Authors: William Dietrich
I have a knack for agreeable company.
D
ETROIT WAS ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD WHEN
I
ARRIVED, BUT
had been under the American flag for only the past five. What had first been a French post and then a British one—finally surrendered under the terms that ended the American Revolution almost two decades before—now sat atop a twenty-foot-high bluff along the short, broad Detroit River connecting Lakes Erie and Saint Clair. The establishment consisted of approximately a thousand people and three hundred houses behind a twelve-foot log stockade. Canada was on the opposite shore, the Union Jack flapping there as a reminder of former rule.
Despite the political division, trade across the river was ample. Detroit’s economy was governed by furs and farming, with Normans-tyle French farmsteads spread up and down the American and Canadian sides for twenty miles.
“It’s a mongrel town,” described Jack Woodcock, our schooner’s skipper. “You’ve got the Frenchies, who have been there nearly as long as the Indians and do all the real work. The Scots, who run the
fur trade. The American garrison, made up mostly of frontier misfits who can’t find a job anywhere else. Then there’s the Christian Indians, the tribes who come to trade, the black servants and freemen, and across the river the British waiting to take it all back again.”
“Surely there’s new pride in being a part of the United States.”
“The French like us even less than the British. They’re hiving for Saint Louis. Town’s lost half its population.”
The land and waterscape was flat, the sky vast, and the April sun bright. The most curious sight was the scattering of windmills, their arms turning lazily against the scudding white clouds of spring.
“The land’s such a pancake there ain’t no rapids for water power,” our captain explained. “We’s like a bunch of damn Dutchmen.”
Near the walls were clusters of domed bark wigwams and crude lean-tos used by the deposed Indians who clung near the post. Our craft tied to a long wooden dock at the base of the bluff, gulls wheeling and crows hopping in hunt of spilled corn or grain. Sloops, canoes, flatboats, and barges were tied along the pier’s length, and the boards rang and rumbled from stomping boots and rolling kegs. The language was a babble of English, French, and Algonquin.
“We’re not even halfway to the symbol of the hammer,” Magnus said with wonder, consulting the charts he’d bought in New York City.
“If we can continue by water it will be faster and easier,” I said. “We’ll show Jefferson’s letter of support to the commander here and ask for military transport to Grand Portage. We have, after all, the backing of the American government.”
There was a dirt ramp leading from the dock to the stockade gate, split logs bridging puddles. A steady stream of inhabitants moved up and down like a train of ants, not just transporting goods to and from ships and canoes but dipping water. The wells had been spoiled by the town’s privies, said Woodcock.
Three-quarters of the inhabitants looked to be either French or
Indian. The former had long dark hair and skin burned almost as brown as the tribes. They wore shirts, sashes, and buckskin leggings, with scarves at their neck, and they were crowned with headbands or bright caps of scarlet. Clad in moccasins, they had a jaunty gaiety that reminded me, however remotely, of Paris. The Indians, in contrast, stood or sat wrapped in blankets and watched the frantic industry of the whites with passive, resigned curiosity. They were refugees in their own country.
“The drunk and diseased fetch up here,” the captain said. “Be careful of the squaw pox.”
“Not much of a temptation,” I said, eying the squat and squalid ones.
“Wait till you been out here for six months.”
Inside the stockade was crowded with whitewashed log houses and dominated at its center by a large stone catholic church. “Headquarters is that way,” Woodcock said, pointing. “Me, I’m stoppin’ at the tavern.” He disappeared into a cabin rather more populated than the others.
The western headquarters of the United States Army, governing three hundred unruly soldiers, was a sturdy command building of squared logs and multipaned windows of wavy glass, its official purpose marked by a flagstaff with stars and stripes. There was no guard, so we walked unannounced into a small anteroom, where a grizzled sergeant sat hunched over a ledger book. We inquired about Samuel Stone, the man Lewis had told us was the commanding officer.
“The colonel’s out at the graveyard again,” said the sergeant, mumbling through a bristle of gray whisker while he held a quill pen like a dart, as if uncertain where to point it. He had none of Meriwether Lewis’s military bearing and squinted at a ledger sheet as if looking at the alphabet for the first time. Finally he scratched through a name.
