Ononharóia 'The Festival of Dreams'

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’1

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Freydís Eirík [the Red]’s daughter…then asked [the merchants Helgi and Finnbogi] to go to Vinland with her expedition and split everything they got there fifty-fifty.2 Greenland Saga

They say there is an island overflowing with gold that is bigger than Hispaniola…3 Christopher Columbus

Head high, tail recurved, a long snake slithers into the narrowing mouth of the Skonéhtati Kahónta4 ‘Hudson River’, the estuary5 currently misnamed for a misadventurer.6 Seen from where the World Trade Center will rise and fall, the snake pulses rhythmically across the wind-teased surface which extends forever into the Oiikhatákeka ‘Atlantic’.

Teiohninhaohakará:when’s fingertips pull a gleaming black sheet off her left eye, which is wide with fear, surprise or both. The eerie, rippling coordination of oars turn the long snake into a giant centipede as it silhouettes against the marshes of what will be called Paulus Hook in Jersey City. Her features relax into a smile.

Kén:tho ne otkonkahonwé:ia é:so iah iah teskénnen, kwah í:kehre'.

’Incoming UFOs with superior technology tend to strike a raw nerve.’7

The smile fades into a calm so extreme it teeters on the brink of arrogance, while she treads water.

Act wisely or look brave?

Tey waves the water around her, descends and swims8 till her cheeks puff. Her surfacing splash speeds four water striders on their way and swamps two. Finding her feet in the voluptuous ooze, Tey presses up the bank onto the shore, which bounces as she staggers slightly.

Clingy, gritty sand muddies into a tidy but gap-toothed field of Áhsen Akhtsí:’a 9 ‘Three Sisters’ ‘corn, squash and beans’. Silhouetted against nodding, vine-wrapped stalks, Kanéntia the Little Owl presents a delicate, sinuously braided reed basket. Her flint cut bangs sway over eyes which flicker between intent and astonished.

Tey empties whelks10 11 12 from her sweetgrass waist bag into the basket while a cool wind paints her back. Past the sun-streaked crown of Kanéntia’s head, a rustic, smoky elm bark longhouse blocks ragged coastal pines. The whelks click gratingly, hollowly. Kanéntia hands her an iron-tipped arrow, which Tey tests with two blanching fingertips. Its dripping serrations bleed sunlight.

She turns to see Landherjuðar’s ‘Land Harrier’s finely wrought, clinker-built13 hull flying at her on its oars, riding up out of the water and skimming along in a semi-planing posture, almost like a power boat.14

Freydís Eiríksdóttir inn rauða ‘Freydís, Eirík the Red’s daughter’ critiques 32 badly sunburned vikings15 in salt bleached rags, who present their rowing stroke to her twenty times a minute. Numbers three and eight are late, nineteen, four and sixteen aren’t pulling their weight, and the whole crew looks stale.

Who’s going to mutiny next?

A tasty south wind licks a yellowish red tendril over her forehead. In the distance to the east, oaks coalesce into the grey-green and rounded mountains of Manhattan.16

Better coaxe him out into the open and squash him before he makes too many friends.

Steering dexterously, Freydís fights a stretching withy17 to wrestle the ship starboard,18 towards the screamer 19 girls. She refuses to tell the starboard oars to lighten. Every breeze trades the familiar shipboard smell (half bracing pine tar, half bilge skank) for cool, salty ocean weather, and occasional, then not so occasional, hints of growing green things, sweating grass, dank mud, sweet violets.

How many fathoms are we in? How long will the trunnels hold out?

So many potential disasters competing to happen.

Freydís is 25, heavily freckled, not quite five feet tall, flame-haired, all sinew. Her clothes are a mélange of what was once fashionable in Baghdad, what still is in Constantinople and what soon will be in Aachen—making her absurdly chic by Greenlandic standards.

Mercian, Irish and Caliphate necklaces, bracelets, rings and anklets jingle, along with a conspicuous belt of keys.20 Motley Chinese silk ribbons bunch her hair. The relatively long and heavy head of a small war axe sways above a kind of scabbard or gilded leather stirrup.

Kol, the sketchily bearded stroke, ships his oar, nocks an arrow and smiles at Ulfstan, the number 31.

Landherjuðar is marching straight for Kanéntia, long oars stepping double-quick. Thirty-two blades slide into the catch with curt backsplashes. They wing smoothly through the water, springing the longboat forward and sending thirty-two whorls wandering. Kanéntia’s calloused feet squirm deeper in the sand. All those long, disturbingly synchronized oars pull the distance away with terrible speed. Surreal whispers, dark growls and the slush and scud of water whirl closer. Kanéntia bites her lip to stop herself from trembling. Death-pale and blood-red people with fallen leaf hair want to take her with them back to the land of the dead, apparently.

A Cree,21 maybe, waves an arm from the stern.

MESSAMOTT (IN WRETCHED LENAPE22)

Kuwatu hàch kèku?

Hey.23

He’s good looking, with long, girly hair, and seems friendly enough. Kanéntia feels ashamed of herself. Maybe the Unidentified Floating Object is harmless, even friendly. Why shouldn’t it be?

She examines Tey carefully.

You’ll have a body like that soon.

Exactly like that. Better.

KANÉNTIA (TO TEY IN KANIEN’KÉHA ‘MOHAWK’)

Shé’kon ratá:ti ne rón:kwe.

Dude says whassup. 24

A ghost of a smile rises at the corners of Tey’s mouth.

Also. All the guys will want you.

A handsome beaded and quilled bearskin cape beside Kanéntia smells of hearth fire: smoky, a little musty and familiar. She presents it to Tey, who takes it matter-of-factly, a rotiiáne ‘lady, noble’ receiving attendance.

Kanéntia wants to talk about getting shot at by the fallen leaf people on the crazy big wooden boat, but holds her tongue.

Scared little chatterbox. Don’t be a.

A vixen-woman, evidently the ship’s grandmother25 by her fine, strange clothes, rises above the gunwale beside Girly Hair in the stern, holding three bows26 to show they’re well armed.

No shit. 27

Or else she’s promising they won’t shoot.

Tey lopes towards the water, speeds up to a sprint theatrically,

KANÉNTIA

AKHTSÍ:’A!28 TÓHSA ATÁ:WENS—

BIG SISTER! DON’T SWIM-- plunges in and races towards the ship, swimming one-handed while holding the cape aloft with the other.

KANÉNTIA

NÓN:WA SASÁHKET!

COME BACK, NOW!

As she swims,29 Tey remembers Kanéntia’s wide eyes. She’d looked at older kids like that once.

Across the water, two or three bows aim forshortened arrows at her.

Well, the one thing stupider than keeping right on going would be turning back.

Idle curiosity might make them hold their shot. Swimming away I’d definitely be target practice.

Hope the arrow hits my shoulder…something meaty.

Hate that flint-into-bone impact.

Tey’s dripping fingers grasp the gunwale, while Pretty Boy regards her gravely.

Mantling with some difficulty because the gunwale curves upward toward the stern, she edges her right foot onto the cusp of a strange world. The wooden husk of the boat holds 32 paddlers sitting in orderly files. Glimmering copper kettles, iron blades, battered wooden chests and an assortment of weird crap clutter a marvelously smooth wooden floor. Everything dances around a very long tent pole carrying a kind of huge cape stretched by fifty ropes. It catches the Fawn Wind.30

The grandmother strides forward, fire and bone with spots.

Now that’s a great look. How do you paint those spots on your skin? How do you get your skin so white, and your hair so red?

Tey extends the bearskin cape31 32 with uncurling hands in a kind of gift giving salaam, the effect, she thinks, ruined somewhat by one soaked and dribbling corner of the cape. The grandmother’s eyes hold the sky.

Fire grandmother lifts a gold ring off her finger and places it precisely in the middle of Tey’s extending and opening palm, then raises a red wool cape from a sea chest. Six raised fingers say: pretty snazzy, eh? The bear-faced paddlers watch them intently.

I’ll be telling people about this for years.

FREYDÍS (IN NORSE TO MESSAMOTT AKA ‘GIRLY HAIR’ ‘PRETTY BOY’)

Ek vil kaupar gull fyrir rautt skrúð. Er er gullrinn eða mikill fe i Þessum landr?

I’m looking to trade red cloth33 for gold.34 Where’s the gold or fe “money, sheep, cattle or other object of value” in these parts?

MESSAMOTT (IN LENAPE, TO TEY)

…Undachqui hàch yuli sukachsin wisaweu? Allum’sin. Winhattakuwagan. Angellowi.

…Wheresoever are these yellow iron thingies, or big little deer?35 Go away, danger, deadly.

Tey widens her eyes to say, “I don’t understand,” and smirks to add, “Fool.”

Learn the language, why don’t ya, buddy?

Messamott watches the sun walk towards them on the water, slipping on the waves. A canoe slides across its path.

KANÉNTIA (FROM THE CANOE, IN KANIEN’KÉHA)

Ohwísta ne ki ken kén:tho? Tánon atená:ti’ ken kén’en? Akhsóh’ta osténha iontáti.

The fire grandmother is asking you if there is any of this metal around, or any elk.

She sees three beautiful people before her and again feels like a skinny kid.

Why didn’t I tell my older sister that Girly Hair says we’re in danger?

It’s too painfully fucking obvious, for one.

Tey turns, surprised to see Kanéntia paddling to keep station to Messamott’s left. She smiles slightly, affectionately, then rolls her eyes towards shore.

TEY (IN KANIEN’KÉHA, TO KANÉNTIA)

Sasahtén:ti óksa’ ónwa.

Go home. Now. Hurry.

Kanentia ignores the order.

I didn’t hear you, and if I did, I didn’t understand what you meant.

Freydís looks expectantly at Tey.

TEY (IN KANIEN’KÉHA, TO KANÉNTIA)

Iah—

No…

FREYDÍS (IN NORSE)

Já?36

Yeah?

TEY

…kwah í:kehre’…iah tewaketerién:tare'.

…I think…I don’t know.

Kanéntia pauses, letting stillness and silence sink in for dramatic effect. Finally, as her boat begins to slip away on the current, while Messamott’s eyes bore holes in her, she raises her eyes significantly.

KANÉNTIA (TO MESSAMOTT, IN FAIR LENAPE)

There are mountains of gold in Onoalákonena ‘Schenectady.’ 37

MESSAMOTT (TURNING TO FREYDÍS, IN NORSE)

Gullar borgir búa í Onoalákonena.

Gold cities38 live in Onoalákonena. 39

Freydís’ pale blue eyes scan Kanéntia.

Freydís nods her head and curls her fingers.

MESSAMOTT

Allum’sin. Winhattakuwagan. Angellowi.

Swim for your life, sister;’ or, more literally, ‘Go away, danger, deadly.

TEY (IN KANIEN’KÉHA, TO KANÉNTIA)

Sasáhket. Sa'nikonhraien:tas ken?

Go back. Do you understand me?

Kanéntia freezes where she has risen, her hands hovering above the gunwales of her canoe. All eyes bore holes into her. She continues to rise to a standing position, gauging how to step onto the big boat at least without losing her balance and hopefully with grace and ease. She catches Girly Hair’s eye.

Thanks for the heads up, brother, but turning my back right now will get it shot full of arrows.

KANÉNTIA (IN KANIEN’KÉHA, TO TEY)

Iah iah satekahtén:ti ón:wa.

I can’t go home now.

The shipboard shifts and shimmies before her descending foot, here with a duck, there with a dive. She balances awkwardly on planks which descend towards the center while she lifts her trailing foot over the gunwale. Words from an old story go through her mind, maybe because she is, at last, setting forth on a great adventure.

…you’ll find a path which follows the edge of a cliff, guarded by rattlesnakes…40

Inside without incident, if also without grace, Kanéntia turns and climbs a step back to tie her boat’s tether to the nearest oarhole. Kol, whose oarlock it is, gives it a dirty look.

Tey slips one finger over the smooth, sparkling ring Freydís gave her.

Too bad about the color.41

Freydís says something to Messamott, her hand brushing his forearm.

MESSAMOTT (TO KANÉNTIA, IN LENAPE)

Where at Onoalákonena? I’m telling you, sister, clear out.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 10 If you face danger instead of running from it, Kanéntia’s coach42 had told her—often, so very, very often—your eyes and hands can help you, glory becomes possible and death honorable. She takes a step downhill to stand just to the right of Tey. They face Freydís, holding the rudder on the left, and Messamott, to the right.

Freydís scares up a piece of charcoal and a trapezoid of heavy wool43 covered with smörring44 ’smearing.’ Tey kneels to rough out a map of the northeastern North American waterways, including the Skonéhtati, Teugéga ‘Mohawk,’ Skáhundow ‘Delaware,’ Gawanowánaneh ‘Susquehanna,’ Ohí:io ‘Allegheny/Ohio,’ and the Oiikhadákeka ‘Atlantic.’ Strictly speaking, she does not need to include more than the Skonéhtati and Teugéga, but wants to provide context and appear cosmopolitan.

The ship is drifting shoreward and spinning slowly counterclockwise. Most of the crew strain their necks or to try to see the pretty screamers. A few lose their eyes on the horizon or chat with their neighbors.

