Seékanauk = Horseshoe Crab TH
Skyco/Skiko = actual name of Chowan boy, son of Menatonon, Lane
Tanaquiny = actual name of Roanoke warrior with Pemisapan, Lane
Tangomóckonomindge = tree whose bark is used for red dye TH
Taráwkow = Sandhill Crane JW
Tesicqueo = a colorful snake, perhaps Milksnake, JW
Tetszo = Mullet, 2 feet in length JW; used as name of fisherman, Keetrauk’s brother
Tetepano = actual name of warrior with Manteo, Lane; used as name of atlatl warrior
Towaye = actual name of warrior with Manteo who traveled to England, Lane
Tsinaw = Smilax root, “china root,” TH
Tummaihumenes = Grackle, “bird that gets a big meal of seeds,” JW
Uppówoc = Tobacco, TH
Wanchese = actual name of Roanoke warrior, traveled to England, abandoned English, Lane
Wapeih = Medicinal Clay, “white earth,” TH
Wasewówr = perhaps Pokeweed, used for red dye, TH
Wassador = Copper, Lane
Weapemeoc = tribe on north side of Albemarle Sound, Quinn
Weeheépens = Barn Swallow, JW
Weewraamánqueo = Bufflehead Duck, JW
Werowans = chiefs or head men of village, Lane
Wickonzówr = Peas, TH
Wingina = actual name of Roanoke chief, Lane
Winauk = Sassafras, TH
Wisakon = Milkweed, “it is bitter,” JW
Woanagusso = Swan, JW
Wundúnaham = Shad or Alewife, “he swims fast,” JW
Wysauke = Milkweed, antidote to poison arrows, JW
“The Indian Village of Secoton” by John White
(created 1585-86)
This watercolor shows the sacred fire, dancing circle, wigwams, and crop fields of the village of Secoton.
©The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
“Indians Fishing” by John White
(created 1585-86)
This watercolor shows various fishing techniques, including a fish weir with a pen.
©The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
References
For a list of references and more information, please visit TheLegendofSkyco.com!
Real Places to Visit
It is hard to get a sense of what North Carolina looked like before Europeans arrived, but natural areas preserved by our state and national parks provide perhaps the closest approximations.
Merchants Millpond State Park, on Bennett’s Creek that flows into the Chowan River, is in the region occupied by the Chowanoacs, Skyco’s tribe. John White’s maps locate Chowanook (Chawanoac) on the west of the Chowan River near a creek mouth. Quinn’s overlay onto current maps places Chowanook near the mouth of Wiccacon Creek; Bennett’s Creek flows in on the east side very near that point.
The area around the bay of Edenton is marked in White’s map as the region occupied by the Weapemeoc, with four villages indicated on both the east and western sides of the bay. Quinn singles out one town, Warowtani, as located on the west side of Edenton’s bay, with the other Weapemeoc towns at other locations. White’s map also indicates an English fort on the land between the Chowan and Roanoke rivers, but it is unclear whether this fort was ever built.
Cypress dugout canoes were discovered in Phelps Lake in Pettigrew State Park. While there does not appear to be a town site there, or at least White didn’t record one, there were certainly natives who left behind their canoes. Perhaps the canoe Skyco worked on was one of them.
Roanoke Island, with its two primary towns of Manteo and Wanchese, has several locations worth visiting. The Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, part of the National Park Service, has a museum with recovered artifacts and a reconstructed earthen fort base. The Lost Colony Play is located nearby. The Roanoke Island Festival Park houses the Elizabeth II vessel, a wooden ship that represents the type of ship the colonists arrived in. There are also reconstructions of both Native American and colonial village life that provide good approximations of how both groups of people lived in America as well as museums and other attractions.
Jockey’s Ridge State Park is fabulous for its sand dunes and provides an idea of how Skyco may have viewed the area. During Skyco’s time, some of the sand dunes were so big that they were called Kendricks Mount. These dunes have eroded down and are now offshore shoals called Wimble Shoals.
Town Creek Indian Mound, a North Carolina historic site, is a little farther afield, located near Mount Gilead in the piedmont of North Carolina. Archaeologists have spent many years working to uncover artifacts and information regarding these natives of the piedmont region, belonging to the Pee Dee culture. They were mound-builders who constructed a temple on top of a built mound along the banks of the Little River. They lived inside a palisade and their houses were built of wattle and daub. Parts of their village have been reconstructed. These Native Americans were probably incorporated into the Catawba and were not closely related to the coastal Algonquins.
