Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past by Tantoo Cardinal Page A

choice.”
    The advance party chief bit his tongue. He had no choice.
    The Anishinaubae chief didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to his people. “As chief and an Anishinaubae, I’ll adopt the other young man as my son and give him to Nauneediss, a young widow who needs a husband and a father for her two children.” Then, turning to the chief of the advance party, he said, “You’d better be on your way, otherwise you’ll be late.”
    The chief of the advance party ground his teeth as he and his party boarded their canoes. Just before shoving off they pitched on shore the satchels belonging to Parisé and Lebrun. Only then did the two young Frenchmen awaken to what was taking place. They sprang forward, but the warriors held them back. They struggled to break free. They yelled, “Our guns! Our guns! At least leave us our guns!” But their outcries were as useless as their struggles.
    Abeedaussimoh went on to the next images on the sash, men lying on the ground sick, with a medicine man standing among them; then men up on their feet.
    â€œThe advance party,” said Abeedaussimoh as he picked up the thread of his story, “went on inland, made their request for corn and the amount from the Waendaut, then returned to Stadacona. The chief of the advance party told the chief of his community what had happened to their two White companions. When the chief of Stadacona told Cartier, by means of gestures, that the two men who had accompanied his advance party had run off, Cartier blew his top. He cursed, yelled, clenched his fists, and kicked a sawhorse. He was a picture of frustration, trying to get the chief to understand.
    But while the chief couldn’t understand what Cartier said, he understood the White mans wrath. After he’d endured Cartier’s
“maudites,” “mardes,”
and
“enfants d’chiennes,”
the chief shrugged his shoulders and walked away, leaving Cartier to fume and rail at the heavens. How would Cartier explain this when he returned to France?
    Back to supervising the construction of their buildings and the fort went Cartier. Meanwhile the chief of Stadacona sent a trading mission inland to obtain a winter supply of corn from the Waendaut.
    For those who remained behind, there was nothing more fascinating than to watch the construction of the fort. They gossiped and marvelled at the size of buildings such as they had never before seen. But the building of such dwellings wasn’t the only aspect of the bearded White men that drew the attention of the Indians. They could not get over how these men could get along without helpmates. They asked one another, “How do they get along without women? Do they care about women? Do they have wives? Girlfriends? Brothers? Sisters? And if they have families, loved ones, how can they leave them behind?”
    When Cartier and his men finished construction of their buildings and erected a palisade around them, they retreated inside, coming out only once in a while to fish for cod or to ask the Indians for meat. The north wind blew, bringing snow and cold. None of the people of Stadacona were invited or allowed inside the fort.
    At home the Indians complained. “We let them in our land and letthem come into our homes and villages … but they won’t let us into their homes.”
    Before too long the bearded White men came into Stadacona to say that their fires were going out and that they were cold. The Indians showed the stick-wavers what kinds of wood made the warmest fires and brought them warm clothing, jackets, mittens, moccasins, leggings, and caps made of buckskin and beaver; they brought warm comfortable bedding, bear rugs, rabbit blankets. The Indians brought these struggling “civilized” bearded White men dried and smoked and fresh meats, but the bearded White men continued to eat their salted cod, boiled.
    About mid-winter most of the White men began to