“Has there been an illness?”
“Nah, another shootin’. The garrison don’t have nobody to fight
so they fights each other. The colonel, he banned dueling, but every time he tries to punish someone for it, half of them is already dead, and the other half usually cut up or wounded. Besides, he’s a fighter too. Keeps the blood up, he says.”
“Good God. How many have died this way?”
“Half a dozen. Hell, we lose lots more to drownin’, ague, consumption, Injuns, squaw pox, and bad water. Better to die for honor than the bloody flux, eh?”
“We’re on a mission from President Jefferson,” I said, adopting a tone I hoped expressed gravity and my own importance. “Will the colonel return soon?”
“I suppose. Unless he don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“The colonel, he keeps his own schedule.”
“We have a letter from the president requesting we be granted military transportation. Has no advance correspondence reached you?”
“You mean letters? About you?” He shook his head. “Where you goin’?
“To the head of the Great Lakes.”
“Head of the lakes? Grand Portage?”
“Yes.”
“That’s redcoat country, man.” He looked at Magnus. “Your friend here looks to be a Scot. Ask him. They’re the ones who run the North West Company. You a redcoat? They run all the freight canoes, too.”
“Magnus is Norwegian, and we want passage on an American ship. Surely there are brigs that go to Michilimackinac.”
“Canoes, mostly. No American ships.” He looked at us as if we were daft. “Ain’t you seen the river? Ain’t no navy. Besides, we’s army.”
This was getting us nowhere. “I suppose we’d better speak to the colonel.”
He shrugged. “Won’t change things.” He looked around, seem
ingly surprised there was no colonel, and no chairs, either. “You can wait on the porch if you like if he ever comes to wait for. Or, try again tomorrow.” He shifted in his seat, raised a thigh, and broke wind with a pop like a signal gun. “Sorry. Reveille.”
We stepped back outside, surveying the bowed logs, mossy roofs, and muddy lanes that were Detroit. “If that’s what’s defending us, I don’t blame our boat captain for making for the tavern,” Magnus said. “Let’s join him and try again in an hour or two, when the grave’s filled. This Stone may move like one.”
So off we strode, Magnus pointing out the magnificence and stink of drying fur pelts and I commenting on the paucity of white women. There were a few pretty Indian ones, but they had the mix of native and European clothing that marked them as brides of the French. Younger ones looked to be Métis, or half-breed.
We’d almost reached the tavern when a voice cried, “Look out!”
A man bulled us against the logs of a candle shop while a black cannon ball, a four-pounder by the look of it, shot from the intersecting lane and went hurtling where we’d been standing a moment before. It disappeared between houses and there was a crash and the sound of toppled wood.
“Sorry for my rudeness,” our savior said, “but you were about to walk into a bowl-lane without looking. Broken ankles are chronic in Detroit, and the town is at odds about it. There’s talk of an ordinance.”
“I didn’t hear a cannon.”
“The ball wasn’t fired, it was rolled. Bowls are a mania, and the debate to ban them has exercised more gums and produced less result than your American Congress. The young men throw whenever the streets are halfway dry or frozen. Keeps them occupied, Colonel Stone says.”
“The players give no warning?” Magnus asked.
“We learn to watch and hop soon enough.” He looked at me with new interest. “Say! Aren’t you the hero of Acre?”
I blinked, puzzled to be recognized. “Hardly a hero…”
“Yes, Ethan Gage! What splendid coincidence! My employers were just speaking of you! Rumor had it that you were headed this way and tongues are wagging, as you might imagine. Who can guess what your next mission might be! And now here you are! No, don’t deny it, I was told to look for a pretty longrifle and a hulking companion!”
“This is Magnus Bloodhammer, son of Norway. And who are you?”