Just past the out-south45 corner of Salmon River Island, where the whale beached two years ago…yeah…

Four people in the stern try to work the following through three languages:

Head up the Skonéhtati Kahónta until you see a portage trail on the left, west bank, which leads past the confluence of the Teugéga Kahónta and the Skonéhtati Kahónta…. If you see a big town you’ve gone too far. Follow the portage…. On your right, you’ll pass the waterfall Káhao’se ‘Shipwrecked Canoe.’ Follow the trail for a couple of miles. It meets the Teugéga at the town of Onoalákonena.

Two Rivers, Comber, Hanundéont ‘Faithkeeper’ and a dozen or so others line the shore, holding what gifts they could find at short notice. A big bowl of half-cooked squash, a riot of tattered

Kanéntia is frightened and thrilled to be the center of attention on an incredible alien vessel. She suddenly feels important to the whole Turtle clan. 46

Landherjuðar distracts her continually. It’s a very impressive, extraordinarily large piece of eerily smooth woodwork and lashing. She explains the strong scent to herself, correctly, as pine tar caulking, not so different in smell from the spruce gum she uses to caulk canoes.

Strange men stare at her, none more frankly than Yellow Hair, the stroke. He has on a kind of sheath made from the same material the grandmother wants to sell, cleverly cut to fit his body. Is that what you get when you weave corn husk strands together? There is a hole in the fabric’s elbow revealing a jagged patch of bone white skin.

Funny, when his face is red.

As Tey puts the finishing touches on her fascinating map, Freydís takes a step towards the rudder while Yellow Hair slides off his bench.

Here we go.

KANÉNTIA (CALMLY, TO TEY)

Akhtsí:’a.47 Sasahtén:ti. Atá:wens. Óksa’.

Big sister. Swim for it. Hurry.

Kanentia takes one step towards the gunwale. A hand catches, then squashes her bicep as the water hangs before her, another crushes her throat. Normal Hair (aka Kol) grasps her effortlessly. She goes limp in the hope Normal Hair will relax his grip sufficiently for her to breathe.

Tey turns as blonde Ulfstan wraps her in a bear hug which he adjusts into a head lock as she writhes. Tey puts her hands straight up and sinks as rapidly as she can to free her arms, but Ulfstan descends with her to keep his hold. Tey reaches behind her and grabs the crooks of

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 12 Ulfstan’s knees, then springs backward with all her strength.48 They perch on the gunwale for a moment, oddly like lovers, then topple backwards into the estuary.

Ulfstan and Tey plunge beneath the surface and pull their arms free of each other. Tey swims twenty yards and breaks the surface to breathe. Five yards farther she breaks the surface again to see the ship turning, Kanéntia with Kol’s hand around her throat, and Ulfstan flailing and sinking.

Idiot, how could anyone be such an…

Now!

Kanéntia twists as suddenly and violently as she can, breaking Kol’s grip on her throat. But as she turns Kol clubs her in the neck with a flailing left hook. Kanéntia falls to the deck. She sees a foot which is getting larger.

Tey reverses direction, disappears, then reappears, towing Ulfstan in a crooked arm.

There is a yell from the water. Freydís, Kol and Kanéntia see Tey holding Ulfstan poised between safety and drowning.

TEY (SHOUTING)

Saionáhket ne aónha káton rahnekí:ra é:so.

The bitch49 comes back or he takes the big drink.

Normal Hair and speckled grandmother look expectantly at Kanéntia. Kol a little belatedly relaxes his hand, removing enough pressure from Kanéntia’s throat for her to speak.

The shore line has become love, warmth, family and home, the UFO cold, alien death, and Kol’s arm the rope that holds her to it.

KANÉNTIA (TO MESSAMOTT, HOARSELY, IN LENAPE)

Let me go or she’ll kill him.

MESSAMOTT (TO FREYDÍS)

She kills him when the kid dies. (He’s mistranslated somewhat.)

FREYDÍS (STARING AT KANÉNTIA)

Drapa honum tveirligr, viltu?

Kill him twice, why don’t you?

MESSAMOTT (TO KANÉNTIA, IN LENAPE)

Throw him down two times, you want? 50 (He has misunderstood Freydis’word viltu, which is a cognate with English ’wilt thou’. He has also used a Lenape idiom for kill, throw down, which Kanéntia does not know.)

KANÉNTIA (TO TEY)

Iah iah tera’nikonhraién:tas ne akhsó’ta otsénha. Tesakahtén:ti. Was! Konneroróhkhwa!

He didn’t understand what the fire grandmother said. I’m not coming home. Get out of here! I love you!

Maybe I just need to make my message clearer, Tey thinks. She dunks Yellow Hair’s head in the water and yells, in the hopes of attracting Freydís’ attention. He claws at her. Nothing seems to be doing, so she lets him back up and swims for shore.

Nine Flintlanders grab their bows,51 push three canoes into the water, teeter into them delicately, and push off with military precision.52

Rather than give up, they prefer to board the great enemy vessel and die arms in hand, after pre-avenging their deaths. 53

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 14 All nine paddle until the canoes are within bowshot, at which point first one, then two in each boat begin fitting arrows and loosing them from their composite bows. Graceful, athletic figures, two kneeling and four standing, compress and spring juniper heartwood while stretching and snapping deer tendon and fish glue. Arrows chunk into the planks of Landherjuðar. One sticks the square-rigged sail and two more fly over the deck.

FREYDÍS

FARA! ‘GO!’

Thirty-two men lift well-worn oar handles. The first stroke is ragged. Some starboard blades almost whiff, barely scraping the top of the water, while a couple of ports slice too deeply, almost crabbing. The second is much better, the 32 oars catching water at almost the exact same instant, and slowly, almost painfully, pulling the boat forward.

There is a suppressed scream as an arrow thuds into the right shoulder of Þorbjorn, the one- eared number six. He drops his oar momentarily, then tries to push and pull it in small, forceless back-and-forths so as not to foul the others. Vikings duck heads and necks under the celtically iconic54 wooden shields which button the gunwale.

Freydís stands at the rudder, a conspicuously still target. An arrow misses her by inches.

The oars creak in near-perfect unison. The square-rigged sail pops taut. Landherjuðar opens distance between herself and the pursuing canoes. First one, then both archers in each of the three boats drop their bows and paddle to try to keep up.55 The canoes…were left behind, however many paddlers they held...it was a great mastery of combined sail and oar…56

Amidst a confused tableau of anger, confusion and shock on the riverbank, Tey sees Faithkeeper placing supplies just so in a canoe: paddles, lengths of birch bark, a pot of spruce gum.

Good man.

Faithkeeper is extending his paddle to launch his canoe. Tey, standing in the shallows, grasps the gunwale. He raises his hands—let me go by myself—but Tey smoothly spins herself inside.

Comber stops and turns back to the shore. He grabs his pipe,57 hears heavy splashes, and sees Two Rivers wade-running towards the boat. Tey’s eyes gaze mournfully at Two Rivers. As she does so, Two Rivers steps in, splitting one of the loose pieces of birch bark propping the starboard aft gunwale, and nudging the pot of spruce gum in the bow.

Tey’s steady, contemptuous stare fails to dislodge Two Rivers from the boat. Finally she presses her paddle into the Skonéhtati’s green silt and pushes off, feeling the paddle scrape discordantly. She glances backwards very slightly. Standing waist deep in the water, pipe in hand, Comber’s eyes reflect hers for the briefest moment, then shift rapidly away.

Landherjuðar pulls away from its pursuers, Freydís’ axe handle pacing their stroke. Tey and Two Rivers briskly shovel the water behind them. Faithkeeper propitiates and caresses the Skonéhtati with tobacco smoke,58 mesmerizing the river like a snake charmer. He snuffs his pipe out, cozies its uncharred tobacco into the well-worn deerhide pouch59 he wears around his neck, and smoothly slides a shipped paddle through his hands.

Tey has a sense of clarity and power for no particular reason, except perhaps that she is setting off for parts unknown on a beautiful morning.

I see you, I see everything…60

A breath of campfire smoke smells like people or love. Her bare legs rustle brittle leaves, Thora’s arm warms her shoulder. The sun is burning a hole through the red clouds.

Landherjuðar shadows what will be called the Verrazano Narrows. Her square sail ripples and billows. Three canoes turn back. The last, containing two men and one woman, continues to follow, but at a greater and greater distance.

Freydís stands in the stern, her hand on the rudder, balancing the fear and exhaustion of her rowers with each tap of her axe handle.

FREYDÍS (MURMURING)

A large black dog reaches land’s end, barking madly.61

* * *

An arrow whisks into the water 120 yards behind the rescue party’s canoe. Faithkeeper, sitting in the stern, pans quickly backward from the faint, distant outline of the ghost ship Landherjuðar. Rings expand from the wound in the water. Tey, in the bow, then Two Rivers, just behind her, turn to look behind the canoe at intervals. A moment passes. Another arrow slips into the waves.

FAITHKEEPER (TO TEY)

Display the gift62 and the pipe63 to the south, khe'kén:'a ‘my younger sister’ ‘girl’.

Why do I always get the...

Tey extends the blade of her paddle backwards, towards Faithkeeper’s right hand; take it. His fingertips fall into the grooves which wear has lined in its blade. She reaches to her left and right, pauses, lifts her body on her arms, turns it 90 degrees, so she’s facing right, then repeats the process, so she’s facing Faithkeeper.

I‘m such a better shot than Two Rivers. SO MUCH BETTER...not that that‘s...

Faithkeeper ships his paddle and wrestles a large, convex juniper and rawhide shield over the stern. He lashes it to the gunwale.

Tey‘s hands brush the tender, frayed feathers gilding the pipe‘s mouth. Once they shone bright yellow, green and white.64 Now they flicker only under a friendly sun. Tey presses herself up, pauses to balance, then locks her legs. Her arms lift and straighten until her pose is parade- ground straight, albeit precariously maintained in a shifting, slipping canoe.

...saying anything, dude can‘t hit a longhouse from the inside...

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 17 Above Tey’s right shoulder is a ball of flickering, warm black gold. The late morning sun refracts off the turkey feathers.65 Her right hand balances a three foot long copper66 pipe. Her message to the oncoming boats is: we‘re peaceful; take our gift, friend.

...waste of sternocleidomastoid motherfucker...

Faithkeeper enjoys the sensation of the straight, whole paddle sliding smoothly through the water. He peers after the last spot he can see of Landherjuðar. The big toe of each of Tey’s feet clutches a juniper rib of the boat.

Two Rivers levers the birch bark canoe forward on bending white pine, stabbing the frothing resistance, pushing off and pivoting. The low morning sun springs moistness on his cheek and flashes off the ripples.

Gorgeous morning to fish, Faithkeeper thinks. The jagged and distantly intoxicating scent of tobacco flows out of his fingertips. His muscles are just burning through his skin, ropy and sinewy compared to Two Rivers’ fine definition.

The smoke of Faithkeeper’s breath chugs past him in a rhythm ramping up with the splashing and sucking of his blade. He remembers his big ginger dog jumping onto the ledge67 he shares with his wife68 after their children69 have already jumped onto it. The children giggle when the dog barks, and vice versa.70

Two Rivers and Faithkeeper slow their rhythm, lengthening their strokes to get out of oxygen debt while losing as little speed as possible.

A canoe from the Shorakapok71 ‘Spuyten Duyvil‘ ‚ ‘Spitting Devil Creek‘ glides out past a dagger of green, its spruce gum crosshatching an advertisement of danger as flagrant as a rattlesnake‘s rattle. Three more piraguas72 pull in behind them, one twice the size of the rest. All four diminish from profiles to head-on views.

Landherjuðar sinks into the mist. Two strong men pull the canoe against the water, muscles shifting rhythmically from one spot of peak definition to the next while a woman balances

FAITHKEEPER

Half a touch faster. How many arrows do we have, khe'kén:'a ‘? 73

The sky is baby blue above and white blue in the distance, each color with its own flock of trotting, fleece-backed, blue-bellied cumulonimbus.

TEY

Ia‘iá’k niwáhsen tánon tékeni ohwísta ne ki ronón:kwe oskén:rha.

Sixty.74 Plus a couple of the red people’s funky metal ones.

Far away, where the water meets the sky, they must blend together, blue with blue, woven like a sweetgrass rope, pulling the world behind…

Two Rivers ships his paddle, reaches quickly for a áhsikwe‘ ‘spear‘ and jams it into the water with impressive quickness. He angles it and lifts, revealing a wriggling and impaled salmon,75 which he cleanses from the spear, whacks against the gunwale, and tosses behind him. Faithkeeper eyes him coldly.

Way to keep your head in the game, brother.

Two Rivers picks up the stroke.

A pause and a gust of warm southern breeze pushes a scent towards Faithkeeper of freshly sweating clean76 skin mixed with bear grease and ochre. Two Rivers went for a swim earlier, oiled his hair, then painted his face, and is now sweating hard for the first time since then,

TEY

What the fuck are Mahicans doing this far south? Aren‘t we still at peace?77

Not to remind you we don‘t want to start a war, my dear uncle. 78 Probably best not to put all our lives at greaer risk, not that I have much use for mine. All other things being equal...

Tey, holding up peace symbols in both arms, is the picture of fawn-eyed innocence to Faithkeeper.

Ironically enough.

There is a brief waft of warm cornbread from the east bank. Not a house fire, but a cooking fire.

FAITHKEEPER (SOUNDING BORED)

String your bows.

* * *

Wahón:nise ’Long ago’

A tear of sweat crests Tey’s right eyelid, wades through her eyelashes and leaps. Fire explodes in her eye. She whirls and walks away, stung.

