Mattie Mitchell Read Online Free PDF Page A

came to lord over
the land. They wanted the fish and the fur-bearing animals, the
immense tracts of timber, the stretches of fertile land. It was an
unimaginable resource to the land-hungry and resource-starved
explorers from Europe. It was a land that knew nothing of the
modern invention of steel.
    The hook, the trap, and the gun would bring an ages-old
native lifestyle to an end. The invading people with the sickly
skin colour wanted to own the very land that the indigenous
peoples had occupied forever. This was a concept the natives
could not understand. How could anyone own the earth? It wasunder the feet of everyone. It was a part of all of their races. The
magnificent waters running through it were like clear bloodlines
that linked humans to the Great Spirit. The white man claimed
ownership over the land that wasn’t theirs to take in the first
place.
    The Mi’kmaq people of which Mattie Mitchell was a part
would survive the wars, but would never be their own complete
and unique nation again. Of the two foreign nations vying for
dominance over the virgin continent, the Mi’kmaq aligned
themselves with the French, and along with them their version
of Catholicism.
    Mattie knew about his people’s belief in Glooscap, their
god who came from nothing. According to their ancient belief,
Glooscap was a man created from speech. Secretly, Mattie didn’t
see much difference in this belief than the Christian belief. He
had never heard the priest say where God came from. He knew
God had a son who came from a woman whom had never lain
with a man and that this man and his father were supposed to
be the same person. This same God blew His breath upon the
dust of the land and created man. Mattie dared not mention the
similarities between the two beliefs. For Mattie, to sit at the back
of the church and experience the reverence of something he never
quite understood was in itself spiritual.
    Several wharves jutted out into the calm Sunday morning
harbour, and as Mattie walked along he noticed a schooner was
tied securely across the head of one of the wharves. Below her
two masts, and fastened diagonally to them on the main- and fore
booms, two stained brown sails were neatly furled. Docked as it
was, the schooner and the rickety wharf had formed a T jutting
from the craggy shoreline. Mattie had always liked the little
schooners, though he had never sailed on one. Watching them
sail in and out of the bays, sometimes seeing them below himas he stood atop a high fjord, they always seemed to be quick,
spirited things, borne freely along by a brisk wind.
    As he drew nearer to the schooner, several shouting men
were hastening out onto the wharf toward it. The rickety wharf
creaked and buckled under the feet of so many hurrying men.
Mattie stopped at the wharf’s entrance, and without venturing
onto it, listened to the noisy white men.
    â€œI tells ’e ’tis no good to be wasting a cannon shot yet. ’Twill
take seven days fer a body to come afloat.”
    This shout came from a bearded, burly man who had just
appeared through the slanted forecastle door. Judging by the
way the rest of the men were looking to him for answers, Mattie
guessed he was the schooner’s skipper.
    â€œWell, ’tis not shot we’re asking ’e to fire from the bloody
cannon. Only a charge of black powder, is all. An’ I always heard
’twould take only three days fer a drownded body to come back
up. An’ ’tis been four days now since poor Walt disappeared.”
    The small, skinny man who was shouting his concerns into
the captain’s face seemed to be speaking for the rest of the crowd.
They all yelled in support.
    The church bell started to ring across the calm, black water.
The men, some of them still standing on the wharf, some of them
aboard the schooner, all turned as one toward the sound. Mattie
stood with his hands in his pockets and continued watching. He
was amused by the loud talk and