Fredy Perlman Archive
Written: 1988.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Wedasi was on edge during the rest of our journey to Bison I ‘mi rie. He wanted to think well of our uncles on the Wabash, he wanted reasons to join them. If I had spoken he wouldn’t have lint,cried, but I didn’t speak. I reached back to Katabwe’s songs mid stories. I touched the objects in my bundle, I mused on my Ii rut. dreams, but I found no guidance; I didn’t know who I was or where to go. I had nothing to tell Wedasi.
I stopped pondering Aptegizhek’s words as soon as I saw the In miliar riverbanks, the fruit trees I had run among with Nnnhkowatak and Mimikwe, at last the lodges of the Fire- keepers’ village. But our welcome was disappointing. Wedasi and I were not expected. Only the gifts from the Strait were expected, and only Burr-net and Cakima, Chebansi and Nesoki were on the landingplace. Our father thought we had returned so as to join Chebansi in the store. We were surprised that Chebansi had reinstalled himself in the store.
Chebansi was well, and he was unchanged. He greeted us with self-justifications. After hearing the story of our binding and our escape, he told us the Bison Prairie store was nothing like the stores on the Strait. Burr-net did not greatly differ from Jay-may, but Burr-net didn’t run his store; Cakima ran it, and had run it since Burr-net’s arrival. Chebansi had told all this to Wedasi earlier. Now he told us that our Bison Prairie kin depended on the gifts in the store, that the Bison Prairie store had powerful enemies, and that Chebansi had pledged himself to help our mother face those enemies. He said the greater enemy was a Cheater and Slaver called Kin-sic, who had installed himself among Kittihawa’s kin on the Lakebottom. The lesser enemy was a Redcoat called Petty-song who had opened a store—Burr-net called it a pigsty—on the outskirts of Bison Prairie itself. The aim of each was to draw the flow of gifts and furs away from Bison Prairie, and they were succeeding. Topinbi’s last fur load was so meager that he hesitated to cariy it to the Strait.
Chebansi and Cakima knew that Kin-sic was the greedier and more powerful, but Burr-net’s lifelong hatred of Redcoats blinded him. Burr-net had made common cause with the Lakebottom Slaver and had sent Shando to join Kin-sic in pouring out barrels of rum that had arrived for Petty-song, on the pretext that the United Scalpers prohibited the rum trade. Shando hadn’t accompanied Topinbi’s caravan to the Strait because he’d feared retribution by the Redcoat’s allies, and the fear of Redcoats was driving Burr-net into ever closer association with Kin-sic. Meanwhile, Kin-sic was destroying our Lakebottom kin. He had already driven Sandypoint away; he was embroiling our uncles in ugly wars.
Wedasi and I brought our brother nothing. Chebansi’s war was not the war Wedasi dreamed of fighting, and I couldn’t even follow Chebansi’s account. We sought out Bindizeosekwe in the cornfield; her daughters Koyoshkwe, pockmarked, and Wamoshkeshekwe, the marks not visible, were already grown enough to help with the planting. Wedasi joined Bindizeosekwe in waiting for Meteya to return from the hunt; Wedasi hoped Meteya would bring news of his brothers Gizes and Wapmimi, news that differed from Aptegizhek’s.
I joined my cousin Mimikwe and waited for Shabeni to rot,urn. Mimikwe’s son Komenoteya, born shortly before I left IliHon Prairie, already used a bow, and hit marks more often Mian I did. I offered the boy songs and stories but Komenoteya, like Wedasi, had no ear for them. As Mimikwe watched the boy play with his arrows, I saw that she was repelled by his desire to be a warrior.
I thanked Mimikwe for sending our grandmother’s bundle to me six springs earlier. Mimikwe thanked me for returning to her lodge. She embraced me, looked deeply into my eyes, and I hanked me again. She had feared that I would return with a strange haze in my eyes, but I hadn’t; the inner joy, and also the Mildness, was still in them; she’d heard Katabwe say that I had our great-grandmother Menoko’s eyes. Mimikwe took me to her Ix'd and made my seed flow into her, dementing me with a joy I luuln’t yet felt. She told me she yearned for my gratitude, lircause only I could ease the pain she felt whenever she thought of our grandmother.
Disfigured by the smallpox as a small child, Mimikwe had tfmwn up fearing plagues, wars and war dances. She’d clung to her mother Nogewi to protect her from Katabwe and the other Iiiiinted dancers; she’d grown up hating and fearing the warrior Katabwe. Mimikwe and her brother Nesoki had both seen their mot her disemboweled by the Scalpers who had spread terror mid desolation in the Wabash valley during their wars against Krkionga, and Mimikwe had blamed Katabwe’s war dances for I In- Scalpers’ rage.
Mimikwe went on hating Katabwe after my birth, when IhiIIi returned to Bison Prairie. Convinced that Katabwe wanted to turn all her grandsons into warriors, Mimikwe had ji nned Nashkowatak in his dream lodge to keep the war spirits lioni visiting him. She had married Shabeni only after he’d mnvinced her that he had renounced the ways of the warrior, and then she’d tried to discourage Shabeni from counciling with Katabwe. Mimikwe had even been glad of my separation from my warlike grandmother. And not once had she counciled with Katabwe until our grandmother lay dying. Only then did Mimikwe learn that Katabwe had not been singing of war in MiHon Prairie, but of regeneration, of a peaceful regeneration such as Mimikwe would have liked to see. Mimikwe learned this limn Katabwe’s instructions about the bundle, from Katabwe’s fondness for the grandson least disposed to kill, the grandson least likely to become a warrior or even a hunter.
A vine grew alongside Mimikwe’s lodge, on the spot where Katabwe’s lodge had stood. When Mimikwe joined Bindi zeosekwe in the cornfield, I sat down next to the vine, as if to council with it; I spread the objects of my bundle between my sell and the foot of the vine. And I remembered the day when I first arrived on that spot. Although my memories were given to me only later, I remembered as if I had myself been aware of my first arrival in Bison Prairie, as if the memories were my own.
I knew that my grandmother had come to Bison Prairie to be close to me and her other grandchildren, to get away from the battlefields. My birth cries were drowned out by news of the death of my grandfather, yet she heard my cries as she listened to Sigenak tell of Nanikibi’s burial, as she listened to Nawak tell of his father Batf s death at the very gate of the ally’s fort. She accepted Nanikibi’s bundle from Sigenak, but she did not intend to carry that bundle to any more wars. She intended to pass the bundle to a grandchild whose joy came from the sight of waving cornstalks and bounding deer, from the songs and ceremonies of dancing kin, and not from the fall of enemies in a battlefield. She had taken part in several victories, had seen numerous fields filled with fallen enemies and fallen kin, ye1 the Beautiful Valley was invaded and Kekionga was destroyed. The deaths were of no avail; they had not stopped the invasion.
Katabwe had become convinced that there were other ways, and that these ways could be found in the bundle she inherited from Nanikibi, on the scrolls Aptegizhek had inherited from Oashi, on the belts Isador had inherited from Mini, even on the arrowhead Wakaya had inherited from his Redearth grandmother Wagoshkwe. And Katabwe intended to show these other ways to her grandchildren, to her son’s Mimikwe and Nesoki and to her daughter’s Nashkowatak, Chebansi, Wedasi, Wabnokwe and the newborn. She would try to give her grandchildren what she had failed to give her children.
She knew that her reasons for returning to Bison Prairie were not Topinbi’s or Cakima’s reasons. She knew that Topinbi and Cakima were not returning to renew a Firekeepers’ village that had dispersed to distant battlefields, but to renew a fur trade that had been disrupted by the wars. She knew she’d have to face Cakima’s hostility, just as she knew she’d have to face Mimikwe’s fear, Nashkowatak’s disorientation, Chebansi’s Indifference. But she also knew she wouldn’t be alone. Sigenak’s oldest son Meteya shared her rejection of the warrior’s ways and Joined the westbound caravan, and Meteya didn’t stir from llison Prairie when his father sent word of the enemy’s desire to hold a peace council with the warriors. Topinbi rushed away to Mint council, as did his cousin Winamek from the Lakebottom, even though neither of them had fought against the Beautiful Valley’s invaders.
Topinbi’s and Winamek’s return from the peace council coincided with my naming ceremony. Aptegizhek came with Miein, as well as several canoes laden with gifts. Topinbi and ('nkima invited kin from nearby villages; Aptegizhek’s sisters came from the Lakebottom, as well as Bindizeosekwe.
Three fires were lit, and at their center stood Topinbi and ('nkima, the hosts, the Firekeepers who were ready to give out I lie gifts as compensation for the deaths on the field of fallen I i ces. But before any gifts were given out, Aptegizhek spoke to I lie gathering; he began by saying Meteya had been wise to stay iiway from the council with the enemy, which had not been a peace council but a humiliation ceremony.
Aptegizhek had helped Sigenak spread word of the council because he, like Sigenak and most of the other warriors, had thought that the Invaders meant peace when they said peace. Aptegizhek still thought this when Will-well and Gabinya and the other interpreters repeated the Invaders’ words to those who hadn't learned the enemy’s language. The agreement was unambiguous: both armies were to disband, Scalper Vain’s uniformed soldiers as well as the Kekionga council’s warriors, and it was on this agreement that the warriors placed their marks. Tlie first to sign was Sigenak, followed by his sons Gizes, Wap-mimi and Wakaya. Nawak signed eagerly. Atsimet signed, and his brother Mowhawa was ready to sign. At that point, to everyone's amazement, people who had not fought against Vain or tiKainst any of the Scalpers’ armies, began to sign. Topinbi rose In put his markon the agreement, as did his cousin Winamek as well as Winamek’s son-in-law Lashas. Mowhawa asked the Interpreters what this meant. He was told that anyone who ri'imunced his claims on the Beautiful Valley was welcome to hIkii and would be rewarded with a mound of gifts. Mowhawa backed away from the Scalpers’ leaf, as did Isador and Aptegizhek and others who had not yet signed.
It was suddenly clear that the Scalpers used the word peace to mean capitulation, that the warriors agreed to disband while the Scalpers agreed to nothing, that one side severed itself from home and kin while the other poured out beads and whiskey.
Aptegizhek who needed no interpreter, told the Scalpers to take their gifts to the other side of the Sunrise Mountains, to feed them to the hungry and the greedy, and to hold a peace council there. Wakaya, who had already signed, covered himself from head to foot with excrement to communicate that the Piqua gathering had not been a peace council but a ceremony of humiliation. Of the signers, only Nawak felt bound by the leaf he marked. The others would wait and see. Mowhawa and Gizes headed to the Wabash, Atsimet to Kekionga, Wakaya and Isador to the Strait. And when all had turned their backs, Topinbi and his Lakebottom cousin loaded themselves up with beads, cloth and whiskey and set out to compensate their kin with death gifts.