What are you doing, Comber, hanging out by the west palisade? Checking for rot? Posing?

A breath of warm breeze turns the sweat on her face pleasantly cool. The air is full of embers.

You’re showing off your new puma tattoo79 to the three quarter moon, that’s what you’re doing. Show off. Idiot. Show off.

TEY

Boring, you thought it was boring. What do you need with a dance?

“I’m waiting for you. I want to be alone with you. I love you. I’ve always loved you, I always…”

Comber looks up, unsurprised, as if she leaves the Hanundáyo ‘Strawberry Thanksgiving’80 dance to talk to him and make a spectacle of herself every day.

COMBER

Broken rattle.

He gestures towards his bare right knee. The worn, curled leather of an old deer rattle lies on the lush grass below it.

TEY

And you felt lopsided.

COMBER

Exactly.

Lopsided. Don’t you hate that?

Below the smoky turtle on the lintel of the Longhouse It’s Been Always Even’s silhouette etches moonlight. She’s holding a baby. No. Her thumb is pushing inwards towards her fingers, pushing fingerprints and a rim into clay.81

Fifty yards away, a group of 100 or so sit mostly arm in arm in a semicircle around the fire, many holding or petting children or dogs, who look notably content. They have the look of an extended family gathered round a campfire, which they are.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 21 The oldest sit in front, the youngest in the back (other than children under ten or so, who sit with their mothers).82 A few, most of them young, are still eating strawberries, baked clams, roasted venison, succotash, plums and peaches from large ceramic bowls.

This people [in the area of present-day New York] were more beautiful and better- dressed than any we met on the entire voyage… Their aspect is sweet and smooth in the manner of the ancients; reminiscent of classic statues.83 The women are as beautiful and well-formed, genteel, elegant, of graceful aspect…84

Faithkeeper’s long, feline body, nude except for a damascened deerhide, worked with varied patterns,85 seems quietly possessed. His mouth is slightly open and working, as if playing an instrument.

Conversation floats towards them:

…no, I wasn’t saying that at all. I was saying you should at least think about talking with Kariistówe about where to dig the new latrine…

…when the Canarsie invited us down, you know,

…no, you don’t NEED to—you don’t NEED…

… to Werpoes…you know…

The moon is a spot of grey in Comber’s deep brown iris. His left deltoid muscle twitches. Strawberries dashed with maple syrup gleam faintly from bowls.

...énska… Wickquasgeck. Hen, hen…

’…in the first battle with the Wickquasgeck. Yeah, yeah…’

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 22 …ne khe’khén:’a Karónkowa…Karónkowa Tawístawis, iah iah Karónkowa A’nó:wara te. Sa’nikónhraien:tas ken? Rononhá:’a ne ro’nisténha akohskére ne khe’khén:’a ne sewa’nisténha Tawístawis…ohsi:na ne kí:ken, hen.

’…Big Sky’s younger sister…Snipe Big Sky, not Turtle Blue Sky. You understand? The Snipe Clan Mother’s younger sister’s boyfriend’s uncle…with the leg. Yeah.’

…iehnekí:ra onen'ta'ón:we…

’…she took hemlock86…’

Tey dances the two steps between Comber and herself, sweeps up the deer rattle and kneels around his shin. He looks a little shocked. She is mortified to feel her fingers graze his calf.

… two enormous pumas, with eyes burning like green fire…87

She gazes up at him, feeling a rush of warmth and smiling broadly.

TEY

Yup. It’s busted.

COMBER

Coulda…

He extends his hand and grasps hers firmly. She rises without moving either foot, almost brushing his leg. They look steadily into each other’s eyes for a full half a second.

COMBER

…told ya that.

You did.

They’re both smiling.

TEY

Thought maybe I could fix you.

Comber lets out a brief snort of resigned, cynical laughter.

COMBER

Good luck.

The embery air is deliciously familiar. Blue clouds coast below the moon.

TEY

Never know until you try.

* * *

An arrow pierces the water 100 yards behind Faithkeeper.

Manhattan has receded and flattened, revealing more cleared farmland88 and village palisades. It rests half a mile away, across a broad ribbon of flecked and stippled navy. Home is receding into the mist with Mount Foxtail.89 To the north, the same flinty blue ribbon extends a very long way, into a misty wall of forest below blue green mountains.

FAITHKEEPER

Ó:nen ká:ti ska’nikón:ra tewá:ton táhnon teiethinonhwará:ton ne…

Three people in one small boat, far from shore on such a wide estuary, seem lonely and vulnerable. They’re in one of the wider cracks of Brother Turtle’s carapace.

FAITHKEEPER

…Onkweshón:’a, Ionkhi’nisténha Ohóntsia, Ohneka’shón:’a…

People, Mother Earth, the Waters…

TEY

What are the Mahicans yelling?

FAITHKEEPER

Mohawk.91 92 ’Ronón:kwe Sewakárien’ 93‘Man-eater.’ That’s what they call us.

Two Rivers is a little thrilled by the spectacular view. Faithkeeper only has eyes for the Mahican boats. Tey thinks her world is a bubble which will soon be burst, again, by flint.

The relative peace releases the faint cinnamon smell of flowers turning towards the morning sun. Tey‘s grim expression defies the suggestion that it’s a lovely morning to be out on the Skonéhtati. Two goldfinches94 do not, however, twittering, and manically rising, stalling and diving as if they think themselves immortal, or know they aren’t.

TEY (MURMURING) Niáwen Hanochenókeh. ‘Thank you, Beneficial Spirits.’95

An arrow pierces the water eighty yards behind Faithkeeper.

You’re so beautiful it hurts my soul…

Beautiful? I suppose she is, though she doesn’t want to be—or so, at any rate, she tells herself. At first glance tall (for her time: 5’6”) and athletic, her unusually long and narrow face presents pleasant, open features in an elegant frame. Delicate lips make her not particularly large almond-shaped eyes and long straight nose soulful.

* * *

Wahón:nise ’Long ago’

Mount Foxtail centers the horizon. Tey is walking along Wickquasgeck Trail,96 ‘Broadway’ which leads to Werpoes, 97 on the southwestern shore of what will be called Kalck Hoek98 ‘Chalk Hook’, then the Collect Pond. The center of the town is about 25 feet below the present-day intersection of Duane and Broadway.99

Bright leaves in the very dark brown humus bring to mind a trashed party. Tey’s bare, calloused foot treads on one bright red and two bleeding pink sugar maple leaves, pressing them for an instant flat to the ground. Relieved of the pressure when her foot lifts, they spring back incompletely, slightly broken and sullied. Tey looks alert yet calm, her resting expression as usual a little contemptuous. She rocks from one side to the other in a rhythm that seems off, as if she has a bad back or is afraid of falling. Shining with sweat, the muscles and tendons in her neck stand out in high relief below a big brown fur cape. Behind her, at what will become Broadway and Worth, is the Kanien’kéhaka Oskenón:ton Kanónhses ’Deer Clan Longhouse’, a glorified wetu100, really, home to the handful of Deer who survived the Big Raid.

Every footstep brings the past coasting forward: a maple leaf she looked at when she was about four, which she tore in an effort to understand what and how and why it was; a breathless, giggling, wrestling match with Thoráhkwaneken, just over there, between the two big oaks and the bent fir, the pair of fiercely protective cardinals that nested in the big plum tree for as long as she could remember. They must live a long time…or maybe there were different pairs.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 26 Watching Faithkeeper’s strikingly quick heel as he led her away on her first real hunting expedition, desperately nervous that she wouldn’t have the cast to kill a rabbit. Singing the sun down with the whole clan 101 “harmonizing marvelously well.”102 Crackling fires and storytelling, listening to “The Dogs Who Saved their Master” while watching the moon behind a veil of smoke. The dogs always seemed to enjoy that one.

Tey turns right, pushing through the bushes which line the beaten Wickquasgeck Trail. Thorns tear lightly at her calves as she wonders why she can never find the path which leads from the trail to the Kanien’kéha A’no:’wára Kanónhses ’Turtle Clan Longhouse’.

Every single time…through the thickest, densest thorns… Deer. Shit.

The longhouse is near the present day intersection of Greenwich and Chambers Streets in lower Manhattan. It is a kind of immigrant suburb one quarter of a mile southwest of the Munsee Lenape Canarsie town of Werpoes.

Two Rivers whispers smoke to race the dust motes to the sky, an oval of powder blue in the center of his room. Deer hide and juniper shelves line two walls, elm bark two others. The dormant hearth reveals the stratigraphy of downtown Manhattan: sickly green silt over coarse red clay sand, with spots of sticky cream clay. Two strong hands filled with small scars caress the three foot long pipe while a wind ticks and rattles the elm bark.

Red ochre dyed hair falls in two small, disorderly cascades over the shaved sides and back of Two Rivers’ head, amidst four strings of deerhide-thonged quahog beads and six turkey feathers. They frame a face half a handsome man’s, half a hawk’s. He wears two long, triangular copper earrings103 and a necklace, which, with its half moon of polished bones, is ornament with a nod towards armor.104 Tattoos on his shoulders and arms try to conjure wings but do not quite succeed. Two four inch wide, whelk-encrusted deerskin shoulder straps cross at his chest, where they hold a scabbard containing a flint blade bound to a bone handle. Two rabbitskin pouches ride his hips. His deerskin breechclout105 is dark blue, his moccasins and leggings off- white.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 27 The deer hide partition of the room presses inward, and Tey slides through. She’s carrying a deer. Her ability to walk composedly while carrying a deer heavier than she is impresses. She pauses to let the shock register on Two Rivers.

TEY

You left this at my ledge.106

She heaves it, with a rolling thud, onto the floor. The deer’s eyes loll upward, its neck lissome, a beautiful thing which passed.

TWO RIVERS (EXPRESSIONLESS)

Couldn’t have been because I wanted to marry you.

TEY (HALF-SMILING)

No.

TWO RIVERS

Cause then I’d be all dressed up.

Two Rivers’ copper earrings sparkle. Precisely drawn clay-white diamonds frame his eyes in an ocean of red cinnabar.107 108

TWO RIVERS

Mind if I ask why?

TEY

I don’t love you.

TWO RIVERS (SMILING)109

Two Rivers and Tey stare at each other. Two Rivers moves half a step closer. He extends his right hand, palm up. Tey looks at it for two seconds, neither moving away nor extending her own hand. For a moment they’re a handsome couple.

Tey smiles.

TEY

Not that I...

TWO RIVERS

Anyways, I have Tewár:athon ‘lacrosse’ practice.

TEY

Playing the Bears this week.

TWO RIVERS

Not the least bit tempted?

TEY

If I said I was you’d try again.

TWO RIVERS

And if you weren’t you’d be gone by now…

Tey turns on her heel and walks out.

TWO RIVERS (POIGNANTLY, TO THE SWAYING PARTITION)

…unless you were just trying to make me feel better.

Tey lets her eyes drift downward, where for a moment they meet Two Rivers. She edges her left foot a half inch left in the hope it may help balance her a little less precariously. Every stroke she bends her knees slightly and leans a few inches forward.

TEY (MOSTLY TO HERSELF)

I’m sorry.

Two Rivers expression twists towards incredulity.

Did you just say, I’m sorry? Are you out of your fucking mind?

Tey looks back at him coldly. A creeping red muscular soreness is creeping into her arms from trying to hold the pipe and cape as far from her body as possible.

Yeah? What are you looking at?

Her eyes linger on Two Rivers.

When you asked me to marry you, my aunt and everyone else said, what luck, you’ll marry rotiiáne, what a beautiful couple. And I didn’t feel like arguing with everyone for days, so I just carried the deer back so everyone would say, what an aónha ‘bitch’, and you and everyone else would leave me alone. And that’s what they did, so it worked perfectly. Except, other things being equal, I didn’t want to make you look bad. So, yes, I’m sorry.

A glimmer of a smile meets the descending tear of Two Rivers’ white makeup.

CURRENTS (MOSTLY TO HIMSELF)

Hey, I don’t need your help to look bad.

TWO RIVERS (TO TEY, BRISKLY)

So everything’s exchanged?

FAITHKEEPER

Skittish fir trees hold hands and balance delicately down the nearest bank almost to the water.

TEY

Comber gave me a deer. My aunt gave wood to his mother. His mother hasn’t decided whether to give my aunt cornbread…

Tey pauses, coloring.

… or I guess she has decided, at this point…probably… so I’ve heard…so I don’t think it’s ah…happening.

Yeah, so I‘m not good enough for his mom...

Two Rivers smirks and averts his eyes.

...which is only ‘cause I‘m common as deer shit. As we are all so painfully...

Faithkeeper, in the stern, notices the sun catch the black paint below Tey‘s left eye, and the frayed ends of her deerskin leggings. Cool blotches of dark beige show they‘re half-soaked.

Two Rivers and Faithkeeper dig deeper, churning foam to the surface, while trying to keep the same stroke rate. Muscles dance to the chunking, sucking sound of two paddles digging into, then pulling out of, the estuary. On the east bank, two dozen people sit in an oval before plates heaped with steaming food.

Probably roasted trout, corn bread and succotash.

Hickory milk. They probably made some hickory milk.

FAITHKEEPER

Tey, you know where all the arrows are, right?

TEY

I’d hate to make relations with the Mahicans worse.

About as diplomatically as I can put...

