_CONVENT DAYS._
1806.
Abbie, who was the very reverse of her sister in appearance and
disposition, still remained in the convent, the seclusion of which
had not transformed her into a religious recluse--rather the reverse.
Her association with gay daughters of wealthy Seigneurs and others
had the effect of deepening her love of adventure and romance.
Sally Smith continued to be her most intimate friend, and any
holidays, which in those days were few and far between, were spent at
the Citadel.
One evening a young officer called, and during the absence of her
mother from the room Sally said, her eyes dancing with mischief: "Let
me introduce you to my friend, Miss Wabisca Onodis, Lieutenant
Randall. Miss Onodis," she continued, "is the daughter of an
Algonquin Chief, and is a boarder at the convent."
"Aw, indeed," said the officer, "I should never have dreamed that
your friend was an Indian girl. Have you had much difficulty in
acquiring a knowledge of English?" asked the lieutenant.
"Not at all," replied Abbie, "I understand everything that is said,
but find difficulty at times in choosing words best fitted to give
expression to my deepest emotions."
"Aw, I quite understand. They say that the Indian nature is much
more intense than that of other civilized nations. What is
exceedingly difficult even for an Englishman must be much more so for
one of your temperament. No language, I believe, either written nor
spoken, can convey any adequate idea of the emotion of love, for
instance. Is that your experience, Miss Onodis?"
Just then Mrs. Smith entered, and the conversation turned to that
perennial subject--the weather. The friendship thus formed soon
ripened into more than a mere friendship. Frequent messages passed
between the convent and the Citadel, messages in cypher, for Therese,
an Indian girl, had furnished Abbie with a list of Algonquin words
and phrases expressive of deep sentiment, which were quite
unintelligible to the nuns, and as the officer was furnished with a
similar vocabulary, messages were frequently carried by Sally between
the two.
This went on for some time until the nuns found a scrap of paper on
the floor containing the following mysterious words:
Nitam shaquoi yanque kitchioni chishim
Kin mishiwaiasky nin
Othai icha quisco.
Ka qui nick kitayam.
Wabisca Onodis.
After matins the Mother Superior addressed about two hundred young
women in the Assembly Hall in the following words:
"Young ladies, a very mysterious letter has been found. It is
evidently in the Indian language. It is probably intended for one of
our Indian young ladies. Did anyone present lose a letter?"
No one spoke.
"O'Jawa," said the superior, addressing a young Indian girl, "will
you come forward and see if this letter is written in one of the
Iroquois or one of Algonquin dialects?"
O'Jawa promptly came up the aisle, and scanning the paper, said:
"It is Algonquin, Mother."
"To whom is it addressed?"
"To no one, Mother," she replied.
"By whom is it signed?"
"By a White Chief, Mother."
"Please translate it," said the Mother Superior.
O'Jawa read slowly and deliberately:
"_First--last--and best,
Thou art all the world to me.
My heart burns.
"Always yours,
"WHITE CHIEF._"
"This letter," continued the Mother Superior, "evidently belongs to
one of the Algonquin girls, who probably has been receiving secret
missives of a similar nature from some white man. As you are aware,
young ladies, this offence is punishable with expulsion. Deceit is
the mother of all vices. The sisters cannot assume the
responsibility of the care of any young lady who would deliberately
deceive them in this way; therefore I am under the painful necessity
of investigating this matter more fully. Therese, come forward.
Your guilty face indicates that you were the recipient of this
letter. Were you?"
"I was not, Mother."
"Then it was sent to you and the bearer dropped it before you saw it.
Is not that the case?"
"I do not know, Mother."
"Have you ever received any communications of this nature before?"
"I have not, Mother."
"Do you know any White Chief?"
"I do not, Mother."
"Do you know for whom this missive was intended?"
Therese hesitated. The question was repeated.
"I do, Mother," she said.
"Do you know by whom it was written?"
Taking the letter in her hand she said, slowly:
"I do, Mother."
"Then, Therese, I must demand the names of both the sender and the
intended recipient."
"Who wrote that letter?"
"I shall not tell," she said, slowly and with great determination.
"I shall give you five minutes to answer my question, Therese, and if
you stubbornly persist in concealing these facts from me I shall
declare you expelled."
There was silence in the hall--not a soul stirred. Therese stood
calmly awaiting her doom, when suddenly there was a shuffling at the
back of the hall and Abbie came forward and addressed the Superior:
"I wrote that letter. It was intended for a young officer at the
Citadel. If you are going to expel anyone, expel me."
