River Thieves

British naval officer David Buchan arrives on the Bay of Exploits in 1810 with orders to establish friendly contact with the elusive Beothuk, the aboriginal inhabitants known as “Red Indians” who have been driven almost to extinction. Aware that the success of his mission rests on the support of local white settlers, Buchan approaches the most influential among them, the Peytons, for assistance, and enters a shadowy world of allegiances and deep grudges. His closest ally, the young John Peyton Jr., maintains an uneasy balance between duty to his father — a powerful landowner with a reputation as a ruthless persecutor of the Beothuk - and his troubled conscience. Cassie Jure, the self-reliant, educated and secretive woman who keeps the family house, walks a precarious line of her own between the unspoken but obvious hopes of the younger Peyton, her loyalty to John Senior, and a determination to maintain her independence. When Buchan's peace expedition goes horribly awry, the rift between father and son deepens.

With a poetic eye and a gift for storytelling, Crummey vividly depicts the stark Newfoundland backcountry. He shows the agonies of the men toiling towards the caribou slaughtering yards of the Beothuk; of coming upon the terrible beauty of Red Indian Lake, its frozen valley lit up by the sunset like “a cathedral lit with candles”; then retreating through rotten ice that slices at clothing and skin as they flee the disaster. He breathes life into the rich vernacular of the time and place, and with colourful detail brings us intimately into a world of haying and spruce beer, of seal meat and beaver pelts: a world where the first governor of Newfoundland to die in office is sent back to England preserved in “a large puncheon of rum”.

Years later, when the Peytons’ second expedition to the Beothuks' winter camp leads to the kidnapping of an Indian woman and a murder, Buchan returns to investigate. As the officer attempts to uncover what really happened on Red Indian Lake, the delicate web of allegiance, obligation and debt that holds together the Peyton household and the community of settlers on the northeast shore slowly unravels. The interwoven histories of English and French, Mi’kmaq and Beothuk, are slowly unearthed, as the story culminates with a growing sense of loss — the characters’ private regrets echoed in the tragic loss of an entire people. An enthralling story of passion and suspense, River Thieves captures both the vast sweep of history and the intimate lives of a deeply emotional and complex cast of characters caught in its wake.

Many historical events, which provided inspiration for the novel, took place around where Crummey grew up. There was a family of Peytons in the Bay of Exploits who were intimately involved in the fate of the Beothuk, John the Elder known as a ‘great Indian killer’ and his son, John the Younger, attempting to establish friendly contact. “What set of circumstances would account for this difference?” asked Crummey. “How would the two men relate to one another? What would the motivations be for their particular actions? As soon as a writer begins answering these sorts of questions in any definitive way, the writing becomes fiction.” Though faithful to historical record in many details, he imagined ways in which the characters might participate more fully in each other’s story. “Of course a different writer, or even myself at a different time in my life, would have imagined a different world of characters and events, a radically different picture.” ( )

Canadian poet and novelist Michael Crummey was born in Buchans, Newfoundland, a town that was presumably named for David Buchan, the English naval officer who is one of the main characters in his 2001 historical novel, "River Thieves."

Early in the 19th century, Buchan tried to make peaceful contact with the small and illusive Beothuk tribe, also known as the "Red Indians," not in reference to their skin color but to their custom of covering their skin with reddish mud. Up to then, contact between white settlers and the Beothuk had been rare and, when it did happen, it usually ended in bloodshed. The Indians liked to steal things from the settlers, and the settlers responded with violence.

The novel's main characters are John Peyton Senior, his grown son John Peyton Junior and Cassie, a woman who had been hired as a teenager to teach John Junior how to read and had stayed on as a housekeeper. As the boy reaches manhood, he falls in love with the older woman, but before he can make his feelings known he concludes she is his father's lover and so remains quiet.

Buchan, meanwhile, has enlisted the aid of the Peytons in his attempts to contact the Beothuk, and he is a frequent visitor at their cabin. The younger Peyton leads an expedition to try to recover stolen goods from the Indians, but two members of the tribe are killed in the process and a young woman is kidnapped and taken back to the Peyton cabin.

Mary, as she is called, gradually learns a little English and, in time, shows little interest in returning to her dying tribe. Buchan, however, is determined to take her back and to find justice for the Beothuk men killed by members of the Peyton party.

"River Thieves" is a fascinating story that sticks close to the historical facts. The novel was a bestseller in Canada, which is where I bought my copy several years ago, but it never found many readers in this country. That is too bad. ( )

Covering approximately ten years at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century this looks at life in Newfoundland - the trappers, fishermen, government officials and their contacts with the native Beothuk. The Beothuk have been driven from their homelands and away from the coastal regions. Meetings are often violent and the British government have decided to try to establish friendly relations, but is it too late?

It is a story I know nothing about and Crummey has managed to create an evocative and informative look at the times and conditions in Newfoundland. The back stories of the settlers gives a picture of those different times and their motives for being in Newfoundland. For me the narrative occasionally jumped making me double check whether I had accidentally turned two pages but the layers of the story do build up. Also some sections read like a traveller's journal - x miles up the river and what the terrain was like. But, as a whole, this is a sometimes bleak (misunderstandings and conflict do not make for a happy read) and very vivid, strong piece of historical fiction. ( )

An interesting but depressing look at life in Newfoundland in the 19th century and the extinction of the Beothuk red indians. ( )

A wonderful work of historical fiction. This book tell the story of recent immigrants to Newfoundland around the time of the end of the Beothuks Interesting, vivid, a great story. ( )