Poor though she is, van Dyck thought, my daughter lives no worse than I.
They ate in the early evening, succulent fish from the river. There were still hours of daylight left when Pale Feather asked him to walk up the slope with her to an outcrop with a fine view over the water. He noticed that she was carrying a small object with her, wrapped in leaves. They sat together very comfortably in the evening sun and watched the eagles that circled high above. After a little while she said: “I have a gift for you. I made it myself.”
“May I see it?”
She handed him the little package. He unwrapped the leaves. And then he smiled in delight.
“Wampum,” he cried. “It is beautiful.” God knows how many hours it had taken her to make it.
Wampum. Tiny slices of seashell drilled through the center and strung in strands. White from the periwinkle; purple or black from the hard-shell clam. Woven together the strands became belts, headbands, all kinds of adornment.
And currency. Among the Indians, strings of wampum paid for goods, marriage proposals, tribute. And since it represented wealth, the wise men of the tribe always made sure that wampum was distributed among the various families.
But it was more than adornment and currency. Wampum often had meaning. White signified peace and life; black meant war and death. But in wearing wampum it was also easy to make elaborate patterns and little geometric pictograms which could be read. Huge, ceremonial belts many feet long might signify important events or treaties. Holy men wore wampum bearing symbols deep in significance.
It had not taken the Dutch long to learn that they could buy fur with wampum—which they called sewan. But the English Puritans up in Massachusetts had gone one better. Traditionally, the Indians had dug the shells from the sand in summer and done the tedious work of piercing them with a stone drill in winter. But, using steel drills that speeded production, the English had started to manufacture their own wampum, cutting out the local Indians. Worse, as the supply of wampum rose and demand for goods grew also, it took more wampum to buy the same goods. To the Dutch and English merchants, this inflation was normal; but to the Indians, accustomed to thinking of wampum’s beauty and intrinsic worth, it seemed the White Men were cheating them.
What van Dyck now held in his hands was a belt. It was less than three inches wide, but six feet long, so that it would go more than twice round his waist. On a background of white shells were some little geometric figures picked out in purple. The girl pointed to them proudly.
“Do you know what it says?” she asked.
“I don’t,” he confessed.
“It says”—she ran her finger along it—“‘Father of Pale Feather.’” She smiled. “Will you wear it?”
“Always,” he promised.
“That is good.” She watched happily as he put it on. Then they sat together for a long time, watching the sun as it slowly grew red and sank over the forests across the river.
In the morning, when he was leaving, he promised that he would come in to see her again on his return.
Dirk van Dyck’s journey that summer was a pleasant one. The weather was fine. On the western bank stretched the vast, forested regions that were still controlled by the Algonquin-speaking tribes like his daughter’s people. He passed creeks he knew well. And he traveled, as he liked to say, as the guest of the river. That mighty tidal flow from the ocean could send its pulse up Hudson’s River for a hundred and fifty miles, all the way to Fort Orange. In summer, even the salt seawater came upstream nearly sixty miles. So, for the most part, he let the current take him in a leisurely fashion toward his destination up in Mohawk territory.
Many people feared the Mohawks. The Indians who dwelt in the regions around Manhattan all spoke Algonquin, but the powerful tribes like the Mohawks who controlled the vast tracts of land to the north of them spoke Iroquois. And the Iroquois Mohawks had no love for the Algonquin. It was forty years, now, since they had started to press down upon them. They raided the Algonquin and took tribute. But despite the Mohawks’ fearsome reputation, the attitude of the Dutch had been simple and pragmatic.
“If the Mohawks raid the Algonquin, so much the better. With luck, that’ll mean the Algonquin are too busy fighting the Mohawks to give trouble to us.” The Dutch had even sold guns to the Mohawks.
In van Dyck’s view, this policy had some risk. The northern outposts of New Netherland, up at Fort Orange and Schenectady, lay in Mohawk territory. Sometimes the Mohawks up there gave trouble. It was just such trouble that had called Stuyvesant up to Fort Orange the other day. Little as he liked Stuyvesant, van Dyck had no doubt that the tough old governor would cope with the Mohawks. They might be warlike, but they’d negotiate, because it was in their self-interest.
As for himself, van Dyck wasn’t afraid of the Mohawks. He spoke Iroquois and he knew their ways. In any case, he wasn’t going as far as Fort Orange, but to a trading post on a small river about a day to the south of the fort. In his own experience, whatever was passing in the world, traders were always welcome. He’d go into the wilderness and sell the Mohawks adulterated brandy, and return with a fine cargo of pelts.
“Put your trust in trade,” he liked to say. “Kingdoms may rise and fall, but trade goes on forever.”
It was a pity, of course, that he needed to trade with the Mohawks. For he liked his daughter’s Algonquin people better. But what could you do? The White Man’s eagerness for pelts and the Indians’ eagerness to supply them had wiped out so many of the beavers in the lower reaches of Hudson’s River that the Algonquin hadn’t enough to sell. Even the Mohawks had to raid up into the territory of the Huron, still further to the north, to satisfy the White Man’s endless demands. But the Mohawks supplied. That was the point. So they were his main trading partners now.