Topinbi and Cakima had been distributing the gifts while Aptegizhek spoke. Katabwe rose, gathered up her share of the gifts and dropped it all into the fire; her kinswoman Shutaha had similarly disposed of earlier gifts.
Only then did Katabwe turn to me. She heard the name thrown at me by Topinbi, the name Wiske, which Topinbi purposely pronounced whiskey, and she threw that name back to Topinbi, saying that one whiskey was enough. She named me Obenabi, one who looks back. Aptegizhek heartily approved, but his sister Shecogosikwe, who had accepted Topinbi’s whiskey, asked why Katabwe and Aptegizhek were so concerned to heal earth’s wounds; she said the trees, the animals and earth herself seemed altogether unconcerned, almost indifferent. Aptegizhek’s younger sister Wagoshkwe didn’t share this indifference, and she urged her brother to remain in Bison Prairie or on the Lakebottom. Aptegizhek chose to return to the broken center between the Peninsula and the Valley, to all- but-abandoned Kekionga.
Katabwe burned the gifts, like ancient Shutaha. Also like Shutaha, she bent to the ground to remove obstacles and encumbrances, so that young shoots could grow straight and strong. But after Aptegizhek departed to Kekionga and his younger sister returned to the Lakebottom, Katabwe was alone in her task. Sigenak’s oldest son Meteya stayed on in Bison Prairie; he too had renounced the warrior’s ways. But he had grown in distant Cahokia among Prairiekin who no longer dreamed, and he stayed out of Katabwe’s lodge; he had no ear for her songs. Bindizeosekwe moved in with Meteya after the other visitors dispersed; she had grown with Shecogosikwe among the Lakebottom’s crosswearers, and she too remained a stranger to Katabwe.
Katabwe had so much to give; she’d thought her grandchildren would be willing to receive it. She was disappointed. I had a name, but I was still too young to grasp her songs. My cousin Nesoki and my brother Chebansi stayed with Cakima in my 1'nt.her’s store. Mimikwe shared Katabwe’s lodge but hated her grandmother, never once forgetting that Katabwe had lived most of her life as a warrior, and that warriors had disemboweled Mimikwe’s mother.
Mimikwe didn’t let her hatred show; she cooked for Katabwe, she made sandals and clothes, she warmed the lodge; hut when Katabwe sang, Mimikwe joined Bindizeosekwe in the cornfield or the furdressing lodge. Wabnokwe was too young to grasp what she heard, and Wedasi listened to Katabwe only when she told of the wars.
Nashkowatak was the only grandchild who wanted to hear Katabwe. He sought her out. On the Strait, someone had called him a halfbreed and the name rankled in his memory. Unlike Wabnokwe, who grew up proud of belonging to both the Invaders’ and the Firekeepers’ worlds, Nashkowatak grew up MHhamed, thinking he belonged to neither. He wanted Katabwe lo show him who he was. He listened to Katabwe’s songs and Mlories, especially those about Pyerwa and Nizokwe and I,ok ask we who were not born among the Peninsulakin but became kin by adoption. And he begged Katabwe to build him a Canting lodge. But as he prepared to dream, Nashkowatak saw himself through the eyes of his friends on the Strait and thought h i mself ridiculous. He wanted to go to the woods for a reason his It lends would have approved, even admired. So he told his cousin Mimikwe he was afraid, and begged her to follow him to I lie Casting lodge. Unknown to all, Nesoki followed his sister.
Nesoki’s mind had been twisted by crosswearers, especially by his aunt Mikenokwe. He ran to Burr-net and Cakima to tell I hem Nashkowatak was committing carnal sin with Mimikwe. The lovers returned at different times and by separate paths, to no avail; all the villagers greeted them with knowing smiles— all except Katabwe, who was annoyed by her grandson’s misuse of his fasting lodge, and Burr-net, who was enraged by his son’s carnal sin and incest. Burr-net would not have his sons revert to the old ways; he resolved to send his oldest sons back to the Strait and to keep his younger three away from the old witch, as he called Katabwe. And Cakima, who lit the three fires only to attract furs to her store, treated her mother as a disease, and was determined to sever Katabwe from everyone in Bison Prairie.
Shabeni was one of the hunters who took furs to Cakima. Topinbi hastily befriended the newcomer, seeing in him a fellow-carrier, perhaps even a successor more capable than Shando, who didn’t inspire the trust of hunters. Shabeni had fought with Wakaya and Nanikibi on the field of fallen trees, but he’d grown among carriers, and Topinbi assumed Shabeni was attached to the carriers’ ways. Shabeni’s eyes often rested on Mimikwe, and Topinbi, during his brief stays in Bison Prairie, removed obstacles that blocked Shabeni’s view. Cakima foresaw a union between Bison Prairie’s Firekeepers and Leaning Tree carriers, a union that was bound to bring more furs to Burr-net’s store. Cakima also thought her mother would be left all alone.
Cakima chose the naming ceremony for Meteya’s and Bindi- zeosekwe’s firstborn as the occasion for the event. While Katabwe was occupied with the naming, Shabeni was to offer Mimikwe his marriage gift. Topinbi brought loads of gifts. Cakima invited neighboring kin. Three fires were lit. But despite all the scheming and arranging, the intentions went unrealized.
Cakima had underestimated Katabwe, and Topinbi had misjudged Shabeni. Katabwe knew what was intended; she also knew that most of the gathered kin remembered the old ceremonies. Katabwe named Koyoshkwe but didn’t stop with the naming. She began the dance associated with the three fires her daughter had so conveniently lit. Katabwe started the renewal ceremony familiar to guests as well as hosts, and she’d done some arranging of her own: her grandson Nashkowatak turned up as long-eared Wiske wearing trader Burr-net’s clothes. By the time the expulsion of the hare began, Cakima had fled to her trader’s lodge, stung and humiliated. But the sequel upset Nashkowatak’s hopes as well. He had hoped Mimikwe would join in the chase of the hare, and would go on chasing him deep into the woods. Mimikwe didn’t take part in the chase. Shabeni hud sworn to her that he had renounced the warrior’s ways, and Mimikwe had already accepted this oath as Shabeni’s marriage gift. And then Shabeni did what no one had expected. Instead of pulling Mimikwe to his lodge, he installed himself in Katab-we’s. Topinbi had been wrong. Shabeni wasn’t attached to the curriers’ ways. He had sought to be close to Mimikwe so as to be close to Katabwe. He wanted to be the grandson of the woman who had been a warrior and had renounced war, and he wanted to learn the songs his people had forgotten.
Nashkowatak felt betrayed—by Mimikwe, by Katabwe, by everyone in Bison Prairie. Blinded by desire, jealousy and selfishness he convinced himself that Mimikwe had chosen the proven warrior, and Nashkowatak resolved to prove himself a greater warrior, on the Strait, in the enemy’s army.
My brothers and my sister let themselves be pulled out of llimm Prairie. But Katabwe wasn’t left alone. In Shabeni she hitd a new grandson, more attentive to her than any of her other (jnmdchildren. And by then I was old enough to find my way to my grandmother’s lodge.
From the very first time I sat at Katabwe’s hearth, [j was transported out of myself by the stories she told: I flew over the places I hadn’t visited, mingled with beings different from any I had seen jKatabwe’s songs and stories carried me to worlds untouched by fur traders, firesticks and plagues. She showed me hones of ancestors who had lived in the water and the feather of un ancestor who had flown; she unrolled the scroll that spoke of ( he wanderings of Kichigami’s first human beings, the common nnroHtors of all Peninsulakin. I hungered for her songs; I even hi'Kged her to build me a dream lodge. But I never asked her for (lie Firekeepers’ bundle; I never even asked to touch the lit lerskin pouch or any of its contents. I took it for granted that if *»he ever died, the bundle would be given to self-assured Sha- heni, who knew why he listened to her songs, who understood everything she told him. When I begged her for a fasting lodge, she thought me too young. But when I returned to tell her my Interrupted dream, she no longer thought me too young. My dream was a sign—for her, not for me.
And then she died, suddenly, right after Shabeni and I left her. She surely died when I was in Mishilimakina, the very moment when I rose from the ground with the power of my own wings and flew above the men carrying corpses out of canoes. Mho had told me my first dream had not been interrupted by Topinbi; it had been complete. I hadn’t believed her, and it was long before I realized that in my first dream Katabwe- Binesikwe the birdwoman had flown me over a world-to-come. In Mishilimakina, from the moment she died, I had to rise from the ground on my own.
I was still sitting face to face with the vine that had grown on Katabwe’s lodge site, my bundle’s contents spread out between me and the vine, when Mimikwe returned from the field. The whole day had passed. Mimikwe called me to her lodge, and I panicked. I packed up the contents of the bundle and backed away from Mimikwe’s lodge. Mimikwe had sent me the Firekeepers’ bundle. Mimikwe had said my eyes were my great-grandmother Menoko’s eyes. Mimikwe wanted to be near the bearer of the Firekeepers’ bundle, and she wanted thr bearer to be as gentle as Menoko. But I suddenly remembered what Katabwe had told me about her mother.iMenoko had been gentle and weak, too weak to bear the burden of sorrow and suffering that fell on her, and one night she’d left her burden behind and walked out of her village to die.
I moved to the youth lodge where Shando was staying, and I waited for Shabeni to return from the hunt. I didn’t like Shando, and I didn’t befriend the other youths in the lodge. I moved in with them to escape from Mimikwe. She knew what I had inherited from my grandmother. She knew that the Fire keepers’ bundle was not a carrier’s nor a trader’s nor a hunter’s nor a warrior’s bundle. And I knew—I had known since the moment Mimikwe had told me I had Menoko’s eyes—that I didn’t want the Firekeepers’ bundle. My two dreams, the dream of the desolate village and the dream of the men carrying corpses, had already told me what the bundle would face. II Katabwe too had recognized Menoko’s eyes in mine, why had she given me such a burden?
Meteya returned from the hunt, and Wedasi plied him with questions about Sigenak, Gizes and Wapmimi, but Meteya had heard neither from his father nor from his brothers. Meteya said Shabeni knew more about the prophet’s gathering on the Wabash, and Wedasi grew as impatient for Shabeni’s return as I was.
At last Shabeni returned, bringing bison meat from the other side-of the Long River. I let Wedasi get to him first. I saw and heard a Shabeni who was strange to me, a Shabeni I hail Itrli'lly glimpsed in the Leaning Tree village. My heart ached for Mimikwe; I knew why she had reached for me. Shabeni had f#vnrted to a warrior. The companions with whom he had hunted the bison were Redearth kin who expected much from the Wabash gathering; they expected a great war against the Scalpors and all their allies. Wedasi at last heard the news he’d bvon waiting to hear since he was a child.
I reminded Shabeni of his promise to build me a dream lodge. Seven winters had passed since he’d made that promise. He remembered. He became the Shabeni I had known. He told me I had grown old enough to build my own lodge, but if it me, he would live up to his promise.
