Post 4 - Ahatatoga/Helene
Post 4 – Ahatatoga,
(Hochelaga, 1558-1565)
Ahatatoga remembered first meeting Hantero when she was six years old. According to her parents, Ahatatoga had already met Hantero the spring before when he had come to Hochelaga to marry into Ahatatoga's Hawk clan. Whatever the reason, Ahatatoga had no memory of that marriage, but did remember the day that Hantero arrived with his herd the next winter..
At first Ahatatoga was unsure what she was seeing as she looked out onto the ice of the Great River [1]. She had heard stories of caribou herds from those who had travelled to the North, and that is what she had initially thought she had seeing coming towards Hochelaga over the ice. There certainly were a lot of animals in that herd, and they were about the right size to be caribou, she thought. But, when they got closer, she realized the animals had small horns instead of antlers, and had wide, stocky bodies. These definitely weren't caribou.
Things got even stranger when she saw that the animals weren't travelling alone, but were being followed by a group of men and dogs who were chasing them over the ice. It was then that Ahatatoga first remembered seeing Hantero. He was the tallest of the four men driving the herd over the ice. He wore clothes that seemed strange to her at the time, but she later learned were typical among Stadaconans, and he carried an air of adventure about him that Ahatatoga hadn't seen much of before. It wouldn't be long before Ahatatoga would use every chance she could get to help Hantero with whatever he was up to.
Hantero and his three friends were the first to bring cattle to Hochelaga. While many Hochelagas who had travelled to Stadacona had seen cattle before, and had eaten their meat, no one had attempted to bring them to Hochealga until Hantero. Hantero, like many Stadaconan men, had been unable to find a bride within Stadacona, but had tried to bring much of his Stadacaonan lifestyle with him when he came to live with his new family. While most Stadaconan men had married into the local villages near Stadacona itself, and had brought their cattle herds with them, Hantero and his friends had more ambitious goals, and wanted to move to the largest town that they knew of: Hochelaga.
The year before, Hantero and his friends had found Hochelagan wives, and had built a barn in which to shelter their herds. They had waited until the ice on the river was solid before they brought their herd across. While each of the four men had married into a different clan, and thus would be living in a different longhouse, they would share the cattle, at least until the herd was large enough to divide it.
Hantero and his cattle brought many changes to Hochelaga. The use of oxen made clearing fields easier, and the availability of meat meant that fewer men went out hunting in the wintertime. The manure helped the crops grow, so fewer new fields needed to be cleared and planted. People began talking about the possibility that Hochelaga wouldn't have to move again as it had when Ahatatoga had been a baby. Stadacona had stayed in the same place for over a generation, people said, and many of the men didn't want to have to go through the work of clearing new fields and building new longhouses.
The winter when Ahatatoga was nine was a cold one, and Hantero spent much of the winter complaining about how the Hawk clan's longhouse was so much colder than the buildings in Stadacona.The next spring, he made a trip to Stadacona, and returned with a saw, hammer and nails. He recruited the help of the whole clan in replacing the bark that covered the outside of the longhouse with wooden planks cut from trees Hantero was felling to clear more land for the grazing of his herd. The planks that Hantero had cut fit together much more snugly than bark did, and the longhouse was much warmer in subsequent winters.
By the time Ahatatoga was twelve, the plank longhouses had become common. Some clans were taking advantage of the new building techniques to experiment with longer and wider house designs, giving each family more space to call their own. Many of the Hochelagan men had started cattle herds of their own, and an extension had been built to Hochelaga's palisade in order to encompass the new barns. One new immigrant from Stadacona had brought the knowledge and tools necessary to work iron, and a forge had been set up. Ahatatoga would tag along behind Hantero when he went to the forge, and would watch the smith pound the hot metal. Sometimes, Ahatatoga would even be allowed to help pump the bellows herself, something she was always happy to do.
On long winter's nights, when the cows were asleep in their barn, Hantero would tell stories around the fire in the Hawk clan longhouse. Many of these were old Stadaconan stories that others who came from downriver also told. Many were those that Hantero had learned from the pale-skinned priest in Stadacona: stories like Noah and the canoe full of animals. Ahatatoga's favourite stories, though, were the ones that Hantero had seen with his own eyes: stories about the pale-skinned people who came from across the ocean.
