Flint and Feather by Charlotte Gray Read Free Book Online

reticence, a father–son relationship blossomed between the gawky Scotsman and the lithe young Indian. Together they criss-crossed the reserve, visiting the separate communities of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras. Each people still spoke its own language (although the tongues were sufficiently similar that they could understand each other). George would switch effortlessly between the native tongues and English as he translated the clergyman’s words of comfort to the sick and dying or spread the gospel to those who still resisted baptism (the Onondagas, in particular, had not abandoned their traditional beliefs). Duty done, the two men would then stick to English as they tramped along the rough corduroy roads, discussing Christian doctrine and Canadian politics until they reached the next needy soul. George seemed to have a special gift for comforting anybody afflicted with smallpox. Most people shrank from contact with the killer disease, but Georgeshowed no fear. He would shake hands with sufferers, even though his skin often stuck to their suppurating sores. His fellow Indians were awed; they did not know that while in Brantford, George had been vaccinated (or “salivated,” as it was then known) by a London-trained physician.
    Adam Elliott’s friendship with George Johnson was unaffected by the parson’s marriage to Eliza Beulah Howells in 1839. Soon Eliza was as fond of her husband’s protegé as Adam himself was. The Elliotts’ first child, Mary Margaret, was born in 1840; three years later, Henry Christopher arrived. The Mohawk boarder was a boon to Eliza. George had none of the British male’s discomfort with bawling infants, and was always ready to take a fractious toddler off her hands for a slow, soothing stroll through the woods.
    By now, George Johnson knew how to move smoothly through European society. He wore European clothes, spoke English flawlessly and modelled his behaviour and values on those of his mentor, Adam Elliott. Nobody could find fault with George Johnson’s manners. The combination of a charming personality and the manners of a British gentleman won him almost complete acceptance in the larger world. George’s position and income meant that, unlike many of the young men in pioneer townships, he could afford a wife and family.
    With the birth of her third child, Charles O’Reilly, in 1845, Eliza was more than happy to welcome her shy little sister Emily, who arrived from Pittsburgh to live at the parsonage and help Eliza with the growing family. Soon Emily was joining the two older children and George for their strolls in the woods. George’s courtesy and gentle manner continued to attract Emily, who was nine years his junior. Given Eliza Howells Elliott’s own fondness for George Johnson, the minister’s wife cannot have been in the least surprised to watch the steady growth of affection between him and her younger sister.
    A few months later, George caught typhoid fever. The sound of his retching and groaning terrified Adam Elliott, who knew that his wife’s health was frail and his young children were vulnerable to such a devastating infection. So he asked Emily, who was much sturdier than her sister, to nurse the young man. It was a situation made for romance: as Emily bent solicitously over George, he stared up at her pale skin andblue eyes and fell in love. In later years, Emily’s daughters revelled in the story. This was the “real beginning of the love match between my mother and father,” Eva recorded in her memoirs. Safe within the four friendly walls of the Tuscarora parsonage, George and Emily failed to recognize that their romance might horrify both their families.

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FOR RICHER, FOR POORER, FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE 1845–1861
    A S both Molly Brant and Catherine Rolleston had demonstrated, marriages between Europeans and Indians were neither unusual nor unacceptable in eighteenth-century North America. For Europeans, the rigid conventions