He led me deep into the forest, far from any villages, to a hill at the turn of a stream. We sang Katabwe’s songs as we climbed to the top. At a spot overlooking the stream, we propped a small rain shelter on a lone birch, with the birch’s trunk serving as lodge pole. When we were done, I gave him Katabwe’s bundle. I told him he too had heard my grandmother’s songs, and I had ftltind t he bundle too heavy to carry. Shabeni sat down beside me. He wasn’t angry at me for having enticed him far into the forest ho as to give him my burden. He told me he had even less strength to carry the bundle than I did. He had heard Kaiabwe —too well, he said. She had renounced the way of the warrior and seen another way. He, Shabeni, had also renounced the way of the warrior but he was a warrior again. He had heard Kaiabwe again, but he hadn’t seen what she had seen. He gently set the btundle down next to me, and left.
A storm broke out. The birds who are said to make thunder their wings furiously and drenched the forest with their tears. Leaning on the birch that held up my lodge, I stared at a veined rock perched on the hillside between me and the stream. I thought I saw the stream’s level rising, but when I looked again, I saw that it wasn’t the stream rising, but the banks themselves turning into water. Looking further, I saw that all the land was becoming water, and then the bases of the trees. Wolves, bears, rabbits and deer were scampering up the hillside toward me as tree trunks turned to water and then the upper branches. The animals huddled around me on a tiny island in the middle of a rising lake. A huge eagle landed next to the birch and flattened its wing against the ground, inviting me to its back, I gratefully patted the feathers nearest me, but stayed where I was, huddling with the forest’s refugees while the water kept on rising.
The sky was clear and the sun was high when I heard a familiar voice and crawled out of my flimsy lodge. Looking down toward the peaceful stream, I noticed that there was no veined rock halfway down the hillside, and the ground I crawled on was dry. Meteya and Wedasi helped me to the small hearth where they were warming soup with hot stones. Wedasi had been doing all the talking. Shabeni hadn’t come for me.
My brother asked what I had seen, and I told my dream Uncle Meteya looked at me as he listened. His face told me he doubted that one needed to go to a fasting lodge to see what I ha< I seen; but he said nothing. Wedasi didn’t hold his thoughts back He understood my dream perfectly. The rising flood was the invasion. The eagle was the prophet in Kithepekanu on the Wabash. Listening to Wedasi, I was relieved that Shabeni hadn’t come for me, that I was spared from hearing Wedasi’s words come out of Shabeni’s mouth.
Bindizeosekwe as well as Mimikwe offered to lodge me while I recovered my strength. I preferred to return to the youth lodge, not so as to be with Shando, but so as to avoid Mimikwe Shando talked endlessly of a Redcoat conspiracy to ruin Burr- net and other peaceful traders. He told me that only he and Burr-net were aware of the danger; that everyone else was blind; that neither Cakima nor Chebansi took the conspiracy seriously; and that Wedasi and Shabeni were preparing to join the Redcoats. Shando left me no peace, but at least he expected nothing from me.
Shabeni stayed away from me; he had told me all he was going to tell me. Mimikwe came to see me. She didn’t ask to hear my dream. She told me she knew Shabeni was going to leave her. I kept silent, but I couldn’t stop my tears from flowing. 1 knew that I too was going to leave Bison Prairie. Mimikwe’s mere presence made me panic. I knew she had expectations in me, our grandmother’s expectations. If even Shabeni couldn’t live up to those expectations, how could I?
I was almost well when Topinbi came to see me. Mimikwe’s father couldn’t have been more unlike his daughter. He laughed, reminded me he had once named me Whiskey, and called me a drunkard. He said my fondness for dreams was Kimilar to his fondness for whiskey, and he recommended whis koy as less of an ordeal. He had grown in the Lakebottom lodge o!’ Katwyn and Nagmo, amid crosses and furs, among kin who hndfeplaced dream fasts with drinking feasts. Topinbi asked to hour my dream. He laughed at me again and told me he saw the world turn watery whenever he drank enough. He said my dream’s eagle was none other than Wiske the gift-carrier, and advised me to do as he had done: hop on and ride.
My strength at last returned, I visited Shabeni to ask him nhout the conspiracy Shando feared. Chebansi reminded me that our father had originally come to Bison Prairie so as to pwape from the Redcoats, and that Shando’s father had been a Redcoat who had let Namakwe’s Bati die at a closed gate, and who had then abandoned Shando’s mother. To Burr-net and Shando, Redcoat, conspirator and enemy were interchangeable Words. Chebansi said there really was a crisis, but this was caused by a Slaver called Kin-sic who was embroiling our liiikebottom uncles Winamek and Nangisi in wars against dis (nut Redearth kin. This Kin-sic had injured our other Lake bottom kin, Kittihawa’s children, and driven them to make common cause with the Redearth kin. Fratricidal war could hri'iik out. Chebansi and Cakima knew, and Scalper Kin-sic a Iso knew, that such a war would destroy Bison Prairie’s fur trade.
When Topinbi prepared to go to the Lakebottom on a peace itiiHnion, I begged to go with him, even though I had no interest In Bison Prairie’s fur trade or in Scalper Kin-sic or in Shando’s conspiracy. Meteya and Bindizeosekwe also accompanied the peacemaker.
Sandypoint’s lodge on the Lakebottom was as large as Pier's on the Strait, with two stories and glass windows. Color hi I representations of the lakeshore and the woods, said to have hi'en painted by Sandypoint, hung on all the walls. It was said I hat Sandypoint himself had been driven away from t he Lakebottom by the threats of Slaver Kin-sic, and that this Hliiver had also forced the trader Jambati to abandon Hnndypoint’s daughter Suzan. I remembered the feats of Rev i niul Bay-con in the north, and assumed this Kin-sic possessed nl m ilar powers.
Bindizeosekwe found her sister Meshewokwe, and together I hey gathered the Lakebottom’s Firekeepers in Sandypoint ’s Iodge. Kin I had never seen greeted me as they entered the great hall. Bindizeosekwe’s cousin Topash arrived with Shecogosikwe and their fiery daughter Menashi. I couldn’t keep myself from staring at the greenstone pendant that dangled from Shecogosikwe’s neck. Little Menashi, at most seven springs old, caught me staring and told me that if I thought her mother beautiful, I would swoon when I saw Suzan. I thought Menashi mean-spirited. The carrier Lalim came with his son Nagan watek. The boy’s mother, Wagoshkwe, was in the upper part of the lodge with Suzan, nursing bedridden Kittihawa. The South branch woman Wewasikwe came with her newborn daughter Miskokwe. Everyone was there except the people Topinbi had hoped to find there.
Nangisi and Winamek had already departed to the Long River, where they would raid Redearth kin and kidnap children And when they had left for their raid, Sandypoint’s son Kegon had rushed to the Wabash, to Kithepekanu, to join the allies of the Redearth kin. The war Topinbi had wanted to avert was already under way. Topash said he had tried to talk sense to the hotheads, and that Kegon was reasonable, but that Nangisi used his reason only to serve his greed. His mission a failure, Topinbi asked Lalim to bring out a barrel of whiskey to cele brate the good intentions.
I found my way to Kittihawa’s room and tiptoed in. The old woman looked like a skeleton. She smiled and motioned me to approach her. She knew who I was; my sister had grown in her lodge. Her hand traced a cross and rested on my hair, blessing me. I wondered if Kittihawa’s blessing would help me more than my bundle or my dreams; I doubted it.
As soon as I saw Suzan’s face and body, my eyes shifted to her daughter OlalL I didn’t want to be caught staring again, as I would have if Menashi hadn’t caught me earlier. I had heard talk of beautiful women but had never before seen one. Suzan’s daughter wasn’t beautiful; Olali was older than Menashi, but seemed less self-assured, almost fearful, and not in the least mischievous.
The third woman in the room was Wagoshkwe, Apte gizhek’s youngest sister. She was nursing Kittihawa with herbs and songs. She asked if I too was concerned with beaver furs. I told her no, I was concerned with the meaning of my dreams. She had me tell my dream. When I was done, she fixed her fierce eyes on me. She said my dream’s eagle was the Invader who had murdered her father Oashi before she was born and her mother Lokaskwe during the Tuscarawas massacre. ftho Haid I had done well to stay on the hillside with my kin. She told me Redearth warriors were waking from a long sleep, but
when they rose, they would oust the murderers from the Lakes. I later learned it was Wagoshkwe who sent Suzan’s brother Hegon to the Wabash for armed allies. She had no use for the peace Topinbi came seeking. She wanted to live up to her Umiumake, Kittihawa’s mother, my great-grandmother, the Redearth woman Wagoshkwe, as different from my other great-grandmother, Menoko, as fire from water.
'I'he Lakebottom wasn’t the place where I wanted to be, and pllu’e no peace council could be held, we soon returned to Bison Prairie. That winter I accompanied the silent Meteya whenever Wedasi didn’t. Meteya’s hunts were more like walks in the woods. He shot only when he knew the meat was expected. Most of the time he tracked animals to their lodges and observed their ways. I could have stayed with Meteya longer, but the melting snows brought a flood of strange guests to Bison Prairie.
Meteya and I heard the war cries long before we could see councilground was alive with the motion of dancing warriors. Wliiriinek and other Lakebottom carriers were tied to a post near the central fire. Among the warriors circling the captives, Meeteya recognized his brother Wapmimi; I guessed that the youth my age was Shawanokwe’s and Wapmimi’s son Ojejok, Mun’s friend. I mooved around the outer circle, trying to learn what had happened. Burr-net and Shando were in the store, behind barred doors, convinced that the Redcoat conspiracy had dlilvt'd. Mimikwe had run to Bindizeosekwe’s lodge the Hiomont the warriors had arrived and was determined to stay there until they left.
I learned, mainly from Topinbi, that the raiding party led by his cousins Nangisi and Winamek had been surprised at the Long River. Instead of finding villages with absent hunters, llinv had found an army. The Redearth warriors had been tinned, probably by a messenger sent by Wagoshkwe. Nangisi Nlul Hoveral companions had been killed. Winamek and his Warriors had retreated all the way back to the Lakebottom.
To avenge his brother’s death, Winamek and his warriors had begun to prepare another war party, armed with weapons given to him by Slaver Kin-sic and the Scalpers in the Lake-bottom fort. But Winamek had barely begun to recruit warriors when he’d been surrounded and disarmed.
Kittihawa’s son Kegon had returned to the Lakebottom accompanied by Prairie and Redearth warriors from the Wabash, including my uncle Wapmimi and my cousin Ojejok The Wabash warriors had wanted to put a quick end to Winamek’s force, but Topash and other Lakebottom Fire keepers had intervened and stopped the outbreak of a fratricidal war. The Scalpers in the fort would have embroiled themselves in such a war, and the Lakebottom village would have been destroyed.