The Mother Superior hesitated. She looked at Abbie, then at Therese,
and said, solemnly:
"Insubordination and deceit must not go unpunished. I shall
communicate all the circumstances of the case to your parents. The
classes may now go to their respective class-rooms."
A few days later Abbie was summoned to the reception room, and was
much surprised to find her father and her brother Bearie in
consultation with the Mother Superior. They had just arrived with a
raft of timber--the first raft from the Ottawa--and had come to
arrange with the nuns to have Abbie spend the evening with them. The
Chief looked very grave as he tried to decipher the tattered letter
which the Mother Superior translated to him. He said:
"Abbie is a giddy, foolish, light-hearted girl, whose spirits often
carry her beyond bounds. I shall be returning to the Utawas in a few
days and shall take her home with me. She will be safe at home," he
said, as the Mother tried to dissuade him from his purpose.
"Now that your daughter is on restriction of leave she will be
perfectly safe with us. We make an exception, of course, in the case
of parents taking their daughters out."
No sooner had they emerged from the stone walls of the convent than
Abbie related the whole affair to her father, who reproved her for
her folly and gave her what is rarely appreciated, sound, fatherly
advice.
On reaching the hotel Bearie introduced to his sister an awkward,
bashful youth named Thomas Brigham, who had come down with them on
the raft.
"What part of the backwoods do you come from?" she asked, coldly.
"From the township of Hull," he responded.
"Did you ever see a city before?"
"Well, no, I cannot say that I have, except Montreal and Three
Rivers," he replied, as he scraped the mud off his long boots with
his pocket knife.
"I thought not," she said.
Her father moved uneasily in his seat on observing the embarrassment
of the young man, and said, gravely:
"Thomas is not as rough as he looks. He is one of the ablest young
men in the settlement. He may lack the veneer of an officer, but you
will find as the years go on that there is no discount on Thomas."
So saying, he arose from the table, and, taking his hat from the
rack, said: "Come, let us walk out and see something of the city."
They were coming up St. Peter Street. Abbie was laughing and jesting
with Bearie, when they came face to face with Lieutenant Randall.
"Let me introduce you to my brother, Lieutenant Randall," said Abbie.
"And this is my father," she said, mischievously.
"Aw, I am awfully pleased to meet you, sir," he said, with a
perplexed and bewildered expression on his face.
He then turned to Bearie and said: "It is difficult to determine
sometimes when Miss Onodis is in jest and when in earnest. She led
me to believe that she was the daughter of an Indian chief, and the
truth is only now beginning to dawn upon me."
"You have not been misinformed," said Bearie. "My father has the
honor to be Chief of one of the Algonquin tribes of the Utawas, but
why do you not call my sister by her right name?"
"Aw, pardon me--pardon me! I did not understand, of course. I am to
address your sister in future as----
"Miss Wright," said Bearie.
The young lieutenant became a frequent visitor at the hotel while the
Chief was negotiating sales of lumber, and had kindly undertaken to
assist him in securing an Englishman qualified to fill the position
of bookkeeper and tutor to the younger children.
Several weeks passed. All business arrangements having been
concluded, Abbie was taken from the convent preparatory to leaving
for home, when the young officer approached the Chief and said:
"I have been earnestly hoping for an opportunity of seeing you
privately, sir, with reference to your daughter, whose hand I desire
to seek in marriage."
"My daughter is not eligible for marriage," replied the Chief, with a
twinkle in his eye, "as she is pledged, provisionally, to one of the
chiefs of our tribe."
"I cannot think that Ab---- Miss Wright has led me on only to
disappoint me at last. Have you any reason to believe that her
engagement with the Chief is an affair of the heart?"
The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Bearie, who
proposed that they should walk out to the square and watch the
setting sun.
Abbie and Bearie tried to outrival each other in relating anecdotes
and incidents of interest which had taken place during the interval
of absence from each other, in the vain hope of arousing the interest
of their military friend, who sat on the end of a bench twirling his
swagger stick nervously.
"There was an Indian girl in the convent," said Abbie, "who was
engaged to be married to one of her own tribe, and a few days before
the wedding we took up a collection among the girls and bought her a
trousseau. It consisted of a very stylish poke bonnet trimmed with
ostrich tips, a purple Irish poplin dress with ten flounces bound
with black velvet, a black lace shawl and a liberal supply of
underclothing. The poor girl was immensely pleased with the gift,
and wore a perpetual grin from the time it was presented to her till
she left.