Ahatatoga had never met any of these pale-skins herself. Her parents had been around when the pale-skins had come up the river and visited Hochelaga, but, at that time, Ahatatoga had not been born yet. Ahatatoga has always thought of the pale-skins as a people of stories, a people of the past. However it seemed that if Hantero was correct, there still were pale-skins living in Stadacona, and more who came to visit from across the ocean every summer.
Hantero told stories about how the pale-skins were able to harness the wind to cross the ocean in canoes the size of longhouses. He told Ahatatoga about the fire-sticks that the pale-skins used for hunting that could kill at a distance. He told her about the ability of the pale-skins to turn their words into markings on a surface, and for others to reproduce words from those marks.
This ability to turn words into markings fascinated Ahatatoga. After further inquiry she discovered that Hantero knew at least some of the basic principles for doing this. He had learned how to make a number of these markings from a woman named Yegasetsi who had in turn learned them from the pale-skin priest. He knew that these markings represented different sounds, and knew a few of the markings and the sounds they represented.
So, in the summer when Ahatatoga was thirteen, Hantero and Ahatatoga would go down to a place on the river known for its flat rocks, and would scratch words into the stone. And, while there were a number of words that Hantero could make easily into markings, there were some that he couldn't. There were some sounds that he just didn't know the markings for.
“So, if you don't know the markings for these sounds, why can't you just make some up?” Ahatatoga asked one day.
“Well, I could make some up, but they wouldn't be the correct markings.”
“What do you mean `correct'?”
“Well, if Yegasetsi came here and tried to read them, she wouldn't understand what was meant by them.”
“But
I would understand because you would have told
me what they meant.”
“But that's not the point. The point of markings is that they mean the same thing to everyone. That way you can send messages to people far away. If I made up markings and taught them to you, then you could only send messages to me.”
“So if I want to learn the proper markings for these other sounds, what do I have to do?”
“Well, I guess you'd have to go to Stadacona and ask Yegasetsi to teach you.”
* * * * *
(Stadacona, July 1567)
Stadacona was a town of marvels for Ahatatoga. Even when she had first seen it from Hantero's canoe, she had been amazed at the architecture and shape of the buildings. While in recent years, the men of Hochelaga had been experimenting with different designs for their longhouses, the basic shape of the buildings had always been the same: long and round. In Stadacona, however, there was much more variety. There were the square walls and angled roof of Fort-St-Francis, the pointed steeple of the wooden church holding its cross high above the town, and the traditional rounded longhouses where most of the Stadaconans lived. Moreover, the variety of Stadaconan architecture lay not only in the shapes but in the colours and textures. There were still a number of buildings covered with the traditional bark siding, but there were others covered with wooden planks, and others covered with this white material that the Stadaconans called plaster. [2]
Once Ahatatoga got the chance to see Stadacona's longhouses close-up she realized that they weren't as traditional as she had once thought. The shape of the building was as the same, and they were still supported by a frame of poles bent over to form the curved roof. However, the longhouses, rather than having a single door at each end, had multiple doors spaced at equal intervals along the sides of the building. Hantero told her that Stadacona had no more clans: rather than all descendants of the same Clan Mother living together in a single longhouse, each nuclear family of husband, wife and children lived in their own apartment and shared a building with unrelated nuclear families. It seemed that the vast majority of Stadacona's population had no ancestors in Stadacona itself and had either chosen to move to Stadacona in order to convert to Christianity, had married into a Stadaconan family, or had been taken to Stadacona as captives during the many wars that had been fought to replace population lost to disease. [3]
Ahatatoga's first task upon arrival was to visit the Church where she was to be made a Christian through a rite called “Baptism”. Ahatatoga still had little idea of what becoming a Christian entailed, but knew that she would have to become one in order to live in Stadacona long enough to learn something from Yegasetsi. A man called Père Jerome, who seemed to be something between a Chief and a Shaman, made many of the rules in Stadacona, and becoming a Christian was one of those rules. If Ahatatoga were to learn what the Stadaconans had to teach, she would have to live by their rules.