Wagoshkwe wanted such a war because she was sure the Redearth warriors would defeat the Scalpers and their allies. Slaver Kin-sic wanted such a war because he was sure his side would win. But Wapmimi and his companions had followed the advice of Topash and the Firekeepers; they had brought the captives to Bison Prairie, where there was no encampment of armed Scalpers, and where Winamek had no armed allies.
The Wabash warriors had already resolved to kill Winamek. But as soon as the dancing ended and the counciling began, Topinbi and Cakima made their voices heard. Both pleaded for the life of their Lakebottom cousin. Both insisted that Winamek was a kinsman, that the real enemies were the Scalpers and Slavers who armed Winamek and embroiled him in their wars. Most of the Wabash warriors were hostile to these words; there was even talk of including Topinbi among the captives.
Meteya rose and placed himself alongside Topinbi and Cakima. Meteya was immediately joined by Bindizeosekwe, by her Lakebottom cousin Topash, by Chebansi, by almost all of Bison Prairie’s Firekeepers, but not by Shabeni or Wedasi. At this point a formidable-looking Redearth warrior called Macataimeshekiakak rose. He said he knew perfectly well who the real enemy was. He enumerated the kin he had lost to that enemy. He said he was preparing to confront the real enemy. But the handful of Scalpers on the Lakebottom were no more than the enemy’s nose, and he wouldn’t pinch the nose until he was ready to defend himself from the whole body. In order to get ready, he had to remove poisonous snakes from his path. But he had no intention of depriving any villagers of a kinsman as dear to them as Winamek appeared to be.
Wapmimi and others promptly released Winamek. Topinbi assured the warriors that he would urge his cousin to go gift- gathering, something Winamek did well. Winamek himself consented.
Cakima thanked her cousin Wapmimi for having helped to prevent war on the Lakebottom. His task accomplished, Wapmimi could now return to the Wabash or wherever else his prophet sent him. Cakima’s voice grew harsh. She said Winamek had been condemned to die because he had kidnapped children of Redearth kin. Cakima was the grandchild of a Redearth woman. So were most of Bison Prairie’s Firekeepers. And Wapmimi was kidnapping her kin, even her own son. Did the Wabash prophet condone Wapmimi’s doing the very thing for which Winamek had been so righteously condemned?
I knew that Wapmimi had wanted to recruit Meteya. The brothers hadn’t been together since before my birth, and Wapmimi couldn’t have known how far Meteya had moved from the warrior’s path. But Cakima’s words were the last words spoken at the council. The warriors prepared to leave Bison Prairie, accompanied by Wedasi and Shabeni. When I parted with Wedasi, I could feel his joy; he had at last found his life’s dream. Shabeni wasn’t joyful; he pretended not to notice me. His son Komenoteya begged to accompany him, and Shabeni pretended to be all taken up convincing his son to stay in Bison Prairie so as to defend his mother and her kin. When he could put me off no longer, Shabeni told me he had renounced war when he had t hought that the world described in Katabwe’s songs had broken up into little pieces. He’d thought there was nothing to defend. But now, he said, the pieces seemed to be reconstituting.
Wapmimi insisted that Topinbi and Winamek set out on their gift-giving mission at the same moment as the warriors left Bison Prairie. I asked Topinbi to take me along.
Chebansi came running as soon as he learned of my decision. He gave me talking leaves from Burr-net to Jay-may. He begged me to do whatever Jay-may asked of me. The hostilities had all but ruined Burr-net’s fur supply. Burr-net was sending me instead of furs.
I was relieved to leave Bison Prairie before abandoned Mimikwe emerged from Bindizeosekwe’s lodge, before she walked toward me and looked into my eyes; the strap that supported the bundle she’d sent me would have cut through my body.
I felt like a migratory bird, returning and leaving again, passing the same familiar places on the way. Topinbi’s and Winamek’s destination was not the Strait, but Kekionga; Topinbi would go to the Strait later, and only to deliver me. Winamek had so readily consented to leave with Topinbi because he’d known that the Scalpers would be offering gifts in Kekionga. This would be the first humiliation ceremony since the one held at Piqua the spring I was named. The countless uniformed Scalpers turned the Kekionga councilground into a forest of dwarfed blue-branched trees. Wagons loaded with gifts stood in every clearing. Eastbranch and Southbranch kin, many of them drunk, sat before the entrances of their lodges, waiting for the ceremony to begin.
Aptegizhek, Muns and Pezhki didn’t come to the land- ingplace; I had to seek them out. They had not expected me to arrive in Kekionga in such company, nor for such an occasion. Pezhki showed his hostility by turning his back and walking away from me. Muns looked at me expectantly, like Mimikwe, as if expecting to hear me describe the wonders I intended to accomplish.
Aptegizhek spoke to me, but only to describe to me the purpose of the Kekionga gathering, and to warn me of its consequences. He said all the rumsacks who had ever marked the Invaders’ leaves were in Kekionga; the Scalpers called each of them a chief. The headman of the Scalpers’ western armies, a landgrabber called Will-hen-garrison, was also present. Our kinsmen Bijiki and Onimush as well as Sigenak’s false son Will-well were the landgrabber’s interpreters. This Will- hen-garrison wanted the rumsacks to give their consent to the invasion of the Beautiful Valley, the Wabash Valley below Kithepekanu, and the Strait’s shore. Such claims were an open declaration of war, since none of the people living in those places had ever consented to let Scalpers invade their lands, and they wouldn’t consent after Topinbi and his likes were given wagonloads of whiskey and beads. Will-well fueled the fire by insisting that anyone who resisted the Scalpers’ claims was an enemy agent, an ally of the Redcoats.
I could have told Aptegizhek that nothing I said could stop Topinbi from signing the leaf, and nothing I did could avert the consequences of the signing. But all I wanted to tell him was that I didn’t want Katabwe’s bundle, that he was its rightful heir. But I kept silent. I knew he wouldn’t accept the bundle because he didn’t consider himself a Firekeeper. And I knew he shared Katabwe’s expectations in me.
The only person who was friendly to me was Pezhki’s brother Kezhek, Bijiki’s younger son. He had been too young to befriend me earlier, had no expectations, and so didn’t feel betrayed by me. He told me the Friends who had come to teach Kekionga’s men to plant had abandoned their task; I could see that their neat square lodges no longer bounded the fields. But the land had not been reclaimed by the women. Will-well had called on the armed Scalpers in the fort to occupy the fields, forcing Chindiskwe, Mekinges and other Eastbranch women to week a distant clearing for their beans and corn. And then Will-well, as well as Kezhek’s father Bijiki and Muns’s father Onimush, had accepted large gifts from newly arrived Invaders and had invited the newcomers to settle on the Kekionga fields. I began to understand the coldness of Muns and Pezhki toward me; they must have thought that I, Winamek’s traveling companion, had set out on the path their fathers were following. I didn’t know how to tell Muns my real reasons for being there: that I was fleeing from myself, that I had found no path to follow.
I didn’t ask Topinbi about the gifts he’d accepted for bowing to the Scalpers’ claims to other people’s lands. I tried not to hear the jokes he made about the kin closest to me, whom he considered shortsighted and backward-looking; I was relieved that at least he didn’t speak of them as enemy agents.
On the Strait, Topinbi led me directly to Pier’s house, which had become Jay-may’s house since Pier’s death. I delivered Murr-net’s messages. Topinbi counciled with Jay-may, Wit- nags and other Cheaters. The council must have been stormy; everyone seemed on edge after it ended. Topinbi gathered a few trinkets and rushed away, eager to rejoin his cousin and his gift-load in Kekionga. Jay-may harangued me about Burr-net’s unpaid debts, but the incomprehension and indifference he saw on my face eventually silenced him. He led me to a small room next door to my sister’s, threw a trader’s costume on the bed and told me to dress like a proper human being and trim my hair. He called me Jeik, Jeik Burr-net; he referred to my sister as Rebe- kah and my oldest brother as Jeims. He would find me a place on the Strait, he said, but it would not be in his store or anywhere near it.
Chebansi had begged me to do what the Cheater wanted, and I put on the clothes of a proper human being, a Jeik Burr- net. But I kept my hair.
Wabnokwe came to my room at sunset. She kissed me and called me little brother. She looked into my eyes. Unlike Mimikwe, my sister wasn’t attracted by what she saw. She seemed repelled. Noticing the bulge caused by the bundle under my shirt, she asked me, with undisguised contempt, why I didn’t put that thing away. She didn’t ask about our Bison Prairie kin. She grew enthusiastic when she told me of the school in which she and Beth spent their days. My incomprehension silenced her. I understood that she and Beth were doing to younger children what Misus Bay-con had tried to do to us. I couldn’t understand Wabnokwe’s enthusiasm. At dinner I saw Margit’s three children. The boy, Jim-may, born during the fire, was four. His older sisters didn’t welcome me. The oldest, Anna- may, stared past me as if I wasn’t there. Greta-may was openly hostile, as if I had injured her.
Margit was recovering from a stillbirth and a painful illness. She had only seen me two or three times, yet she greeted me as if I were a long-absent son. She, too, saw something in my eyes; she said it was music. She told me I should have stayed on the Strait and learned to play an instrument. I told her I wished I had.
Margit told me of the changes I had noticed since my arrival. Downstream from Jay-may’s house was the house built by Wit-nags, and further down was an enclosure in which Wit- nags kept horses. The horse-enclosure occupied the space I remembered as the councilground, bounded by the burial hill, the bubbling springs and the forest. There was not a trace of the Firekeepers’ village! The kin among whom Wedasi and I had lodged were gone. Nawak, Pamoko and Mikenokwe had been pushed southward, toward the swamp.
When I left Margit, I walked toward the Strait’s shore. My ancestors—Shutaha, Miogwewe, Katabwe—had felt empowered to confront such changes. I felt helpless. I had an urge to hurl my bundle into the water and watch it sink.
Jay-may delayed finding a place for me, and I wasn’t anxious to occupy the place he found. I wandered along the Strait’s shore, away from the rebuilt village, toward the kin who now lodged downstream. But I didn’t go far from the house. Margit was right. I was attracted to music the way a moth is drawn to a flame. And there was always music at the house.
As Margit grew stronger, she went to her music box, her piano, and filled the house with melodies and rhythms that made me feel I was floating on clouds. When Margit wasn’t playing, her daughter Anna-may was creating an altogether different world of sound with the little instrument across which she pulled a bow. And in the evenings, when Wabnokwe played her bowed instrument, larger than Anna-may’s and deeper in tone, I wanted to be nowhere except where I was, entranced by the sound.
I learned from Wabnokwe that Belle-may and Gabinya lived on the Strait with their daughter Anabel, together with Gabinya’s first wife Nebeshkwe and her daughter Sukwe—and that Jay-may was on good terms with his daughter’s husband. Gabinya pretended his first wife was a servant, even a slave, and the pretense was accepted by all the traders to whom Gabinya carried Kekionga’s furs.
