“Now, Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle, being brother and sister, cannot intermarry. They must marry out of Hawk, Heron, Deer or Snipe.”
Fromwest nodded at each pronouncement of Keeper, made in the heavy, ponderous tones of a man who had laboured all his life to make this system work, and to extend it far and wide. Fromwest had been declared a member of the Hawk tribe, and would play with the Hawks in the morning’s lacrosse match. Now he watched Keeper with a hawk’s intensity, taking in the irascible old man’s every word, oblivious to the growing crowd at the lakeside. The crowd in turn went about its own affairs, the women at their fires preparing the feast, some of the men setting out the lacrosse pitch on the biggest water meadow.
Finally Keeper was done with his recital, and Fromwest addressed all in earshot.
“This is the great honour of my life,” he said loudly and slowly, his accent strange but comprehensible. “To be taken in by the finest people of the Earth is more than any poor wanderer could hope for. Although I did hope for it. I spent many years crossing this great island, hoping for it.”
He bowed his head, hands together.
“A very unassuming man,” remarked Iagogeh, the One Who Hears, wife of Keeper of the Wampum. “And not so young either. It will be interesting to bear what he says tonight.”
“And to see how he does in the games,” said Tecarnos, or Dropping Oil, one of Iagogeh’s nieces.
“Tend the soup,” said Iagogeh.
“Yes, Mother.”
The lacrosse field was being inspected by the field judges for rocks and rabbit holes, and the tall poles of the gates were set up at either end of the field. As always, the games set the Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle tribes against Deer, Snipe, Hawk and Heron. The betting was active, and wagered goods were laid out by the managers in neat rows, mostly personal items of ornamentation, but also flints, flutes, drums, bags of tobacco and pipes, needles and arrows, two flintlock pistols and four muskets.
The two teams and the referees gathered at midfield, and the crowd bordered the green field and stood on the hill overlooking it. The day’s match was to be a ten-on-ten, so five passes through the gate would win. The head referee listed the main rules, as always: no touching the ball with hand, foot, limb, body or head; no deliberate hitting of opponents with the ball bats. He held up the round ball, made of deerskin filled with sand, about the size of his fist. The twenty players stood ten to a side, defending their goals, and one from each side came forward to contest the dropped ball that would start the match. To a great roar from the crowd the referee dropped the ball and retreated to the side of the field, where he and the others would watch for any infraction of the rules.
The two team leaders fenced madly for the ball, the hooped nets at the end of their bats scraping the ground and knocking together. Though hitting another person was forbidden, striking another player’s bat with yours was allowed; it was a chancy play, however, as a mistaken strike on flesh would give the hit player a free shot at the gate. So the two players whacked away until the Heron scooped the ball up and flicked it back to one of his team-mates, and the running began.
Opponents ran at the ball-carrier, who twisted through them as long as he could, then passed the ball with a flick of his bat into the net of one of his team-mates. If the ball fell to the ground then most of the players nearby converged on it, bats clattering violently as they struggled for possession. Two players from each team stood back from this scrum, on defence in case an opponent caught up the ball and made a dash for the gate.