FAITHKEEPER

Niáwen, khe'kén:'a. ‘Thank you, my younger sister.’ ‘Good point, young lady.’111 No one wants to make relations with the Mahicans worse. The question is, what should we do, given that relations with the Mahicans are not good? Since it seems clear this group of Mahicans will not honor our request for a truce, we‘ll see if we can outrun them. If not, we‘ll start shooting.

TEY (TO FAITHKEEPER)

Niáwen, rake'níha ‘Thank you, my father.’ ‘Good idea, sir.’112 But plans like that are what start wars.

FAITHKEEPER

Niáwen, khe'kén:'a ‘You’re absolutely right about that, my younger sister.‘ ‘You got it, girl.‘ And letting them get any nearer without running first and then shooting second if we can‘t outrn them makes tomorrow less likely to arrive for us. And for our daughter.

TEY (TO FAITHKEEPER)

FAITHKEEPER

Niáwen, khe'kén:'a ‘You’re correct, my younger sister. I don’t. There‘s a chance, but not a good one, and I can‘t advise taking it at the risk of our lives and of our daughter‘s life. We asked for a truce. They didn’t grant it. Race a mile. Niáwen, khe'kén:'a.

Tey throws down the cape and the pipe,114 spins and sits down so quickly it‘s more like a sudden, about-facing fall, stretches forward for a paddle, and joins the stroke after waiting half a second for it to come round.

The lip of the far bank dips to provide a view of something like a bucolic idyll. Three neat Sinsink115 villages116 divide a patchwork of well-tended fields. Half-cloaked women117 prune and wander while their children trot, perhaps while playing Tewár:athon ‘lacrosse’. Wetu bump up on the east bank. Though varying considerably in size, they are all dome shaped, and consist of both an inner and outer wooden frame, with bark and moss in between. As it is still early fall, the insulating moss is largely gone, and the covering consists mostly of thin strips of chestnut bark, overlapped carefully to make the wetu rain-tight. Above the fire which burns constantly except in hot weather is a single hole at the wetu‘s apex.

Dig-pull-dig-pull-dig-pull-dig-pull-switch-dig-pull-dig-pull-dig-pull-dig-pull. As before, but now with three people at a faster rhythm, with more precise timing, muscles straining. The blades hit the water, pull through it, and exit in almost perfect synchrony, painting the stern with whitewater.

Sweat glistens on three heaving backs.

An arrow pierces the water 50 feet behind them.

Kheien'okón:'a ‘Hey kids.‘ Twenty feet closer is the edge of my range,118 and fifty closer is the beginning of his. Maybe. When I tell you to, slow down smoothly and catch your breaths until you‘re in my range, then stroke like hell to keep us out of his range for as long as you can.

Faithkeeper chucks his paddle down, hoists himself up by his hands, lifts his legs, and turns to face backward, then reaches forward and raises a bow in his left hand, an arrow in his right. The river greets him with a leaping, sparkling trout dead center of the fading “V“ of the wake.

FAITHKEEPER (MUTTERING)

Dajóji ‘Panther West Wind,’119 we thank you for all...we thank you for all.

Tey reaches behind her to grab his, better, paddle, and ships hers. Faithkeeper enjoys the comfortable, familiar feel of his bow handle. His fingers run up and down the central shaft, slipping over the smooth, gentle arc of the juniper on the belly and the semi-translucent fish glue on the back. Carefully separated strands of deer hamstring tendon lie frozen and locked in the fish glue. He remembers how delicately, how patiently, he had teased them apart. Faithkeeper tugs lightly at the rawhide string, feeling his creation arc and tense.

Useful spirit, arrow-deliverer.

Clouds are rushing across the sky, running from Sister Moon.

FAITHKEEPER

Okay, relax and stroke smoothly while they gain.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 34 Tey and Two Rivers draw in breath deeply while the dance of their back muscles becomes less frenetic. Tey’s cheeks fade. Red ovals radiating from a spot of crimson dissolve to oblong patches of maroon.

TWO RIVERS

Look, I love kheién:'a 'our daughter' as much as anyone, but...I think we have an obligation to the Turtles...and to the Deer...

Faithkeeper grasps a turkey vulture-fletched juniper arrow at its base between his thumbpad and the outside of his index finger.120 He hooks four fingers on the bowstring and grimaces while pulling the arrow back to his ear, the remains of a cinnabar stripe on his cheek crinkling. Tilting his bow to 45 degrees, he lines up the string, shaft and bow to his right eye until the distance between bow and string is, from his perspective, twice the size of the flint point.121 He plucks the string like a harp.

The string whips, the arrow whirs.122 Faithkeeper pushes his left arm forward a few inches as he follows through, as if to will the arrow towards its target.

FAITHKEEPER

SATÍTA RIIÉN:‘A! ‘GET IN THERE, SON!‘

Faithkeeper’s heart sinks as he sees his target lop its whirling paddles and turn precisely 30 degrees to starboard a moment after his arrow flies.

Maritime veteran tough fucking nut to crack motherfuckers...

TEY (TO CURRENTS)

Kanéntia loves us. We’ll rescue her or die trying.123

Two Rivers smiles.

Really think I mind spending my life on a hopeless effort to save kheién:'a 'my daughter' ?

Tey casts a brief, hard look backward. I don‘t know, do I?

TWO RIVERS

Well I don‘t, whatever you think of me. I mind spending rake’níha ‘my father’s’ ‘our captain’s’ life.

Under Faithkeeper’s cascading second arrow, the Mahican boat angles precisely right this time, moving crisply and decisively off the spot the arrow will land. The first piragua grows dangerously nearer.

CURRENTS

And I can‘t stand the thought of spending yours. Of course.

Tey smiles.

* * *

Tobacco bathes the striated, bright pink skin which covers most of Faithkeeper’s face. Must have been one hell of a roasting. A miserable cold drizzle is gradually inflating into a pelting rain.

FAITHKEEPER

Sa’nistén’a iakenté:ri kén:tho ne níse?

Your mom know you’re here?

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 36 Thoráhkwaneken, a pretty fourteen year old, works up into a sprint, his javelin pumping over his shoulder, pivots, plants, arches his back and catapults the javelin towards a white pine ring, which hangs from an elm, fixed by the rain. The javelin ticks the ring, spinning it.

TEY

Iah iah teiakkwé:ni nistén’a.

She can’t know.

Faithkeeper pulls sharply at his pipe three times, exhaling puffs of smoke from the corner of his mouth. The smoke drifts over a sheet of birch bark which doesn’t quite cover a dozen bows124 of different sizes and types.

TEY

Her skull lies in pieces, scattered on the ground, prey to coyotes and wolves.125

He twists the pipe 180 degrees and continues smoking it upside down.

TEY

Hence my attendance.

THORÁHKWANEKEN

…pussy ass piece of shit…

FAITHKEEPER

Skinny points,126 nocking speed and accuracy make a small bow deadly. Just stay out of naval fights. On the river cast is always crucial. Of course.

A wind ruffles a few stray hairs in Faithkeeper‘s scalplock. He glances back to see Tey and Two Rivers at the limits of exhaustion, trying to keep their stroke from fraying.

FAITHKEEPER

Are we in your range yet, khe‘kén:'a?

TEY (GASPING)

Hen. Kwah í:kehre’.

Yup. I guess.

FAITHKEEPER (SMILING VERY SLIGHTLY)

Hen ken katón swáh í:sehre’ ken?

Is it yup or do you guess?

TEY

Ón:wa hen.

Now it‘s yup.

FAITHKEEPER

Three more strokes while catching your breath, then take one shot each. Tey: aim five feet to the left and three feet behind where you’d normally lead; Two Rivers, five feet to the right and five feet behind.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 38 Faithkeeper feels the bowstring catch in the arrow’s notch, then snap through. Tey and Two Rivers ship their paddles, and spin counterclockwise on their hands. Tey picks up her bow and two arrows in a continuous motion. Two Rivers fumbles for his bow.

TEY

Rahktsí‘a ‘Older brother’ ‘Bro’.

She flips an arrow towards him.

An arrow arcs towards them, looking like it will hit Faithkeeper in the chest. At the last moment it whirs into the water 20 feet in front of him. Tey stands, her legs unscissoring, and fits fletch to string.

She sees Faithkeeper‘s eye searching behind her for Two Rivers. It narrows with impatience. A diving osprey angles towards the water, swinging its talons forward, then back. The backward pendulum of the talons hits the water, spume flies, the osprey has a heavy moment, flaps hard, and pulls a three pound wriggling, shining rainbow trout from the waves, then ascends, regripping the shining fish to aim its head into the wind.

Finally Tey sees Faithkeeper‘s right elbow rise.

She echoes him almost perfectly as he draws his bowstring, stills his right eye, and pauses for one second.

Ripple. Ripple. Ripple.

Little gusting breeze; maybe aim just ahead and four feet right.

If it gusts once while the arrow is in the air.

I promise you tobacco, Gáoh127...

Tey watches Faithkeeper‘s string launch his arrow just as she feels her bow unwind.

Ooooh baby. Oooh honey. Ooooh baby, oooh.

Two arrows fly in perfect formation, five feet apart, and land where the boat would have been had it either continued course or turned 45 degrees to the right. But it is turning 45 degrees to the left. Two Rivers‘s arrow, slicing badly, eventually lands 20 yards wide and ten feet short.

Tey cannot resist a brief look backward at Two Rivers.

You really suck, you know that?

Faithkeeper watches an arrow fall out of the blue mountains and pierce water ten feet to the south and five feet to the west of the stern. Five more arrows raise minispumes a second later in a twenty five foot circumference. The closest is five feet short.

FAITHKEEPER

Three strokes forward, two back, till I say pause.

Tey and Two Rivers take three strokes forward, then dig their paddles to stop, the turbulent water teaming heavily around the blades. Awkwardly and reluctantly, the boat reverses itself. Adrenaline widens eyes. Sweat drips from hair.

FAITHKEEPER

Pause.

Another volley arcs downward.

One arrow sticks in the juniper shield Faithkeeper lashed to the gunwale.

Tey and Two Rivers turn their paddles in the water to keep the boat stationary.

An arrow arcs from Faithkeeper’s bow, streaking the water two feet behind the other boat.

FAITHKEEPER

Wiggle.

Every third stroke and fifth stroke, Comber and Tey try to halt the cascading water with their flat-backed paddles and lever the boat the other way.

FAITHKEEPER

A bit more back.

In the distance, the three piraguas pull within fifty yards of the six man canoe.

Faithkeeper fits another arrow, and draws his bowstring.

FAITHKEEPER

A lot more forth.

Take a shot each. Tey, aim five feet to the right and five feet behind where you’d normally lead it; Two Rivers, ten feet to the left and five feet behind.

Faithkeeper’s bow reverberates. Tey’s bowstring rolls off calloused fingertips. She pushes her hip slightly right, willing it. Niáwen ‘Thank you’ Gáoh, oh, baby oh....

An arrow whirs straight towards one of Two Rivers’ slightly dreaded braids.

* * *

32 oars enter the water as one, or very nearly, pull forward and lever Landherjuðar for a moment higher in the water. Words in a language alternately sibilant and guttural pop, fade and rumble in Kanéntia’s ears.

The red people clearly have taken her to serve as an interpreter, as they took Girly Hair. A five year old would have had the sense to keep her mouth shut.

Idiot. IDIOT.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 41 Under Girly Hair’s sidelong glance, Kanéntia’s middle and index fingers walk towards the gunwale, hop-dive over her transversely laid thumb, and feather kick away: Any plans to blow this popsicle stand, brother?

Sitting calmly with his back against the gunwale, fetters crossed, Messamott’s ensuing smile is slow, deep and genuine. He spreads both hands, palms to the sky. Hell no.

KANÉNTIA (TO MESSAMOTT, AS SHE INTENDS TO SOUND, IN LENAPE)

Sweet.

They survey each other, bound in C-fetters, on an alien vessel three hundred yards from shore. They both know they may or may not have understood each other, but are glad they have earned and awarded style points.

We may be kidnap victims with no hope of ever returning home, but we’re pretty cool.

The western Banks are perpendicular rocky Cliffs of an immense Height, Covered with Woods at the Top, which from the great Height of the Cliff seem like Shrubs.128

Kanéntia looks carefully at the straight part in Girly Hair’s long hair.

A boy about Kanéntia’s age scoops water out of the bottom of the boat. He crouches, shoveling a shallow redware bowl into the exact center and lowest point of the hull, then lifts it, dripping, above a wooden bucket, and empties the contents.129

MESSAMOTT

I may be able to get your fetters off. Now that you mention it.

KANÉNTIA

That’d be nice.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 42 In fact this was communicated more by gesture than halting Lenape. After herding Kanéntia into a position that blocks Kol’s eyes, Messamott hits his fist against the cotter pin securing Kanéntia’s fetters.

She nods, and does the same to his fetters. Messamott stops her hand.

KANÉNTIA

Quatsch? ‘Why?’

But the foreign father doesn’t hear, or doesn’t understand her question. Or refuses to say.

MESSAMOTT

You want me to knock your fetters off, or don’t you?

KANÉNTIA

If you think I’ll make it overboard.

Kanéntia smiles.

KANÉNTIA

Alive.

Messamott smiles.

MESSAMOTT

Alive the best.

The broad, genuine smile makes Kanéntia’s heart go out to the foreign father. She guesstimates how long it might take for Messamott to knock the cotter pin from her fetters.

MESSAMOTT

How good a swimmer are you?

Nothing special.

MESSAMOTT

I wish I would have tried to swim for it when I was as near home as you are.

