Martin

Martin

My object

My object of choice is a French civilian musket which was invented in 1717 and brought to New France shortly after. Although it wasn’t the best musket to be had, it was reliable and relatively cheap. The musket that I will be writing about was found in what seems to have been a field by archeologists and was seemingly buried there along with a skull. Although there weren’t any pictures from the dig site there were pictures of the rifle itself.

Pre-story

Martin was born in 1720 in the town of Nouveau Metz. His most beloved relative was his sister, Remi who was born in 1723. They had hard lives working long days on the farm and never really liked it there. Every day after Martin’s tenth birthday he would have to get up at four in the morning and do chores regarding the animals, hard work which he didn’t like. But there were things to look forward to like glimpsing the people in the woods who lived there. Martin would fantasize about going with them and starting a new life in the beautiful forest beyond the farm and the smelly town. He would also play with his sister and with his eight other brothers and sisters although most of them also had their own chores. Remi, Martin’s favourite sibling would often play with him. they’d climb trees and throw rocks into the woods, hoping they’d hit a squirrel. She was more or less the only joy in his farm life. Once when they were throwing rocks, they hit a skunk and it stunk there for two weeks. One of the other children had seen it and had ratted them out to their parents, who beat both Martin and Remi for hitting it. So when Martin turned 15, he had had enough, and this is where the story starts.

Story

It was my birthday today and I’m happy with what I got, my parents say that I can go hunting now and I think that that’s gonna be lots of fun. Remi also got me something, she got me a slingshot so that we can bother the neighbours a bit better. I think it’s gonna be fun, especially with our new neighbour who’s annoying as hell. Because it’s my birthday I’ve also got the day off, finally! I hope that by some miracle the clouds clear up but it seems more like a storm, and it’s getting late. Well I still want to try out my new slingshot. “REMI! Come on, let’s go! “
Martin and Remi ran out through the trees and behind their neighbours house. As usual he was feeding his geese.
“When is he ever gonna get rid of those geese, they’re more work and taste worse than chickens, and they don’t have as much meat as pigs.” Martin never liked the geese. It was most likely because he always got chased by them when he was small.
“That’s why I made you this slingshot, now you can really do some damage”, Remi said.
But by that time it had already started to drizzle and the downpour was going to come at any minute so they went back inside where they ate some stale bread for dinner and went to their room. They then pulled out their plan for how to make a nice home away from their accommodation. You see Martin and Remi may have had their differences but one thing that they really did agree on is that they wanted to settle down in a place that didn’t smell like a toilet and pigs, and was instead in the middle of nature, near a creek or a lake although a lake would be to obvious. So that was why on the evening of Martins 15th birthday they started packing.
“You know, I think we should take one of dads muskets. It’ll be easier to hunt with and we could sell it to the Indians once we run out of ammo”.
“But we’d have to take it on the day we go so that mum and dad aren’t suspicious.”
“Alright”
Martin and Remi had already packed their stuff and were going to go on the next Sunday. That would be one of the best times to go because Martin’s birthday was on March 19th and around March 26th was when the nights got warmer than freezing.

The next morning was like any other, and so was the next week, but you could tell something was up by the way they acted. Then on Sunday morning they stole the musket and left. Martin knew that no one was going to be awake that early on a Sunday morning and so he was surprised when he saw someone through the trees. He whispered to Remi: “Hey, look over there, who’s that?” “I don’t know” she said, “looks like some Indian” “Yeah” After the encounter Martin and Remi jogged as far out as they could. They then hiked even further. “This is further than I’ve ever been before!” Martin exclaimed “Hey look! That’s a nice cave!” Remi had found a cave which looked like with some cleaning it might just make a nice house. And so as the morning turned to noon they started to set up camp. At the start of the day it had looked like it would be sunny but now it looked more like rain and Martin made an effort to get all the stuff in the cave before the downfall. That night they had a nice sleep and the next morning they started organizing their stuff and building up the cave entrance. While Remi organized, Martin cut down the surrounding trees to build a makeshift wall and door. They also decided that it would be mutually beneficial if they plucked the feathers off some geese from the nearby pond and made a bed using them. As the days passed by, their cave looked more and more like a nice house. Something out of those tales about Hobbits that the old tall Irish man with the long grey beard had told them. Martin started building traps around their house and tried to go hunting once, although he missed both shots. Remi started building fish traps in the creek near their house as well. After about one month Martin was out exploring like he usually was if he wasn’t hunting or mapping out the area. He had discovered some salmon berry bushes which he planned to use to make the food nice and sweet. As he walked further out, keeping close track of where he was going he found something, a Native Village. So he spied on the people there for a little while until he turned around and ran to tell Remi about his discovery. Remi contemplated doing some trading with the Natives but decided against it because they didn’t have anything to trade.

After the first few days nothing much happened and for the next month they’d just build up their home as well as the area around it while still covering their tracks as well as they could. When May started to go by Martin had a peek at the Native village and the salmon berry bushes he had seen earlier. While he was there he almost encountered someone but he managed to get out of sight quickly enough for them not to see him. When he got back he told Remi about it while they checked their traps for any new animals.
“You know, since the summer’s coming up and so we might be able to plant some things so we don’t have to rely so much on animals”
“But we don’t have any seeds”
“We could steal from the natives, I bet they’ve got what we’re looking for”
“But what if they catch us, they probably know where we live, and you’ve heard the stories”
“Come on, they’re just stories and aren’t true anyways.”
“I hope so”
They then finished checking all of their traps and went inside where they ate. They then prayed to their makeshift shrine and went to bed. The next morning there was a storm and they had to stay in because they didn’t have any clothes which they could go into the rain with and get wet. At around noon, the sky cleared up and they saw that the stream was flooding a bit so they had the idea that they could use it to their advantage.
“Hey look at that stream, isn’t it a bit too high?” Said Martin.
“I guess we could use the dirt from when we cleaned our cave to build a levee.”
“No that’s not what I meant, couldn’t we do what they did with the fields by the ocean where they had the rivers flood them every once in a while and then they had water”
“Or have some aqueducts so the crops would always have water”
“You know what, that could just work!”
“But we don’t have any seeds”
“You know what? Maybe we could just ask the Natives for seeds and they’ll give some to us”
“Ok, but first lets relay and check the traps on the small river for any fish.”