Clara and I and Peter and Eva had to run to keep up with the Indians. If we fell down we were dragged along the ground until we managed to scramble to our feet again. Soon our hands and elbows and knees and feet were cut and bleeding. No one seemed to care.
Pettikin? I could not understand why Grandfather’s friends, the Mohawks, did not help us. Why did these Indians hate us? Were Father and Mother and Joshua and Myrtle killed because they had broken God’s law?
When we finally stopped for the night, the Indians flung themselves on the ground and slept. No one lit a fire or had anything to eat. A cold wind swept through the gloomy forest, rustling the leaves of the great trees. Somewhere an owl hooted, a wolf howled. Clara and I clung together, whimpering and trembling.
I wondered if what had happened in the house was a bad dream, like Clara’s. Maybe I would wake up soon and Mother would give me warm milk and honey and I would forget the whole thing. I wanted to forget it. I wanted to stop feeling cold and numb and afraid. I wanted to be happy again.
Pettikin. The word no longer meant anything. Memory had become an enemy.
BOOK
ONE
ONE
TWELVE YEARS LATER, IN THE VILLAGE of Shining Creek on the shore of Lake Ontario, the girl who once had been Catalyntie Van Vorst slept in the longhouse of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois. I no longer remembered my white name. I was She-Is-Alert, daughter of Early-Day, granddaughter of She-Shakes-The-Trees. (I am translating the Seneca names, which are almost unpronounceable for white people’s tongues.) You who will read this story in the distant future may wonder how I could forget my white name and the way my parents died beneath the hatchets of Seneca warriors in that terrible moment on the Mohawk River. Few people understand how pain and sorrow affect a child’s soul.
Grief not only makes memory a child’s enemy. It awakens in her soul a hunger for love and a desperate desire to escape the shadowy ghosts that loom in dreams and darkness. A grieving child turns to love like a plant to the spring sun, not only for nourishment but for the healing balm of forgetfulness.
I found love in abundance in the village of Shining Creek. Having recently lost a child to sickness, my Seneca mother’s heart was full to bursting with love that she yearned to bestow on someone. I became her favorite child—in fact the favorite child of everyone in the longhouse of the Turtle Clan. They were fascinated by my white skin, my blond hair. Other mothers gave me toys. The warriors let me play with their dice and marveled at how often I threw winning numbers. They said I would bring them good luck.
Beyond the longhouse lay the glistening lake and the winding creek from which the village drew its name. With the other children, I swam in the lake and wandered the nearby forest in the spring and summer and fall. I learned to identify the calls of the birds and chased brilliant butterflies around the cornfield as my mother sowed and hoed our golden crop. As the seasons turned and the great trees shed their leaves and budded and shed again at the end of another summer, a contentment that transcended understanding grew in my soul.
When the snows of winter whirled out of the north, my mother and grandmother wrapped me in bearskin against the cold and told me ancient tales about famous warriors and the women they had loved. They told me that someday I would marry a mighty warrior whose deeds would make me and my children proud and happy. Memory, that enemy who inflicted pain, dwindled slowly to a tiny whisper and finally vanished in my new Seneca self.
For years I accepted my mother’s assurance that my white parents had died of sickness while journeying through the country of the Senecas and the Master of Life, the being who presided over the world, had sent a hunting party to discover me before I starved to death. How many times did I lift my eyes heavenward and thank the Master of Life for granting me the privilege of becoming a member of the Seneca tribe of the great league of the Iroquois!
Only in the last year, as I passed from girlhood to womanhood, did I begin to realize that my white skin and blond hair made me different from the other young women in the village—different in a way that hurt and wounded, and stirred vague fragments of memory in my soul. On this particular morning of my twelfth year as a Seneca, I was having a dream that reflected these feelings. I dreamed I was presiding over a great feast. Many warriors were there, and many women. I was serving them venison and trout, corn cakes and squash. They saluted me with shouts and chants.
I awoke and lay quietly, thinking of the dream. So much food! But in my waking belly, hunger prowled. Yesterday I had eaten nothing but a few mouthfuls of parched corn. The day before I had eaten nothing at all.