As soon as Ahatatoga stepped inside the church, she forgot any fears she had about becoming a Christian. The walls of the church were covered with images of people who Ahatatoga later learned were Christian Saints, and surrounding the images were the markings that Ahatatoga had come to know as “writing”. She sounded out the markings that she could identify, and realized that the language represented these markings was not Kanatian at all, but a language that had come across the ocean with the pale-skinned people that the Stadaconans called “Frenchmen”. She knew, as soon as she saw the beauty of the pictures and words that Christianity had produced that, whatever Christianity was, she would have to become a part of it.
Ahatatoga remembered little of the Baptism ceremony itself, partly because much of it was said in a language she didn't understand, and partly because she was too distracted by the contents of the church itself. Once the ceremony was finished, Ahatatoga was introduced to a young man, a few years older than herself. “Hèlene,” he said to her, “my name is Charles Grignon. My mother is Marie-Claire, who you've come here to learn from. She's busy at the moment, discussing the upcoming harvest with the other Town Mothers [4], but I'm to take you back to our apartment.”
“What did you just call me? Elen? And who is Marie-Claire?”
“Hèlene is your new name. When you were baptised, Père Jerome gave you a new Christian name. And Marie-Claire is my mother's Christian name. You may know her by her Heathen name: Yegasetsi.”
Getting a good look at Charles, Hèlene forgot all about the beauty of the Church around her. Charles didn't have the pale skin and blue eyes that Père Jerome had, but his hair was something else. It wasn't black like Kanatian hair or yellow-grey like that of Père Jerome but red, almost as bright as a maple tree in fall. It curled into ringlets that bounced on his forehead and fell past his ears. His face also, had a look about it that Hèlene had rarely seen before. While his skin tone was the same as any Kanatian's, he had a band of freckles across his nose and cheeks which gave it an exotic touch. His eyes contained a fire in them, and Hèlene could see the fierce energy that burned within him. Hèlene began to wonder if Charles' hair was just as colourful within his leather breeches, and saw that Charles had noticed her downward gaze. [5]
“Yes, I am here to learn from your mother,” Hèlene burst out. “My clan has sent me to Stadacona to learn how to grow the new crops you are growing here so that I can bring that knowledge back to enrich Hochelaga. And I also am interested in learning more of those markings you called 'writing'. Hantero has taught me a little, but he says that your mother will have to teach me the rest.”
“Well, my mother isn't the only one here who knows how to write,” Charles replied, “many of us here in Stadacona can do so. She taught me when I was a child!”
“Oh, really!” Ahatatoga exclaimed. “I know your mother must be a busy woman being the town Headwoman and all. Could you teach me? I mean unless you're too busy as well. I'm sure all the young women in this town are dying to learn from you!”
“Actually, Hèlene, you're the first to ask,” Charles replied with a smile that showed that he was as excited about spending time with her as she was about spending time with him.
* * * * * * *
(Stadacona, May 1569)
Hèlene was itching to see Stadacona again, and to be again in the arms of Charles Grignon. After spending a year in Stadacona living with Yegasetsi's family, learning plough-based farming techniques from the mother, and learning reading and writing (and lovemaking) from the son, she had returned to Hochelaga at the end of the past summer in time to participate in the harvest and share the knowledge she had learned with her clan. Hèlene had missed the wonders of Stadacona almost as soon as she had left, but knew that her place was with her clan in Hochelaga.
And then, just as Hèlene was settling in to life in Hochelaga, she had realized that she was with child. Her grandmother had initially tried to convince her to take the herbs to end her pregnancy, but Hèlene was stubborn and wanted to keep the baby, especially since she knew it had been Charles who had fathered the child. She had written a note to Charles on a piece of birch bark explaining that she was pregnant. She had sent the note downriver to Stadacona with a trader, and, after a few more exchanges, Charles had agreed that the two of them should marry.
Charles himself had stopped by Hochelaga in October on his way to lead a raiding party up the Copper River [6] against the Omamiwinini [7] people. It was late in the year to conduct warfare, but Charles was an ambitious warrior, and knew that he stood a chance of catching small groups of Omamiwinini out on their fall hunting trips. Charles' visit in Hochelaga was cut short by the need to complete his raids before the rivers froze over, but it had been wonderful for Hèlene to be able to see him again. They had spent several fall nights making love as Charles told Hèlene stories of France that he had learned from his father.
