Searching for River Glass Beads

The title poem of my first book of poetry, The Thing with Feathers, has one line I am writing about today: "counting river glass beads to pass time."

The Thing with Feathers

by Jessica Outram

It catches her gaze

by the trunk of the cherry blossom tree

perhaps a wilted flower delivered in the wind

enchanted by its quiet form  

she walks to the lake

there is beauty in death; she remembers

when in despair

she prayed for a thousand angels to carry 

her when she was too heavy

counting river glass beads to pass time

and waiting for sunflower doors to appear

for years she dreamed of blue fish in willow trees

wearing hummingbird crowns she didn’t understand—

an hour later she arrives home again, the tree

at her feet and now she sees feathers 

—not a flower after all

---

Dear River,

Since writing this poem, I have forgotten whether river glass beads are real or something I imagined. Are there truly beads in the river, created as your waters run over small stones, polishing them until they shine like glass? Or are the beads lost, dropped, or placed there by people on their travels?

Today as I worked on remembering river glass beads, I looked online for help. That's how it goes now with thinking and writing. The inner world, real world, imaginary world, and virtual world all have perspectives to consider.

Beads as currency

I read a 2016 story in the Parry Sound North Star about glass beads uncovered in 1961 in the Shebeshekong River, artifacts once exchanged as currency in the fur trade networks of the Great Lakes. River, I wonder: is this distraction, or discovery?

The fur trade and the rivers are both part of my own story and how I came to write today in the first place. We've travelled from book to poem to line to discovery to connection to history. Each moment personal and an opportunity for drifting. I need a nap. I did not see this coming.

Writing pauses for thirty minutes as I nap.

For years I've collected stories of my ancestors and the places they've lived. River, I need your help to determine how to share them. When I begin to write, it's just like the glass river beads. The past and present collide, a complex narrative emerges and I meander through this synergy until it's time for dinner. The past is the present, and the present becomes the past.

Ezekiel Solomon and the fur trade

My great-x5 grandfather, Ezekiel Solomon (1735-1808), was instrumental during the fur trade. He travelled from Europe in the mid-1700s with some friends, Levy Solomon, Chapman Abraham, Benjamin Lyon, and Gershon Levy. Grandfather Solomon was the first Jewish man in what is now Michigan and over the years I've collected many details about his life I'd like to share with you in these letters.

What the voyageurs may have carried...

Is it possible the river glass beads found in the Shebeshekong River were from one of his boats? Maybe not. It's not been easy to track his routes, although I've learned he played a role in the expansion of the fur trades routes. I've spent hours reading contracts in the Voyageur database. I found 112 records for Ezechiel Solomon et Compagnie.

Selecting one randomly, I explore:

• Voyageur: Paul Pelletier

• Role: Guide

• May 5, 1780.

• Travel from Montreal to Michilimackinack

  • "Leave the Port of this city in one of its canoes, to go to the place of guide to the post of Michilimakina, to make the journey, both going up and going down. To have good and duly care during the journeys, and being at the said post, of the merchandise, food and furs.

  • For four hundred and fifty pounds or shellings, the old rate of this Province, which the said Sieur Bourgeois promises, and undertakes to give and pay to the said engaged person upon his return to this city, and upon his departure, a three-point blanket, a cotton shirt, a pair of large six-point canvas breeches and a 2 1/2 point blanket."

And this leads to more reading and more questions. Did Paul know my grandfather Solomon? What did the responsibility of caring for the workers, boats, merchandise, and relationships feel like? My grandfather paid workers using pounds, but did Paul trade with glass beads on his journey?

What else have we lost beneath the surface of the river over time?

In the poem The Thing with Feathers, the speaker describes how when seeing a flower in two different ways, she discovered it wasn't a flower, but actually a dead bird. The beauty in the circle of life.

In this letter, I wanted to write about river glass beads because they conjured beauty and light. I discovered they are also a currency, a story of the fur trade. The complexity of the truths under water.

One day I'll visit the beads at the museum on Tower Hill in Parry Sound. Before I can get there, I know I'll be by the river. I'll be sure to take a moment to scan below the surface, in amongst the river stones, for treasures.

What hidden thing might the river still carry for you?

Subscribe to 'Letters to the River'