I heard talk of marriages and talk of betrayals. Margit’s younger sister Monik had betrayed my brother Nashkowatak and would soon marry one of the Strait’s largest landholders. Soffs daughter Felice had betrayed her northern kin and would soon marry a crosswearer called Dasisi, whom I remembered from Misus Bay-con’s school. Felice’s uncle Jambatl, the man who had abandoned Sandypoint’s daughter Suzan and her daughter Olali on the Lakebottom, would soon marry a cross- wearing daughter of Lemond. My school friends Sharlokwe, Rina and their two brothers were no longer on the Strait; their father Lesoter had been pushed out at the time the Firekeepers’ village had been pushed out. Marikwe, Lesoter and their children had moved to Mishilimakina, to Agibicocona and the northern Rootkin. Sofi and Felice had gone north with them, but Felice had returned to the Strait with her uncle Jambatl.
I remembered Felice as the snob who had avoided her cousins and been ashamed of her mother. On an impulse, I entered the camp of square lodges to seek her out. I thought, or rather hoped, that she had returned to the Strait for reasons similar to mine. She welcomed me with a smile, a pretty smile; maybe it was my memory of her smile that led me to seek her out. Felice thought I had returned for reasons similar to hers. I grew dizzy listening to her reasons.
Felice told me her grandfather Soli-man originated among people who had been despised and persecuted since the world began, people who had never been crosswearers. Soli-man had crossed the Ocean to be among people who did not despise him. He had found acceptance among the crosswearers, Redcoats and Scalpers of Mishilimakina, not because these Invaders had ceased to despise Soli-man’s people, but only because they despised other people more.
Agibicocona’s people, the redskinned people of the forests, were the despised people here, they were the persecuted people. Soli-man’s son, Will Soli-man, had pretended not to know this, and had married Agibicocona. Soli-man’s daughter Sofi had known this, but had persisted in befriending Agibicocona. When Felice was in Misus Bay-con’s school, Rev-rend Bay-con was in Mishilimakina, explaining to Felice’s uncles Will Soli- man and Jambati that blackskinned and redskinned people were despicable, unfit for marriages; he severed Will Soli-man from Agibicocona and Jambati from Suzan.
But Sofi had not forgotten why her father had crossed the Ocean; she persisted in befriending the despised. She came to the Strait with Agibicocona’s cousin Lesoter and together they hounded Rev-rend and Misus Bay-con out of Kichigami. When the Scalpers at last succeeded in ridding themselves of Lesoter, Sofi pulled Felice back to Mishilimakina, not to Will Soli-man’s proper new family, but to Agibicocona’s redskins. But Felice had been told too much about grandfather Soli-man’s persecuted people, and she had no desire to be one of them. Felice abandoned her mother and her aunt. She returned to the Strait with her uncle. She resolved to marry the crosswearer Dasisl; she wanted to live among people who were not despised.
I would go on remembering Felice’s smile, but not as something pretty. I ran from her house. I stayed away from her marriage celebration, and I also stayed away from the other celebrations. I listened to music, usually alongside little Jim- may, Margit’s youngest. And I waited. I heard Wabnokwe and Margit talk of my brother Nashkowatak’s desperation after Monik’s marriage, of my uncle Isador’s attempts to undo the effects of the treaty signed by Topinbi in Kekionga. I heard that Wakaya’s son Poposi, together with other Turtleyouths, raided the enclosure in which Wit-nags penned horses. At last I heard Jay-may tell me he had found a place for me. I was to crop my hair and join Nashkowatak in the uniformed militia.
I removed the proper clothes, folded them and left them on the bed. With my hair untrimmed, and wearing my own clothes, I tiptoed to a corner of the music room. Jim-may was listening. Anna-may and Margit’s twin Joset were bowing smaller instruments, Wabnokwe a larger one. Margit looked up from her piano and saw me; she surely knew I couldn’t join the uniformed armed men; I didn’t have Felice’s smile. When the music ended I left the house and rushed into the night.
I headed downstream toward the Firekeepers among whom Wedasi and I had lodged, the kin among whom I was born. Hursts of thunder replaced the music I had been hearing. I thought of the kin I intended to join. I remembered that I’amoko, Mikenokwe and Nawak had trusted the Scalper who had promised to protect the village and its burial grounds, the forest and its trees; their trust in the Scalper’s promise had angered their cousins and split the village and driven the Turtlefolk downstream. The Scalper’s pledge had been as solid as ice in spring, and the Firekeepers themselves had been driven downstream, though not as far down as the Turtlefolk. The inhabitants of Tiosa Rondion, the people of three fires, were far from home, in two separate villages, hostile to one another, and threatened where they were. I thought of my dream. A flood had driven the forest’s inhabitants to seek refuge on top of a hill. A bird had landed on the hilltop and offered ... What had the bird offered? Had it offered to raise all of us out of the flood? Had it offered to show me a way out? Or had the bird offered to take me away from my kin, away from the persecuted and the despised?
It began to pour, the path became muddy, and I couldn’t go on. Leaning against the trunk of a large tree, I listened to the storm, but Felice’s words were repeated by the thunder and the rain and when I looked into the dark, I saw Felice’s smile. The forest was drowning and I was trying to reach the kin on top of my dream’s hill.
The storm passed with the night, and I went on. The path hardened under the warming sun. I heard galloping behind me and I hid. Three horsemen rode past me; I recognized one of them as Nawak’s falsetongued kinsman, Wit-nags; the other two were armed militiamen. I walked on following their tracks. I didn’t go far before I heard voices. I stopped. Slowly and noiselessly I made my way to a lookout. Before me, in a small clearing, were four men, Wit-nags and his armed companions and a man I hadn’t seen before, a hunter with a bow. Wit-nags was holding the reins of two horses and shouting; the mounted militiamen were pointing their rifles at the hunter. Hearing a slight movement, I turned and saw a young woman at the edge of the clearing, only partially hidden from me by the intervening bushes and trees; she held a dead rabbit in one hand, a rifle in the other. She hadn’t seen me; her attention was fixed on the men in the clearing. The militiamen started to tie up the hunter; Wit-nags was about to mount his horse, ready to pull the other horse in tow. The woman raised her rifle and pointed it at Wit-nags. If she shot Wit-nags, the militiamen would find and kill her and probably me as well. I walked into the clearing.
Wit-nags recognized me; he identified me to the armed men as Jeik Burr-net and he told them I would soon be one of them. 1 said I was heading toward my uncle’s village and he urged me to hurry on so as not to delay his recovery of his stolen horse. I stayed put. I had heard how he had acquired the horses in his pen: he and his armed men stopped lone hunters and demanded deeds or titles which no hunters possessed. Wit-nags was lying to me: he wasn’t recovering a stolen horse; he was stealing the hunter’s horse. I lied too; I told him I knew the hunter, and I also knew the horse to be this hunter’s horse. Wit-nags’ face turned red. He told the militiamen to arrest me. One of the armed men grabbed me. Suddenly all eyes turned toward a rustle at the edge of the clearing; all saw the barrel of a rifle protuding from a bush. Wit-nags and the militiamen froze, stiffened by fear. They were no longer three against one; they thought they were surrounded. They hastily let go of me, of the hunter and of his horse. Wit-nags mounted, and the three galloped away, in the direction from which they had come. I untied the hunter. He put his hands on my shoulders in gratitude. Then he mounted and galloped away in the opposite direction, without once glancing toward the hidden rifle or the person behind it.
I had never been so close to death. I stumbled toward the nearest tree and fell at its foot, shaking with fear. I didn’t hear the woman stir until she stood in front of me. Her face didn’t show a trace of fear. She sat down alongside me. I saw that she was only a girl, a spring or two younger than I. Her long black hair hung behind her in a single braid. Her dark eyes were fierce and mischievous, reminding me of my Lakebottom cousin Menashi. She sat silently and examined me. At last she said Udatonte, pointing to herself. How I wished I had learned the language of the Turtlefolk! I pointed to myself and spoke my name. She then pointed in the direction in which Wit-nags had fled, and looked at me questioningly. With words and motions, I assured her I was not one of them. Seeming satisfied, she placed her hand on mine.
At that moment, the whole forest became silent, the Strait’s water stopped flowing, the birds stood motionless in the sky. A tthiver passed through my whole body, a shiver I had felt before, in fasting lodges and when listening to Margit’s music. I knew that my dream spirit had at last come to me, and her name was Udatonte.
She broke my trance by rushing off to her hidingplace to gather up her animal and her rifle. I begged her to stay with me. She spoke and she motioned, but all I understood was the word Hhe said in my language, the word night. She ran across the clearing into the woods, toward the Strait’s shore. I heard the swish of a canoe sliding into the water. She was gone.
I remained seated, staring at the empty spot next to me, imagining she was still there. Tears of joy ran down my cheeks, then tears of sadness. I longed for Udatonte’s return more than I had longed for a dream spirit in my fasting lodges.
At dusk I crossed the clearing and looked for the path she’d followed toward her canoe. I stumbled toward a tree at the water’s edge as fog settled over the Strait. I leaned against a large rock below the tree’s branch and waited. I knew she would come for me, but I didn’t know if she’d come when the night began or ended, if she’d come on this night or another night. After what seemed like eternity, I heard a sound in the fog. I told myself it was the Strait’s water licking the shore, but when I heard it again I knew it was the swish of a paddle. The rhythm of my heart quickened as I made out the outline of a canoe gliding to shore. A hand groped toward mine and pulled me into the vessel. I knelt behind the silent figure and noticed the rifle and a second paddle. I took up the paddle.
We headed downstream, but the fog kept me from seeing either the Strait’s islands or the outlines of the villages on shore. When I thought we had reached the Strait’s mouth, where Kichigami’s waters flow into the Lake of the vanished Ehryes, she headed the canoe westward, into the Peninsula. By the dim light of a fogged sunrise, I saw that we were paddling up a narrow stream, midway between its tree-lined banks. The fog rose, exposing a cloudless blue sky. Udatonte’s black braid fell along her back to the bottom of the canoe, reminding me of the black wing extended toward me in my dream.
The rhythm of the paddles stroking the stream’s waters made me think of the large bird’s flapping wings. I knew I had accepted my dream spirit’s offered refuge; I also knew I was not, like Felice, fleeing from my kin. I was fleeing from Felice and her justifications, from Wabnokwe and her accommodations, from Chebansi and his store, from Nashkowatak and his militia, from Wedasi and his warriors. I saw that they were all following one path, and I was on another. I was carrying ancient Wedasi’s bundle toward the center of the Peninsula, and my guide was ancient Yahatase’s kinswoman. I was filled with gratitude for the clear day, for the beautiful girl who led me, for the bundle my grandmother had sent to me.
We paddled by day and we paddled by moonlit night. Far inland, where the stream was narrow and its water shallow, Udatonte banked the canoe and covered it with brush. She led me to a small clearing, gathering twigs along the way. From her gestures I understood that this clearing was not our final destination.
