Trouble at Fort La Pointe

CHAPTER 1

TO THE ISLAND

Maybe today, Suzette thought hopefully as she slipped on her moccasins. Maybe today our family can paddle to the island! After days of stormy weather, sweet new-morning sun sifted through the pine and birch trees surrounding the Ojibwe camp. She’d find Papa and ask him.

Leaving the wiigwams and cook fires behind, she hurried along a faint path that led through the woods to the lakeshore. At water’s edge, she paused to look out over the sparkling lake. La Pointe Island beckoned in the distance. Fort La Pointe, the fur-trading post, seemed tiny as a child’s toy, the French flag flying above it no more than a spot of color. Squinting, Suzette could almost make out the Ojibwe lodges that already dotted the field beside the fort.

The lake was so big that the French traders called it Lac Supérieur—Lake Superior. Different bands of the great Ojibwe tribe lived all around the lake, much farther than Suzette had ever traveled. In rough weather, waves could capsize even the largest birch-bark canoe. But this morning, the lake looked welcoming, and the sky was a cloudless blue. As blue as your beautiful eyes, Papa often said on such mornings. Suzette smiled. The echo of his voice reached inside like a ray of spring sunshine.

She took a deep breath, enjoying the damp smell of earth, the lapping of the waves, and the sun warming her shoulders like a trader’s wool blanket. Still smiling, Suzette glanced back at the camp. Smoke from morning fires twisted toward the sky, and the first shouts of children at play mixed with the mournful yipping of hungry dogs. It was good to be among more wiigwams again!

Ojibwe people moved with the seasons. During the cold winter months, when food was scarce, they scattered into the deep forest in small family camps. At the end of the long winter, it felt wonderful to move on to the sugaring camp, where perhaps a dozen families gathered to tap maple trees for sap to boil into syrup and sugar. And then Ojibwe people all over the mainland began making their way to the great summer village on La Pointe Island, just like Suzette’s family. Each day now, more families arrived at the campground along the lakeshore and pitched wiigwams among the trees, waiting for good weather so they could cross to the island. Every passing day brought happy reunions with friends and relatives Suzette hadn’t seen since last summer.

And soon would come the greatest reunion of all! Suzette gazed across the dancing water to La Pointe Island again, almost bouncing with excitement. She had spent every summer of her life on the island that the Ojibwe called Moningwanekaaning. It had been the summer gathering place of the Ojibwe people for generations, long before the French arrived. Suzette loved the island more than any place she knew. During the busy summer months, La Pointe was home to many people: Ojibwe families and French traders, soldiers, and canoe men. Sometimes Ho Chunk or Menominee or Potawatomie trappers, who lived many days’ travel from La Pointe, paddled their furs to the trading post. Once a trapper with skin black as night had spent two days on the island. It was a big, noisy mix of people. Suzette couldn’t imagine passing through the seasons’ circle without summering outside the walls of Fort La Pointe.

And this year, because of the trappers’ competition, her family would have even more to celebrate. This year—

Suzette!

Suzette grinned and waved when she saw Gabrielle Broussard emerge from the trees, carrying a copper kettle. Gabrielle was her best friend. They had both been born in the moon of blooming flowers, twelve years earlier. And they both had French fathers.

"Aaniin, Gabrielle greeted her. What are you doing?"

I’m going to find Papa. He walked out to the point, to get the best view of the lake. Want to come with me?

Gabrielle splashed into the water to fill the kettle. Mama’s waiting for me. What’s your papa doing there?

"Can’t you guess? He’s watching for the voyageurs!" Suzette’s feet scuffed the earth in a little dance. Any day now, the songs of the French voyageurs would ring across the water from the east. They were paddling huge canoes filled with trade goods from a far-off place called Montréal. The trip took many weeks, down mighty rivers and across two great lakes. Their arrival on La Pointe Island would spark the wildly joyous gathering called rendez-vous by the French and maawanji’iwin by the Ojibwe. By the end of the short summer visit, the voyageurs’ canoes would be loaded with the furs the Ojibwe trappers had been collecting all year. Then the voyageurs would say their good-byes and paddle back to Montréal before snowstorms and iced-over rivers made travel impossible.

Papa can’t wait to see his old friends again, Suzette added. Her own papa had been a voyageur for many years.

Gabrielle glanced to the east, her face wistful. I’m waiting too.

Suzette stopped dancing. For a moment she had forgotten that Gabrielle’s father would be among the paddlers. Gabrielle hadn’t seen her father since the moon of shining leaves, when the woods blazed with red and yellow and the air held a promise of coming snow. Suzette chewed her lip. I’m sure your papa will arrive soon, Gabrielle. I’m sure his journeys have been safe.