“Ah! I forgot my manners in all the excitement!” A cheer went up and another cannon ball went bouncing by. “Nicholas Fitch, aide to Lord Cecil Somerset, a partner in the North West Company. He’s staying at the Duff House in Sandwich across the river, with his cousin Aurora. He’s most anxious to meet you. Damn curious about the scrape at Acre. Something of a student of ancient fortification, he is. He’s an acquaintance of Sidney Smith, who you served with.”
“We’re trying to meet with Colonel Stone about transport up the lakes.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll see Stone again today. Tends to go hunting after a burial. Says it clears the mind to kill something else. And the traffic north is all British anyway. Please, be our guests—we’re having a party. Quite the gathering for these parts: traders, farmers, chiefs! And Lord Somerset is going north. Perhaps we could help each other!” He smiled.
Well, one of my missions was to sniff out British intentions in the west. There’s no better place than a social gathering, where tongues are loosened by drink. “If you don’t mind men rough from a little traveling, then certainly.”
“We have a bath, too!” He winked. “You’ll want to be clean for Aurora!”
A
LEXANDER
D
UFF’S HOUSE ON THE
C
ANADIAN SHORE WAS A
three-story, whitewashed trading house that transplanted British propriety to the wilderness in order to impress French voyageurs, visiting Indians chiefs, and Scottish investors. There were grand windows and a pediment porch, and inside ostentation was achieved with massive mahogany tables, brocaded chairs, silk curtains, pewter candelabra, fine china, lead crystal, and heavy silver with ivory handles. The bric-a-brac was a claim to imperialism much more effective than planting a flag.
Magnus and I were welcomed by Alexander Duff himself, told that our fortuitous arrival indeed coincided with a gathering of notables that evening, and were shown to an adjacent bathhouse to make ourselves presentable. By dusk we were as scoured, mended, and straightened as possible. I clipped my hair to republican fashion, while Magnus trimmed the wilder boundaries of his beard to mere prophet dimensions. Our boots were so worn by our travels that
Duff gave us freshly beaded moccasins that were wonderfully soft and quiet. “The only things for canoes,” he said.
Then we were primed with scotch, lubricated with brandy, and had our appetite whetted with port. This was just as well, given the shock of the guests who arrived. I’d no hash with the English and Scottish fur captains, German Jews, and French canoe captains who first crowded in, leaving their native brides on the back porch as custom demanded. They were dressed to the frontier nines, showing up in calf-high beaded moccasins, embroidered sashes, silk vests, feathered caps, and that jaunty self-confidence earned by wresting money from the frontier.
Rather, it was the trio who arrived when the main room was already hot and close with pressed bodies and raised laughter. There was a draft as the door opened, merriment faltered, and men backed to make a space as if these new dignitaries were either renowned or contagious. In this case—by my lights as an American—they were both.
One was a lean, hawk-nosed, long-haired white man of sixty dressed in Indian buckskin leggings tied below the knee, savage breechclout, and a long French jacket of faded blue cloth. He wore a bright officer’s gorget at his chest, like a silver crescent moon, and a hunting knife in a beaded sheath at his waist. He was a good three days unshaven, his gaze made fiercer by a sliver of bone in his nose and silver earrings the shape of arrowheads. His yellowy eyes, small under heavy brows, had a raptor’s stare.
The other two were Indians, both tall and of imposing bearing. One was the white man’s age but shaved bald except for a scalp lock, and dressed in a black European business suit. His pate, high cheekbones, and Roman nose were the color of beaten copper, setting off eyes dark as a rifle ball. His manner conveyed dignity, his posture tall and straight.
The second native, thirty years younger, had black hair to his shoulders in the Shawnee fashion and was dressed entirely in fringed buckskin. If the first chief kept his gaze remote, this one’s bright and oddly hazel eyes took us all in with a sweep, as if examining the heart and soul of each man before flickering on. He had a string of three tiny brass moons hanging from his nose, and on his chest was an antique medal of King George, brightly polished. A single feather lay in his hair and he had that electric magnetism more inherited than learned. It was interesting that his inspection finally rested on Magnus. He said something to his companions.
“Tecumseh says that one’s different,” the white man interpreted.