The Cherokee in western North Carolina are not closely related to the Algonquins, but they are the only (currently) federally recognized tribe, and their towns and land in western North Carolina can be visited today. The Cherokee belong to the Iroquois language family. The Tuscarora, who lived in close proximity to the coastal Algonquins, are close relatives of the Cherokee and are likely the same as the Mangoaks described in this book and others. When the Tuscarora lost the Tuscarora War of 1711, they migrated far to the north, where they joined the Iroquois Confederacy and became the sixth nation.
About the Author
Dr. Jennifer Frick-Ruppert is the Dalton Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Brevard College in western North Carolina, where she has taught since 1997. She earned her Ph.D. in Zoology from Clemson University. She teaches courses in environmental perspectives, biodiversity, biology, and natural history and was awarded the 2003-2004 Award for Exemplary Teaching at Brevard College. She is a frequent presenter for naturalist groups, including the Roan Mountain Naturalist Rally, NC Native Plant Society, and The Wilderness Society.
Originally from South Carolina, she grew up with a love of nature and the outdoors that was fostered by her close-knit family. She listened to story after story around campfires, barbeque pits, and fishing ponds and is now telling her own stories to other listeners. Her writings all have a strong sense of the natural world, and she explores how people interact with nature. Since she is a professional biologist as well as an award-winning teacher, her writings can be trusted for their accuracy in addition to their engaging portrayals.
She authored websites for South Carolina Educational Television and wrote a regular column for The Transylvania Times, Brevard’s local newspaper. She has written several scientific articles, the most recent co-authored with her undergraduate students; one of these compared the caloric values of native fruits, another examined diet of coyotes in the Southern Appalachians, and a third focused on the biology of the Blue Ghost Firefly.
In 2010, she published Mountain Nature: A Seasonal Natural History of the Southern Appalachians. Illustrated with both color and black-and-white images, it conveys the seasonal change in animals and plants of the region, emphasizing their interactions and unique characteristics. It received several notable reviews for its quality and lively writing style and was a finalist in the Philip Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing about the Southern Environment.
In 2015, she published Waterways: Sailing the Southeastern Coast. Like Mountain Nature, it centers on natural history, but it is a story of a single cruise that she made with her husband aboard their sailboat Velella when they sailed from Charleston, SC to Lake Worth, FL across to the Bahamas and back to Beaufort, SC. It relates their joy in seeing the natural world while learning to sail, it reflects on environmental changes and concerns,
and it discusses the value of understanding the interrelationships of humans and nature.
About the Illustrator
Lorna Murphy is an author/illustrator of children’s books based in Suffolk, UK. She grew up on the coast but has been landlocked for 20 years. She still misses the sea.
After 16 years working in the public sector, she decided enough was enough and signed up to study illustration, at the Cambridge School of Art in the UK. It was here that she discovered the world of illustrated books and has been hooked ever since. Since graduating with an MA in Children’s Book Illustration, she has worked as a freelance illustrator of children’s books for clients such as MacMillan and Burroughs Wellcome as well as many independent publishers.
She feels very privileged to be living and working in a world of books and the children who love them. When not working as a freelance illustrator, she spends her time creating her own books, writing, critiquing, and attending any event with the words: “book” or “illustration” in the title. She can often be found wandering around the East Anglia with a sketchbook or camera in search of inspiration.
If you would like to see more of her work, please visit: www.lornamurphyillustration.com.
Amberjack Publishing
228 Park Avenue S #89611
New York, NY 10003-1502
http://amberjackpublishing.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, fictitious places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Frick-Ruppert
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Frick-Ruppert, Jennifer, author.
Title: The Legend of Skyco : spirit quest / by Jennifer Frick-Ruppert.
Description: New York, NY: Amberjack Publishing, 2016
Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-944995-11-9 (pbk.) | 978-1-944995-17-1 (ebook) | LCCN 2016951831
Summary: Skyco, an Algonquin boy, must learn how to hunt, fish, start a fire, and communicate with the spirits before he can take his place as the tribe’s chief.
Subjects: LCSH Algonquin Indians--Juvenile fiction. | Algonquian Indians--Juvenile fiction. | Indians of North America--Juvenile fiction. | Spirits--Fiction. | Wilderness survival--Fiction. | BISAC JUVENILE FICTION / People & Places / United States / Native American.
Classification: LCC PZ7.F89582 Le 2016 | DDC [Fic]--dc23
Cover Design: Red Couch Creative, Inc.
Artwork & Illustrations: Lorna Murphy
Historical sketches ©The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
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