Soon enough it became clear that Fromwest had played lacrosse before, presumably among the Doorkeepers. He was not as young as most of the other players, nor as fleet as the fastest runners on each side, but the fastest were set guarding each other, and Fromwest had only to face the biggest of the Bear Wolf Beaver Turtle team, who could counter his low and solid mass with body checks, but did not have Fromwest’s quickness. The foreigner held his bat in both hands like a scythe, out low to the side or before him, as if inviting a slash that would knock the ball free. But his opponents soon learned that such a slash would never land, and if they tried it, Fromwest would spin awkwardly and be gone, stumbling forwards quite quickly for a big short man. When other opponents blocked him, his passes to open teammates were like shots from a bow; they were if anything perhaps too hard, as his team-mates had some trouble catching his throws. But if they did, off to the gate they scampered, waving their bats to confuse the final gate guard, and screaming along with the excited crowd. Fromwest never shouted or said a word, but played in an uncanny silence, never taunting the other team or even meeting their eyes, but watching either the ball or, it seemed, the sky. He played as if in a trance, as if confused; and yet when his team-mates were tracked down and blocked, he was always somehow open for a pass, no matter how hard his guard, or soon guards, ran to cover him. Surrounded teammates, desperately keeping their bat free to throw the ball out, would find Fromwest there in the only direction the ball could be thrown, stumbling but miraculously open, and they would flip it out to him and he would snare the ball dextrously and be off on one of his uncertain runs, cutting behind people and across the field at odd angles, wrong-headed angles, until he was blocked and an opportunity to pass opened, and one of his hard throws would flick over the grass as if on a string. It was a pleasure to watch, comical in its awkward look, and the crowd roared as the Deer Snipe Hawk Heron team threw the ball past the diving guardian and through the gate. Seldom had a first score happened faster.
After that the Bear Wolf Beaver Turtle team did what it could to stop Fromwest, but they were puzzled by his strange responses, and could not defend well against him. If they ganged up on him, he passed out to his fast young team-mates, who were growing bolder with their success. If they tried to cover him singly, he weaved and bobbed and stumbled in seeming confusion past his guard, until he was within striking distance of the gate, when he would spin, suddenly balanced, his bat at knee height, and with a turn of the wrist launch the ball through the gate like an arrow. No one there had ever seen such hard throws.
Between scores they gathered on the sidelines to drink water and maple water. The Bear Wolf Beaver Turtle team conferred grimly, made substitutions. After that an ‘accidental’ bat blow to Fromwest’s head gashed his scalp and left him covered with his own red blood, but the foul gave him a free shot, which he converted from near midfield, to a great roar. And it did not stop his weird but effective play, nor gain his opponents even a glance from him. Iagogeh said to her niece, “He plays as if the other team were ghosts. He plays as if he were out there by himself, trying to learn how to run more gracefully.” She was a connoisseur of the game, and it made her happy to see it.
Much more quickly than was normal, the match was four to one in favour of the junior side, and the senior tribes gathered to discuss strategy. The women gave out gourds of water and maple water, and Iagogeh, a Hawk herself, sidled next to Fromwest and offered him a water gourd, as she had seen earlier that that was all he was taking.
“You need a good partner now,” she murmured as she crouched beside him. “No one can finish alone.”
He looked at her, surprised. She pointed with a gesture of her head at her nephew Doshoweh, Split the Fork. “He’s your man,” she said, and was off.
The players regathered at midfield for the drop, and the Bear Wolf Beaver Turtle team left behind only a single man to defend. They got the ball, and pressed west with a fury born of desperation. Play went on for a long time, with neither side gaining advantage, both running madly up and down the field. Then one of the Deer Snipe Hawk Herons hurt his ankle, and Fromwest called on Doshoweh to come out.
The Bear Wolf Beaver Turtle team pressed forward again, pushing at the new player. But one of their passes came too near Fromwest, who snagged it out of the air while leaping over a fallen man. He flipped it to Doshoweh and all converged on the youngster, who looked frightened and vulnerable; but he had the presence of mind to make a long toss do
wnfield, back to Fromwest, already running at full speed. Fromwest caught the toss and everyone took off in pursuit of him. But it seemed he had an extra turn of speed he had never yet revealed, for no one could catch up to him before he reached the eastern gate, and after a feint with body and bat he spun and fired the ball past the guardian and far into the woods, to end the match.
The crowd erupted with cheers. Hats and bags of tobacco filled the air and rained down on the field. The contestants lay flat on their backs, then rose and gathered in a great hug, overseen by the referees.
Afterwards Fromwest sat on the lakeshore with the others. “What a relief,” he said. “I was getting tired.” He allowed some of the women to wrap his head wound in an embroidered cloth, and thanked them, face lowered.