After starting a small fire, she pulled tobacco out of the pouch and placed it on the flames, singing as the smoke rose to the sky. While we shared dry meat and winter crackers from her pouch, she translated some words of her songs into the language of Rootkin. I understood only parts of stories I had heard before: the world rested on a turtle’s back, where furry swimmers had deposited the earth they had scooped up from below the water. I also understood that the Turtleland had been located in the Morningland across the Strait, so that Udatonte’s people were distantly related to ancient Yahatase. I knew that the Morningland’s Turtlefolk had dispersed in several directions, some fleeing with Yahatase to Greenbay, others to the Peninsula’s upper and lower straits, yet others to the lands of the Ehryes. I understood that Udatonte’s people had fled to Sandusky Bay on the southern shore of the Lake of the Ehryes.
We didn’t rest in the clearing. Udatonte extinguished the fire, dispersed the ashes and removed every trace of our presence. In her eyes and on her moist lips I saw the same joy, the same anticipation that filled my whole body with energy. She took my hand and gently pulled me away from the stream and clearing into a thick forest. She followed a trail 1 couldn’t distinguish, a trail made by wolves or bears or wolverines; she seemed familiar with every bent twig. We came to a more recognizable trail, a deer trail, and her hand clasped mine ever more tightly.
The trail ended at the shore of a lake surrounded by grass. Deer played among sparse trees on green ground that surrounded water as still and blue as the sky. Udatonte led me toward a large tree; together we watched the sun descend into the lake. She removed her clothes and set them alongside her rifle and her pouch at the foot of the tree. I removed my clothes and followed her to the water’s edge. Udatonte glided into the darkening water like a canoe pushing off shore. I stood at the water’s edge, alone with the full moon. I dipped my head to sip the clear water; and Udatonte’s face rose up; her lips met mine. My hand reached for hers, but she vanished in a splash. I slowly crawled into the water after her.
Udatonte and I emerged from the water hand in hand and floated to a grass bed by the root of our tree. Our hands ran over ouch other’s bodies like squirrels along a tree’s branches, from oars to neck to thighs and legs and back again. We embraced and rolled over each other like playful cubs, our arms and legs Intertwined like vines. At last we lost ourselves in each other, becoming a single body pulsating in rhythm with our beating hearts. We were one with each other, with the grass and the forest and the lake and the moon. I dissolved as I had dissolved once before, in Mimikwe’s lodge in Bison Prairie. I didn’t remember Mimikwe then; I didn’t remember anything. I felt myself turning to water, water that held a dream in its depth the wuy the lake held the moon’s reflection. I was free of my body, free of all limits; I was all and nothing, full and empty; I was a Mky that had turned itself to rain. In that moment of eternity I Jdatonte and I, Turtlefolk and Rootkin, earth and sky married.
We relaxed, embraced again and relaxed again until sleep overwhelmed desire. In a dream I returned to the lake’s shore and dipped down to sip the water. A face rose out of the water; its I ips kissed mine; as it slipped away I saw that the face belonged to a shell-less turtle with a beaver’s head and glistening Milvery-gray scales. I woke up terrified and sweating. I found myself in Udatonte’s embrace on the grass near the tree’s root, our bodies covered by moon-streaks that penetrated through the branches. I slid back into a long dreamless sleep.
We didn’t separate and rise from our grass bed until the sun was high. Udatonte knew I had dreamed, and she made me understand that untold dreams fester like unhealing wounds. In the very act of describing the scaly monster to Udatonte, I realized that I was describing Misus Bay-con and her school, Jay-may and his jail, Burr-net and his store. I was describing something with pent-up desire, something I myself could become, something that lashed out against love and freedom, something that swallowed earth’s people and animals while imprisoning earth herself in picketed enclosures.
We built a fire, which I enlarged with twigs and fallen wood while Udatonte darted into the forest like a deer. She returned with a skirtfull of roots and berries. After placing stones on the fire, she dug a hole in the ground, lined and sealed it with leaves, and filled it with lakewater. Bringing the berries and crushed roots to a boil with the heated stones, Udatonte prepared our wedding feast. And all the while she sang in her melodious language of a woman who fell through a hole in the sky, of the twins she bore on the turtle’s back.
Counciling with each other around our cooking fire on the grass between our tree and the blue lake, we shared songs and stories. I sang the songs Katabwe taught me as I showed Udatonte the contents of my bundle. I sang of ancestors who lived in the water and of ancestors who flew like spirits of birds. I sang of Kichigami before the coming of the plagues, and of the powers of the shell to bring the dead back to life. For the firs! time in my life, I understood the meaning of the fishbones, the feather, the shell and the scrolls that lodged in my bundle.
Udatonte took a sharp stone, cut a lock from her black braid, and offered me the lock. Between songs, she told me aboul herself and her people. Until her ninth spring, she thought the world’s center was a longhouse in Sandusky, a lodge whose occupants kept the ways of ancient Turtlefolk and shunned the crosses, the whiskey, the beads and the firesticks that cluttered the lodges of their neighbors. From the longhouse grandmother and from her mother, she learned planting ceremonies, healing songs, and the secrets of herbs and roots; from her mother’s brother, she learned to track animals.
During her ninth spring, her world was shattered. There were guests in the Sandusky longhouses, numerous girls of Udatonte’s age led by two blackrobed women and one man, a kinsman of the Turtlefolk. The guests were fearful; they thought armed men had followed them to Sandusky, and they embarked and fled during the dark of night.
The paddles of the fleeing guests were barely beyond hearing when a band of pioneers stormed into the Sandusky village, their eyes blazing and their mouths twisted with pent-up desire Not finding the girls they were seeking, the pioneers lunged into the longhouses, emptying the bullets in their rifles and the liquids in their groins into the bodies of the villagers. By the time the Turtlewarriors rallied and removed the Invaders, Udatonte’s longhouse, the first one attacked, was a tomb; only the old woman, two aunts and Udatonte were still alive. Udatonte flushed the murderer’s juices out of her body, and she broke from the ancient ways. When hunters set out from a neighboring longhouse, she accompanied them, learned to use a rifle and acquired one of her own. She became the meat bringer of her broken longhouse and she rarely parted with her rifle.
No intruders marred our joy at the Grasslake. Our only guests were the deer who played among the sparse trees surrounding the blue water, and the squirrels who ran on the branches of the tree by our marriage bed.
After helping scatter the ashes of our fires, I gratefully gave an offering of tobacco to the spirit of the lake. With Udatonte’s hairlock in my bundle, I was overwhelmed with sadness as I looked for the last time at our grass bed, our tree and the blue water. Returning along the same path, I recognized some of the plants, trees and branches that guided us to the hidingplace of I Jdatonte’s canoe. The downstream paddling took no effort, and before long we left the stream’s mouth, approached the Isle of White Trees and banked our canoe across from the isle, on the Hhore of the Strait’s Turtlefolk, in Karontaen. We were in the village ofIsador and Wakaya, the village of the Turtlefolk who had left Tiosa Rondion ten springs earlier.
Our arrival wasn’t noticed. All the longhouses seemed empty; their inhabitants were gathered in the councilground, mround a single fire. I saw Isador and Wakaya on opposite sides of the fire. Udatonte left me on the councilground and ran to her lodge. I circled the gathering until I recognized one of the painted warriors as Wakaya’s son Poposi; I hadn’t seen him since he’d been a little boy. Poposi must have known I understood little of what I heard, and at intervals he whispered to me in the language of Rootkin. I learned that Poposi’s and my uncles, Wapmimi and Mowhawa, had come to Karontaen with wad news: the village of Kithepekanu on the Wabash had been destroyed by an army of Scalpers. Sigenak had been killed. Wapmimi’s daughter Omemekwe and wife Shawanokwe had been killed.
I asked Poposi about my brother Wedasi, about Shabeni, but he knew no more. He told me Wapmimi had urged Wakaya lo prepare to avenge their father’s death, and Wakaya had been ready. Most of Karontaen’s youth had been ready. Only Isador and the longhouse grandmothers hadn’t been ready. Even now, Poposi told me angrily, when the Prairie warriors had forged the greatest alliance since the days of the Kekionga council, Isador was still insisting that Karontaen’s warriors remove their paint and lay down their weapons, insisting on neutrality, as if there were room for a neutral between a hunter and his prey.
Poposi’s angry words sickened me. I stumbled out of the circle toward the edge of the woods. The news of the deaths on the Wabash and of the split among Karontaen’s Turtlefolk made my head spin. Udatonte found me and led me to a long house which stood apart from all the others. The lodge was full of people; none of its occupants were attending the council. I soon learned that I was among Turtlefolk who had come to Karontaen from Ehrye’s southern shore, refugees who had wanted to get away from councils of war.
The longhouse grandmother, a wrinkled Turtlewoman flu ent in the language of Rootkin, took me to a corner of the lodge where other youths had their mats. She told me I was to pretend not to know Udatonte until the day of my adoption ceremony; only then could we reenact our meeting and marriage. The old woman told me Udatonte had expected me to lodge in another corner of the village until my adoption, but hadn’t expected to find the Turtlevillage torn by hatreds and war preparations.
From Udatonte’s grandmother I learned that the Ehrye refugees shared Wakaya’s hatred of the murderous pioneers but had no desire to take part in war councils, because such councils had torn apart their village in Sandusky Bay. The old woman’s people had been attacked and slaughtered by pioneers; Udatonte had already given me some understanding of this attack.
The Sandusky Turtlefolk had armed themselves after the attack, they had counciled, and they had sent out messengers in search of allies. The messengers had returned with alliances that quartered the Sandusky village. Some had found allies among Redcoats who wanted to push the pioneers back toward the Sunrise Mountains. Others found allies among Wabash Prairiekin who shared the goal of the Redcoats. Yet others, grandsons of men allied with bluejacketed pioneers in the age of my great-grandfather Mota, found allies among the Bluejackets. Instead of strengthening the Sandusky village, the councils and alliances tore the village apart. Kin had turned against kin?
The old woman had gathered around her all those who nbhorred the fratricidal passions and had fled with them to Karontaen, to be with kin who had seemed impervious to such passions. The old woman said that the war councils and ulliances led only to the further decimation of Turtlefolk; she was convinced that the Redcoats and Bluejackets and their likes were so violent that, if left alone, they would soon wipe each other out and leave the world to its original inhabitants.
The Karontaen councils went on, but I didn’t wander far from the longhouse of the Sandusky refugees. On the day of the ceremony, Isador and several others joined the celebrants; Wakaya and his kin stayed away. Dancers with grimacing wooden masks, others with animal heads and horns, frightened me with howls and rattles, cut my flesh, passed me over a fire, and at last showered me with a mound of gifts. I understood that 1 was to take the gifts to Udatonte, who stood at the lodge entrance waiting.
