Chapter 16 cont...
*****
The next two and a half weeks were a flurry of activity as the boys came home exhausted from working in the fields. When people had seen how well they worked, they were hired by several other soldiers to prepare their plots for spring planting. Felix and Aaron were particularly proud of themselves. They made a good team and the Captain was lavish with his praise of their efforts. It also kept their minds off their families.
Susannah with the help of Lucy and her sisters finished the first gown in five days. Madam looked very elegant as she walked into Church on the Sunday on her husband’s arm. It had cost her £11 to have made. At a point in time when £15 could be a working man’s annual income, and a family of four was in poverty at £40 per annum, even a middle class income was only £100/annum, so the ability to spend £11 on a dress was luxury beyond what most could ever hope to afford. The two ladies waiting for gowns were now doubly eager to have theirs completed. At £6 each, the printed cotton dresses
a l’anglaise had their skirts draped
a la polonaise were not inexpensive, but the fashion plates they had chosen the dresses from had been printed in Philadelphia in January and so they would be at the height of fashion. Altogether the ladies were thrilled with their dresses and Susannah was £23 richer than she had been. She set aside £3 for Lucy and £1.50 for each of her sisters. She then contributed £5 to her uncle for their care.
“That is very much appreciated Susannah, but I can afford your upkeep,” he protested when she tried to give him the money.
“I know that, uncle,” said Susannah, “but I would feel better knowing that I had contributed to our care. You had to hire Miss Abigail and she has been so wonderful. At home a good housekeeper was about £12 a year, so I hope that this can be added to her salary, if nothing else.”
“A fine idea! Alright Miss Susannah, I will accept your contribution towards paying Miss Abigail,” smiled Capt. Morden.
*****
Sally sat in the kitchen of Mistress Best’s house. The weeks of hard work were taking their toll. The soft slightly pudgy child was gone leaving a fit, determined young lady. Her fury with Susannah had become tempered by the fact that she really did know that it was her own doing that had got her there. But Lordie, she had never worked so hard. Mistress Best kept an immaculate home. She had one slave and now Sally to help her and the oldest of the Best girls, Lilly and Anne, never stopped working either. Everyone was nice but they really worked and they didn’t let her slack either. She thought back to how she had wheedled her way out of work, and her mother’s exasperation but indulgence.
Sally thought about what Susannah had been through. First her mother dead, then she finds out that her father is dead but he wasn’t her father because her mother had been married to some Indian… She also thought about what being half-breed meant. It meant only that Susannah’s mother was English and her father an Indian… Susannah still seemed to be the same take charge girl she had been back in Jaysberg with her life neatly organized and… and here she had slid into her new life with barely a ripple. At church she had listened to the ladies exclaiming over the new gowns. They had asked her about Susannah and she found herself telling of Mrs. Morden’s skill and the quality she had demanded of Susannah.
Sally had to admit that her mother had always held Susannah up as an example and finding out she was a half breed seemed to her to be the appropriate means of social readjustment but Susannah was just forging ahead… People of quality were patronizing her… Sally found it confusing. Perhaps if Susannah had moaned and wailed about it, then Sally could have been magnanimous in saying it didn’t matter… well not much… perhaps just a little… But with Susannah treating the revelation as trivial, it made it impossible for Sally to be generous and yet able to put Susannah in her correct social place.
Then she had learned that Mistress Best was not the lawful wife Sgt. Best. When she had looked shocked, Lilly Best had simply quoted an old French proverb:
Boire, manger, coucher ensemble
C'est marriage, ce me semble. 1
[To drink, eat, sleep together
that's what marriage is, it seems to me].
Sally had been scandalized and yet once again people of quality broke bread at their table, treating Mistress Best as if she were the lawful, church-formalized wife. She was confused as the tidy pigeon hole boxes of Jaysberg came apart.
Later that afternoon, the Rev. Bethune had come by. Despite him being Scottish and a Presbyterian, Sally felt that he was a good person to talk to.