In the afternoon the younger ones played the game of throwing javelins through a rolling hoop. Fromwest was invited to try it, and he agreed to make one attempt. He stood very still, and threw with a gentle motion, and the javelin flew through the hoop, leaving it rolling on. Fromwest bowed and gave up his place. “I played that game when I was a boy,” he said. “It was part of the training to become a warrior, what we called a samurai. What the body learns it never forgets.”
Iagogeh witnessed this exhibit, and went to her husband Keeper of the Wampum. “We should invite Fromwest to tell us more about his country,” she said to him. He nodded, frowning a little at her interference as he always did, even though they had discussed every aspect of the league’s affairs, every day for forty years. That was the way Keeper was, irritable and glowering; but all because the league meant so much to him, so that Iagogeh ignored his demeanour. Usually.
The feast was readied and they set to. As the sun dropped into the forest the fires roared bright in the shadows, and the ceremonial ground between the four cardinal fires became the scene of hundreds of people filing past the food, filling their bowls with spiced hominy and corncakes, bean soup, cooked squash, and roasted meat of deer, elk, duck and quail. Things grew quiet as people ate. After the main course came popcorn and strawberry jelly sprinkled with maple sugar, usually taken more slowly, and a great favourite with the children.
During this sunset feast Fromwest wandered the grounds, a goose drumstick in hand, introducing himself to strangers and listening to their stories, or answering their questions. He sat with his teammates’ families and recalled the triumphs of the day on the lacrosse field. “That game is like my old job,” he said. “In my country warriors fight with weapons like giant needles. I see you have needles, and some guns. These must have come from one of my old brothers, or the people who come here from over your eastern sea.”
They nodded. Foreigners from across the sea had established a fortified village down on the coast, near the entrance of the big bay at the mouth of the East River. The needles had come from them, as well as tomahawk blades of the same substance, and guns.
“Needles are very valuable,” Iagogeh said. “just ask Needle-breaker.”
People laughed at Needle-breaker, who grinned with embarrassment.
Fromwest said, “The metal is melted out of certain rocks, red rocks that have the metal mixed in them. If you make a fire hot enough, in a big clay oven, you could make your own metal. The right kind of rocks are just south of your league’s land, down in the narrow curved valleys.” He drew a rough map on the ground with a stick.
Two or three of the sachems were listening along with Iagogeh. Fromwest bowed to them. “I mean to speak to the council of sachems about these matters.”
“Can a clay oven hold fires hot enough?” Iagogeh asked, inspecting the big leatherpunch needle she kept on one of her necklaces.
“Yes. And the black rock that burns, burns as hot as charcoal. I used to make swords myself. They’re like scythes, but longer. Like blades of grass, or lacrosse bats. As long as the bats, but edged like a tomahawk or a blade of grass, and heavy, sturdy. You learn to swing them right —” he swished a hand backhanded before them — “and off with your head. No one can stop you.”
Everyone in earshot was interested in this. They could still see him whipping his bat around him, like an elm seed spinning down on the wind.
“Except a man with a gun,” the Mohawk sachem Sadagawadeh, Even Tempered, pointed out.
“True. But the important part of the guns are tubes of the same metal.”
Sadagawadeh nodded, very interested now. Fromwest bowed.
Keeper of the Wampum had some neutral youths round up the other sachems, and they wandered around the grounds until they found all fifty. When they returned Fromwest was sitting in a group, holding out a lacrosse ball between thumb and forefinger. He had big square hands, very scarred.
“Here, let me mark the world on this. The world is covered by water, mostly. There are two big islands in the world lake. Biggest island is on opposite side of world from here. This island we are on is big, but not as big as big island. Half as big, or less. How big the world lakes, not so sure.”
He marked the ball with charcoal to indicate the islands in the great world sea. He gave Keeper the lacrosse ball. “A kind of wampum.”
Keeper nodded. “Like a picture.”
“Yes, a picture. Of the whole world, on a ball, because the world is a big ball. And you can mark it with the names of the islands and lakes.”