KANÉNTIA

Think you would have made it?

MESSAMOTT (SMILING)

Not a chance.

The sun has a warm moment as it escapes from a cloud. The wind curls the wave into white…a lattice like a spider web, each interstice manfully carrying an enormous drop of dew…slender threads carrying more than they can bear, but the waves keep curling into white…What is white?…and the spider walks along the wavetops, trapping souls…

As her eyelids flutter downward, Kanéntia imagines Freydís returning to her den, and her vixen shape, smoothly circling her nose over her tail, sighing and going to sleep. Iakén:naras ´She’s a witch’ She has to be a witch… Surely anyone who would abandon their family and home to search for pieces of metal is a witch.130

The thought of home makes Kanéntia want to cry for a moment. What she’d give to have her old problems back…what she’d give to feel anonymous when she wanted to shine…

…sitting around the fire…broiled fish, blueberries and cornbread…can’t think like that…

She imagines herself giving her report to the Turtle general assembly on the witch UFO.

* * *

Snow tumbles silently from the ledge of the chimney, disappearing above the fire. Thoráhkwaneken wipes crumbs of cornbread from the corner of his mouth, Faithkeeper’s arm across his shoulders. Concentric rings of the Turtle clan circle outward from the clan mother,

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 44 It’s Been Always Even, who watches Kanéntia attentively, her asymmetrical braids and assorted eagle and flicker feathers nodding occasional assent.

…to see things never heard of nor even dreamed, as we saw—it was so amazing I don’t know how to describe it, Kanéntia is saying.

Wahón:nise’…’Long ago’…

Well, not really so long ago, only a few days…but Wahón:nise’ has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think…

Wahón:nise’…the biggest and most beautiful ship entered the mouth of the Skonéhtati. Otgon ‘the piercing spirit’131 was in the ship’s captain, a shape-shifting witch vixen.

But where did…

The snow is thick and fleecy and strangely neutral in temperature. It yields appreciably, smoothing and flattening under the callouses of her feet like the thickest, softest bear fleece. The landscape of snow flows and changes constantly, forming hillocks and little valleys, which soon flatten. There’s a small pool of deep blue sunk into the snow nearby. People, including her husband…didn’t know I had a husband…crowd her towards it. She doesn’t want to go. Leaning backwards, she tries to straighten her legs, but her feet keep sliding forward.

It’s a hole, a deep blue hole.

Kanéntia falls into the sky.

The ocean is terribly far below. She can’t control herself in the air, spinning and tumbling, slowly turning backwards. Sky and sea trade places.

Rahktsí:’a Ákweks ‘Brother Bald Eagle’ is soaring on gently rippling wings. The passing sun gilds his brown tail feathers. His angry eyes turn to watch her fall. Then he wheels and dives, sliding gracefully through the wind.

She sees his body glide beneath her—within reach…there!—and grabs a fistful of feathers with her left hand, pulls herself towards him, feels her right hand catch delicate brittleness, and

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 45 squeezes him between her arms and legs, reaching deep into his thick coat of feathers to slide her fingers between their calami. Her feet rise to clear his wings. The wind shrieks steadily as they circle slowly downward to another, equally vast world of blue.

A huge boulder rises from the ocean below, which becomes the shell of Rahktsí:’a A'nó:wara ‘Brother Turtle’. He looks up with patient eyes to Brother Bald Eagle, who wheels towards him.

Rahktsí:’a Tawí:ne ‘Brother Otter’ surfaces, slick and shining, with a ball of mud in his paws. He places it carefully on Turtle’s back, and slaps it into place, working it with busy paws and whiskered snout into a flat disk. Then he slips back into the water and reappears with another mud ball, which he spreads from the first.

Kanéntia touches down soft as a feather on Turtle Island, this earth. 132

* * *

In the lead Mahican canoe, the number three hears the faded murmur of the command SATE‘SHENNÍ:IOST! ‘AIM WELL!‘ arrive across the water. He sees a tall, cream-colored figure shoot an arrow which rises into the sun as a shorter, shimmering person behind him shoots another. His view is framed by the deerskin-legged V of an archer in his own boat.

There is a crack of juniper planking amidships. The arrow’s fletch catches one broken edge of juniper, then pulls out, downwards. Sparkling water spurts upward.

Another arrow strips a gaping wound in the birch bark on the port side of the bow, before sticking at a sharp angle in one of the ribs.

Five seconds later, a third sails thirty yards over his head and two feet short of the next boat.

An arrow full of threat, whirring and hissing, heads for Tey’s right shoulder as her blade catches. She pivots around her spinal cord as she pulls through the water, pulling her right shoulder down the moment the arrow would have hit it. The arrow hisses harmlessly into the water.

Faithkeeper chucks his bow down and picks up his splitting paddle.

FAITHKEEPER

100 strokes, full power.

An arrow slaps down halfway between Tey and Two Rivers, holing the hull just above its starboard waterline. A glint of water sparkles on birchbark. The quicksilver worms downward, towards the center of the boat.

Three faces look drawn and blank.

Faithkeeper grabs a shallow bowl, bails once, strokes six times, then bails again. Tey looks over her shoulder.

Another arrow lands twenty feet behind them.

Seen from above, one boat moves briskly away from another, which is surrounded by three piraguas.

FAITHKEEPER

Iah iah oná:ke tekásewe. Kwah í:kehre'.

The canoe is dead in the water. I think.

Sinuous and foreshortened, Landherjuðar rises from the water as they round the bend.

There’s something nearer than Landherjuðar, a dark, twitching mass.

É:so’ tekahsinón:ton akówanen. Iah iah oná:ke tekénska néktsi é:so.

’A big centipede. Not one canoe but many.’

Motherfucker.

FAITHKEEPER

Tsatoríshen niá:wen.

Stop please, you two.

FAITHKEEPER (TO TEY)

Sánere kówa.

You were excellent.

Tappan villages, with their regular alternation of palisaded centers and adjacent cleared farmland dot the

gently rising Country, Hill behind a Hill, of fruitful Vegetation at the back of which lie the White-plains.133

FAITHKEEPER (TO CURRENTS)

More fun than a ledgefull of toothless agokwa,134 huh, brother?

TWO RIVERS

At first I was a little nervous, you know. But after a while all I felt was total, complete and senseless terror, culminating in the moment the arrow flew over my head, when I pissed myself.

FAITHKEEPER

You were the last one, then.

TEY (RUEFULLY)

Yup.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 48 The water sparkles randomly. A light south breeze carrying the sweet hint of maple sap toys with glittering leaves. Faithkeeper stands in the canoe slowly and carefully, and looks north. The dark, twitching mass resolves into five or six semi-distinct canoes.

FAITHKEEPER (TO CURRENTS)

Well. A life worth having is worth risking.

Tey narrows her eyes.

FAITHKEEPER

Though maybe I’ve hit you with that one before.

CURRENTS (TO TEY)

Why don’t you let us rescue her by ourselves? You wouldn’t have to put up with me.

TEY

Because death is better than abandoning someone you love.

Two Rivers eyes meet Tey’s.

Did you mean? Nah.

Tey stops to bail the boat quickly, then watches the water slither its way inside. She reaches into a pretty, neatly woven red and white sweetgrass and elmbark bag by her right knee, feels hopefully with groping fingers, and latches onto a slightly grainy lump. It’s ticne, a cake made from four parts double-charred red corn mixed with one part maple sugar.

FAITHKEEPER

Besides, I’ve faced longer odds before.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 49 Tey lifts the lump she’s extracted from the bag to her mouth. The crust resists her teeth, and the maple sugar grates on her teeth slightly. Grainy, distinctly grainy, Tey thinks as her teeth sink into it.

FAITHKEEPER

Énska.

’Once.’

Under the crust it’s bland and starchy but comforting. Then the invigorating sweetness of the maple sugar carries the goodness over the top. The next bite is even better.

FAITHKEEPER

Tékeni kwah í:kehre’. Sakáhtet ó:nwa hahskwahoton.

’Maybe twice. Let’s double back to the big rock.’

It’s dry, it’s cool, it’s not that new, it’s slightly over-charred, and it could use just a touch more maple sugar. Just a bit. But she’s so hungry it’s amazingly good. For a second Tey imagines herself blissfully wolfing down 20 more ticne cakes exactly like this one.135

There are six boats to the north: two big, four medium sized.

Then one day, during the moon when raspberries ripen as Ahweyoh was grinding corn…136

FAITHKEEPER

We’re going to try to hide. But if they see us and stop, we’ll present the pipe and the gift from the shore.

Tey smiles at Faithkeeper.

Niáwen ‘thanks’ for at least making a token effort to avoid getting our asses…

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 50 They double back south, rounding a bend in the estuary. Tey sees a one man canoe heading towards them from the south, its bow and stern kissing the waves a little longer than other boats.

A longish scaplock descends from a spot a bit high and to the left of the crown of the paddler’s head. Horizontal black and red stripes cross the face. The hull’s bark is familiar as an old friend’s cape.

She knows and yet is still shocked that the detailed deltoid muscles and slightly lurching paddling style are Comber’s.

Faithkeeper and Two Rivers are already slowing down. Two Rivers is about to say, “You weak- ass motherfucker.” Tey watches the water between them shrink very, very slowly.

Wá:sewe ó:nwa. Néktsi…

’We’ve got to go. Now. But.’

Words like “Konneroróhkhwa kówa.” “’I love you so much.’” will clink.

So when he coasts alongside, as Two Rivers, surprisingly silent, holds out an arm with curling fingers, and Comber’s eyes meet hers, she simply says Rahktsí:’a quietly, half-smiling.

He throws an arm out which she grasps in both hands. The pattern of raised veins feeding his bicep is so familiar to her lips it’s comforting.

TWO RIVERS

You’ve missed all the fun…

He glances north, towards the swarm of boats.

…though not for long. Whatcha bring me for keeping your girl warm for you?

Tey feels Comber’s body heat suffusing her own as the sun ducks back and forth from the clouds.

For doing a piss poor job of it, you mean?

CURRENTS

She wanted to keep her distance. Inexplicably.

TEY

Hen. Kats tekróri.

Yes.137 Come here, I want to talk to you.

COMBER

Onöñda’gega wa:k.

I’m going to Onöñda’gega.138

TEY

You are tired of living.139

COMBER (TO TEY)

I saw myself going there in a dream.140 Besides, peace with the Onöñda’gega was your idea.

TEY

Niáwen. My idea, actually, was to save lives, not waste another one. We all know dying for no good reason is a good thing. I was just wondering if we might have fewer people doing it. If that didn’t rock the boat too much.

Niáwen. Says the girl on the death ride.

TEY (TO COMBER)

Why don’t you go ask the Teugéga Kanien’kehá:ka Oskenón:ton ‘Mohawk River Kanien’kehá:ka Deer Clan’ for help instead?

Tey smiles cheerfully.

You could scare up a Tewár:athon ‘lacrosse’ game.

COMBER (TO TEY)

Nice try at sweetening the pot.

Tey sees Comber with new eyes. He wants to be a big man, a memorable man, and he’s gambling his life he can pull this off. Pretty heroic, as heroic things go.

COMBER

They’d ask me to send you back to them.

And pretty fucking selfish. What about your mother and sisters and daughters? What about me?

TEY

But we’re doing so well at Manahatta Kawehnó:ke' ’Manhattan Island’! Other than getting almost completely wiped out by the Onöñda’gega, anyway.

Comber manages a glimmer of a smile.

In my dream, you gave me the katkowa ‘wampum’ 141 you’ve been gathering and beading. 142 143

Tey digs into the bag which is now stored aft starboard and hands Two Rivers a handful of partly worked quahog purple and whelk white beads.

COMBER

These are…great. I was hoping…

TEY

Sorry.

Tey’s hands return to the cream colored deerskin bag. She wants to say his embassy to the Onöñda’gega was her dream, her skatkowa ‘strings of [white whelk] wampum’ was her dream…

She snakes out first one, then two, then three skatkowat. They’re lovely, really beautiful. Each bead has been polished into a perfect, shining globe.

Comber extends a rippling arm and envelops them slowly with a veiny hand.

TEY

But…I saw myself presenting these to Onöñda’gega…

Tey does not let go.

COMBER

You love these? Love them as much as you want.144

Comber’s hand relaxes. Tey forces her fingers to yield their grip.

Though I guess I’ll be walking the long path in any case…

Comber takes Tey’s prize possession, her special thing, from her in silence. There would have been a big ceremony where everyone would have agreed to live in peace, and she would have been acknowledged as a great ambassador. And as a craftswoman. What a great craftswoman! What beautiful skatkowat ! Now…now…well…

There’s an awkward silence, then Comber and Tey embrace again.

You’re so warm. Couldn’t we just stay like this, just to stay warm…for a minute longer? How about a few seconds?

Tey feels intensely tired. She hasn’t slept in two days, and has hardly eaten.

A vision dashes across her fading eyes: she and Comber asleep under a pile of furs, sleeping for days…

An ice dagger inserts itself between her and Comber as they separate, which grows into the air surrounding her. The warmth which is Comber’s body slips away.

Her dream showed her presenting the belt. Her. Not Comber. It’s her belt…

The rest of Tey’s life seems so dank, suddenly. As she watches Comber embrace Two Rivers and Faithkeeper, she feels the hopeless, dark, cold other world sinking in. She feels like the dried up leaf beside her, melting into the cold water. No Comber, no belt. Perfect.

