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WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

Tall Man

“Shh, what is that?”

We stopped and listened to what sounded like a huge animal running through the underbrush, snapping small branches as it went. It was a bright and cold spring day, with large patches of snow that the sun had yet to reach in the depth of the woods. In the forest, sound seemed to travel in cascades when there was sharpness to the air, and whatever was running through the woods was blazing a trail of broken limbs, small trees, and making enough noise to announce its arrival akin to thunder and rain.

The community called me Tall Man. We identified ourselves as the Beothuk (the people). My name came naturally since I towered over my fellow tribesmen by a foot and a half. Standing over seven feet tall, I am an imposing figure, held in wonderment by all of the Beothuk.

Three companions and I had been hunting seals on the northwest part of our lands (present-day Newfoundland). The shore ice was starting to break up, but this did not hinder our ability to harpoon a couple of seals to take back to our winter village a day or so away.

The sounds were getting closer and we could make out the snorting of a caribou, plus what sounded like men yelling and dogs howling. Then, before we could react, the animal rushed out of a huge thicket in front of us, knocking over two of my travelling companions. Two arrows were sticking out of the animal’s front withers, blood and phlegm spurted from its mouth, and a pack of five or six what looked like wolves snapped at its legs, trying to hamstring it. As the animal neared me, I could see a look of total horror in its eyes. At that intense moment, a whish, whish sound passed my head. A spear embedded itself in the beast’s neck, and with one dying bellow he spurted blood and saliva onto my face, took a few more steps, and fell with a sudden rush of air gusting from his body. The smell was horrendous, a mixture of rotting vegetation and gases.

Then, sudden silence. I had dropped my harpoon to wipe the assortment of stomach contents from my face. My two hunting companions that the beast had run over were slowly getting up; one was bleeding profusely from a neck wound that had occurred when the caribou sharply grazed him with his horn. Our fourth hunter was standing with his harpoon cocked back in a threatening manner.

Then, to our astonishment, three men unlike any we had seen before emerged from the thicket. Men with coloured hair, clothes the vividness of ripened berries, and weapons that were strange to us. One was holding what looked like a stick, but it gleamed in the sun. Another had a shaft with a sharp-looking grey shale head on it, but it was not shale. There we stood in a standoff over a dead caribou, one of our warriors slowly dying from a neck wound, me weaponless, and another on his hands and knees.

One of the strangers pointed at the animal and said a word I could not understand: “rheindyri,” and then pointed at himself and said something else that gave me the impression he was saying the animal was his. Our companion with the harpoon was young and reckless, and I was concerned he was about to do something foolish that would result in sudden carnage. One of the yellow-haired men raised his weapon in anger, as if this unexpected meeting was wasting his time. Then he let out a bellow that caused my skin to rise.

At that precise moment, a harpoon sailed through the air and embedded itself in the man’s neck, causing a sudden end to his yell and blood that spurted onto our friend on the ground.

Retribution was like summer lightning. The man with the sharp-looking weapon that gleamed in the sun took our young companion’s throwing arm off with a mighty swing. I was just about to react when I heard an abrupt noise at my back, and a crushing blow to my head sent me into a world of darkness.

***

I do not know what woke me first, the bouncing that my body was enduring or the eye-burning stenches of urine, fish, and body odour of the men who were carrying me. My head was throbbing and I was trying to resist, without much luck, losing consciousness. After awhile I was able to stay fully conscious.

Now I was able to understand the predicament that had befallen me and my fellow warriors. They had tied me up like a gutted animal on a stick, with my arms and legs bound by vines, and I was carried hanging from a stout sapling by two very smelly and strange-looking men.

I was able to look around and see only one other of my fellow tribesmen in the same predicament as myself. He was the eldest of our hunting party, one of the two men who the wounded caribou knocked down. His name was Whale Bone, a great hunter, but at this moment the fear in his eyes showed a weakness I had never seen in him before. Two men were carrying the slaughtered caribou in the same tied-up position as us. By the looks of things, this was not going to turn out well for my companion and me.

My hands and ankles were starting to chafe and bleed from the vines that bound them. Tied above my head, the blood slowly dripped onto my skull and ran down my face, into my mouth. At least it was some liquid to moisten my lips, which were starting to dry out. My mouth was dry too, mostly because of the fear flowing through my body. I now had a sudden urge to defecate and I did not know if I could resist the cramping of my intestines. I could not stand the pain, and with a sudden rush, my bowels emptied and spilled onto the ground, immediately causing the man at the end the stick to step into the excrement and slip. My last memory of that moment was a sudden foreign curse and my head hitting the ground, causing me to black out again.

It only seemed like I was out for a few minutes. This time, instead of my captors’ smell awakening me, it was someone kicking me in the ribs, yelling “Skræling, Skræling,” that woke me. The sudden pain and loud yelling caused me to sit up with a cold chill running through my body. My wrists and ankles were still raw and bleeding from being carried. With all four of my appendages still fastened, I was totally incapacitated and defenseless.

I opened my eyes and looked at my tormentor. The sun was setting behind him and the evening rays fell upon him, lighting his hair like a bonfire. His locks were a bright red, with facial hair to match. It was the colour of the red ochre that our people customarily painted themselves with.

Who were these people with the colours of the sun in their hair? They had hair on their faces, which I had never seen before on any of my kind. Their weapons were different from any I had ever encountered, and they were very efficient killers, from what I had seen in the forest.

My assailant untied me and gave me another kick in my ribs, and I got the hint he wanted me up. Whale Bone was standing behind me, whimpering and gagging. The poor man was going to die of fright before these strangers could do anything to him. “Øysten,” said Visäte, “why did you bring these men to our village? Look at them, they paint themselves in taufr (red ochre). They look like fools. These red men are of no use to us. Kill them!”

“We need them, Visäte, as þræls (slaves) to take over the oars for the two men we have lost in this forsaken land, Æirik the Elder who died after we arrived and Frømund who these Red Skrælings stuck with a harpoon. We probably would have killed the two of them but Floki sneaked up behind the giant there and rattled him in the head. Bior cut the arm off the youngest one, who bled out and died along with another of the weaklings who been gored by the wounded rheindyri. The old one just curled up and started to puke his guts out. Not much sport in killing either of them in those circumstances.”

“Well, feed them then, Øysten. We need them healthy for where we are going. We leave tomorrow for the island in the mists that my brother Edvard told us about when he came this route. It is essential that we catch enough lax (salmon) and obtain some björn (bear) meat for our journey home, plus the blessing of Óðinn (Odin) for our crossing. The sooner we leave this land, the easier I will feel. There has to be more of these red warriors and we cannot afford to lose any more of our men for naught. This land has nothing to offer except death and harsh elements.”

I turned and looked at Whale Bone and said, “My friend, did you understand what these men were saying?” “No, Tall Man, it was all just noise that I could not recognize,” he replied.

“Strange, I could understand every word they said!” I replied.

Whale Bone looked at me oddly and his face twisted. “Tall Man, something out of the ordinary is happening; the Great Spirit may be preparing you for a journey. I hope he has plans for me also.”

They gave us a strange vessel that was as hard as a rock. In it were a broth and chunks of caribou and our seal meat. We had not eaten in nearly a day. Whale Bone and I dipped our hands into the broth to grab the chunks of meat and just as quickly pulled them out. The broth was very hot and my fingers were throbbing. Whale Bone had popped a chunk of meat into his mouth and immediately spat it back out; he was gasping and spitting the hot residue out of his mouth.

Visäte turned to Øysten and said, “They don’t even know enough to let the food cool down. How do you expect them to handle an oar? Kill them now and get it over with!”