way out and had
left their camp there in the east bay for their return.

It was a magical place, surrounded by beaches, filled with
seasoned grey driftwood that washed ashore from the huge
western gulf. It made the best firewood. With hundreds of nesting
waterfowl flying in from both the Port au Port and St. George's
Bay sides, they would dine on roasted duck tonight.

It was their haste over the wet ground that took Murray down.
Keeping pace with Mattie's long steps ahead of him, Murray
jammed his right foot into a rock crevice at the very extent of its
back reach. When he pulled the leg, without breaking his stride,
his anchored foot yanked him back like a spring. He fell forward,
twisting sideways as he went down. When his crushing weight
fell upon the twisted leg bone, his fibula cracked and he tore his
Achilles tendon.

The scream of pain that escaped the man's clenched teeth
stopped Mattie in his tracks. He rushed to Murray's side. Murray
was lying half on his side and half on his back, with both hands
clasping his lower leg. His hat had come off. His packsack had
shifted up over his round shoulders during the fall. He leaned his
balding head back upon it, wincing in pain.

His foot was still wedged between the rocks. Seeing what
had to be done, Mattie helped Murray to his feet and pulled
his foot back, freeing him. Murray's face was flushed. His foot
burned like fire. Sweat appeared on the cheekbones above his
bearded jaws and beaded on his rain-soaked skin. He felt dizzy
and staggered against Mattie's chest. He thought he was going
to faint, but the nauseous wave passed and he stood on one foot
with an arm around Mattie's shoulder.

Murray knew he was in trouble. They were days away from
any medical assistance. He wasn't even sure if there was a doctor
on the coast. Mattie helped him to their camp and laid him down
upon his blanket inside the tent. When he removed Murray's
trousers, he discovered his leg was terribly bruised and badly
swollen. After starting a fire outside their camp, Mattie quickly
walked away in the damp evening.

When he returned, he had in his hands a clump of moist black
mud wrapped in thin, greenish yellow fronds of kelp. When he
gently smeared the cooling mud over Murray's swollen leg, the
man sighed in instant relief and thanked him. Mattie covered the
mud-encased lower leg and ankle with the wet, salty kelp. He
used a piece of the kelp “belt” and tied it around the bandage to
hold it all in place. That night, Murray sat framed by the firelight
in the tent flap and entered his day's work in his ledger.

With a fire going outside their camp, the men discussed their
options. An overland route to any of the settlements that might
offer medical assistance was out of the question. Murray couldn't
walk, and for Mattie to carry him would only add to his agony.
Mattie figured they should try and get a boat and sail either north
to the Bay of Islands, or across St. George's Bay and south to
Port aux Basques.

But the stubborn Murray would hear none of it. They would
only get him to a doctor who would do little more than “administer
their foule tasting concoctions. I weel go nowhaire,” he said.