My mother’s hand shook my shoulder. “Wake up,” she said. “We have something to eat. Your friend Nothing-But-Flowers has left us a bushel of corn.”
With a cry of joy, I flung aside my bearskin blanket. It was not the first time Nothing-But-Flowers had saved us from starvation. As my mother combed out my long blond hair and tied it in two plaits down my back, I told her about my dream. My mother excitedly summoned Grandmother to interpret it for us.
Grandmother’s wrinkled face glowed with delight. “It can only mean one thing—a marriage! She-Is-Alert will soon find a husband.”
My mother struggled to believe Grandmother. She was famous for her skill in understanding dreams. Only the village shaman1 had greater powers. But my mother had begun to think her white daughter would never find a husband. The young warriors called me the Moon Woman. They said it would be like marrying a ghost. In the dark my white skin and yellow hair would make their flesh freeze. What if I had white children? What good would they be in a night attack? They would have to stain their bodies with the juice of whole baskets of berries each time they went to war.
Grandmother insisted her understanding of the dream was correct. “Before the next snow, She-Is-Alert will meet the warrior she will marry! Perhaps he will be a visitor from another tribe. Many warriors want to join the Iroquois, who rule the land from the shores of this mighty lake south to the great ocean.”
Grandmother was always boasting of the power and greatness of the Iroquois. They were On-gweh On-weh—“real people.” Everyone else was a poor imitation. Her pride in the Iroquois was her consolation as she faced old age with only her daughter and adopted granddaughter alive. Her husband and her two sons were dead, the husband killed in war with the Ottawas long ago, the sons in a white man’s plague, called measles, when they visited the French fort at the great falls of the Niagara River.
I understood everything that passed between my mother and grandmother, both the spoken and the unspoken parts. I too had begun to think I would never find a husband in the village. My white skin and yellow hair were not the only problems. My grandmother and mother belonged to one of the lesser families in the Turtle Clan. They did not have the power to appoint and dismiss chiefs and sachems, like the matron of the clan. They were not consulted on great decisions of peace or war, of joining the French or the English.
Next year, if I lacked a husband, I would probably become a hunting woman. That was a hard fate. Hunting women went into the winter woods with the warriors who traveled west to trap beaver and otter to sell to the English and French. A hunting woman cooked meals and dressed the skins and let the trappers take her when they felt the need for a woman. If she bore a child, she would never know who was the father. A hunting woman’s life was full of cold and sadness.
I tried to put this evil thought out of my mind and waited patiently while my mother cooked the corn and pounded it into cakes. Then all the members of the other families in the longhouse were summoned to the feast. Fortunately there were no warriors—they were out hunting for the game that often mysteriously disappeared at this time of year, after the snows melted but before the first flowers of spring appeared. Even without the warriors, the basket of corn became only a single small cake for each person in the Turtle Clan. But it tasted wonderful. I hurried from the longhouse to thank my friend Nothing-But-Flowers.
It was a beautiful
day. The sun glistened from a blue sky on the wide waters of Lake Ontario. Several young women were trying to organize a game of double ball—a sure sign that spring was on its way. My long legs and angular frame made me very good at this game, in which young women chased two deerskin pouches stuffed with feathers tied to a stick up and down the village street. It was a female version of lacrosse, the warlike game the young warriors played with ferocious frenzy.
In double ball, each woman was armed with a stick that enabled her to whip the pouches twenty or thirty paces toward the goal. I loved to score goals. I had won many pairs of mooseskin moccasins and leggings as prizes. Unfortunately, my pugnacious style of play did not endear me to the other young women of the village.
I found Nothing-But-Flowers sitting in front of the longhouse of the Bear Clan, her grandmother plaiting her gleaming black hair. Nothing-But-Flowers had painted several streaks of vermilion on her creamy brown face. Yes, she was my former playmate, Clara, but I had forgotten that name too. I asked her why she had painted her face. Nothing-But-Flowers explained that she had dreamed she would meet her husband today. I thanked her for the corn and decided not to mention my poor dream. Nothing-But-Flowers’s dream was so much better.
