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Ouabache
Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: LuLu
ISBN-10: 1257624903
Type: Fiction
Pages: 302
Copyright: 2011
ISBN-13: 9781257624904
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Ouabache is the old French spelling of Wabash, the Algonquin word waapaahšiiki, the name the Miami Indians gave to the river that runs through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. This is a novel about life in the valley during the French Colonial period.
Ouabache is the story of a boy and his mother struggling to find their place on the frontier of French Colonial North America. Featuring actual events and characters from history the story follows Charlotte and her son La'Havre from the Mississippi Delta to the Wabash River Valley painting a vivid picture of life among the French and Native people who occupied the land in the eighteenth century. It begins when a pregnant Charlotte is arrested in France and deported to Louisiana where she finds refuge among privateers and gives birth to a son. Charlotte names her son Jean Michelle de La'Havre. With the help of a former slave and his Chickasaw family she moves to the remote Canadian outpost of Ouiatenon on the Ouabache (Wabash) River. La'Havre has learned the Chickasaw language and makes a lasting impression on the Commandant of the post who is in the process of building another new settlement which will one day be known as present day Vincennes Indiana.
Excerpt
Chapter 1 Louisiana
The smell of searing flesh filled the air around the women arrested in Paris, as they boarded a ship in Normandy. Before being deported to Louisiana, the women were branded with a small fleur de lis on their shoulders to mark them as criminals under a life sentence.
A group of over 150 women whose offenses ranged from prostitution to vagrancy had been rounded up in a sweep of the poverty-strangled streets. The country was under the regency of Philippe II, Duke de'Orleans. Louis XV, the ten-year-old King of France, was more of a ceremonial prop than a ruler.
Philippe was ambivalent towards the needs of the people, and the city of Paris was brimming with what the nobility considered "undesirables." Political dissidents and religious heretics were recruiting followers among the poor. Philippe was doing whatever he could to reduce their numbers. The heretics, known as Huguenots, were simply burned at the stake. Those suspected of petty crimes were rounded up and deported. Most of the women on the dock that morning had never seen the ocean before, and they only glimpsed it as they were herded into the blackness of the ship's cargo hold.
After several weeks at sea, one of the young deportees called Charlotte began to realize she was pregnant. Charlotte had been only fourteen when her father was taken to debtor's prison. Her mother, too ill to care for her, had died soon after. She lived on the streets like an animal since that day. First she was a beggar, later a thief, then briefly a prostitute. The latter was the reason she found herself trapped in the hold of the ship.
The brand on her shoulder festered and her stomach growled constantly with the pain of hunger. She had heard tales of the fate that awaited her in Louisiana. It was said to be the most hostile country in all the empire. Disease, famine, and barbaric natives brought quick death to those deposited on its shores. She was surrounded by the smell of human waste and the soft constant sound of muffled prayers.
She had never attended mass regularly, but she was familiar with the concept of sin and punishment. Having seen upper class gentlemen commit unspeakable acts with no apparent consequences, she was convinced sin was just a myth. Now, in the darkness surrounded by the smell of effluents and the prayers of the condemned, she believed hell was real.
When the ship made landfall at the port of New Orleans, a large crowd was gathered. A commotion of sorts broke out near the center of the crowd. Some of the women, who were unloaded ahead of Charlotte, were throwing themselves to the ground and begging to be put out of their misery. Their hysterics spread through the assembly like a wave. As the women closest to Charlotte began to become overwhelmed with emotions, she felt her own legs tremble beneath her. The animal instincts that had kept her alive in the streets seized her, and she ran in the opposite direction.
The confusion of the crowd allowed her to slip quietly into the wilderness. She found herself alone in a strange land of swamps and marshes, which were like nothing she had ever seen. Her hands were bound with shackles and her feet sunk and stuck in the muck. Lizards, the size of fairy tale dragons, slept in the spots of sunlight sparkling through the canopy, and birds the size of angels she had seen painted on cathedral walls flew in the air above her.
She trudged through the afternoon, growing more weary and unsure with every step. As the sky began to darken, she could make out the glow of a fire in the distance and hear voices in the darkness. The smell of food overcame her. She walked towards the fire, knowing it could mean her death. As the voices grew louder, one called out to her. "Who's there?" questioned the voice.
The sound of the voice startled her more than she expected, and for a moment she considered turning back into the darkness, but the smell of food was too powerful, and she muttered, "I am lost."
From the shadows around the fire, a large black man stepped forward and reached out to her. He grabbed Charlotte by both shackled hands and pulled her out of the marsh onto a dry landing in front of the fire. Behind the man was a woman, three nearly naked children and another man dressed in buckskin and calico.
"I am Toussaint," the man said, "and who are you?"
Her mind racing between fear and fatigue she managed to reply, "My name is Charlotte."
"How did you get all the way out here?" Toussaint asked.
Something gentle in his voice made her feel that he could be trusted. As she sank to her knees on the dry sand, she took a deep breath and told him the story of her escape "I slipped away in the crowd at the dock and disappeared into the woods."
"It was foolish of you to hide the way you did," Toussaint said. "Aren't you afraid?"
"More hungry than fearful," she said with a sigh.
Toussaint raised her hands to examine the shackles.
"We'll get these off and you can help yourself to some stew." As he pried on the bolt that held the irons together with a large knife, he introduced his family. "This is my wife, Shoteka, and the man is her brother, Yanash. They are from the Chickasaw tribe." Charlotte had never seen Native American people before. "I have friends nearby that you will be safe with," Toussaint told Charlotte. "I will take you there in the morning." The shackles clanked to the ground, and Shoteka handed Charlotte a bowl filled with stewed meat and broth.
"How did you come to live among the natives?" Charlotte asked. These creatures that had been described to her as the very devil himself fascinated her. Here in the warmth of their company she felt safe for the first time in months.
"I was born on the Island of Saint-Domingue as a slave and sold to a privateer named De'Graff," Toussaint explained. "Captain De'Graff was a mixed blood and a former slave himself, so he had no trouble allowing me to buy my freedom with a sword." Charlotte gulped on the stew as Toussaint continued with his favorite story.
"We raided Spanish treasure ships filled with gold from Mexico and sunk British pirates after their plunder. De'Graff's wife Marie was captured in a Spanish raid on his home in Tortuga. She was sent to Vera Cruz as a prisoner. De'Graff agreed to stop harassing the Spanish if they would pardon his wife. She was released and he settled in Louisiana near what would become New Orleans. I lived there with them until I met Shoteka. I am one of her people now. Marie was like you Charlotte; she came from France. De'Graff died a few years ago, but Marie still owns a large piece of land. I'm sure you can find safety there."
Listening to his story, Charlotte fell asleep where she sat by the fire.
Yanash chuckled, "I know how you feel little one that story always puts me to sleep."
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