“A Scandinavian giant is what he is!” said Duff. “We also have an American visitor, Ethan Gage. They wish to visit the west beyond Grand Portage.”
“American?” The gray-haired, grizzled white fixed on me and spoke rapidly to his companions in the native tongue. The long-haired Indian said something more, and he translated again. “Tecumseh says Americans go everywhere. And stay.”
The company laughed.
“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” I said coolly.
“This is Tecumseh, a chief of the Shawnee,” Duff introduced. “Born with a comet, so his name means Panther Across the Sky. He thinks your country has enough land and its people should stay where they are.”
“Does he now?”
“His grasp of geography and politics is quite remarkable. His companion is the famed Mohawk Joseph Brant, and their translator is frontier captain Simon Girty.”
Girty! Everyone waited for my reaction. Here was one of the most famed villains in America, an Indian fighter who had switched sides during the revolution and even bested Daniel Boone. Enemies claimed he delighted in the torture of white captives. He just looked
like a feral old man to me, but then his war was a generation in the past. “What’s Girty doing here?” I blurted.
“I live here, Mr. Gage,” he replied for himself, “as do thousands of other loyalists forced from their rightful homes by an insane rebellion. I’m a refugee farmer.”
“Brant fought for the king as well, as you know,” Duff said. “He’s visiting to speak to Tecumseh. All of us think highly of the young chief.”
I couldn’t pretend to pleasantries since Girty’s infamy had reached across the Atlantic. “You turned on your own people like Benedict Arnold!”
He eyed me in turn like a piece of gristle spat out on a plate. “They turned on
me
. I mustered a company for the Continentals and they denied me a commission because I was raised captive by the Indians. Then they were going to betray the very tribes that helped them! But I don’t have to explain about switching sides to Ethan Gage, do I?”
I flushed. It was circumstance, not betrayal, that had left me bouncing between the British and French side in the Holy Land, but it was damn difficult to explain. This was Girty’s point, of course. “Mr. Duff,” I managed, “I recognize that I’m a guest on foreign soil here in Canada, and a guest in your house. You’ve the right to invite whoever you please. But I must say that if this trio were to cross the Detroit River there is every possibility they would be hanged, or worse. Simon Girty committed the worst kind of atrocities on American captives.”
“That’s a damned lie!” Girty said.
“My guests are well aware of their reputation in the United States, Ethan, which is why they are in Canada,” Duff said. “But Simon is right, the rumors are untrue. They’re simply brave soldiers who fought for another cause. Mr. Girty in fact tried to save captives from Indians, not torture them. He was, and is, a man of honor wronged
by the foolishness of your own nation and then slandered by men embarrassed by their wrongs. We share dinner tonight as a fraternity of warriors.”
“Like Valhalla,” Magnus said. “Where the Viking hero goes to feast.”
“Exactly,” Duff said, glancing at my companion as if he might be daft. “I included you, Bloodhammer, because we’re curious about your purpose. Lord Somerset wishes to meet you, and Gage has a reputation as a man—usually—fair and broad-minded.”
His point was obvious and it would do no good to make a scene. I took a long swallow from my cup. “And where
is
Lord Somerset?”
“Here!”
And he did look the lord, descending stairs from the bedrooms above as if stepping to a coronation. Tall, fit, and impeccably dressed in green swallowtail coat and glistening black boots, he was a handsome man in his forties, with a crown of prematurely silvered hair, eyes focused at some point just above our heads, and sensually sculpted nose and lips like those marble generals in Napoleon’s hallway. He seemed born to command, and the only ones who matched him for presence were the two Indian chiefs. There was an actor’s precision to Somerset’s movements, a sheathed rapier swinging theatrically from one hip. Something in his poise, however, made me suspect that unlike many aristocrats, he actually knew how to use the weapon.
“An honor to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gage.” Somerset’s rank negated the need for him to hold out his hand. “My friend Sir Sidney Smith has spoken quite highly of you, despite your disappearance back into France. You are not just a warrior, but something of a wizard, I understand.” He spoke to the others. “Mr. Gage, by reputation at least, is an electrician!”