And the Skonéhtati is groaning and burbling and whispering and…encouraging her…or no, not at all, actually…it’s just telling a story or…repeating bits and pieces of the stories she’s heard…

RAKHTSI:’A SKONÉHTATI KAHÓNTA ’BROTHER SKONÉHTATI RIVER’

Tey stares at the face of the waters.

FAITHKEEPER

Might want to be talking less about staying alive and doing more about it.

COMBER

Niáwen. But if you’re staying I’m leaving. Best not keep all the eggs in one basket.

Selfish bastard. Comber puts his arm around Two Rivers, smiling warmly.

COMBER

If Tey dies, I’ll kill you.

TWO RIVERS (ALSO SMILING)

If Tey dies, I’ll already be dead.

COMBER

If Tey dies and you’re already dead, I’ll find you wherever you are and kill you again.

TWO RIVERS (SMILING MORE BROADLY)

Wouldn’t hurt.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 56 Sunset turns into fire. Fire gives birth to elm bark. Elm bark curls and crackles around a corpse, as if someone had carefully scattered bits of it in a semicircle for some kind of effect.

Funny how he ended up in the same position—half curled, on his side—that he always slept in.

Well, he’ll wake up, won’t he? Into a different world, with miles to walk. Why can’t he take me with him? I don’t want to keep stumbling around…I want him by my side. I want to see the scar behind his left ear...

Comber inserts his paddle in the ripples, wounds the water and pulls himself past the wound. Tey’s hopes pull away from her. He’s vanishing now, leaving little suction cups with his paddle. The mist is swallowing him shade by shade.

Well, this is you. Maybe the last moment you have with the last person you love, and you don’t say a goddamn thing. Well, at least you’re always pathetic in the same way.

TEY

Rakhtsi:’a!

Comber dabs another whirlpool on the face of the river with his paddle. Then he looks back, coasting along in complete silence with his paddle held horizontally and gently, his expression half-surprised and supercilious.

TEY

Wa:s kowa, kahskere.

’Bon voyage, my love.’

Comber stares at Tey for one second. She thinks she sees something ineffably tender in his eyes.

COMBER

Wa:s kowa, kahskere tánon’ niáwen.

Tey begins to open her mouth, but Comber has already turned away, his paddle reaching for purchase in the water.

TEY

Io. ‘You’re welcome.’

Comber takes one stroke, then pauses. His canoe scuds slowly across the water while he remains frozen in his followthrough. He pulls his canoe smoothly through the water while the first taste of sunset smudges the western water. Cicadas drown his deep, steady breaths.

From a hollow in the pines, the rescue party watch Comber paddle into shore four hundred yards north and drag his canoe out of sight.

The approaching boats’ 24 blades move with a crisp, military rhythm. They’re pretty as a very frightening picture, down to a partial coordination of a red and black stripe motif in their face and body paint. Their scalplocks are so short their heads look shaved.

Onöñda’gega war party. Fuck me.

Tey feels giddy with terror for a moment, her mind spinning onto visions of exactly how they will flay her. Her last view of Comber is of his sprinting left calf as it slips behind hot pink sugar maple leaves.

* * *

Wahón:nise ’Long ago’

A trapezoid of velveteen blue glows above the horizon, framed by a thick canopy of ghostly blue green, a sea of toasted gold pine needles, and two ragged trunks. Sticky pockets of resin coast through the humid dawn breeze.

Kanéntia walks with three other children a year or two older after their morning swim. Her normal expression of low-key astonishment—as if she cannot quite believe in the world she is

KANÉNTIA

Iah iah teioron:ia ne karónha…

’I’ve never seen the sky so blue…’

Kanéntia kicks herself, hard, for sounding so fatuous, for destroying everything. She meant to say she had never seen that particular shade of almost iridescent dark blue, but it sounded as if she had never been so happy as she is at this moment, walking with Thoráhkwaneken’s arm noticeably warm around her in the cool morning in the woods before sunrise.

A thock recurs rhythmically, at first ear perhaps a tree chopping sound, but finishing in a clean click. Kanéntia watches Faithkeeper sitting cross legged with a core of blue black flint in his right hand, a future point146 in his left. He’s near the beginning of the process, hitting the future point with loose, casual strokes, roughing it into a triangular shape. Each thock knocks a leaf off the flint, leaving a smooth, gleaming bulb of concussion in the rock.

Thoráhkwaneken rearranges his arm so that it pulls across and grips Kanéntia’s stomach snugly, then raises it so that she can feel his fingertips between her ribs. It surprises her that they can walk comfortably like this, one body almost, moving in step.

The horizontal shelf of a kind of three sided, loosely bound wooden cage or grill veers into view as they turn, on which one rainbow trout and one weakfish lie. The succulent smell of fresh fish is cut slightly by the alien evergreen of hot spruce gum. Tey nudges the trout with a forked stick. Its skin is just starting to curl at the edges.

Deerhide covered, tightly woven baskets lie around, occasionally revealing chestnuts inside. Two gutted deer hang from a tree, spinning slowly. Her ribs feel suddenly more compressed as Thoráhkwaneken’s fingers lift off the gaps between them. Tey is running her fingers through

Kanéntia sees a miniature blue-black pine tree, glinting softly. Bulbs of concussion intersect. At one side are the smallest bulbs, running from top to bottom, which form a serrated edge. A hammer stone presses the other side under blanched, calloused fingertips, until a tiny, smoothly rounded sliver of debitage ’microflake’ ‘shatter’ falls.148

KANÉNTIA

Why do you use your thumb some times to pressure flake, and your first two fingers at other times?

FAITHKEEPER

Usually I start the edge with my thumb forward on the hammer stone, then go two fingers forward to fine tune it. But you have to read the fault lines in the rock. Every time I knap a point I do it a little differently. 149

Tey dips a small deerhide cloth into the hot spruce gum, then uses it to stroke a piece of birchbark which Kanéntia stretches before them. They both press it over the holed birch bark of the canoe, and hold it still. Tey paints the edges of the patch with more spruce gum.

Heavy, sudden raindrops begin to knock down leaves.

* * *

FREYDÍS

Our new translator says there’s gold a couple of days north.

Kanéntia raises her head, and feels it pound with her pulse. The speckled grandmother is gibbering something across the water in her whisper pop language.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 60 Helgi and Finnbogi, captains of the knarr ‘beamy merchant ship’ Naglfarr, stand in its bow, ten feet from Landherjuðar’s stern. Finnbogi is a little viking doll, down to his neatly trimmed beard. Helgi is a brown bear with a helmet. They have the body language of an old, comfortable couple.

FINNBOGI

The little screamer’s full of shit.

The left side of Kanéntia’s lip is swollen and tastes acrid. She’s very thirsty, lying on her back on something hard and strangely flat. Running her fingers over it, it feels like polished stone, with grooves. It’s satisfying somehow, this smoothness. A ring-necked gull fights to have a closer look, then lets the wind pull him away.

Thanks Rakhtsí’a Kwiii ‘Brother Sea Gull’ 150 for finding me now that I need help.

FREYDÍS

Maybe. But if we don’t go we’ll never know.

FINNBOGI

And if we do, we’re likelier to get killed than rich.

FREYDÍS

We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fill the ship with gold or die trying. And you would seriously contemplate not going? On the grounds that it’s dangerous? Óforvitinn smámennir151 ‘You chickenshit little men!’ You’re worse than Þorvald and my brother Leif!

FINNBOGI

Beats the hell out of being big badass dead men.

FREYDÍS

Fé deyr, frændr deyr,

sjalfr deyr it sama.

En einn veit ek þat aldri deyr :

doemr dauðr hverrn.

Cattle die, family die.

You will also die, yourself.

One thing I know, though, never dies:

judgmemt rendered on the dead.152

The speckled grandmother is very pretty, in a surreal kind of way, Kanéntia thinks. Red and yellow hair, ice blue eyes, skin the color of cured deer hide. And spots!

FREYDÍS

Well, seeing as you’re so fysir að lifir153 ‘eager to live’…

Freydís turns, opens the sea chest nearest the rudder, and rummages through clothes.

FINNBOGI

Let me thank you most kindly for all your help.…

Freydís grabs a wool something or other and throws it at Finnbogi.

FREYDÍS

Many laugh, almost all of them on Landherjuðar.

FINNBOGI (WITH STRAINED DIGNITY)

I’ll be sure to tell Leif where you went.

FREYDÍS

You’re going there yourself.

FINNBOGI

And why would I want to do a fool thing like that?

FREYDÍS

Because I’ll kill you if you don’t. And that goes for the rest of you!

Freydís’ eyes scan the length of Naglfarr challengingly.

Þætti mér sem ek skylda betr berjast en einnhverr yðvar.154

‘Seems to me I can fight better than any of you.’

Kanéntia watches in fascination at a discussion she can’t understand. Clearly, the red grandmother is having an argument with the big man and the little man—are they agokwa? It could be important, because no one has argued with the speckled grandmother until now. On the other hand, they could be arguing about whether it’s better to overnight here or 200 yards further on.

In the second boat, Hrafn, a balding troll, gets up slowly and deliberately from his sea chest. He walks to Naglfarr’s stern, and crosses onto Landherjuðar’s prow, stumbling slightly.

Hrafn has begun walking down the nave of Landherjuðar. Freydís walks forward to meet him. Oarsmen in the stern, including Kol, spin to watch the action. All eyes switch between Hrafn and Freydís.

MESSAMOTT (WHILE HIS EYES SWITCH BETWEEN FREYDÍS AND HRAFN )

This may be the best chance you’ll have to swim for it. Yes or no, tell me quick.

Adrenaline bursts through Kanéntia’s system. She wonders if she would be making a terrible mistake, and realizes she could be doing so for two entirely different reasons: the foreign father could be intentionally betraying her, or unintentionally miscalculating.

Why would he risk his own life to free her and leave himself behind, with the redmen all too likely to take out some kind of revenge on him? It doesn’t make any sense.

KANÉNTIA

Please.

Freydís does not move a muscle as Hrafn walks down the nave and stops twenty five feet in front of her.

Freydís looks up at him calmly and pleasantly, smiling slightly. Their eyes lock, his furious, hers calm.

Hrafn takes a step towards Freydís.

HRAFN

You’re leading us to our deaths.

Freydís bends, then stands, now holding a bow and arrow. Hrafn rushes towards Freydís as she nocks an arrow.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 64 After pulling Kanéntia down in a way so as to suggest—hopefully--they’re taking a seat to enjoy the festivities, Messamott pulls a smooth quartzite alluvial cobble from under a coiled line, then slams it into the thin end of the cotter pin which joins the two halves of Kanéntia’s C-fetters.

Surely someone’s heard that clink, Kanéntia thinks. But no head has turned.

She hopes so very desperately.

Messamott slams the rock into the cotter pin again, then a third time.

Fifteen feet away, Hrafn begins his sword’s backswing, dropping the blade behind his back until it points straight down.

Messamott slams the cotter pin again. It shoots loose, taking the lower C-fetter with it.

I’m going to die, Kanéntia thinks. Everyone continues to watch Hrafn and Freydís.

Kanéntia picks up the cobble, and realizes it will be too heavy for her to swing. Messamott gestures urgently away from the boat: go now.

Hrafn swings his sword forward and down with all his strength, the blade catching the sun as it arcs towards Freydís’ left clavicle.

Kanéntia bellies and slides towards the gunwale at an accelerating pace. She expects at any moment a yank on her arm or neck, or an arrow or sword through her body.

Trembling, Kanéntia slips up and over the gunwale. Messamott watches her left side slide like a knife into the water, as she grabs a last breath.

KANÉNTIA

Niáwen é:so', Heno. Sheiateré:'a kenorónhise kówa.

‘Many thanks, Heno. Your granddaughter loves you very much.’

Kanéntia pulls the water past herself and descends.

Hrafn’s leg partly gives way as his sword descends. Freydís dodges to her right. Hrafn’s sword grazes Freydís’ shoulder. She pushes him on his followthrough. Hrafn stumbles and falls over the gunwale.

In one smooth, practiced motion, Freydís’ right forefinger sweeps up the underside of her axe blade from its scabbard.

Messamott tries to knock the cotter pin back into Kanéntia’s fetters.

Freydís pulls the axe handle back and over her right shoulder while plumbing the blade. She lets her right hand slip down to meet her left and arches her back, then sinks the glittering edge three inches deep into Hrafn’s neck.

FREYDÍS (STILL SMILING PLEASANTLY)

Eða þu að þin. Or you to yours.

Freydís puts her foot on Hrafn’s back and wrenches her axe free of his body.

With one hard kick, she launches the corpse face first into the ocean.

Þorbrand and Þorsteinn are doubled over laughing, tears rolling down their cheeks. Freydís holds her axe blade to her eye with her left, examining it closely.

FREYDÍS (SCREAMING)

SAUERRINN155 ‘SHITHEAD’ NOTCHED MY EDGE! FUCK!

Freydís calms herself almost instantly, remounts the sea chest and begins projecting her voice.

FREYDÍS

We should be able to portage to Onoalákonena tomorrow, where there may be gold. I’ll take care of the navigation, you take care of yourselves. Our

This raises a good laugh.

Wonder if pine will do for the trunnels? 156

We have to stay out of bowshot from the shore. We always sleep on the ship. Shields stay up. When we have to refit or gather provisions, we do so in force. The only reason we haven’t lost more men is extreme caution and damn good luck. Now is not the time to lose the caution.