Keeper didn’t look convinced, but what he was put off by, Iagogeh couldn’t tell. He instructed the sachems to get ready for the council.
Iagogeh went off to help with the clean-up. Fromwest brought bowls over to the lakeside to be washed.
“Please,” Iagogeh said, embarrassed. “We do that.”
“I am no one’s servant,” Fromwest said, and continued to bring bowls to the girls for a while, asking them about their embroidery. When he saw Iagogeh had drawn back to sit down on a bit of raised bank, he sat on the bank beside her.
As they watched the girls, he said, “I know that Hodenosaunee wisdom is such that the women decide who marries whom.”
Iagogeh considered this. “I suppose you could say that.”
“I am a Doorkeeper now, and a Hawk. I will live the rest of my days here among you. I too hope to marry some day.”
“I see.” She regarded him, looked at the girls. “Do you have someone in mind?”
“Oh no!” he said. “I would not be so bold. That is for you to decide. After your advice concerning lacrosse players, I am sure you will know best.”
She smiled. She looked at the festive dress of the girls, aware or unaware of their elders’ presence. She said, “How many summers have you seen?”
“Thirty-five or so, in this life.”
“You have had other lives?”
“We all have. Don’t you remember?”
She regarded him, unsure if he was serious. “No.”
“The memories come in dreams, mostly, but sometimes when something happens that you recognize.”
“I’ve had that feeling.”
“That’s what it is.”
She shivered. It was cooling down. Time to get to the fire. Through the net of leafy branches overhead a star or two winked. “Are you sure you don’t have a preference?”
“None. Hodenosaunee women are the most powerful women in this world. Not just the inheritance and the family lines, but choosing the marriage partnerships. That means you are deciding who comes back into the world.”
She scoffed at that: “If children were like their parents.” The offspring she and Keeper had had were all very alarming people.
“The one that comes into the world was there waiting. But many were waiting. Which one comes depends on which parents.”
“Do you think so? Sometimes, when I watched mine — they were only strangers, invited into the Long House.”
“Like me.”
“Yes. Like you.”
Then the sachems found them, and took Fromwest to his raising-up.
Iagogeh made sure the cleaning was near its finish, then went after the sachems, and joined them to hel
p prepare the new chief. She combed his straight black hair, much the same as hers, and helped him tie it up the way he wanted, in a topknot. She watched his cheery face. An unusual man.
He was given appropriate waist and shoulder belts, each a winter’s work for some skilful woman, and in these he suddenly looked very fine, a warrior and a chief, despite his flat round face and hooded eyes. He did not look like anyone she had ever met, certainly not like the one glimpse she had had of the foreigners who had come over the eastern sea to their shores. But she was beginning to feel he was familiar anyhow, in a way that made her feel peculiar.
He looked up at her, thanking her for her help. When she met his gaze she felt some odd sense of recognition.
Some branches and several great logs were thrown on the central fire, and the drums and turtleshell rattles grew loud as the fifty sachems of the Hodenosaunee gathered in their great circle for the raising-up. The crowd drew in behind them, manoeuvring and then sitting down so all could see, forming a kind of broad valley of faces.
The raising-up ceremony for a chief was not long compared to that of the fifty sachems. The sponsoring sachem stepped forward and announced the nomination of the chief. In this case it was Big Forehead, of the Hawk tribe, who stood forth and told them all again the story of Fromwest, how they had come across him being tortured by the Sioux, how he had been instructing the Sioux in the superior methods of torture found in his own country; how he already spoke an unfamiliar version of the Doorkeeper dialect, and how it had been his hope to come visit the people of the Long House before his capture by the Sioux. How he had lived among the Doorkeepers and learned their ways, and led a band of warriors far down the Ohio River to rescue many Senecan people enslaved by the Lakotas, guiding them so that they were able to effect the rescue and bring them home. How this and other actions had made him a candidate for chiefdom, with the support of all who knew him.
The Years of Rice and Salt Page 34