“What’s an electrician?” Girty said suspiciously.
“A Franklin man, interested in lightning, the fire of the gods,” Somerset replied grandly. “Explorer, savant, and counselor. I’m flat
tered, Mr. Duff, by the august company you’ve assembled. Any one of these men is a hero, but to put them together—well.”
Damn it, the man had a title, and even though I’m a solid Yankee democrat, I couldn’t help but preen. I’d caught the lightning!
“Nor should we neglect notice of Mr. Gage’s companion, the Norwegian adventurer Magnus Bloodhammer, scholar of history and legend. A descendant of noble blood himself, a lost prince so to speak. Am I correct, Mr. Bloodhammer?”
“You flatter me. I’m interested in my country’s past. And yes, I trace my ancestry to the old kings before my nation lost its independence.”
This was the first I’d heard of that. Magnus was royalty?
“Now you’re here in the American wilderness, very far from Norway and its illustrious past,” Somerset said. “Or are you? We may find we all have things in common, what?”
Tecumseh spoke again.
“He says the big Norwegian has medicine eyes,” Girty translated. “He sees the spirit world.”
“Really?” Somerset’s appraisal was intent as a jeweler’s. “You see ghosts, Magnus?”
“I keep an eye out.”
The company laughed again, except for Tecumseh.
Cups were refilled and we began to relax, even though I half-expected Girty, Brant, or Tecumseh to pull out a tomahawk at any moment and commence howling. The frontier wars during the American Revolution had been brutal and merciless, and memory of their cruelties would linger for generations. What intrigued me this night was that the two older and notorious warriors seemed almost deferential to the younger one, Tecumseh, whom I’d never heard of. And what was an English lord doing in this corner of Canada, opposite the desultory garrison of Detroit? I sidled over to Nicholas Fitch, the aide we’d met across the river. He seemed well into his cups and might say something useful.
“Mr. Fitch, you did not warn of such interesting company,” I gently chided.
“Joseph Brant has long buried the hatchet.”
“And the younger savage?”
“A war chief who fought you Americans for the Ohio country. Beat you twice, he did, before Fallen Timbers. Hasn’t given up, either. Has an idea to outdo Pontiac by uniting every tribe east of the Mississippi. He’s an Indian Napoleon, that one.”
“And you British support him in this scheme to set the frontier on fire?”
“We British are the only ones who can properly control Indians like Tecumseh, Mr. Gage,” said Lord Somerset, coming up to my elbow. Fitch retreated like a well-trained butler. “We can be your nation’s closest friend or deadliest enemy, depending on your willingness to set reasonable boundaries on expansion. There’s room for all of us on this vast continent—British, Indian, and American—if we keep to our own territories. Tecumseh may threaten war, but only with our help. He could also be the key to a remarkable peace—
if
your new president can rein your immigrants in.”
“But not room for the French?” The British, after all, had driven the French out of Canada some thirty-eight years before.
“Ah. There are rumors that France is retaking possession of Louisiana. And now you come, fresh from Napoleon’s court, reportedly headed that way. A remarkable coincidence, no?”
“I’m beginning to understand why I was invited to this gathering, Lord Somerset. You’re as curious about my mission as I am about an English aristocrat in the wilderness.”
“My role is no secret. I have investments and am on my way to Grand Portage to discuss a future alliance with our primary competitors, the Hudson’s Bay Company. Again, cooperation might suit better than competition. And I hear you were once in the employ of John Astor’s fur company?”
“As a young laborer, nothing more.”
“And that he called on you in New York?”
“Good God, are you spying on me?”
“No need to. This is a vast continent geographically, but a small one when it comes to rumor and dispatch, especially for those of us in the fur trade. Fact travels with each dip of the paddle, and rumor seems to fly even faster. Ethan Gage, from Syria to the Great Lakes? How curious. And rumor has it your departure from New York was in haste after a rather spectacular explosion. Not that I credit such tales.”
He knew entirely too much. “I like to see new things.”
He smiled. “And you will.” He turned toward the staircase and the crowd’s conversation faltered once more. “My cousin, for example.”