Cheryl Savageau Biography

thanks for bringing that
to our attention
she said the first time
...

they find what looks like
a grave
what looks like a grave
...

It is the fish that bring them first.
Cod in such numbers as to seem endless.
Cod to fill the nets and bellies of hungry
Europeans with the tender white flesh.
Cod, it seems to them, without end.

They fill the ships,
salting the fish
down in barrels,
til the hull is full,
and head back home. This wet
cod-fishing goes on for
years, far out in the Banks,
with only an occasional stop on land.

We dry our fish in the sun
cure it in smoke-houses
and sure enough, the
foreigners hear
about it.

Soon they need
a land base
to dry the cod
which weighs less
than when wet
tastes better, too

it is these dreams
of cod that
first bring
the French
to land

dreams
of cod
the gold
of the sea
that will
fill their bellies
and their
pockets
...

Les Filles du Roi (1668)

French men are marrying Indian women. It will have to be stopped. Wives will have to be found. French wives for French men. And so the call goes out to all the unfortunates in France. Women without homes, without family, poor women, women alone. Women with no dowries to buy a husband. Becomes a Fille du Roi, a Daughter of the King. Each woman considers her options. The hardships she doesn't know are preferable to the ones she knows too well. As a Daughter of the King, she will have a dowry, payable to her husband at the time of marriage. She will have a home, the possibility of children, a place in the community. Women come from Ile de France, from Normandy, 800 women in ten years. Les Filles du Roi.


Une Fille du Roi, 1668

Marie Mazol is thirty three years old when she becomes a Daughter of the King. She will bring 300 livres to her marriage to Antoine Roy-Desjardins. She will have money for her own use as well, for expenses, they promise her. She thought it would go further, but what she takes with her are a coffer, a cap, a taffeta handkerchief, a shoe ribbon, a hundred needles, a comb, a pair of stockings, a pair of gloves, a pair of scissors, two knives, a thousand pins, a bonnet, and four laces. Thus prepared, she faces marriage to a man she doesn't know, in a country she's never seen.


Les Filles du Roi—Afterwards

The Daughters of the King become wives. But French and Indian keep marrying. Their descendants will say, "Scratch a Frenchman, find an Indian."
...

plantain makes a
good tea. its seeds are
crushed and used as a
laxative. it is found in
every english garden. now
its leaves are pushing up
everywhere. you can find it
outside every english
settlement, its long leaves
with parallel veins,
its central stocks of tiny
flowers. wherever
the english go
plantain
grows in their footsteps.
when you see it
you'll know that they're
near. that english boy
found his way home
following those
footsteps. when
you see it
go the other way
...