Instead of desperately inspecting the whole village for a possible husband, Nothing-But-Flowers was allowing orenda, the spirit that pervaded all things, to search out the future for her. Everyone agreed that Nothing-But-Flowers’s personal orenda was very powerful. Her mother and grandmother had seen it the day they adopted her. That was why they had given her a name that predicted she would become a woman with both a beautiful body and a beautiful spirit.
A tall thin young woman named Big Claws sidled up to us. She was one of the worst gossips in the village. “Why don’t you loan Moon Woman some vermilion?” she said. “She’d paint her whole face with it and maybe her cunt too but it wouldn’t do her any good. Do you know what Running Wolf called her after they went into the woods? Dead Otter.”
“Ho!” All the other young women laughed and whirled their ball sticks over their heads. Even Nothing-But-Flowers’s grandmother laughed—although usually she was very dignified. As the matron of the Bear Clan, she was the most powerful woman in the village.
I felt so ashamed I wished I could die. Running Wolf was the fourth young man who had taken me into the woods without proposing marriage. He had not been cruel to me. But after he emptied his seed into me he had not been tender. He had spent the rest of the time boasting about what a great warrior he would become when war came.
I often thought about dying, especially during the starving times. My white brother and sister had died in the first starving time after we came to the village. Their Seneca mothers had not liked them very much— especially my brother, who refused to go hunting in the woods when it was cold. His mother had decided he would never become a warrior and stopped giving him food during the starving time.
Nothing-But-Flowers became angry at Big Claws for insulting her friend. “You should talk about not getting a husband. You know what the young men call you? Barking Stick.”
Everyone laughed even harder and Big Claws slunk away like a wounded snake. Not for the first time, my heart flooded with gratitude to Nothing-But-Flowers. Everything about her was beautiful, from her spirit to her body, which was small and perfectly shaped, with curving legs and full breasts and slender arms. Yet she always treated me, with my sharp nose and thin lips and white skin, as her equal, her friend. Obnoxious pride seemed foreign to her soul.
Before I could thank her for routing Big Claws, a great clamor began at the other end of the village. Young boys came running from all directions, shouting “Ho, ho!” Dogs barked fiercely. Babies, frightened by the noise, began to howl. In a moment through the crowd burst the young warrior Bold Antelope. He had a buck deer slung over his shoulders. He carried it as carelessly as if it were stuffed with feathers. He flung the dead animal at Nothing-But-Flowers’s feet and said: “See what I’ve brought you and your honorable mother and grandmother? I killed it with a single shot at a hundred paces.”
There was, in fact, only one wound in the animal, a bloody patch behind its ear. Nothing-But-Flowers’s eyes glowed with admiration. Everyone knew Bold Antelope loved her and hoped to marry her. He was from a lesser family of the Wolf Clan. To marry Nothing-But-Flowers would be a great thing for him. He would join the noblest family in the village. But he could only do it by proving himself a future chief, a pine tree around whom warriors would rally.
Nothing-But-Flowers’s grandmother asked if the village’s other warriors had found game. “Yes!” Bold Antelope said. “So much that their canoes are almost sinking with the loads they are carrying. I took this buck and went ashore to help keep my canoe afloat. They will be here before the sun begins to fall in the sky.”
“Ho!” The young women shouted and danced with joy. The starving time was over! When the warriors returned, we would have a feast. There would be many trips to the woods for lovers. There would be marriages before summer began. There would be babies after the next snows.
“I also brought this gift for you and your honorable grandmother,” Bold Antelope said.
From a deerskin pack on his shoulder he drew a scalp, dried and stretched on a hoop, the edges painted red. The hair was golden yellow. “It is a Frenchman’s scalp,” Bold Antelope said. “We found him and his friends hunting on our lands. When we ordered them to go they threatened us. We opened fire and I killed this one with a bullet in the heart. The rest ran away.”