"The day after the wedding the young bridegroom was seen parading the
streets dressed in the bride's clothes. The ribbons of her bonnet
were roughly twisted under his chin, the lace shawl hung over one
shoulder, the hoopskirts were wabbling about in a most extraordinary
manner. He seemed much pleased with the amusement it created and
laughed as heartily as any of the crowd. His love of adornment had
so triumphed over his new-found affection that he left his dusky
bride disrobed to weep over it."
"Take heed, take heed, Miss Wright, lest a similar fate be yours,"
said the young officer.
Abbie looked puzzled, but made no response. "Tell us something about
your experiences on the way down," she said, addressing her brother,
whom she had seen but once since his arrival.
"We were seven weeks coming down on the raft."
"A raft--a raft? What is that?" interrupted the officer.
"It is an immense flotilla," said the Chief, "made up of numerous
sections or cribs of timber, lashed together by green withes, which
are easily detached from the main flotilla or raft, and which are
capable of being rowed by long rude oars. We constructed on one of
these cribs a sandy hearth, above which we made a roof with no walls,
which served as a protection from rain. Six little cabins, not
unlike dog-kennels, were formed of broad strips of bark, in which
each man found a bed. As we drifted down the river cheer after cheer
went up from the settlers who had gathered on the point to see us
off."*
* In the list of provisions for the journey the Chief mentions, in
his diary of June 11th, 1806, "The bread of 3½ bushels of wheat £1
6s. 3d."
"All went well until we reached the Carillon Rapids. We succeeded in
getting nineteen cribs over safely, and Martin and Bearie were
steering the next, when a gale sprang up from the south and it blew
them so near to the north shore at the head of the bay that Captain
Johnson, whom we hired to help us over the rapids, thought best to
send a canoe to take them off, but he was too late to overtake them.
You had better tell the rest of the story," he said, turning to
Bearie, who sat with his hands in his pockets leaning against a tree.
"We got through the first chute all right," said Bearie, "but the
wind blew us on to the rapids above Green Island and the crib stuck
on the rocks. We worked all day to get her off, but it was no use.
At last there was a creak and a crash, and the whole thing went to
'smithereens.' One stick only remained on the rock, with Martin
clinging to one end and me to the other. It worked like a 'see-saw';
when Martin came up I went down, and when I came up Martin went down.
Though my eyes, ears, nose and mouth were full of water, I managed to
call out,--
"'Ough, Martin; how do you like that?'
[Illustration: "Martin came up I went down."]
"Then Martin went up and I went under, and he called out:
"'How do you like it yourself, youngster?'
"At length they got us off by throwing a rope from a point above and
letting it float down to where we were. I managed to get hold of it
first and tied it round my waist, and it was all I could do to keep
my head above water in the raging torrent. I was not sorry, as you
may imagine, to see a boat put out from Barren's Point to pick me up.
They tried the same plan with Martin, and got him off safely, too.
"When we came to the head of the Sault we had to hire some Indians
from Caughnawaga," continued Bearie. "They could not speak English,
and we could not understand much French so father wrote down in his
note-book a good many words which he spelt according to the sound,
and with the supposed meaning attached to each word. In this way he
soon had a number of words, phrases and sentences which he at once
began to use. He found it very hard to get some words, and the
Indians often looked very bewildered when he spoke to them. He tried
for a long time to find out the word for 'pike-pole,' and at length
decided that it must be '_Am-chee-brin_.' He used the word all the
way to Quebec before discovering that it meant '_Un petit brin_,' a
common expression among the French-Canadians, meaning 'a little.'"
"But that was not the worst," said the Chief. "When we came to
Bastican we went to a Post-house* for dinner, and the 'bonne femme'
introduced with great pride her only child, a black-eyed boy of about
two.
* Not a post-office, but an inn with livery attached, under
Government inspection, with fixed tariff of rates per mile for hire
of horses for travellers.
"'_Cest un bon petit crapeau, madame_,' I ventured to remark, patting
the boy on the head and thinking that I was paying a great compliment.
"But I saw at once, by the angry expression on the woman's face, that
I had made a great mistake, which was afterwards explained by one of
the men on the drive, who said that it meant, 'That is a nice little
toad, madam.' We were a long time trying to find out the meaning of
_Puck-a-pab_, and were amazed when they told us on reaching here that
it meant '_Pas capable_,' 'not able.'"
