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Lisette Duval Harmon: British Columbia to Vermont & Montreal, 1786-1865
Métis daughter of a voyageur and a "Snare" (Secwepemc) Indian from the Kootenays, Lisette paddled 2300 miles across the continent with her fur trader husband Daniel Harmon. At the end of his Sixteen years in the Indian Country 1800-1816, NorthWest Company trader Harmon brought his femme du pays (country wife) and their daughters back to his native Vermont. The family later moved to Montreal, where Lisette would outlive all but one of her 14 children. Lisette and Daniel are buried in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.
Lisette's Journey has her own website with a full program series of fur trade songs and tales, voyageur theatre, and digital history.
Lisette's Journey has her own website with a full program series of fur trade songs and tales, voyageur theatre, and digital history.
Maona (trad.) & Veins in the Stone (L.E. Noel © 1993)
Maona
Maona, leno leno gaote, haino, haino, haino. (repeat)
Maona, wai kan chucki kche hinge. (descant)
O Maona, be in my head and in my understanding
O Maona, be in my eyes and in my seeing
O Maona, be in my mouth and in my speaking
O Maona, be in my end and at my beginning.
Veins in the Stone
Strong of spirit, strong of heart
Deep in the heart of the land
There's a song of the spirit, a song of the heart
Deep in the heart of the land.
CHORUS: Run, river, run like blood in the bone
Deep in the heart of the land
Run, river, run like veins in the stone
Deep in the heart of the land.
Ocher bison, ocher face...
Of power lines a lichened trace...
CHORUS
The rapid beats below the boat...
Feel the pulse of the river in the pulse at your throat...
CHORUS
Tobacco for the water witch...
Memegwayse, o megwitch*...
CHORUS
Shield of granite, shield of ice...
This open heart the Shield's device
This is the heart of the land.
CHORUS
(repeat first verse)
Like Lisette, this song is the daughter of native and European traditions. The melody's "father" was the Abbott's Bromley Horn Dance, and its "mother" an Ojibwa chant to the earth goddess Maona, collected by Wisconsin singer Corinne Rockow. Veins in the Stone was Maona's gift to me on a nine-day canoe trip down the Bloodvein River in Manitoba for a 1993 video. Visit www.chrs.ca for information on the Veins in the Stone video and on the book VOYAGES: Canada's Heritage Rivers.
*Megwitch is the Ojibwa word for "thank you." Tobacco is the traditional ritual offering to the memegwaysiwuk, the spirits who dwell in the river caves.
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