A Discovery of Strangers by Rudy Wiebe Read Free Book Online Page B

as traders?”
    How to attempt explaining European history! What can the inhabitants of such a desolate land understand concerning the political and national philosophies of Empire? To compare their elementary hostilities to England’s conflict with Napoleon, as Hood sometimes attempts to do, is ludicrous, as he would know if he had been a captive of the French for five years as I was. However, our pomp of proclamation may have been poor strategy — we might better have devoted our persuasions, as the traders do, to the simple ones of tribal pride and full bellies. God knows these natives live in a dreadful land with more than enough space quite empty around them. With no discernible social organization — and wandering about at random — why will they laboriously transport themselves through four hundred miles of vacant moss to identify a possible enemy? Not even Samuel Hearne forty years ago, in his lengthy book, could elucidate that. Nevertheless, out of this irreducible confusion of idea and inadequate translation — however it may have emerged in their minimal language — there suddenly developed their ritual dance. What it was — other than referring somehow to their Dogrib Indian neighbours, apparently the dancing masters of the country — or why they danced, our translator could not explain, nor how such a thumping ceremony would commit them to hunt for our expedition — as apparently it did!
    So, whatever our strategy, happy results. I began to anticipate that some of the females might join in, the dance being exceedingly energetic. And truly — though seated and muchencumbered with heavy clothing — they were beginning to sway, rather like a field of dark corn playing under wind, when the blazing flag roused everyone, women included, for a run to our camp above the lake. After my heroics it was quickly established that our servant, John Hepburn, had built a fire before the main tent to repel the usual mosquito hordes, and being more used to smoke than clear air — his pipe was a cloud-burner — fell comfortably asleep at last, the clouds of pests held somewhat at bay, and so did not notice the thin moss catch and the flag dipping down to it under the wind until our shouts awoke him.
    But the Indian mind rejects accident. The women, as saggy and wrinkled as native females invariably are — their breasts undergo great distention from an early age from long feeding of their infants, the sight of which can only be repugnant — took up the chief’s lament, whereupon Lieutenant Franklin quickly had our extra flag unrolled. By good fortune it was larger than the first — though not of silk, which difference no Indian could discern — and the chief, seeing majesty wave again, subsided together with all his factotums. Doctor Richardson treated the servant for a slight burn and the dancers were especially cheered when — on further orders — Hood broached another cask of rum for them, well watered though it was. As became evident, the men — who had most willingly shared the wailing — would share neither rum nor dance with the females, but left them to look on, squat and sullen, at their own boisterous, expanding caterwaul.
    Still, the old mapmaker seemed unreassured. During the dance he questioned our translator further, who repeated the name of our servant again and again rather oddly:
    “Hep Burn , Hep Burn,”
    together with a great deal of what seemed elaborate explanation, such as he had never yet vouchsafed us. Suddenly the grizzled oldster walked away to crouch on the folded rock by himself, staring across the lake and paying no attention to the young men trundling a circle in their tuneless chant, their pounding of the long-suffering ground. I was about to make a quick sketch of him against the great wind-swept water — truly an astonishing freshwater inland sea, we were three days crossing the narrowest parts of it, island to island — when Hood appeared beside me.
    “Perhaps you