Gabrielle nodded, but she didn’t smile.

What would cheer up her friend? I’m hoping Papa will say we can cross to the island today! she confided.

Ooh, maybe we can cross today too! Gabrielle said hopefully, then cocked her head toward the camp. Mama’s calling me. I have to go.

I’m glad I’m not waiting for Papa to arrive this year, Suzette thought as she walked down the path toward the rocky finger of land jutting into the lake. For most of Suzette’s life, she too had anxiously waited for her papa to arrive with the voyageurs each spring. She knew what that felt like. Every year one or two of the voyageurs who had Ojibwe families left and didn’t come back, sending word that they had no wish to leave Montréal again. Sometimes voyageurs drowned or got injured when canoes capsized in storms or hit rocks and broke up in river rapids. Suzette’s own grandfather, Grandmother’s first husband, had died along that journey while Mama was still a baby. A winter spent waiting and wondering was hard to endure. Suzette didn’t ever want to feel that way again.

She hurried down the trail, enjoying the sparkle of water visible through the trees and the soft feel of pine needles blanketing the ground. She caught sight of Papa sitting on a rock, staring out over the water. His whittling knife and a sharpened stick lay beside him.

Suzette paused at the edge of the woods, looking at the familiar figure: red hair and beard, very broad shoulders, strong hands now oddly still. She glanced toward the eastern horizon. Two black cormorants skimmed above the lake. There was nothing else to see. No canoes.

She looked back at her father. It was strange to see Philippe Choudoir sitting quietly. Papa!

Papa turned, and a huge grin lit his face. "Suzette! Have you come to keep your papa company, mignonne?" He engulfed her in a big hug as she dropped onto the rock beside him.

"Oui, Suzette said in his native French. They spoke Ojibwe with the rest of the family, but she and Papa always spoke French when they were alone, so she could practice. Any sign of the voyageurs yet?"

"Non, not yet. But any day now" Papa rummaged in his pocket for his old clay pipe and pouch of tobacco.

You’ve missed your friends, haven’t you. She’d known it during the long cold months of their first winter together. Around the fire at night, when the Ojibwe men told stories of bear hunts or falling through thin ice or other adventures, Papa told tales of his canoe days, with a faraway look in his eyes.

Papa lit his pipe and regarded her. "Oui. I miss my friends. But not as much as I missed my family, all those years I traveled with the canoe men. I am very happy I made the choice to stay here with you last fall."

His words made Suzette feel warm inside. Well, soon you will see your friends again. She was as eager for the voyageurs’ arrival as he was. "It will be a grand reunion, non?"

Papa grinned. "A grand reunion! A celebration!"

"And once the voyageurs arrive, Captain d’Amboise will end the competition! And surely you’ll win the prize!" Captain d’Amboise was in charge of Fort La Pointe, on the island. The trappers’ competition had been his idea.

Shhh! Papa warned, looking around.

There’s no one about to hear!

Only your Spirit of the Woods, perhaps, Papa said seriously. Or the Spirit of the Waves.

Papa tried to be respectful of Ojibwe ways. The Ojibwe believed in Gizhe Manido, the Great Spirit, but they also knew that all things had a spirit. Papa had just one spirit, God, to protect him. He carried a small silver crucifix on a band of blue, red, and yellow that Mama had woven in a lightning pattern, and he had once given Suzette a little silver cross of her own. But he believed that Suzette, as a Métis girl of mixed blood, had both kinds of spirits to protect her.

She hoped he was right. She found the thought comforting. We’ll keep our secret, she whispered. But, Papa, I know you’re going to win. You have to! Surely no one trapped more beaver than you last winter! And mink, and otter, and— She sputtered into silence, remembering how Papa had run his traps every day during the coldest months, ranging far from their winter lodge on snowshoes and returning with ice crusted in his beard. Papa hated trapping. But he had done it.

We all worked hard, Papa agreed. You and your mother and grandmother helped by cleaning so many furs. And the rabbits and foxes you caught in your snares will count too. His eyes danced. I think it just may be enough. If I win the competition for having the most furs, you won’t have to work so hard next winter, Suzette. I can use the prize money to pay my debt to the fur trade company.

Suzette nodded. Papa’s debt was like a heavy load the family had been hauling on their sleds all winter. By choosing to stay with his family year-round, Papa had broken his contract with the fur-trade company that had hired him to work as a voyageur. Some voyageurs who liked Ojibwe life simply broke their contracts and stayed, far from the reach of French authorities. But Papa said he wouldn’t be