The scattered references to them fascinated, then obsessed Duckworth, like an unfamiliar word that begins to recur in a way that seems loaded with import. He had written letters and attended informal meetings with members of the Privy Council in London before beginning his appointment. He wanted some action taken to protect the Indians, to establish a formal relationship. He argued, quoted statistics (manufactured out of the air to lend weight to his opinions), bullied and harangued to the point that people began avoiding him, coming down with sudden illnesses that made it impossible to keep their appointments. He was gaining a reputation, he was told by friends, as a quack. Each month his appetite decreased. The crick in his neck tightened like a body on the rack.
Duckworth sat back from his meal. The Privy Council, he told Buchan, had been made aware of the dire situation of the local natives by most of the colony’s governors in recent memory. A series of ineffectual proclamations had been issued in response to reports that attacks of inhuman barbarity were being perpetrated against the Indians by settlers. The decrees placed the natives under the protection of the Crown and exhorted settlers to “live in amity and brotherly kindness” with the Red Indians. There was a report from an officer of the navy in 1792, the state of the tribe was discussed at a commission of inquiry, there were official recommendations. There was talk of a reservation in Notre Dame Bay, of making an example of some of the worst offenders in the Bay of Exploits. All of these suggestions the Privy Council took under advisement and proceeded to ignore, unwilling to risk alienating the growing population of settlers by appearing to side with local natives. The English cod fishery on the Grand Banks was the richest in the world, Duckworth reminded Buchan, and the revolt in America had not been without its lessons.
They washed their food down with tankards of a dark molasses beer brewed on the premises and Duckworth lifted a hand to signal for more. Despite the chill in the air, the effort of eating raised beads of perspiration on the governor’s forehead. As far as he could determine from his own inquiries, he continued, no one had ever succeeded in building a sustained relationship of trust with the Red Indians. The remnants of the tribe had retreated to the northeast shore, wintering seventy miles inland on the Red Indian’s lake. During the warmer months they scavenged a living among the sparsely populated maze of islands in the Bay of Exploits. From May to September they hunted for eggs on the bird islands and harvested seals and took salmon from the rivers not yet occupied and dammed by English settlers. They dug for clams and mussels on the shoreline and pilfered ironwork and nets from the settlers’ tilts and they sometimes cut the English boats from their moorings in the dark of night in a useless display of bravado or protest.
The settlers responded to their constant stealing and vandalism by shooting at them on sight or raiding and looting their camps in retaliation. An old man named Rogers living on Twillingate Great Island had boasted of killing upwards of sixty of them. Several people Duckworth knew personally — he leaned dangerously low over his plate of food — had seen Red Indian hands displayed as trophies by furriers in the Bay of Exploits.
Buchan was vaguely familiar with much of the information Duckworth was relating, but he saw the governor’s need for a naive audience, his desire to find a convert. He shook his head in disbelief. He nodded, he made small disgusted noises in his throat, he offered pained expressions where appropriate.
Duckworth had tucked a linen napkin into his waistcoat to protect the white silk. He leaned his bulk back from the table and methodically wiped his hands clean with the napkin before removing a folded sheaf of letters from the waist pocket of his frock coat.
“One of my predecessors,” he said, wiping at the corners of his mouth with his thumb, “consulted a magistrate by the name of Bland for advice on this issue.” He flipped through the pages for a particular passage and turned a letter up to the poor light of the lamp when he found it. “‘Before the lapse of another century,’” he read, “‘the English nation, like the Spanish, may have affixed to its character the indelible reproach of having extirpated a whole race of people.’” There was a noticeable tick in the pale jowls of his face. He folded the papers and laid them on the table at the officer’s elbow. “My dear Buchan,” he said.
Duckworth rested his chin on the starched muslin folds of his cravat as the lieutenant leafed slowly through the letters. Buchan was a Scotsman who had signed on as a cabin boy in the Royal Navy at the age of ten. By the time of the most recent war with the French he was master of the HMS Nettby and was instrumental in sinking and capturing several French ships in the conflict. He’d served intermittently on the Newfoundland station for several years and had mapped much of the island’s south coast. The two men had crossed paths in official capacities for nearly a decade and they recognized in one another an instinctual devotion to duty and Empire. They both felt the same confirmation of their natural inclinations in service to the ways and laws of Britannia.