If I were them, I wouldn’t give me a chance to fight, talk, or rally my friends. Spear into back, done…. Lucky I’m not them.

Dagr’s upp kominn. Dynja hana fjaðrar.

Mál’s vílmogum at vinna erfiði

‘Day rises. Her feathers rustle.

Time’s whore begins her work.’

.* * *

Freydís is reaching around in the darkness…cozy and dark under the sod. Clink clink clink goes the smithy to the east.

Pouring out the embers from the ember cup, lighting the tinder…why is she always the one to do this? Why doesn’t anyone else ever do a fucking thing?

* * *

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 67 Seen from the river, the rescue party fronts a gap-toothed hill of basalt boulders, which rise from scattered outliers near the beach to a height of fifty feet or so against the sheer, nearly vertical basalt wall of what is now called the New Jersey Palisades.

Faithkeeper holds his smoking pipe between his thumb and forefinger, his arm slightly extended, as if frozen in the act of handing it to a ghost before him. He draws on it and eyes the plug, which has been reduced to a glowing white skeleton of tobacco. His back feels the warmth of the sun reflecting off the basalt. Just behind his left and right shoulders are larger and smaller boulders, respectively. Beyond and slightly in front of the one on the left, Tey displays the turkey feather cape. Her left hand holds one corner under her chin, her right arm, completely extended, holds the other. Two Rivers, to Faithkeeper’s right, holds a three inch square tapestry of white katkowa over his heart.

FAITHKEEPER

We’re Kanien’kehá:ka Turtles and Deer, acting ambassadors on a mercy mission, who’d like to present you, our Onöñda’gega brothers, with this cape as a token of our friendship, and invite you to share in smoking our pipe. The katkowa belt contains my word.157

The Onöñda’gegas’ faces are painted mostly in variations of red and black vertical stripes. They move with a threatening precision and grace as they choose and grasp weapons, which they do as matter-of-factly as if they were about to kill and butcher a herd of trapped deer. A giant with ungathered hair, a sun and moon tattooed on his chest and a face painted red over black walks towards them at a stately pace.

TANGLED

Very pleased to meet you as well, brothers—sister. I thank you in the name of the Onöñda’gega Snipe,

Tey turns aside in disgust. Tangled eyes her carefully and pauses.

…and applaud your wisdom in leaving the war spear buried that we have so often reddened with Kanien’kehá:ka blood.158

Tangled takes the cape as Tey’s hands expel it. They remain open. He examines it methodically, using the side of his left hand to check the alignment of the turkey feather quills, and his right hand to pull another sheaf into checking position.

TANGLED (CONTINUING TO EXAMINE THE CAPE)

Ambassadors, eh? The path of friendship between the Onöñda’gega and Kanien’kehá:ka is as you know—got some old black vulture feathers mixed up here in this— is as you know overgrown from disuse—sadly, those of us inclined toward peace may think…

Tangled pulls a feather from the cape, with a very soft but painful pop.

…if indeed it was ever much traveled, which my great grandmothers assure me it was not…

Tangled brushes his index finger against one feather to check its spread, age, and fullness. The man has done nothing but sew turkey feather capes, apparently.

…while the martial route between our two nations is always, it seems, freshly trodden, well-marked and popular.

But I’m inclined to make a certain, limited effort to clear away some of the brush and obstacles which block the peaceful path.

FAITHKEEPER

Niáwen, rakhtsí’a. ‘How right you are to do that, my brother.’

You’re not really going to be a statesman, are you? You? Tangled? No way. No fucking way.

Tangled presents a single, black vulture feather to the rescue party as a kind of gigantic index finger, a visual expression of the words, “here’s the thing.”

Out of my profound desire for peace, I’ll let you give us your boat, clothes and possessions, then let you wend your way to Onöñda’gega and ask the assembly for their approval of your safe passage through our territory. If they find your story checks out, well then we’ll give all your stuff back to you.

Of course fucking not.

The rescue party, in varied states of repose which flirt with the languid, take these words as a signal to look actively bored.

Your fucking territory! The hell it’s your fucking territory.

Tey shakes her head in disgust, as if to say, how painful it must be for you to have to live your life as such a complete twat.

TEY

TANGLED

I’ll do worse than that.

TEY

If you think killing us is worse than dishonoring us, you don’t know what honor is.

Tangled lets the cape fall to the ground ostentatiously; I wash my hands of it, and of you.160

* * *

The sun is a warm yellow vortex above Kanéntia’s right shoulder as she swims. A catfish scumbles through the mud-clouded floor. Kanéntia steepens her angle of descent, then kicks back. She is vertical and almost stationary, treading water gently in reverse to keep herself below the surface. Her head bends back. She flutters very slowly upwards and breaks into the sky mouth first. Expelling air quickly, she pulls in another breath, pauses, tilts her head forward and scans the surface quickly. Three hundred yards away, Landherjuðar’s ship’s boat rows forward, twenty degrees off perfect foreshortening. She turns towards the shore, swims161 towards a half-submerged boulder, and surfaces, exhaling desperately.

Landherjuðar’s ship’s boat passes the boulder in the direction she had been swimming. When they’re two hundred yards past, Kanéntia slips out of the water and onto the bank.

A runner’s steady breaths162 disturb an old-growth forest.163 They slow as Kanéntia trots, walks, then stands, leaning on her knees. She half folds herself and half collapses under a pin oak. The sun is low, casting the long, twisted shadows of branches across Kanéntia’s body.

…well, safe’s an exaggeration…

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 71 A root digs into her right hip. Kanéntia wants to move to a more comfortable position but can’t muster the will. Her fingertips rest on damp, dirty yellow leaves. She scrapes one leaf very gently, feeling the grains of very dark brown humus wedge under her fingernails.

Sleep becomes the most beautiful person she has ever seen, luring her onward:

C’mon just close your eyes for a second. Just a moment. You need…

"Little Sister," said the tallest of the men, "We heard you call our name. Often have we watched you from above as you worked without complaining. We have seen how you always give niáwen for the fruits of the earth and for the good rain which we send.164

* * *

Two Rivers looks disgusted in turn, but, it would seem, with Tey.

Very considerate of you, getting us all killed.

But then you always were so considerate.

Faithkeeper raises an eyebrow and the ghost of a sardonic smile. However that may be, what’s the most stylish way to die? The rescue party’s eyes try to meet Onöñda’gega eyes calmly while shooting back and forth to and from their peripheries. They’re stepping backward with a forced air of calm, then slipping between the two boulders and the ridge.

The rescue party stands in an excellent defensive position, sandwiched between two smaller and one larger basalt boulder.

There is enough room in the openings between them for a man to squeeze through. But it will be difficult for him to do so while effectively wielding a weapon.

TANGLED (TO THE RESCUE PARTY)

You sure you’ve hidden yourselves well enough? I can still see a tiny little bit of flesh that’s not cowering behind rocks.

Depends on whether any three of you have the balls for a fair fight.

TANGLED

Might any one of you be so endowed? If so I will wager your safe passage on the outcome of a duel, 165 if you will wager your lives in return. We may safely, I trust, rule out the lovely young lady.

All three of the rescue party step forward.

FAITHKEEPER (TO TEY AND TWO RIVERS)

I believe this is my privilege, if you’ll be so kind as to allow it.

TEY

Iah tetkaiíeri, rake’nonhá:’a

‘It’s not right, uncle’…

’I:’I katón Dekanawitah, kwah i’kéhre’

Me, or even Two Rivers, maybe…

Tey wants to tell Faithkeeper that he’s too important to risk, without letting him see that she thinks he’s too old for duels.

FAITHKEEPER (SMILING)

Iah “rakh’sóhta”?

Faithkeeper steps forward after stooping to pick up the turkey feather cape, and casting a graceful, affectionate glance of niáwen, separated by a moment, to Tey and Two Rivers. He hands the turkey feather cape to Tangled, who nods briefly before casting one more brief glance askance at its faulty workmanship.

Tangled picks through the armful of spears which lie scattered on the ground. He chucks one towards Faithkeeper.

TANGLED

Give you a sporting chance…

Blue stands obstinately in front of him.

BLUE

You promised me the next fight, rake’níha.

TANGLED

So I did, ri’kén:’a ‘my younger brother’, but I’m obligated by honor and tradition to fight the enemy rotiiáne ‘lord’ when he’s responding to my challenge.

BLUE

Niáwen. With all respect, uncle, I believe the first obligation trumps the second.

Tey watches Blue closely. Twenty or so, he is a few inches shorter than Two Rivers and fifteen pounds heavier than Faithkeeper. He has a striking combination of gentle, deep brown eyes and finely defined muscles. Tattoo snakes curl around each pectoral muscle, a tattoo palisade girds his waist. Blue paint covers his forehead and cheeks and lines the ridge of his nose.

Tangled steps back, slowly and reluctantly, his lips moving as the right argument, the necessary means of persuasion, escape his tongue.

FAITHKEEPER (TO BLUE)

Spears and shields, or what’s your pleasure?

BLUE

Spears and shields suit me perfectly, seeing as you’re too old and small to fight bare-handed.

FAITHKEEPER

If spears frighten you, wrestling suits me fine. Or would you prefer witty repartee?

Two Rivers laughs. There are a few suppressed chuckles among the Onöñda’gega.

BLUE (WITH A FRIENDLY SMILE)

Toothless old men are too good at that for me.

FAITHKEEPER (SMILING)

Niáwen, ontiarasé:’a.

How right you are, coz.

Blue ambles towards the beached boats of the Onöñda’gega, and lifts his spear and shield from the third one.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 75 Faithkeeper grabs a spear from the edge of the rescue party’s cargo pile and holds it point first to his eye, checking the bend. He drops it, then picks up another one, evaluates it, and then picks up the first again.

BLUE

Yeah, that’ll make all the difference.

Faithkeeper smiles pleasantly, picks up a five foot by two foot shield166 with his left hand, and wiggles the rawhide shoulder strap over his right shoulder.

He turns and walks towards Blue, who hops from one foot to another, then on both at once, either loosening himself up, trying to intimidate Faithkeeper, or both.

FAITHKEEPER (TO TANGLED)

Are we sure there’s any point in losing at least one man to an insubstantial disagreement?

Blue continues to move around, stretching his shoulders and flexing.

TANGLED

All you have to do is to give us your possessions and go to Onöñda’gega.

TEY

If we do that khekén:’a ‘my little sister’ dies.

You simple motherfucker.

TANGLED

FAITHKEEPER

You mean atenró:sera ‘friendship’.

TANGLED

Niáwen. Two names for the same thing.

FAITHKEEPER

Niáwen.

Faithkeeper steps forward, fairly slowly and very deliberately.

Blue dances forward, feinting with his spear, moving in all directions.

Faithkeeper keeps his arm cocked and his spear still.

The tattooed skins of each man draw attention for being targets. They’re disputing which will be the hunter, and which the deer.

Both personify deadly force. Blue’s big muscles and Faithkeeper’s ropy ones seem far stronger than will be necessary to drive those flint edges deep enough to kill. They look, in fact, skillful and strong enough to kill with a single blow from the butt ends of their spears, though this is probably an illusion.

A three inch long, blue-black, faintly glinting Onöñda’gega escarpment point will hole a hide at least once, and from that hole life will run out.

They’re five feet apart. Blue circles Faithkeeper counterclockwise, away from the point of his spear. Faithkeeper turns steadily, continually squaring his shield to him.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 77 What’s happened to him? At the beginning of the journey, he’d been vital if a little grizzled-- more than a match for almost anyone. But after a couple of days and a couple of skirmishes, he’s…old. He’s gone from lean to gaunt. Well, that’s aging, isn’t it? You lose your resilience, you lose your bounce.

I’m gonna puke.

Tey watches his sad, wise, doomed eyes.

Come on, COME ON! Don’t just stand there. Feint, move, turn. Don’t just be a stationary target. COME THE FUCK ON!

Faithkeeper’s eyes and skin have lost their shine, while Blue glows with youth from head to foot. Tey’s hand stings. She notices the popped blister on the center of the palm. Punk ass motherfucker.

It’s not that we’re all going to die. That’s okay. That’s fucking fine. Yeah, who the fuck cares about that? It’s that we threw our lives away on a no-chance gamble, like complete fools. Total morons. That’s what’s going to kill him isn’t it? That’s what made him grow old. He feels responsible for all our deaths. He blew it. He blew it and he knows it.

Faithkeeper’s many scars catch the morning sun. A mild breeze which has been drying one side of Tey’s nose vanishes.

Blue takes two doubletime skips in the same counterclockwise direction while changing his grip from overhand to sidearm. Yelling to wake the dead, he pushes off his right foot and sweeps his spear arm wide, trying to get his point past the left edge of Faithkeeper’s shield and into his kidney. Faithkeeper lifts his left elbow to catch the point of the spear on his shield, steps right and sweeps his own spear arm wide. Slightly off balance, Blue can’t turn counterclockwise quickly enough to block the tip of Faithkeeper’s spear point with the left edge of his own shield. It punctures Blue’s skin just under the floating rib with a barely audible pop.

He was playing possum. Of course.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 78 Blue lets out a stifled gasp.167 Faithkeeper’s point is completely hidden in the skin of Blue’s abdomen, the muscles of both etched by effort. Blue lets his spear fall. Faithkeeper punches the spear forward two inches…

Why’d he do that?