The winter had passed with no word from Charles as there were no traders travelling up and down the river in wintertime to pass messages along. Hèlene had given birth in the first few weeks of spring. The first trading canoe coming up the river from Stadacona had brought a letter from Charles setting a date for their wedding in Stadacona. Now, Hèlene, with her daughter at her breast, was in a canoe paddled by her mother and father. Many other members of her clan followed in other canoes, on their way to Stadacona to attend the wedding.
In Kanatian towns and villages all up and down the Great River [1] it was traditional for a wedding feast to take place at the husband's longhouse, but it's was the job of the wife's family to supply the food for the feast. This way, the wife's family could show the husband's family that their son would be in good hands once he moved into his wife's longhouse. Thus, the ten canoes that travelled downriver to Stadacona were filled to the brim with meat from freshly-killed deer, dried corn from last years' harvest, and various roots, herbs and other ingredients to improve the flavour of the food. There were even a few dozen cobs of “stinky corn” that had spent the winter soaking in a pond. [8]
Soon the canoes arrived at Stadacona's dock, where Charles and his family greeted the Hawk Clan and helped them carry their supplies into the feast hall. The wedding itself would take place in the church, Charles told Hèlene, and the feast would happen afterwards in the hall. Hèlene was excited that Père Jerome would be presiding over the wedding. She loved the stories that he told in church on Sundays, and hoped that he would include some in the wedding service. Hèlene was also relieved to learn that Père Jerome's usual prohibition on non-Christians entering the church wouldn't apply to her family on her wedding day.
The wedding service was everything that Hèlene had dreamed of. Père Jerome shared a number of her favourite Biblical stories with the assembled families. The Christian wedding traditions, while still a little strange to Hèlene, were pleasant enough, and getting married in this beautiful church was definitely a thrill. Hèlene's family seemed to be happy enough, even though they were a little awkward at the unfamiliarity of the whole ceremony.
After the ceremony came the feast, when Hèlene finally got a chance to relax. Her family had cooked up a wonderful meal, and Charles' father Henri had contributed a few barrels of beer to improve the mood. Everyone was feasting and drinking and carrying on conversation, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Hèlene could now finally turn to her husband and talk.
“Hèlene,” Charles said to her, “I was thinking maybe that tomorrow we could go and take a look at the new longhouse that's under construction on the east side of town. My mother has arranged for us to have one of the apartments in that longhouse, and I will have been helping out with the construction myself. I thought you might want to take a look at where we will be living.”
“I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I understand,” Hèlene replied, “are you saying that we will be living here, in Stadacona? I thought you were going to come back to Hochelaga with me after the wedding to live in the Hawk Clan longhouse. You are a member of the Hawk Clan now too.”
“Why would I want to share a longhouse with your family in Hochelaga when we can have an apartment of our own here? I know you well enough to know that you would much rather live here than return to Hochelaga.”
“Well, if it was just me, of course I'd prefer to stay here. But it's not just me. We have a daughter now, and we will need my mother's and my aunt's help taking care of her.”
“My mother can help with that just as well as yours. And I have sisters who are raising children of their own, and would love to share childcare with you. It's not like I didn't think about that.”
“Well, what about when my mother gets old? Who will take care of her then? I have no sisters, only brothers, and once my brothers are married into other clans, she will have no one to take care of her.”
“I've thought of that too. Remember the raids I carried out against the Omamiwinini[7] in the fall? Well, we took a dozen captives, including a couple young girls. If your mother needs someone to take care of her and carry on the Hawk clan, she can adopt either one of the girls. And, if they are both unsatisfactory, I can find her more girls to adopt. I do want to make sure your mother is taken care of and I do want to support your clan. But, you have to remember that you're a Christian now. Your place is here where you can attend church and live as a Christian. My mother gave up her clan when she married my father and converted to Christianity, and you can do the same...”
