River City (44 page)

“Kondiaronk is a sage man, but I know him to be a cruel man also when he needs to be. A determined man. Do you see this scar here?” In the firelight, Radisson opened his shirt and displayed the scar, in the shape of an X, across the centre of his chest. When all had had a good look, he said, “Kondiaronk, The Rat, gave me this. As a warning. For I had cheated him. I had taken two hundred and twenty pelts and told him only two hundred. So he marked my chest with his knife, to show me where he will cut out my heart if I try cheating him again. That, of course, will not happen. For he is too wise a chief, too clever a man, too cruel a warrior, for me to cross him twice.

“This, then,” Radisson declared, and poked at the fire with a stick, sending sparks into the night sky as though summoning the spirit of the man of whom he spoke to attend these proceedings, although the man was still very much alive, “is the story of The Rat.”

The boy leaned in, his attention rapt, yet no more so than the others.

The French needed allies. The English hemmed them in from every side, and their colonies were growing with rampant immigration, while the French had to grow their community primarily, and diligently, through childbirth. The Iroquois were hideous in their attacks, and the Huron, so often defeated, were reluctant to continue on the French side. Or so The Rat, Chief Kondiaronk, led the governor of New France, the Marquis de Denonville, to believe.

“If we are eliminated,” the governor pressed him, “if we either abandon this land or perish with Iroquois tomahawks planted in our skulls—”

“A fortunate way to die,” the Huron chief demurred.

“Excuse me?”

“A skull, split by a tomahawk. I have seen many deaths, and this is the best way to die at the hands of the Iroquois. If your people are to die, may they go that way.”

The marquis was momentarily taken aback. He had heard that the chief had a knack for repartee, that he should expect both wit and subterfuge from the man. “It’s not a picture I care to contemplate,” he said.

“You prefer to burn, do you, the little fire at your feet? Slowly, the fire climbs up your calves to your knees, to your thighs, higher. Scorching, blackening. You will cry out—any Frenchman would—as the hot flames lick your balls. That is when even the strongest man who is burning, even a Jesuit priest, pleads for a tomahawk—” Making a hatchet with his fingers, the chief in his raiment used it to divide his skull.

“Quite,” Denonville reluctantly concurred.

Kondiaronk wore feathers in his hair and across a highly embroidered breastplate. His moose hide was fashionable, with decorative beads and a leather fringe, right down to his elaborate moccasins, which he’d never wear except to meet the governor of New France, to impress him with his haberdashery. The Rat had been a student of the Jesuit, Daniel Greysolon Dulhut, who had set out in the middle portion of the century on a clandestine mission to gather Indian tribes westward from the Great Lakes, the Saulteurs and the Sioux in particular, into an alliance against the English. With these tribes on the side of the French, the groundwork would be prepared to allow the remainder of the continent, south to Louisiana and west to the sea, to become French. Yet, for the allegiance of the tribes to be meaningful, they had first to make peace with one another. Dulhut succeeded eventually, coming to an agreement in the place that would later bear a scrambled approximation of his name, Duluth, in the land called Minnesota. As a young man in his company, being persuaded by some arguments and taking issue with others, Kondiaronk learned about politics and negotiations, to the point where he would one day supersede his mentor. From Dulhut, Kondiaronk had learned to comprehend—and more fully imagine—the potential power of peace.

“Scalped alive, that’s another way to go,” The Rat mentioned to the squeamish governor.

“But if we, Chief, are treated to such horrible acts, then what will become of the Huron, after we are gone?”

Kondiaronk knew the answer to that question. He lifted one side of his derrière and pointed to the protuberance. “Our asses,” the chief declared, “will look like French heads after they’ve been scalped.”

The marquis chose not to reflect upon that outcome. Why did The Rat have to continually make reference to gruesome details? “Then surely, Kondiaronk, we are agreed. The French and the Huron must fight together, side by side, in our mutual defence against the Iroquois.” Except for the bloodiness of certain images, the discussion, Denonville believed, was going well.

“Maybe,” Kondiaronk said.

“Maybe?” The marquis expressed dismay.

“Maybe means perhaps. The French and their English brothers have too many words. Why do you have two words to mean the same thing?”