His journey took ten days. Venturing into the interior, he encountered no trouble. The Mohawk trading post, unlike most Algonquin villages, was a permanent affair with a stout palisade around it. The Mohawks there were tough and brisk, but they accepted his brandy. “Though it would have been better,” they told him, “if you had brought guns.” He returned with one of the largest loads of pelts he had ever brought downriver. Yet despite the valuable cargo he now carried, he was still in no hurry to return to Manhattan. He considered ways of delaying, a day here, a day there.
He intended to keep Margaretha waiting.
Not too long. He’d calculated carefully. She had set a deadline, so he was going to break it. He’d tell her of course that the business had taken longer than anticipated. She’d suspect he was lying, but what could she do about it? Leave her with a little uncertainty: that was the way. He loved his wife, but he had to let her know that she couldn’t order him around. An extra week or so should do it. So, on his orders, the oarsmen did not exert themselves too much as they journeyed slowly south; and van Dyck counted the days, and kept a cool head.
There was only one thing that troubled him—one thing he had failed to do. A small matter perhaps, but it never left his mind.
He had no present for his daughter.
The wampum belt she’d given him. It had a price, of course. But it was beyond all price. His little daughter had made it for him with her own hands, threaded the beads, sewn them, hour after hour, into this single, simple message of love.
And how could he respond? What to give her in return? He had no skill with his hands. I cannot carve, or carpenter, or weave, he thought. I am without these ancient skills. I can only buy and sell. How can I show my love, except with costly gifts?
He’d nearly bought a coat, made by the Mohawks. But she might not like a Mohawk coat. Besides, he wanted to give her something from his own people, whose blood, at least, she shared. Try as he might, he had not been able to decide what to do, and the problem remained unsolved.
They had come back into Algonquin territory when he directed his men to pull over to the western bank, to a village where he’d done business before. He liked to keep up his contacts, and it was a
good way of delaying his return a little more.
He received a friendly welcome. The people of the village were busy, because it was harvest time. Like most of the local Indians, they had planted maize in March, then kidney beans, which served as useful props for the tall maize plants, in May. Now both were being harvested. For two days, van Dyck and his men remained in the village, helping with the harvest. It was hard work in the hot sun, but he enjoyed it. Though they had little fur to sell, the Algonquin were still able to trade maize to the White Man, and van Dyck promised he would return in a month to take a cargo of maize downriver for them.
The harvest went well. On the third day they had all sat down for the evening meal, and the women were bringing out the food, when a small boat came in sight. It was paddled by a single man.
As the boat drew near, van Dyck watched. When it reached the shore, the man stepped out and dragged the boat up the bank. He was a fairhaired young fellow, still in his early twenties, with slightly protruding teeth. His face was pleasing, but quite hard. Despite the warm weather, he was wearing riding boots and a black coat that was splashed with mud. His blue eyes were keen. From the boat he lifted a leather bag, which he slung over his shoulder.
The Indians looked at him suspiciously. When one of them addressed him, it was clear that he did not speak Algonquin. But by an easy gesture he made clear that he was asking for food and shelter; and it was not the custom of the Algonquin to refuse. Van Dyck motioned the stranger to sit beside him.
It took only a few moments to discover that the young man did not speak Dutch either. He was English, which van Dyck could speak well enough. But the fair-haired man in the dark coat seemed cautious about saying much in that language also.
“Where are you from?” van Dyck asked.
“Boston.”
“What’s your business?”
“Merchant.”
“What brings you here?”
“I was in Connecticut. Got robbed. Lost my horse. Thought I’d go downriver.” He took the bowl of corn he’d been offered and started to eat, avoiding further questions.
There were two kinds of men van Dyck knew in Boston. The first were the godly men, the stern Puritans whose congregations lived in the light of the Lord. It was a harsh light, though. If Stuyvesant was intolerant of outsiders like the Quakers, and kicked them out when he could, that was nothing to what the people of Massachusetts did to them. Flogged them half to death, from all accounts. It did not seem to him that the stranger was one of the godly, though. The second kind were the men who’d come to New England for the money to be made in fishing and trading. Tough, hard men. Maybe the young stranger fell into this category.
But his story seemed unlikely. Was he a fugitive of some kind who’d gone west to shake off his pursuers? Stolen the boat too, maybe. He resolved to keep a careful eye on him.
Tom Master had not been having a very good time. His voyage to Boston with the English fleet had encountered storms. When he had reached Boston and gone to the family house, now occupied by his brother, Eliot had greeted him with a look of horror, followed by hours of silence that, Tom decided, were even more unpleasant than the storms at sea. His brother did not actually throw him out of the house, but he made it clear in his quiet, serious way that, dead or not, their father should be obeyed; and that Tom had violated every rule of decency by attempting to re-enter the family circle.
At first Tom had been hurt, then angry. The third day, he’d decided to treat the whole business as a joke; out of sight of his brother, he had laughed.