* * * * *
(Stadacona, June 1575)
Ahatatoga was down at the river gathering water, when she saw the canoe approaching. She could tell by the design of the canoe and by their clothes that the men paddling it were Abenaki. They had likely come down the Swift River [9] to trade furs, meat, and other forest products for metal and other goods the Abenakis themselves couldn't produce. She knew that Henri, her father-in-law, would want to surpervise the trading, so she put down the water she was carrying and ran up the hill to Fort-St-Francis, where the surviving Frenchmen still lived.
Ahatatoga was happy that her children were now old enough she didn't have to carry them. Her daughter was almost as independent-minded as Ahatatoga had been at her age, and was probably off helping in the fields. Her son was with her, but he was 3 now: old enough now that Ahatatoga could leave him to guard the water while she went to fetch Henri.
Henri was working on repairing a plaster wall in Fort-St-Francis when Ahatatoga arrived. The Fort was starting to show its age, and, with the death of two of the Frenchmen last year, the number of Stadaconans who knew how to work with plaster had decreased. Henri had shown Charles how to plaster a wall, but Charles was always more interested in war and hunting than he was in doing any work around the town. In fact, even now Charles was off downriver making war on the L'Nuk people [10] who coveted the fishing grounds near the mouth of the Great River [1].
Henri put down his plaster and trowel, and fetched the cart where he stored his trade goods from the Fort's courtyard. Soon, Ahatatoga and Henri were back at the dock. When they got there they could seen that the Abenaki canoes had already been pulled up on shore, and the traders had laid out their furs and other goods. A number of other Stadaconans had already brought trade goods of their own down to the dock, but, as usual, they deferred to Henri to take charge of the exchange.
Amongst the Stadaconans Henri was considered an expert trader. As someone who had lived in France, he knew the true value of European-made goods, and had been taking charge of trading with the Europeans for years. While Henri often times acted as an agent to negotiate a fair price for goods held by individual families, the vast majority of the goods traded by Henri belonged to the town as a whole. When Stadaconans acquired surplus furs or goods of any type, they usually gave them to Henri to use as trade goods, and, in exchange, Henri distributed many of the products he obtained from the European trade ships amongst the various families in the town. He always acquired more goods from the Europeans than the town needed at any one time, and he kept the surplus in his hand cart to trade with Abenakis from the South, Hochelagans from upriver, and Atikamekw [11] from the North.
But today, something was different. Rather than looking through the Abenaki's furs to determine their number and quality, Henri was looking at a pendant that one of the traders wore around his neck. It was made of metal, and was pounded flat and engraved in the same way as traditional copper jewelry, but it wasn't copper. Ahatatoga could tell by looking at it that it was too yellow to be copper. She recalled that she had seen some metal like it being used for jewelry by traders from the Northwest when she was a child. Her father had called it “yellow copper”. [12]
“Can I take a look at that pendant?” Henri asked the trader. The trader handed it over, and Henri bit it, noticing how soft a metal it was. The trader protested, but Henri promised to offer him something better in exchange. After rooting around in his cart for a bit, Henri produced a larger pendant made of pure copper. This one was regular copper: it had once been the reddish colour of polished copper, but had since turned blue-green from age. “Here have this in exchange,” Henri said as he offered it to the trader.
The trader looked puzzled “Why would you give me red copper for yellow copper?” he asked. “Is this pendant cursed?”
“Of course
we all know that red copper is worth more than yellow copper,” Henri replied, “it is harder and stronger and thus more useful for making tools and weapons. But, my people across the ocean, the pale-skins as you call them, they are lazy and idle. They are too lazy to polish their red copper when it gets tarnished so they prefer yellow copper, which doesn't lose its shine. The softness of yellow copper isn't a problem: they use it for ornaments and not for tools, so they don't care how soft it is. They have too much red copper, and, for them, yellow copper is rare. This means that they are willing to give me great quantities of iron and red copper for a small piece of yellow copper such as this one. Can I ask where you got this yellow copper?”