Udatonte and I relaxed in a prepared sweatlodge, bathed in the cold water of the Strait, stuffed ourselves with meat, berries and com until we thought we’d burst, and entered the longhouse together. I lay down on the soft mat; Udatonte sat alongside me and sang, almost in a whisper, of the twins born to the woman who fell from the sky. When she lay down beside me and our arms and legs intertwined, all the deaths and war councils became a bad dream I could no longer remember.
I avoided the councilground and the war preparations; I lived in a world apart, a world that consisted of Udatonte and her Sandusky kin. But I didn’t live there long. Udatonte’s grandmother died, and before her burial ceremony ended, her own longhouse filled with the fratricidal passions from which the old woman had fled. The youth of Udatonte’s longhouse joined the youth of other longhouses, painted themselves and sang of war. Heated to boiling point by their own shrieks and leaps, the young warriors then confronted me.
The Turtleyouth who faced me were led by Wakaya’s son Poposi and by another whom I recognized as Wapmimi’s son Ojejok. I hadn’t known that Wapmimi and his son were in Karontaen again. I longed to ask Ojejok how my brother Wedasi was faring, how my cousin Shabeni, where they were. But the youths would hear no questions from me. They only wanted answers. Was I a warrior like my uncles Wakaya, Wapmimi, Gizes, Mowhawa? Or was I a cowardly neutral like Isador? There was no council, no deliberation, no ceremony. I was to spit out my answer as if I were a rifle spitting out a bullet as soon as the trigger was pressed. The longer I put off answering, the tighter their circle around me. Suddenly the circle broke up; the youths dispersed as soon as they saw Wakaya approach; they knew this was not how he wanted his warriors recruited. On3y Ojejok stayed behind, and only long enough to spit on me. I realized that the impatience of the youths had been roused by Ojejok who had lost his sister, mother and grandfather in Kithepekanu.
Udatonte was at my side as soon as the youths dispersed. She had seen the confrontation, but didn’t think me a coward for refusing to bow to the young warriors. Udatonte had prepared a food pack, baskets and blankets; she was eager to leave war-torn Karontaen. With her rifle and my bow, with our pouches and bundles, we walked into the woods in search of a camp.
Alone among leaves and birds, we sang to each other of the first beings. Udatonte particularly liked to hear of the ancient Turtlewoman Yahatase who had turned her back on the stone lodges of crosswearers, and of the ancient Firekeeper Wedasi who refused to kill animals with a rifle. When we hunted together, Udatonte insisted that I confine myself to the cere monies of gratitude and the songs addressed to the rabbits, deer and moose we stalked. I showed Udatonte the herbs and roots my aunt Pamoko had taught me to identify. We knew we were reversing the ways of our kin villages. Udatonte and I told each other we were first beings, we were a new beginning. Neither of us could imagine how near the end was.
While preparing our camp, Udatonte and I rarely separated. We stalked animals together, dried meats and dressed furs together. Only rarely did she leave to hunt by herself. But one morning when I was occupied lighting the fire, Udatonte noticed fresh moose tracks at the edge of our camp, and she bounded off with her rifle.
I was still feeding my fire when I was surrounded by armed men whose uniforms I recognized as those of the Strait’s militia. I leaving the fire burning, the armed men pulled me away from my camp, away from Udatonte. They half pushed and half carried me toward the Strait’s shore, into a huge encampment of uniformed men. They threw me into a wooden cage. They handled me with a hatred I couldn’t explain to myself; what had I ever done to them? Their treatment of me led me to fear I would bo beaten or tortured or scalped, or all three. And I feared that Udatonte would follow the tracks of my captors and find herself Murrounded by hundreds of armed Scalpers.
After an eternity of fears, I was released from the cage and pushed toward the camp’s headman, who was addressed as lioos-gas. This headman asked how many we were and what weapons we carried, and an interpreter repeated the question. I answered the headman in his own language. Loos-gas slapped my face, called me a lying halfbreed, and repeated the question. Commotion kept me from repeating the same answer. It was announced that one of the militiamen recognized the lying halfbreed as his brother. Soon Nashkowatak was at my side, acknowledging our kinship. Loos-gas repeated his question yet aKain. But when I again answered that there were only two of uh, my bride and I, and that she had been away with the rifle, lioos-gas laughed; soon all the men in the camp were laughing, and Nashkowatak was filled with shame.
Nashkowatak was told to lead his halfbreed brother to a prison upstream while the rest of the army followed Loos-gas downstream. Nashkowatak was given a bundle of messages for the Strait’s big men.
My first emotion toward my brother was boundless gratitude, but as soon as we were alone I could think only of I Idatonte, and I begged him to let me rejoin or at least find her. Nashkowatak was enraged. He told me he had saved my life twice, first by admitting his relationship to me, then by saying nothing of my desertion from the militia. These were times when deserters were being killed without as much as a hearing. As for my bride, he told me I would have helped her more if I had Joined the militia and defended her village from the enemies who were overrunning it. What angered Nashkowatak most of all was having to accompany me, being separated from his armed companions. He had anticipated confronting armed enemies for the first time in his life, and I kept him from his first chance to prove himself a warrior. I wondered if he was still proving himself to his childhood love, his cousin Mimikwe, and if he knew, if he had ever known, that his ambition would only have repelled Mimikwe.
Nashkowatak delivered me as well as some of his message's to the house I had fled from, Jay-may’s, and not to the fort. 1 knew without his telling me that my brother was saving my life for the third time. With my own clothes, with my bundle, with my hair uncropped, I would not have been left alive in the fort.
The whole Strait, particularly the armed men, seemed to be affected by some sort of hysteria. Felice had told me of similar outbreaks of hysteria on the other side of the Ocean; the mere sight of one of the despised provoked desires to torture, to maim, to kill. Even Wabnokwe, my own sister, greeted me with murderous glances. Jay-may wasn’t kind, but at least he wasn’l hysterical; perhaps the kindly Margit swayed him from his preferred course. Jay-may told me what Nashkowatak had told me, that deserters were shot. But he didn’t hand me over to the fort. He had bars installed on the windows of my former room and kept me behind a locked door. I realized that in Jay-may’s eyes I was an enemy, a Redcoat, since only an enemy would have run away from his militia.
I tested my strength against the strength of the window bars. I looked for cracks in the wall. I thought only of rejoining Udatonte.
Margit brought me food; she was again big with child. She always left the door ajar. When she was alone in the house with young Jim-may, she invited me to the music room to listen Jim-may played the small bowed instrument. Margit said he played it almost as well as my aunt Pamoko, whose playing I had never heard. I took the hairlock out of my bundle. The music of the instruments fused with Udatonte’s melodies and I was transported to the Grasslake; I could almost feel Udatonte’s touch. I was free to run out on the only two people who cared for me, but I could not have carried my bundle, nor could I have faced Udatonte with such a betrayal behind me.
One day I heard angry shouts in the councilroom and recog nized the voice of horse-snatcher Wit-nags. Margit later told me that Wit-nags’ brother had been killed in a battle near Karon taen, and Wit-nags, like Greta-may, wanted me handed over to the armed men in the fort, as if I had been one of his brother’s killers. I wondered who else was killed in the battle near Karon- tnen, and by whom.
Margit was confined to her bed. My sister brought me food but told me nothing of what was happening. One day Jim-may, who had no key, whispered to me through the door. He told me the enemy, the Redcoats, had invaded the Strait and occupied the fort, and not a shot had been fired against them. Jim-may was only repeating what he’d heard; the implications of the uvent were as impenetrable to him as they were to me.
I learned nothing more until Margit resumed her visits to my room. She showed me her new baby girl, Carrie-may, born on the day of the Redcoat occupation. She told me my cousin I’oposi and his companions had once again raided Wit-nags’ horse-pen; this time the youths had succeeded in releasing all the horses.
Suddenly I was released. Jay-may unlocked the door and told me I was free to go wherever I pleased. The Redcoats had released some of their prisoners; I was one of the prisoners released by the other side, in exchange. Jay-may asked me to do only one thing before I left, to attend that evening’s council and listen carefully to Jay-may’s guest. He said what I heard would help me choose my path intelligently.
I stayed for the council. Everyone was in the room, Margit’s family as well as Jozet’s; Nashkowatak was there. He told me our father, Burr-net, had been killed on the Lakebottom, and that Burr-net’s fellow-trader Kin-sic was about to tell us how our father died. Kin-sic and our cousin Shando had been captured by the Redcoats and taken to the Strait’s fort. Jay-may had exchanged Kin-sic’s release for mine.
I had never seen the Slaver from the Lakebottom, the man my brother Chebansi and our mother Cakima had feared. A cold chill ran through my body as soon as Kin-sic began to speak. He told of himself, together with Burr-net and other peaceloving traders, being surrounded by a shouting horde of savages. The Havages were Redcoat agents; he also called them cannibals. He Haid Burr-net’s own son was among the savages, painted black us night and shouting hellish obscenities. Burr-net tried to calm (he demons but only provoked them to greater fury. One of the savages who had an account to settle with Burr-net settled it then and there, by splitting the trader’s skull with a tomahawk. This act gave the signal for a general massacre of the peaceloving men in the fort and fur post. Little children were smacked against posts, women were raped while they were scalped, men were shot and skinned. Kin-sic’s allies at last arrived from Kekionga, but they arrived too late; they were themselves massacred; their headman was scalped and quartered; the cannibals removed his heart and ate it . . .
Kin-sic grinned as he told of the deaths and tortures. I backed out of the room, stumbled to the Strait’s shore, and vomited. What sickened me was Kin-sic’s grin, the contempt m his voice. I knew that Kin-sic derived pleasure from telling his tale, and that Jay-may enjoyed hearing it. His every word was a Scalper’s knife. I could feel Kin-sic twisting a knife in my chesl and grinning while he twisted. I knew that something horrible had happened on the Lakebottom, and I wondered which of mv kin had really died, and how.
Margit ran out to look for me. She gave me a food bundle She knew I would not return to her house. She also knew thai Kin-sic’s tale was the massacre, his words were the tortures.
I hadn’t walked for so long that my strength gave out when I reached the fence of Wit-nags’ empty horse-pen. I leaned against a tree by the Strait’s shore and fell asleep. I dreamed that I was leaning against a huge rock under the tree’s overhanging branch. Fog had settled over the Strait. I heard a sound in the fog, like a swish of a paddle through the water. Through the for. I saw an arm move toward me, a hand reaching for mine. I woke with a start and stared into the dark, looking for the hand, the body, the long black braid. I heard the sound again: the Strait’s waters were lapping the shore. Groping for the hairlock in my bundle, I clutched it in my hand and fell asleep again. I heard Udatonte’s voice, singing faintly, from far away, and then I heard nothing but the mocking voice of the Slaver becoming ever louder, coming at me from every direction, repeating: the cannibals removed his heart and ate it.