“Why do you say maybe?” Denonville demanded to know, not interested in the Indian’s perpetual interest in semantics.

“Rather than perhaps?” the chief asked him.

“No! Why do you say that only
maybe,
only
perhaps,
will the Huron stand side by side with their French brothers?”

“Ah,” the chief said, and helped himself to a grape from the plate before them. These foods the French enjoyed, that arrived from time to time on ships, were a marvel on the tongue, well worth the drudgery of these meetings. “It’s simple. I need what you call, in your language, guarantees.”

“Such as?”

“The French must fight,” Kondiaronk insisted. He made a fist and flexed it before the governor, to indicate that the French must not only fight, but that they must fight hard.

Denonville objected to the implication. “We fight!” he claimed.

“You fight when you are attacked,” the Huron pointed out to him. He was a strong man with broad shoulders and a stout chest, although shorter than most men of his tribe. In his middle years, he’d grown a paunch he was fond of patting while he ate. “When you have no choice, when it’s fight or die, you fight. Usually, you French do both. You fight, then you die.”

“So what’s the problem? We fight!”

“You do not attack! You rely upon the Huron to attack the Iroquois on their land. The French must also attack. If not, then the Huron, too, we will only wait to be attacked, seeking the enemy no more. Perhaps, maybe, perhaps, maybe, we will run and hide. To protect our asses, you understand.”

Now the discussion was not going so well for the governor. He needed to create the semblance of a broad front and a redoubtable force, for he had engaged the Iroquois in secret talks about peace—secret from his visitor, as well—and for those negotiations to succeed, he needed to appear strong. On his part, Kondiaronk needed only one thing: a commitment from the governor to make no separate peace with the Iroquois, but to fight them at every opportunity. Peace between the Iroquois and the French would allow the Iroquois to concentrate on fighting the Huron, and his people, he knew, who had already sustained grievous losses, would be annihilated in any such war.

“If you do this, what I suggest, strike a clever blow against the Iroquois, then we French will also attack. But I need to witness this commitment from you, Chief Kondiaronk, before we proceed.”

The agreement pleased both men, and Kondiaronk commenced the long trek back to his lands around the Michigan lake, dreaming strategies of war.

On the way home, he stopped at the French fort that guarded the great river where it flowed out from Lake Ontario. He was welcomed there, as the commandant always enjoyed his company, more than that of any Indian. Over a meal, without being aware of the secrecy that was meant to govern certain information he’d received, the commandant spoke freely to Kondiaronk.

“How did you find the marquis, Chief? Is he well?”

“I left him in good spirits.”

The commandant sipped wine. “Wonderful! He’s talking to so many Indians these days, it’s good news that you got him off to a happy start.”

“Yes, yes. Talking to Indians, many Indians. Ah, who’s next, did he say?”

“The Iroquois, I suppose.”

“That’s right, I remember that now. Who exactly—have you heard? I hope it’s not Conaymasteeyahgah. He’ll make the governor irritable. Or Klow, who will only put a knot in his bowels—he does that every time, to everyone he meets.”

Smacking his tongue around his lips to clean them up, the commandant leaned forward to the centre of the table, ripped the last leg off the roasted turkey and blithely waved it in the air. “Whomever they chose to be their ambassadors, they will go. Whatever team they choose to negotiate the peace.”

“Yes, the peace between the French and the Iroquois.” Kondiaronk spoke as though this was old news to him, while a knot in his own belly began to fester.

“Precipitous, don’t you think?” The commandant was always amused that he could use a word like that in front of Kondiaronk and the chief wouldn’t blink, wouldn’t indicate any lack of comprehension. He was a noble chief, that much was understood by the French and Huron both, and even by most Iroquois and English. Vicious, too, rumours told. They said of Kondiaronk—and the commandant had heard the governor himself say it—that he made his moves in the present in order to influence the future, and no one possessed clearer insight into the future than The Rat. “I don’t know who they’ll send. Perhaps the sachem, from their ruling council. Probably not chiefs for a first meeting. The Iroquois will be suspicious of a trap, don’t you think? It is all great news. Peace!”

The commandant reached for his goblet.