“The world that you live in now is much bigger and more complex than it used to be back in Pennsylvania and there are many sorts of people that you will meet here who are new and whose customs are unknown to you. If you don’t open your mind and learn to accept the differences in others,” he told her. “You know… the Canadian half-breeds often swagger with two genealogies -- a European commencing with a lieutenant du roi, and an Indian, from some celebrated chief. I met one half-breed, a man tolerably well off, who had engraved both his French coat of arms and his Indian totem, an otter, on his seal-ring2…
“You know Sally, we are all God’s children and it is not your job to stand in judgment of others. When your mother gets here, I am going to talk with her about sending you to school in Quebec City. It may seem far away, but the Ursuline Sisters run a very good school and have an excellent history of launching young women into Society. I suspect that you are going to be looking for a marriage and not a trade, so we had best position you well to catch a husband.”
“What about you, Reverend?” asked Sally somewhat boldly. “You said that you are engaged.”
“Yes,” replied the blushing minister. “I am engaged to Veronique Waden dite Vadebonnecoeur. Her mother is French Canadian and her father is Swiss, a soldier turned fur trader. He is bougoisie. This year he and his partner are licensed for 3 canoes. My Veronique is a pretty thing and well educated. Her father has been in the northwoods for the past decade. Mme Waden manages the business and very shrewd she is too. Like her girls she was educated by Les Soeurs de Congregation.”
“I don’t think I would like to have a husband who is away so much,” said Sally thoughtfully.
“No perhaps not,” agreed Rev. Bethune. “Every person is different. My father was at home and working on our farm. Veronique’s father seeks the peltry. Now, I also want to talk to you about Wahta..”
“Martin,” said Sally with determination.
“No, young lady,” said the Rev Bethune with steel in his voice. “His name is Wahta. If you want a relationship with him, then you will have to adjust to the fact that he is the adopted son of the Longhouse, that he is Mohawk. He and I have spoken at length. He has no desire to be a farmer or a shop keeper. He wants to be a warrior and a hunter. The boy Martin was died when he was captured. He became a man trying to save your father. You have been told this repeatedly. Very soon Wahta will lose patience with you and you will lose any opportunity to be a part of his life. When she arrives, your mother will struggle to accept that, as will all the other women from Jaysberg. You will have a golden opportunity to lead them in accepting what is now the truth. They should be back soon.”
*****
Mary Ostrander sat quietly by the fire. She longed for the beautiful rocking chair her husband had carved her. She missed him desperately. He had been a good husband and father. At night her bed was empty and she longed for his presence… even his snoring… Now, her seat now was a stump. How far they had fallen. She had lost more weight since they had been set free. There is no freedom in starving to death when you are not permitted a gun and your garden has been destroyed. From time to time, small baskets of food would appear at their door. Those were days of joy as at least they could feed their children. Soon they would start to die. She stretched her hands out towards the small flames and savoured the warmth. She got cold so easily.
She heard a sound at the window for a moment her heart leapt and then it crashed before it leapt again, this time in terror. Three Indians slipped in through the door. However could she have forgotten to bar it?! One came over and knelt down in front of her. His dark red top knot, greased with bear fat and stuck with crow feathers. She could not see him. In her fear, she saw only the Mohawk man.
In stilted English, he said. “Once in another life, I called you Mommy and you called me Martin. I am now called Wahta. Sally and the others have made it to us in safety and are being cared for. Tomorrow night, we will come back and get you and the Mistresses Miller, Blauvelt, Carpenter and Seegers and the nine children. Bring only what you can carry on your backs. Sleep well tonight and tomorrow for the journey is long and we will not have horses until the evening of the first day. Good night Mommy.”
He kissed her thin worn cheek and they were gone. She sat there stunned as tears coursed down her face. She ran to the door. She flung it open but there was only the dark of the waning moon. Slowly she closed the door and this time barred it. She would have like to believe it a dream, but now she had work to do and the others needed to be told. A slow flame of hope was lit inside her. Perhaps… perhaps there was a future… She went and woke the other women.
=====
1. Source: Hunt, David. Parents & Children in History: The Psychology of Family Life in Early Modern France (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), p. 64.
From: The Founders of Green Bay: A Marriage of Indian and White by Jacqueline Peterson
https://www.uwgb.edu/wisfrench/library/articles/marriage.htm
2. Source:[/B] KohL J.G. Kitchi-Gami, Wanderings Round Lake Superior (London: Chapman and Hall, 1860; Reprint ea., Minneapolis: Ross and Haines. 1956). P.297
From: The Founders of Green Bay: A Marriage of Indian and White by Jacqueline Peterson
https://www.uwgb.edu/wisfrench/library/articles/marriage.htm