The next day I reached the spot to which the Firekeepers had moved their village across from Turkey Isle. I recognized only the shapes of the abandoned lodges. I had never visited Pamoko, Mikenokwe or Nawak in that village. I looked for sign:, that might tell me what had happened, where they had gone My search was cut short. Armed men leaped from behind the lodges and surrounded me. I thought I was reliving the moment of my separation from Udatonte. But I quickly saw that the men surrounding me this time were Southbranch hunters. Their tension left them as soon as I told them I was alone, unarmed and seeking my bride. They told me the Strait’s Firekeepers and Turtlefolk had fled in several directions; they had themselves crossed paths with people fleeing southward, toward Sandusky Bay. I thought it likely that Udatonte would have rejoined her Sandusky kin.
The hunters were on their return voyage to the Beautiful Valley. They told me there were few animals to hunt in the vicinity of their own village; pioneers more numerous than mosquitoes in summer had killed off the animals in some places, destroyed the forest in other places. The Southbranch men said the Sandusky village was not far from their homeward path. They seemed as grateful for my songs and stories as I was for their guidance and protection. I was under the impression that the hunters never slept. Whether we walked or rested, they were continually on the lookout for traps and ambushes, for pioneers or uniformed men armed with long knives, scalping knives or rifles.
My heart ached when I entered the Sandusky village. The Turtlefolk were unfamiliar to me, and they were all crosswearers. The only kin from the Strait were the Firekeepers, among them Mikenokwe and her brother Nawak, as well as Liket’s brother Jose and his wife Rose. I realized that Udatonte would not have stayed in the Sandusky village even if she had returned there. Liket’s brother wore a black robe and conducted continual ceremonies in the largest of the longhouses, the crosswearers’ lodge.
I remembered that my uncle Nawak had not been a lover of crosses when Wedasi and I had known him, and I asked him if he had been converted. I also asked him if he might know where the Strait’s Turtlefolk had gone.
Nawak welcomed me warmly. He was glad to have a bundle-carrying Firekeeper as a companion. He told me he had not been led to Sandusky by his love of crosses, and even his sister Mikenokwe had not come only to be close to crosswearers. The Strait’s militia had passed through Nawak’s village and had forcefully recruited several Firekeepers, including Dupre. Under cover of night, Dupre fled from his captors, returned to Pamoko and his son Jon Dupre, and the three crossed the Strait to the Morningland, begging Nawak and Mikenokwe to accompany them. Nawak was suspicious of Dupre’s destination, and his suspicions were confirmed when he learned that Karon-taen’s Turtlefolk were crossing to the Morningland to seek the protection of the Redcoats.
Nawak and Mikenokwe had no desire to be protected by Redcoats; they bitterly remembered the type of protection their father Bati had received on the field of fallen trees. But they couldn’t stay in their village which was located halfway between the Bluejackets in the Strait’s fort and the warriors from the Wabash who were gathering in Karontaen. Nawak learned from Southbranch hunters, the very ones who later accompanied me, that the Strait’s Firekeepers would be wel corned in Sandusky. The Sandusky Turtlefolk had dispersed in several directions. Those who rejected the crosswearers’ ways had not returned from the Strait; they had crossed to the Morn ingland. Those who sympathized with the Wabash prophet had left Sandusky to join the prophet’s warriors. The only Turtlefolk left in Sandusky were people whose ancestors had been crosswearers since the first Blackrobes arrived in the Morningland, people who had fought alongside northern carriers but never alongside Redcoats or Bluejackets. The Strait’s Firekeepers moved to Sandusky to join kindred spirits.
I surmised that Udatonte had either fled by herself further into the Peninsula, perhaps even to the Grasslake, or else had accompanied the Turtlefolk who had crossed to the Morningland. I hoped to join another group of hunters heading toward the Strait. Nawak assured me that I would wait long; he told me the way to the Strait was blocked up by armed men who cluttered every landingplace, traversed every path and clashed at. every intersection.
I didn’t want to believe Nawak. I kept on waiting for a band of hunters heading northward. I prepared to set out alone, but Nawak convinced me that even if I were able to find my way, 1 was not a scout and would not be able to avoid the traps and ambushes. The battles raged ever closer to Sandusky, sometimes so close that we could hear the gunshots and smell the smoke.
No hunters moved, either northward or southward. A Turtlewoman gave me a bow and arrows but I had no use for them. The village men stopped venturing out, even in search of squirrels or rabbits. The women didn’t go in search of herbs. Soon the women became afraid of going to their cornfields. There was little food to eat, there were no furs to dress. The only activity was the song and prayer in the crosswearers’ lodge. The Sandusky village was surrounded by armed men; it became a prison.
Blue-uniformed armed men entered the village. Everyone except me gathered in the crosswearers’ lodge to council with the intruders, to ask when this war would end. The council with the Bluejackets was no more appealing to me than the prayers of the crosswearers. I leaned against the wall of Nawak’s lodge. Clutching the hairlock, I tried to imagine myself by the edge of the Grasslake listening to Udatonte’s song. But all I could hear was the mocking voice of Kin-sic drawling, the cannibals removed her heart and ate it.
Nawak told me the headman of the Bluejackets, Will- hen-garrison himself, had been one of the guests. The headman had promised to protect the Sandusky villagers, but had imposed a heavy condition. The Bluejackets were ready to advance toward the Strait, and they didn’t want any warriors to remain behind them. They wanted all warriors—which meant all men and boys except the Blackrobe—to accompany the rearguard of Will-hen-garrison’s army. If any of the warriors remained in the village, they would be burned out.
I was eager to return to the Strait, but not in the rearguard of an army of Scalpers, not wearing a bluejacket and trousers. I could have escaped. The Scalpers didn’t watch us closely, although they did keep count and others would have had to answer for my absence. I moved with the rearguard, staying close to Nawak. I did want to reach the Strait. I told myself I would escape as soon as I reached a place where I was likely to (ind my bride. I did not intend to carry the Firekeepers’ bundle into another battlefield.
With Nawak’s help, I kept my bearings so long as we traversed places familiar to me. I knew we had moved along the Khrye’s western shore toward the mouth of Kekionga’s river. We waited to cross on rafts. We crossed at night. The crossing took long, far too long, and when we landed I no longer knew where I was. From the trees, Nawak guessed that we were on the Isle of Birches, the isle that had given refuge to our Tiosa liondion ancestors during an earlier dispersal. I tried to walk to the shore to listen for the swish of a paddle. I was stopped. I was was to stay where I was put. Now our every move was being watched.
I was roused from sleep by men who pushed and pulled me uh they shouted incomprehensible instructions, the sense of the whouts being drowned by the general din. Something horrible was about to happen, and all knew it; every face was marked by fear.
I managed to stay by Nawak during another raft crossing, during the walk through woods to a river’s edge, and then alon^ the river’s bank. On one side of us as on the other were armed men who never let up watching us, ready to kill any who might try to run toward the woods or the river. I sickened and fell but was immediately lifted up and forced to go on. The sun rose ahead of us, and I knew we had been following the Morn ingland’s river inland.
We reached the river’s fork. Arrows flew toward us. A bul let grazed Nawak’s shirt. We were not in the rearguard at all! The bluejacketed Firekeepers and Turtlefolk and Eastbranch war riors were the front line; no one and nothing stood between us and the bushes from which the bullets and arrows came. Nawak forced me down to the ground, behind a clump of grass. I felt my bow drop from my right arm and suddenly felt a sharp pain.
The main force of Will-hen-garrison’s army was behind us, shooting round after round of bullets over our heads toward the bushes. I saw objects floating in the river and turned away when I recognized them as bodies; none of the floating bodies were clothed in red coats. Nawak parted the grass in front of us, and I saw the barrel of a rifle protruding through the bushes. I imagined a long black braid falling on the rifle’s handle. I tried to rise, to run toward the bushes, but Nawak kept me down.
There was a short lull, and suddenly the armed men behind us began running past us, shooting into the bushes as they ran The bushes no longer responded. The people of the lakes and valleys were silent. Instructions and names were shouted all around me, names of the victors, names like Jon-sin, Loos-gas. May-jerk Whip-o, End-sin Tip-tin and Will-hen-garrison. Om boasted his belt was full of hair. I could no longer rise. My arm felt as if it were on fire. I vomited and couldn’t raise my face out of my own pool.
I knew that Nawak was no longer beside me, that the whole army had run past me, that I was among the dead, alone, in the rearguard. I felt myself dying. Yet I still heard the voices. One with a drawl as thick as Kin-sic’s shouted: I’ll skin this yallei cheef fur me yunguns. Another shouted, cant ya see sur t’ant no cheef but a yaller skwa—nuthin but a yaller skwa? I heard a slash, like a knife cutting through flesh and bones, and at tin end I heard the sound of gushing liquid, the sound of font streams gushing from a source, increasing and diminishing: with the rhythm of a heart’s beat.
Obenabi told all these things to me, Robert Dupre, his nephew, in August of 1851. The last event he described, the war of the Bluejackets against the people of the forests, lakes and valleys, had taken place almost forty years earlier. He had been sitting, leaning against the jailroom wall, talking continuously, barely pausing to eat or sleep. His whole body was drenched with sweat, as was mine. The heat was killing him. The Detroit jailhouse was built in such a way that it intensified the August heat and allowed no relief at night.
While he had spoken, he had seemed to disregard the heat, but when his story was done, he turned from me, vomited and collapsed on the jailroom floor. Two jailers rolled him onto a plank and carried him out. Some days later the jailers came for me. They said my uncle was dying on them, drying up, and the doctors didn’t know what to do for him. They took me to the hospital room, which was identical to the jailroom and just as hot. They told me to use witch medicine to keep him alive; they didn’t want him to die before the trial. I told them the only medicine he needed was the shade of a tree by the edge of the lake. That suggestion made the jailers and doctors laugh. They pushed me toward him. The room stank of vomit and urine.
I barely recognized my uncle. He was skinny, shrunken; with his eyes closed he looked like a corpse. His arms pressed his bundle to his chest; the jailers or doctors must have tried to take it from him. He heard me approach and opened his eyes, those strange sad eyes that always seemed to be looking elsewhere, seeing things that weren’t there. He sat up with strength that seemed to come from somewhere outside his frail body. His hand groped for the strap that supported his bundle. He raised the strap over his head and passed it over mine, after first opening the bundle and removing from it a lock of black hair. His face turned toward mine, but his eyes, although aimed toward mine, were looking at things that were far away. He spoke quickly, as if he feared being cut off before his tale was done.
He started by telling me a dream, as he had the first time, and I again couldn’t tell when the dream ended and the events began. To him it was all dream, the things he had actually done as well as those he had dreamed. He told me he had dreamed this dream in the village of the Leaning Tree. I knew he had been in that village twice, the first time as a boy, in 1800, the second time in 1831, the year I was born. He clutched the hairlock as he spoke.