Shadowed History
From the Archives – Mary Ducharme (June 2011)
The story of Native Canadians in the early Hemmingford frontier is shadowy at best in the Archives collection. Indian artefacts, says Alister Somerville, in Hemmingford Then and Now “suggests trails from Chaughnawaga to Lake Champlain along what is now Route 219.” And, he says, “Tradition tells us that an Indian burial ground was located in this area.”
The earliest settlers feared Indians, but the military eagerly used them as scouts and patrols in struggles for power. Their stealth, keenness of observation, and capacity to invoke terror were weapons useful to their various allies.
Lucretia, the wife of John Scriver, remembered her fearful encounter with Indians in Odelltown when she was a child. “There were about a hundred of them, some of them wearing only a clout, and they had feathers in their hair and painted faces.” They asked for apples, and her father gave them a bushel basket and in return one of them chopped firewood. “After a time I got over my fear of Indians and rather liked them,” Lucretia said. Later, during the War of 1812, she and John hosted Indian scouts at their home in Hemmingford.
Some of the “untutored savages” (a term used by Robert Sellar in his History of Huntingdon County) likely resented the intrusion of white settlers into hunting territories essential to their survival. Sellar relates that if they found skins or furs in possession of white people, they confiscated them. Mrs. Covey, the wife of settler Samuel Covey, hid her furs under her bed when roaming Indians appeared on her property. She also greatly resented the “squaws” who plucked her corn.
In a 1985 interview, the late Malcom Brown told the story of the time when Indians saved Grandfather Brown’s life. He was searching for his land grant and had become lost, but he encountered a group of Indians trapping along a river who knew where it was. At the time he was struggling through the bush barefoot in snowy weather and crying because he had two small children suffering the cold with him. They survived through the terrible winter only through the kindness of the Indians who provided food and helped him construct a shelter. The women brought gifts of clothing made of fur pelts for the children.
Marriages between Indians and whites in Quebec were not regarded as legal, according to an 1888 letter from Julius Scriver to Robert Sellar, and to be a “half-breed” seemed to engender self-destruction. An example is James Connolly, a school-mate of Julius Scriver. James was ad- mitted to the bar in 1841 and stood for Provincial office, but “went to the dogs” because of drink. The real story is not just genetic intolerance for alcohol; it is the tragic destruction of identity and a world-view that had no place to exist in transplanted European culture.
The Archives would greatly appreciate any additions to our information base about Native Canadians in early Hemmingford’s history.
Contact: mducharme117@sympatico.ca