"I find it exceedingly difficult," remarked the officer, "to
understand the language of the habitants, though I studied French
with an excellent tutor."
"We had a terrific storm while anchored at Pointe aux Trembles," said
Bearie. "The sky grew densely black; every moment broad zig-zag
flashes lighted up the dark, angry-looking water. Father and I were
on shore, and we crawled beneath a large upturned tree root to keep
dry, for the rain soon began to fall in torrents. It was well we
did, for the hurricane swept the masts, tents, cabins, and even the
roof of the caboose away down stream, and scattered the cribs in all
directions. We were three days looking for lost timber and repairing
damages."
"I should not omit to tell you of our experience at the Long Sault.
We were thirty-six days getting through the rapids. The habitants
shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders and said: 'Il n'est
pas possible (It is not possible); what has never been can never be,
and the man who would attempt such a thing is a fool.'
"While camping there one evening we met a priest and some Frenchmen
who were on their way to one of the back settlements. The priest was
not a bad fellow. He spoke good English and was very kind and
affable, and he invited us to go with him and his party to see the
site of an old French palisade fort, which he called the Thermopylæ
of Canada, and where, he said, the most daring deed ever attempted on
this continent took place nearly one hundred and fifty years ago."
"Tell us about it," said the officer.
"You tell about it, father," said Bearie.
"It is a long story," replied the Chief, "but I shall try to tell it
as briefly as possible. The priest said that the French colonists
had suffered much from the cruelty of the Iroquois tribes, who had
decided to destroy the whole French colony. A Mohegan Indian told
the French that eight hundred Indian warriors were encamped near
Montreal, and would soon be joined by four hundred more from the
Uttawas, and that they had planned to take Quebec, kill the Governor,
burn up the town, massacre the inhabitants; after which they would
proceed to do the same with Three Rivers and Montreal.
"A young officer named Daulac, who was in command of the garrison at
Montreal, proposed to entrap them on their way down the Ottawa and
fight them. Sixteen young fellows from Montreal volunteered to go
with him. They did not know much about canoeing, for they were a
whole week in attempting to pass the swift current at St. Anne, at
the head of the Island of Montreal. In the meantime they were
overtaken by forty Hurons and several Christian Algonquins. When
they saw the rushing, foaming waters of the Sault they decided to go
no farther, for they knew that the Iroquois were sure to pass there.
He pointed out a spot just below the rapids, where the woods slope
gently down to the shore, where an old Algonquin palisade fort stood.
'It was,' he said, 'a mere enclosure of trunks of trees planted in a
circle.' In a few days they saw two Iroquois canoes coming down the
Sault. Daulac and his men hid behind the bushes and, as they landed,
shot all but one, who escaped and fled through the forest to the main
body.
"'Suddenly,' said the priest, 'a fleet of canoes filled with Iroquois
came bounding down the rapids. Soon as they landed they smashed the
bark canoes of the French, and, kindling the bark, ran up to set fire
to the palisade. Three times they attempted to storm the little
fort, but were driven back by the deadly fire of the small garrison.
Their rage was unbounded. They sent word to five hundred of their
tribe, who were camped at the mouth of the Richelieu, to come to
their aid. This so frightened the Hurons that they deserted and
betrayed the smallness of their force to the enemy, who advanced with
yells, firing as they came on. But again they had to fall back,
owing to the deadly fire of the French. The latter held out for
three days, and the Iroquois were on the verge of giving up the siege
when they resolved to make one last attempt. They made large, heavy
shields, four or five feet high, by lashing together three split logs
fastened together with cross bars. Under cover of these they
advanced, reached the palisade, and, crouching below the range of
shot, hewed furiously with their axes until they cut their way
through. Daulac filled a large musketoon with powder, and after
plugging up the muzzle attached a fuse, and tried to throw it over
the palisade, but it fell back among the French and exploded, killing
and wounding several and blinding others.
"'In the confusion that followed the Iroquois got possession. All
was soon over. Daulac was the first killed, and a burst of
triumphant yells went up from the savages. Five of the heroic
defenders escaped and brought the news to Montreal. It proved the
salvation of our French colonists in Canada,' continued the priest,
'for they felt that if seventeen white men could hold seven hundred
warriors at bay so long in an old palisade like that, there would be
no chance of capturing walled towns like Quebec and Montreal.'"
"If that is true," said the officer, thoughtfully, "the French must
have more nerve than I ever gave them credit for."
"It was a daring deed," said the Chief, who walked off with Thomas,
leaving the others to follow.