“That was not a wise thing to do!” Nothing-But-Flowers’s grandmother said. “At this very moment there is a great council in the land of the Mohawks, trying to make peace between the French and the English and the Iroquois and the Seven Nations of Canada.”
“There will never be peace between the white men and us, no matter how many presents they give us,” Bold Antelope said.
“That is not for you to decide. That is for the sachems, who will weigh the matter carefully,” Nothing-But-Flowers’s grandmother said. “You are too young to remember other wars when the French and the Hurons attacked us and drove the Senecas from the shore of the lake. Our warriors had to flee like children to the protection of the Mohawks. The French are as strong as the English up here on the lakes. We must tread carefully between them.”
I barely listened to this exchange, although I was usually fascinated by the stories the village’s grandmothers told about the old wars of the Iroquois against the French and the Indian nations of Canada. I could not take my eyes off the yellow scalp. It seemed to be turning the inside of my head into a swamp in which thoughts sank like footsteps and snakes rose to twine themselves around the unwary traveler.
The sun whirled in the sky, its rim as red as the edges of the Frenchman’s scalp. Was it hunger returning? Surely I could live for a whole day on a delicious corn cake. My friend Nothing-But-Flowers’s hand seized my arm. “Let’s go for a walk along the lake. Maybe we’ll see the warriors returning. We can swim out to greet them.”
“You must swim with no one but me!” Bold Antelope said.
“I’m not married to you yet,” Nothing-But-Flowers said. “I’ll swim with anyone I please.”
I heard the spoken and the unspoken parts of this exchange. I knew my friend Nothing-But-Flowers wanted to get me away from the scalp. Perhaps she wanted to get away from it herself. When we were small, we were both afraid of scalps. We would cry and hide our faces when the warriors displayed them in the longhouses.
I also knew Nothing-But-Flowers was not yet sure she loved Bold Antelope. He was still very young and lacked the dignity of Nothing-But-Flowers’s father, Hanging Belt, the village’s greatest war chief. There were many other young men courting Nothing-But-Flowers. She had no need to throw herself at Bold Antelope.
We walked quickly away from the village, our arms around each other. I had told Nothing-But-Flowers about the swamp that appeared in my head at certain times. Nothing-But-Flowers had told me it belong
ed to the Evil Brother of the Master of Life, the great God who brought spring and fruitfulness to the world. The Evil Brother was trying to suck me back into the unhappy winters of our girlhood, just as each year he tried to prevent the Master of Life from bringing us the spring. The Evil Brother lived in the cold dark past and he wanted others to join him there.
I listened carefully to Nothing-But-Flowers, as always. I respected the strength of her orenda. But her words did not stop the swamp from filling my head. In the gloom ghostly white faces appeared, names drifted vaguely, hissing like snakes. Vorrrrst, whispered one. Vorrrst. On the branch of a dead tree, an evil crow croaked Van. Van. Van. A woodpecker went Cat Cat Cat. I knew it had something to do with how I came to the Senecas. But I could not remember any of it. There was only this swamp in my head and a terrible fear in my heart.
I walked along the shore of the lake, my heart almost bursting with gratitude for Nothing-But-Flowers’s friendship. Everyone was sure that someday she would take her grandmother’s place as the matron of the Bear Clan. She would become the most powerful woman in the village. She would rule the clan’s longhouse and their corn and squash fields. Even if I never found a husband, as Nothing-But-Flowers’s friend I would always be sure of having food to eat, a warm place to sleep.
“Here come the warriors,” Nothing-But-Flowers said. “Let’s swim out to meet them.”
The canoes came toward us swift as birds on the lake’s surface, six warriors in each one, bending forward to take a mighty stroke in unison. Quickly we kicked off our moccasins and stripped off our deerskin leggings and wool dresses and plunged into the water. It was very cold but it felt wonderful on my skin. It was our first swim of the spring. Soon we would swim every day until the snow came.
“We have heard about your good fortune!” Nothing-But-Flowers called as the canoes approached. “My friend She-Is-Alert and I come to congratulate you.”
Remember the Morning Page 2