“My mother found it once by the side of a stream when she was gathering water. The stream is in our lands South of here, a few day's travel up the Swift River.” [13]
“Well, if your people want to return to that stream and collect more pieces of yellow copper like this one, I can trade you red copper or iron tools for your yellow copper. I will pay handsomely for any yellow copper you can collect. If you bring more of your people here next summer, I can teach them how to collect yellow copper more effectively, so that your people will have more to trade to us. This yellow copper can make your people rich!”
Footnotes:
[1] The Great River is the OTL St. Lawrence River. The Stadaconans are now referring to it as the River Kanata, but the Hochelagans still call it by its traditional name in their language.
[2] I've looked it up, and making plaster would be very possible for these Stadaconans. They would need pickaxes for breaking up limestone, which they can make in their forge, and then could fire the limestone to make quicklime in the same bonfires they used for firing pottery (I'm not sure if they would have had kilns at this point – if they did then they could also use those). Then, all that's needed is to add water and you have plaster! This is another craft that the French have brought to Stadacona along with blacksmithing, brewing, cheesemaking, and basic carpentry.
[3] In Iroquoian cultures, captives taken during wartime were often adopted into a local family. Here, the Stadaconans have further elaborated on this practice, promising captives not to torture and kill them if they convert to Christianity and settle down in Stadacona. While many of these Stadaconans start out as captives, they generally grow to like the Stadaconan lifestyle enough that they come to see Stadacona as home.
[4] The Stadaconans have done away with the clan system of social organization because such a large percentage of the town is made up of immigrants, but still retain the idea that women elders should be in charge of the distribution of food and other goods along with family affairs such as marriages and adoptions. In many traditional Iroquoain societies, this role was taken on by Clan Mothers. When New Stadacona was just a small settlement of 100-200, Yegasetsi took on this role as sole Headwoman. Now that (New) Stadacona is a town of over 500 there is a council of Town Mothers that serve this function.
[5] Adolescent women in Iroquoain culture were noted to be very sexually forward (at least in comparison to the attitudes of the missionaries who documented much of the culture).
[6] The Copper River is the name the Hochelagans in TTL use for the OTL Ottawa River. The name comes from the fact that it is the main trade route that leads to the copper-mining country around Lake Superior.
[7] Omamiwinini is the Algonquin people's name for themselves. Having very little documentation of the Hochelagan language, I'm not going to try to re-create Hochelagan names for their neighbours.
[8] Corn fermented in a pond was an OTL Huron delicacy. In TTL, the Hochelagans enjoy it too.
[9] This is the OTL Chaudiere River which flows into the *St. Lawrence close to Stadacona and is one of the main trading routes with the Abenaki and other peoples to the South.
[10] This is the Mi'kmaq people's name for themselves. Again, I will be using various nation's names for themselves whenever possible instead of referring to them by the names that OTL were given to them later by European explorers and missionaries. From what we can tell there was an ongoing dispute over the fishing grounds in the Gaspé peninsula at the time of Cartier's arrival, and, in TTL that dispute is ongoing.
[11] The Atikamekw lived in the upper *St.-Maurice River valley, and OTL were trade partners with the Innu. In TTL furs come down the *St-Maurice River from Atikamekw territory to be traded at Stadacona.
[12] “Yellow copper” is gold of course. I have read in at least one source that, before European contact, the natives peoples of Northeastern North America did use gold and silver for ornamentation when it was readily available in the same way they used copper. However, they placed a higher prestige value on copper than they did on gold or silver because it was more useful for making tools, and thus gold and silver weren't traded nearly as extensively as copper was.
[13] The trader's mother found a gold nugget along the *Gilbert River, which was the site of one of Canada's first gold rushes. See
http://www.uragold.com/history.php for more information.
. The reason for this is that, from what I can tell, he was already "old" by Stadaconan standards (I'm guessing in his 50s) by the time of Cartier's first visit to Stadacona in 1535. He's aged more than 10 years already since then, and he's endured a lot of stress in his travels to France. I don't think I can plausibly keep him around for too much longer, so I've decided that he dies in 1551. Pere Jerome is most of a generation younger (he was in his early 30s when he first met Donnacona), so I'm planning to keep him around till the 1570s. Donnacona's mantle will be partially taken up by his daughter Yegasetsi (who will share his enthusiasm for adopting French innovation, but will be a little more critical of Christianity).