“This is good, this is good.” Already defining his next move to counter the white man’s never-ending treachery, Kondiaronk feigned passive agreement. After the meal, he headed back the way he’d just come, departing in the dark so the French would not notice his reversal of direction. Following several days of hard paddling, in the Adirondack Mountains well south of Montreal, he ambushed the Iroquois peace delegates, killing a couple and capturing the remainder.

His warriors had been under strict instructions to take most delegates alive and to scalp none.

By the side of the river, the Huron made camp and cooked rabbit from their stores. Kondiaronk threw scraps at the feet of his captives, and slowly, the men bound at their ankles consented to eat also.

“I’m sorry about this,” Kondiaronk told them. “It’s the French. They made me do it. I had to promise I’d come down here and attack you.”

“They did not,” the man who would speak for the group protested.

“Why else would I be here, a Huron from Michilimackinac? The governor sent me to massacre you, to roast you over a slow fire. ‘Cut off their balls and feed them to the bullfrogs,’ he said. ‘When I hear the frogs croaking, I want to
know that dead Iroquois are moaning in their bellies.’ So that’s what I will do. I will feed your manhood to the frogs. I want to remain on good terms with the governor.”

“We were on our way to see the French governor!” an Iroquois maintained.

Another was equally adamant. “He asked us to go there, to talk about a peace! Does the governor send Huron to kill us when he wants a peace?”

Kondiaronk expressed his astonishment. “A peace? He asked you to come to him to talk peace, then sends me down to feed you to the bullfrogs along the way? What black deed is this? My brothers! I’m sorry. There has been a terrible mistake. How can I be a part of this treachery? Such black and wicked deeds! The white man! Who can understand his animal ways? He is a wolverine on two legs! I shall never be happy, my brothers, until the five tribes of the Iroquois avenge this day! Huron! Cut loose our Iroquois brothers!”

The captives were freed, and Kondiaronk gave them gifts of beads and rabbit meat and delectable deer for the inconvenience and tragedy of the unwarranted attack. He confessed his shame to them and repeated his horror at having been used in such a repulsive scheme. “Ah,” he cautioned, just before the Iroquois were about to embark northward again in their canoes, “I do have a slain warrior.”

No Iroquois could recollect firing a shot. They’d been outnumbered and taken by surprise in the open, and in that circumstance had been quick to surrender. That any of their own had died had been unfortunate, as there had been no need for the Huron to kill them in order to win the fight. That an attacker had died remained inexplicable, although perhaps a shot had been fired by an Iroquois who was now dead. The dead Huron lay visible, lying at a distance through the trees upon a mound, his body awaiting disposal.

As was the practice, an Iroquois captive would take the place of the dead Huron and remain behind with the invading tribe. Less that one man and their dead, the Iroquois continued on, burdened now by the gifts they’d received.

Once they had disappeared behind a bend downstream, and the lone Iroquois captive was distracted by his slave duties, five Huron climbed the hillock to bury their dead brother. Six men returned from the task. The party then
returned to their territory and to the fort at Michilimackinac, by Lake Michigan, where Kondiaronk approached the commandant upon arriving.

“What do we have here?” the Frenchman inquired, for he did not normally see one Indian bound in the company of others.

“Iroquois spy,” Kondiaronk bristled, and spat.

“Is that right?” the commandant inquired of the prisoner.

“I am not spy,” the Iroquois insisted. “I came to negotiate peace with the French governor.”

The Rat shook his head solemnly. “He’s crazy,” he said. “He’s a madman. What should I do with him, Commandant? I can’t keep him—he’s too crazy.”

The military man eyed the Iroquois up and down. He was not from a tribe that came into his area very often, although he was not the first Iroquois prisoner that Kondiaronk had brought to him. He looked like a formidable warrior, taller and more muscular than the majority of Huron men. The Iroquois pleaded again that he had come to talk peace with the governor, which confirmed that he was either a spy or crazy.

“Shoot him,” the commandant decided.

“You shoot him,” Kondiaronk said. “We Indians, you know, we prefer to roast our prisoners alive.”

The commandant nodded, and consented to the arrangement.

The Rat visited him again that night.

“You shot my prisoner,” he pointed out to him.