But finding employment in Boston proved to be no laughing matter. Whether he had a bad reputation, or whether Eliot had been busy warning everybody about him, he could find no encouragement from any of the merchants he knew. Evidently, if he remained in Boston, life was going to be difficult.
He also wondered if his father had made any provision for him in his will. But when he asked his brother, and Eliot told him, “Only under certain conditions, which you do not fulfill,” he had no doubt that his brother was telling the truth.
So what was he to do? Should he return to London? Eliot would probably pay for his passage, if that would remove him permanently from Boston. But it irked him to be run out of town by his own brother.
Besides, there was still the other consideration that had brought him here.
The Duke of York’s fleet remained in Boston harbor. The commander was making a show of attending to the Duke’s affairs in Boston. But a conversation with a young officer had soon confirmed what Tom had suspected all along. The fleet was going down to New Amsterdam, and soon. “If the Duke can take New Netherland from the Dutch, he’ll be master of an empire here,” the officer told him. “We’re carrying enough cannon-balls and powder to blow New Amsterdam to bits.” The King of England’s assurance to the Dutch had been that amusing monarch’s favorite tactic: a brazen lie.
And if this was the case, then the opportunities for a young Englishman in the American colonies were about to improve. It would be foolishness on his part to return to England now. What he needed was a plan.
The idea came to him the next day. Like many of Tom’s ideas, it was outrageous, but not without humor. He’d met a girl he remembered, in a tavern—a girl of no good reputation—and talked to her for a while. The day after that, he returned to talk to her again. When he told her what he wanted, and named the price he’d pay, she laughed, and agreed.
That evening, he spoke to his brother.
He started with an apology. He told Eliot that he felt repentance for his past misdeeds. This was greeted by silence. Tom then explained that he wanted to settle down, no matter how humbly, and try to lead a better life.
“Not here, I hope,” his brother said.
Indeed that was his plan, Tom told him. And not only that, he thought he’d found a wife. At this news, Eliot had gazed at him in blank astonishment.
There was a woman he had known before, Tom explained, a woman who had also led a less than perfect life, but who was ready to repent. What better way of showing Christian forgiveness and humility than to save her?
“What woman?” demanded Eliot coldly.
Tom gave the girl’s name and the tavern where she worked. “I was hoping,” he said, “that you would help us.”
By noon the next day, Eliot had discovered enough. The girl was nothing less than a common whore. Yes, she had told him, she’d be glad to marry Tom, and be saved, and live here in Boston no matter how humbly. For anything was better than her present, fallen condition. Though Eliot saw at once that this might be a hoax, he did not see the humor of it. Nor did it matter whether the thing was true or not. Clearly Tom was prepared to make trouble, and embarrass him. Alternatively, Eliot assumed, Tom would be prepared to leave—for a price. That evening they spoke again.
The interview was conducted in the spirit of mournfulness in which Eliot seemed to specialize. It took place in the small, square room he used as an office. On the desk between them was an inkwell, a Bible, a book of law, a paper cutter and a little pine box containing a newly minted silver dollar.
The offer Eliot made was the inheritance that Adam Master had left for his younger son if, and only if, he showed evidence that he had joined the community of the godly. With perfect truth, Eliot informed his brother: “I am disobeying our father by giving you this.”
“Blessed are the merciful,” said Tom, solemnly.
“You refuse to return to England?”
“I do.”
“This letter, then, will give you credit with a merchant in Hartford, Connecticut. They are more tolerant,” Eliot said drily, “of people like you down there. The condition is that you are never, ever to return to Massachusetts. Not even for a day.”
“In the Gospels, the Prodigal Son returned and was welcomed,” Tom remarked pleasantly.
“He returned once, as you have already done. Not twice.”
“I shall need money for the journey. Your letter gives me nothing until I reach Hartford.
”
“Will that be enough?” Eliot handed him a quantity of wampum and a purse containing several shillings. Some of those shillings would pay the girl in the tavern and the rest, Tom reckoned, would be enough for his journey.
“Thank you.”
“I fear for your soul.”
“I know.”
“Swear that you will not return.”
“I swear.”
“I shall pray for you,” his brother added, though evidently without much conviction it would do any good.
Tom rode away early the next morning. Before he left the house, he slipped into his brother’s office, and stole the silver dollar in the box. Just to annoy him.
He had taken his time, riding westward across Massachusetts, staying at farms along the way. When he came to the Connecticut River, he should have turned south. That would have brought him to Hartford. But it irked him to take orders from his brother, and so, for no particular reason, he had continued westward for a few days. He was in no hurry. The money, which he kept in a small satchel, would last him a while. He’d always heard that the great North River was a noble sight. Perhaps he’d go as far as that before turning back to Hartford.
Leaving Connecticut, he’d passed into Dutch territory. But he saw no one and, keeping an eye out for Indians, proceeded cautiously for a couple of days. On the evening of the second day, the land began to slope down, and soon he saw the sweep of the big river. On the terrace above the riverbank he came to a Dutch farmstead. It was small: a single-story cabin with a wide porch, a barn on one side, a stable and a low outbuilding on the other. A meadow ran down to the riverbank, where there was a wooden dock and a boat.
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