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

bleed from their noses and ears. The men who had not yet fallen sick came to the Indians with their tale of woe, asking for help. Yes, these civilized men asked the Indians for help.
    The medicine men were invited into the fort to look at the sick. One glance was all the medicine men needed to know what ailed the stricken men. It was scurvy, a condition brought on by an insufficient intake of greens in the system. It was an ailment easy enough to remedy.
    Near at hand were stands of cedar, balsam, pine, and spruce rich in vitamin C coursing through their roots, trunks, limbs, and needles, bearing the life-giving “strength of the earth” that no living creature can do without. The medicine men made a beverage from the greens and gave it to the sick men to drink. Within a week the men stopped bleeding and recovered.
    Abeedaussimoh went on to the next set of figures, two bearded men in the company of Indians listening to a storyteller.
    For the first two years of their adoption, Parisé and Lebrun were kept under pretty close watch, but after that, in their third year as members of the community, they had as much freedom to come and go as any other member of the village. Both were married and the parents of children, and both were quite proficient in the Anishinaubae language. When asked if they ever wanted to return to their country, both said, “No, never would we ever return to a life of servitude and hunger.”
    In the meantime both had received Anishinaubae names, really corruptions of their real names: Parisé became Pau-eehnse, an elf who dwelt on the shores of the lakes; Lebrun became Nebaunaubae, a merman. They wore loincloths, moccasins, leggings, jackets, like any other Indian. The two men were as good woodsmen as any Anishinaubae.
    By the third winter the two men were in demand as storytellers; people wanted to hear about their country and what had brought them to the Land of the Great Turtle. After three years both men were enough in command of the language to enable them to take part in the storytelling sessions.
    The storytelling season always commenced with the account of creation told by one of the leading narrators in the village. This long story was followed by a recitation of the history of the nation.
    Two weeks went by before the storyteller came to the prophecy that foretold the coming of bearded White men to this continent. It was this narrative that many older people wanted to hear, to see what their adopted White men would say and do. Then they could hear Pau-eehnse and Nebaunaubae talk about what life was really like in the old world.
    And this is the story that he told. I’ve heard that it was Daebaudjimoot, our nation’s first storyteller, who first told this story. The muses who foresaw the future put the story in his mind. He told his listeners: “One day bearded men with pale complexions will come to our land. They’ll arrive on board great wooden canoes ten times longer than our longest canoes. At either end of these long canoes will stand tall timbers. From the limbs of these timbers will hang blankets for catching the wind that will whisk this great canoe along as quickly as a cloud. The White man’s canoe will not need paddlers.
    â€œIn the beginning only a few ships will arrive, on board not many men. For this reason our people will not take them as threats. They’ll accept the strangers’ word that they are bound for another land lying well beyond the western horizon and that they will resume their journey once they have found a passage and replenished their provisions.
    â€œHowever, in no time these White people will forget that they weregoing to the Far East to find its riches for which they had sacrificed so much. They’ll find something on our land far more precious than fine textiles, shiny stones, or spices. But wait. Wait for a few years. Then our ancestors will see ship after ship, bringing shiploads of men and women to our