To Bid Me Adieu

By Kathleen Keating

It is a book about my great-great Grandma (her death certificate says Ireland, but doesn't name the county), and her half-Cree Indian husband, named Robert Brooks. It is a book about the Great Lakes between Canada and the United States, and voyageurs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499020601

Kathleen Keating

I came to Belfast for four years in 1996 as a peace and reconciliation worker from the United States and I fell in love with the west of Ireland and Donegal. Since then, I just went back to the States for visits. I live with an assortment of ‘over 55’s’ in an apartment building in Dungloe, County Donegal. I am 70, and, at long last have an Irish passport. I have three daughters, one in Illinois, one in Alabama, and one in Saudi Arabia.

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Copyright © 2014 by Kathleen Keating.

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4990-2061-8

eBook 978-1-4990-2060-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 05/20/2014

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Contents

CHAPTER 1 Voyageurs—Robert Brooks—Geneology On My Dad’s Side—My Great-Great Grandma Mary Duffy Brooks—Songs And Dances Of Donegal

CHAPTER 2 Mary Brooks Nee Duffy—The Singer Of Songs—The Teller Of Tales—Silkies—Lough Derg—A Ghost Story

CHAPTER 3 Pike Creek—Southport—Kenosha Wisconsin—Samuel Resique’s Tavern—Alexander Peter’s Piece Of Land—The Lighthouse—Cholera And Typhoid Fever

CHAPTER 4 The First Robert Brooks—Subbekashe—Hudson’s Bay Company And The 5Th Earl Of Selkirk—Violence Erupts—The Handsome One—Tattooing—The Flute

CHAPTER 5 A Medicine Woman—Tobacco—Sage—Sweet Grass—Cedar Leaves

CHAPTER 6 Pork-Eaters—Hivernants—Voyageurs—À La Façon Du Pays—Red River Carts—Métis Nation

CHAPTER 7 Yorkshireman And Cree—Pemmican—Tenting—‘Whiskey’ And ‘Jack’—Cruelty On The Trip—‘Dog Shoes’—Supper In The Camp

CHAPTER 8 Starvation At Fort Garry—Hanged For Arson—’Crow’—A Little Brass Medal—Sweetgrass—The Keening

CHAPTER 9 Legend Of The White Horse—Wesakechuk, ‘Whiskey Jack’—The Origin Of The Moon—La Chaise Gallerie—Smoking Tobacco

CHAPTER 10 The Territory Of Wisconsin Becomes A State—Mary Brooks, Widow, With A 6 Year-Old Daughter, Ida—Arthur Keating Comes To Kenosha To Stay With Cousins—Chicago And The Fenians—Settles In Morris, Illinois

Edith Fowke, a folklorist, in 1963, said The ‘Red River Valley’ in Canada was a song written about an Indian woman and a voyaguer. ‘This is probably the best-known folk song on the Canadian prairies… later research indicates that it was known in at least five Canadian Provinces before 1896…

Come and sit by my side if you love me,

Do not hasten to bid me adieu,

But remember the Red River Valley

And the poor girl who loved you so true.

CHAPTER 1

VOYAGEURS—ROBERT BROOKS—GENEOLOGY ON MY DAD’S SIDE—MY GREAT-GREAT GRANDMA MARY DUFFY BROOKS—

SONGS AND DANCES OF DONEGAL

The songs of the French fur trade were adapted to the voyageur, to accompany the paddles of the canoes that would take them to trade with the Canadian French of the Northwest and the Hudson’s Bay Company. The fur trade was active for over 300 years in North America. Canoes were used to transport trade goods in exchange for furs through established trade routes consisting of the Great Lakes, and rivers, and portages in the back—country of present day Canada and the United States. Singing helped to pass the time and to make work seem lighter. It is likely that the Montreal agents and the ‘wintering’ partners sought out and preferred to hire voyageurs who liked to sing, and were good at it. They believed that singing helped them to paddle faster and longer.

The lively voyageur rowers sang Alouette, gentile alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai . . . ! Alouette, the lark, was eaten in Europe and was considered ‘mauviette’, a term for a wimp or weakling. In the French song, the lark is the first bird to sing in the morning. It could make lovers part or wake up the sleepy. The