People of the Beautiful River

            On Friday morning I had all but one verse of “Vu de l’extérieur” (From the Outside) by Serge Gainsbourg memorized.

            I read Arthur Symons’s essay, “The Decadent Movement in Literature”, some poems by Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and Constance Naden.

            I started organizing some preliminary notes for my Indigenous Studies essay.

            I washed another section of my bedroom floor on the west side of the room. There are white splatters that I have to scrape up left over from when our former superintendent painted the room without a drop sheet. My cleaning job doesn’t show up as well this time because the wood is darker in that section, but that takes care of a third of the area where my futon sits.

            I worked a bit on getting the information correct in the “Home” part of my “Finding Places” Indigenous Studies essay.

            I did my exercises in the afternoon while listening to Amos and Andy. I skimmed through the 1946 Christmas show because it was only a slightly altered version of the 1945 Christmas show. The one I listened to came about from Kingfish hearing that someone went homesteading in Alaska, got free land from the government, developed it and after a few years sold the property for $40,000. Kingfish figures that if he sends Andy up there, when he comes back he will split the money with him. But Kingfish has to convince Andy that it’s not cold there. He has fake Alaskan travel brochures made up showing palm trees and girls in bikinis. Andy is almost convinced but finds out it’s not true. When Kingfish gets home he finds that Sapphire has looked at his fake brochures and proceeded to sell all of their furniture in preparation for moving them both to Alaska.

            I worked a bit more on my Indigenous Studies essay.

            I had a potato, two drumsticks and gravy for dinner while watching Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            In this story someone puts a private bounty dead or alive on Josh Randall for $1000. After the first attempt by someone to claim it Josh goes to the source. It is a wealthy man named Sam McGarrett who explains that if Josh hadn’t survived to come see him he wasn’t the man he was looking for. McGarrett wants Josh to guide him into the desert following a treasure map that he’s acquired showing the location of Spanish gold. After he ups the price to $5000 Josh agrees. McGarrett brings his son and daughter along whom he does not treat very well. Beth can’t make it and is dropped off with a friend. They are being trailed by two crooks hoping that Josh and the McGarretts will lead them to the gold. Out of water and food they find he caves on the map but the chests are empty. McGarrett is devastated. The crooks corner them in the cave and demand the gold. Clay McGarrett acts as a decoy while Josh kills the crooks. Everybody’s happy.

            Beth was played by Nan Leslie, who starred in a lot of B movies and westerns.

I worked a bit more gathering historical data for my essay:

In New Brunswick, twenty kilometres east of the farm where I was raised and five and a half kilometres south of Bath, where I was born, is what is now the town of Florenceville-Bristol. Bristol was previously a small village five kilometres north of the village of Florenceville. Bristol was previously known as Shiktehawk, from the Wəlastəqwey language, until the railroad came through in the late 1800s. Because colonial railway officials were unable to pronounce “Shiktehawk” it was renamed Kent Station and shortly after that it was changed to Bristol.

Shiktehawk is the area between where the Big and Little Shiktehawk streams, shortly after splitting from the Shikethawk River, empty into the Wəlastəqw (known better now as the St John River). At the mouth of the Big Shiktehawk there was a popular salmon pool that was fished up until recent years. This intersection was an important stopping point for the Wəlastəqwewiyik people and other indigenous travellers because it was the beginning of the cross province route. They would canoe fifteen kilometres up the Shiktehawk to its end and then make a twenty-three-kilometre portage to the Miramichi River, which flows to the Atlantic Ocean. This was the shortest route between the Beautiful River and the Miramichi River.

Before the white man the worst enemies of the people of the Beautiful River were the Kanien’kehá:ka (commonly called Mohawks) or the people of the Flint Stone Place. War parties of Kanien’kehá:ka would portage from the Kaniatarowanenneh (which means "The Big Waterway" but is now commonly called the St Lawrence River) to the head of the Beautiful River which they descended and attacked Wəlastəqwewiyik settlements. The Wəlastəqwewiyik would sometimes light several fires in the woods to fool the Kanien’kehá:ka that there were more of them.

“Shiktehawk”, “Sigtahaw” or “Sixtahaw” means, “Where he killed him” in Wəlastəqwey.  According to oral tradition it was on the perdue between the big and small streams that a Wələqwewiyik chief and a Kanien’kehá:ka chief fought for a whole afternoon on behalf of each of their tribes. The Wəlastəqwewiyik chief finally killed the Kanien’kehá:ka chief and he was buried there.

To Shiktehawk the Wəlastəqwewiyik would bring large pieces of special stone from other places like the Miramichi to make arrowheads, spearheads, scrapers and other tools. The archaeologist Dr. G.F. Clarke found some unique double pointed blades at Shiktehawk that have not been discovered anywhere else in New Brunswick.

Five kilometres north of Shiktehawk where Munquart stream flows into the Wəlastəqw, it is said that two Wəlastəqwewiyik elders fooled a party of Kanien’kehá:ka into thinking there were more Wəlastəqwewiyik than there actually were. The two men would paddle past them up the Wəlastəqw around the bend in the river. Then they came ashore, carried the canoe through the woods back down river, and then paddle up the river past them again. They did this over and over until finally the Kanien’kehá:ka met with them and the chiefs made a peace agreement by burying a hatchet in the ground. Every year after that Wəlastəqwewiyik and Kanien’kehá:ka chiefs came to this location to ratify the treaty. The last meeting was held about 1857.

            The Maliseet Nation Conservation Council continues to assess the Shiktehawk stream to evaluate the health of the fish population there.

            The course of the Beautiful River as it flows from Tobique and past Shiktehawk to Woodstock is fast but with few rapids. 

            There would probably have been crops of perhaps corn growing along the shore as that was the area for planting and cultivation for the people of the Beautiful River.