…before levering it left and right in a split second and pulling the spear back. It drips the purest red.

Tey looks at the beautiful boy, carefully suppressing every sound as blood flows out of his abdomen in a pulsing rivulet. He sits down carefully.

Poor bastard. Probably never even…

Faithkeeper spins, leaps and sprints back towards the three boulders, pursued by a smattering of javelins and arrows.

First Tey, then Two Rivers, duck behind the right and left basalt boulders, respectively. Faithkeeper scrambles through the center, breathing hard, as a wild javelin shatters five feet over his head.

There is a pause while the Onöñda’gega await orders and the rescue party consolidate, slipping furtive hands into the cargo pile to move its weapons to safety after hard looks for incoming missiles.

Tangled kneels beside Blue. He examines the wound intently. Goodleaf touches his shoulder, and gestures towards the rescue party, but Tangled does not seem to listen to him. Reluctantly, it seems, Goodleaf rises and walks towards the rest of the Onöñda’gega, who gather around him.

Twenty five Onöñda’gega arrange themselves in three unequal groups. Eight archers reconnoiter promising boulders. They’re picturesque, holding arrows up to gauge their lines of fire while posed fetchingly on helter skelter angles of the Giant’s Teeth, as the basalt boulders are known. Patches of red and black stripes, skin bursting with muscle and sinew, and deerhide cream dot the red and grey of the rocks.

Always pictured myself perfectly made up when…

When.

Eight men armed with both bows and spears stand ten yards away directly in front of the rescue party, while the remaining eight, similarly armed, stand left and right in groups of four. They’re silhouetted against the wrinkled blue grey, white dotted Skonéhtata.

Tey and Two Rivers catch each other’s eye as they glance inward.

FAITHKEEPER

We may—may—hold them off as long as we don’t let them pull our spears away from us. Wait until you’ve got a good target, jab and pull back immediately.

Goodleaf fits arrow to string and and pauses before loosing while the rescue party duck behind the rocks. A point shatters on the basalt behind them, about three feet above and to the left of Faithkeeper’s head.

They’ll say: what a stubborn, stupid, cold-ass bitch from hell.

Pretty honorable death, really. As deaths go.

Tey can see her aunt’s pursed lips of disapproval, as she warms to her refrain, “Well, that’s what you get for playing with the boys.”

TWO RIVERS (TO FAITHKEEPER)

What’s the plan?

FAITHKEEPER

Sell our lives dearly.168

CURRENTS

The Onöñda’gega begin to trot forward. Most hold 6-8 foot long ash or juniper spears with blue black fine-grained Onöñda’gega escarpment points. There’s a sprinkling of other fine-grained flint as well: cream, rose and brown points from what is now Flint Ridge, Ohio; one dark blue with root beer speckles from today’s Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Other points are made from inferior material: gray, rough-grained moraine flint from Butler, Pennsylvania; river cobble quartz and quartzite from all over; and one leaf-shaped piece of argillite. There are also clubs of various types, including Goodleaf’s, which is finely carved to resemble an arm holding a ball.

Blue is not moving on his spot of red, nor Tangled beside him.

Tey sees the rusty grey of the basalt boulder curving away from her. It’s about eight feet high, four feet from the ridge at its base. Her left side feels cold and exposed, her right snug and secure, protected by the rock, Two Rivers and Faithkeeper. She pulls Faithkeeper’s spear away from him while handing him hers. She steps forward, brandishing the spear Tangled gave on agreeing to a duel.

TEY (SHOUTING TOWARDS TANGLED)

IT SEEMS RAKHTSÍ:’A ‘BROTHER TANGLED’! SUFFERS FROM A MNEMONIC DISABILITY! HE CAN ONLY REMEMBER THE PROMISES HE MAKES! UNTIL IT IS TO HIS ADVANTAGE! TO FORGET THEM!169

Tangled doesn’t move. No one is impressed.

It would be better to spear left-handed but Tey doesn’t trust her left hand enough. She arches her back to press her shield against the left side of her body, for reassurance and to test the tightness of the shoulder strap. Her shield, once uncomfortably big, now seems too small. She shadow-spears, at first underhand, with the shaft held more or less like a pool cue, then overhand. She can’t get the point through the killing zone before her elbow bangs into the boulder. She tries again, this time with an exaggerated overhand motion. Forward, move left,

She crouches slightly, and pushes the spear forward quickly and loosely, watching the spearhead jab forward. Standing tall, she tries powering the spear downward at a forty five degree angle.

Switching her spear to her shield hand she pushes the shield forward rather awkwardly.

Warmed up and ready to go!

Adrenaline flows.

Now this—This!—is going to be fun…

…right up until a spear pierces your side or an arrow skewers your neck…or a club slams into your skull…

Cold rushes up from the nape of her neck. She has to fight to stop herself from trembling.

…you fall and lie dying in a pool of your own blood.

Tey smiles.

Then it won’t be so much fun.

She starts to laugh.

Yeah, sure, but right up until then…

An Onöñda’gega painted mostly black with red accents moves cautiously and deliberately within twenty yards. Letting out a yell, he sprints towards her. He carries a javelin and no shield.

He turns sideways, takes two galloping steps, and catapults the javelin at Tey. She rotates thirty degrees clockwise, squaring her shield to the javelin. With an echoing thwok, the javelin hits the shield and sticks, point deep. The thrower tails off to the left with his follow through.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 82 Tey sees another javelin thrower beginning his run-up. She slams the swaying shaft of the javelin stuck in her shield against the ridge to her left. And again. The javelin levers out. She whisks it behind her.

The Onöñda’gega goes into his two sideways galloping steps. He dodges suddenly to his left.

Tey sees an archer following through. She pushes herself to the right, behind the boulder.

Her hands spread into the gritty basalt, which feels peaceful and safe. She wishes for a moment she could sink into it.

One arrow hits the boulder to her right. Two, one about knee level, one about head height, pass through the spot she’d stood one second before.

Two Rivers draws in breath quickly. An arrow sways from Two Rivers’ shield arm.

TEY

I’m so sorry.

TWO RIVERS

Yeah, you should have taken that arrow for me.

TEY

I should have blocked it. I…I’m really…

TWO RIVERS (GASPING AND LAUGHING)

I was joking.

Another Onöñda’gega approaches. He carries a shield and spear rather than a javelin, and moves at a deliberate trot.

Three feet in front of her he comes to a dancing stop. Tey feints her spear towards his head, which turns him clockwise to block with his shield. He tries to shoot his point low, below the

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 83 edge of her shield and into her left calf. She twists left, and pushes her shield down with her left hand, catching the union of point and shaft. The spearhead deflects into the basalt. The tip snaps.

Tey half falls on her shield, trying to wrench the spear out of her opponent’s hand. But he maintains his grip and pulls his spear back. She stumbles forward half a step.

The head of the club, carved in the shape of a ball held by a hand…descending…ever so slowly. She’s trying to get out of the way, pushing on her shield, bending and stepping backwards.

* * *

…The sandstone boulder is losing its pleasant warmth. The point of her toy spear by her ear, Tey waits for the rainbow trout to come back to its home, the boulder’s shadow.

She should have left an hour ago. She should be building the dinner fire. But she wants to bring back a prize which will make up for her not building the fire. And the later it gets, the more she needs the prize.

The spear flies into the water without her having urged it. Nothing. Nothing. Not that fat feeling of trout on the end of it. Just a suddenly opaque pond surface when she needs a translucent one. And, ever so faintly, just coming into focus, a cloud of dirt the trout kicked up from the bottom as it arched and pushed away. The last taste of sunset smudges what will be called the Collect Pond. Tey crouches at what today is the intersection of Worth and Center Streets a block north of Foley Square. Cicadas drown her deep, steady breaths.

Rakhtsí:’a Kéntson, niáwen, Please, Brother Fish…. The trout looms up out of the brown, looks up at her calmly, blankly, as his mouth suctions bread crumbs from the surface of the water.

BROTHER TROUT

You’ll marry a great commander, the victor of twenty battles, handsome as a hawk and sweet as maple syrup. Now give me some more cornbread.

Óhnke í:’i? Kwentenwítha. Tkaiéri.

’Who am I? The Morning Star. That’s right.’

A beautiful boy fell in love with me and took me up into the sky with him, to protect me from another girl who loved him. And there I am looking down on me, rising in the east, before the moon, above the moon. Does the beautiful boy come to see me every night, I wonder, or am I lonely up there?

Her mom’s fingers pushing though the vines, plucking painfully…the spray of cold dew from the vine on her feet.

Iothó:re.

It’s cold.

* * *

…The deeply notched bark of the hickory before her contains, Kanéntia now understands, Rakhtsí:’a Dehotkohskáyeh ‘Brother Hickory’ ’Split Face’. She’s hoped to see him all her life, and now it’s almost an afterthought to fatigue.

He’s immensely old with skin like deeply creased bark. The ridges on his skin remind her of something.

Niáwen, Rakhtsí:’a Dehotkohskáyeh

’Thank you, Brother Hickory.’

He’s there and he’s not. She can hear the wind in the leaves hum into the Old Man’s voice. He coughs and clears his throat, but it never quite rises above a murmur…dayon, dayon.

Kanéntia unslings her deerskin pouch, pulls out a small, rouged bag, cups forest green170 powder with three fingertips, then the other three, and paints171 a stripe across her forehead,

The bed of golden pine needles with its dank whispers and musky resin is shockingly peaceful. No one exists, and the light is going out. Kanéntia curls up, grasping her knees tightly against the cold. She closes her eyes and watches the dancing golden galaxy on the inside of her eyelids.

The cold will go away if I keep watching the golden lines…

The golden lines fade. A thumb and an index finger pinch a small, lumpy disk of cornbread surfing on a rolling boil.172

* * *

Up. Tey has to get up. A hand, Faithkeeper’s hand, is pulling her arm, and she has to get up.

Scrambling, feet slipping forward and back. Nothing much broken. Nothing important, anyway. Just her nose. But she’s so tired now, so dizzy.

There is a dead man in front of her, or one badly wounded. Faithkeeper is moving back to cover the central opening.

FAITHKEEPER

Arrows!

Tey stumbles to her right, behind the boulder, and bumps into Faithkeeper, who has moved left.

Two arrows whirr through the places Tey and Two Rivers have been standing. Six others miss by feet or yards.

Two shatter against the larger, rearward boulder, passing through the spot Faithkeeper had been.

Tey pushes the spear point forward. She watches it sink into the inside of his thigh, then hears a rabbit-like scream. He stumbles backward.

TEY (TO THE ONÖÑDA’GEGA)

You may want to kill me slowly. It would give you more time to learn from me how to die like a man.173

Another spear wielder looms. He dances towards her, then throws himself down. Tey moves to her right while watching him.

CURRENTS

Arrows!

Everyone steps back behind rock as if they are a three person turtle retreating inside its shell.

Tey’s opponent springs up and charges into the gap where she had stood. Tey pushes her spear at him, but he knocks it skyward with his shield. Tey pushes into him, shield first, and reaches for her knife.

Faithkeeper moves around and behind her, and pushes forward. Their opponent stumbles backwards as Faithkeeper hops back to his original position.

Tey is covered with sweat, eyes wide with adrenaline.

Faithkeeper looks calm, if sweaty. He’s wondering how long it’s going to take for the enemy to solve the problem they’re presenting. If they try to send a man or two onto the boulder on the right, close enough to be able to shoot down at them, he or Two Rivers can probably stick their feet or calves. But if they do so while others attack at the openings, the rescue party will have to choose their deaths. Attack the men on the rocks, and get killed by the men on the ground, or vice versa.

Faithkeeper remembers his uncle crouching and cupping slipping, glittering water from what will become the Collect Pond. He’s on one knee, and one corner of his breechclout is floating in the water. He’s looking up and listening for deer, it seemed then. Now it seems more likely he was listening for enemies. Wickquasgeck. Or Onöñda’gega.

If he had any inkling…

Blood pours from Two Rivers’ left arm as he dances back and forth from one foot to the other.

No spears have glinted for a few seconds. Faithkeeper gestures Two Rivers nearer, holds his hands out to ask his forbearance, and carefully pushes the arrowhead all the way through his tricep. Pain fills Two Rivers’ eyes. Faithkeeper snaps the arrow shaft in two with precise movements, and pulls the shaft from Two Rivers’ arm as blood spurts.

Faithkeeper reaches down just as a fire-hardened point deflects off the right edge of his shield and catches his flank. It’s hardly penetrated deeply enough to stick. As Faithkeeper grasps the shaft to extract it, his eyes meet Two Rivers. They both smile.

TWO RIVERS

Watch Turtles turn into porcupines.

Two arrows arc over their heads.

FAITHKEEPER

Sorry for getting you both killed.

TEY

I wasn’t really doing much with my life anyway.

TWO RIVERS

TEY

Niáwen. And I in even better.

Three grim faces are covered with sweat and dirt, two of them flecked with blood. They look out and see no enemy within fifteen feet, and quickly hold and kiss each others’ extended arms in turn.174

FAITHKEEPER

Just as I’m beginning to grow rather fond of both of you. Atatitén:ron ‘Pity’.

TEY

Iah iah teiatatitén:ron. Atenró:sera.

Not pity. Friendship.

FAITHKEEPER

Niáwen, khekén:’a. Konneroróhkwa kówa ne rikén:’a tánon ne khekén:’a.

Indeed I do, my little sister. I love both of you, my little sister and my little brother, very much.

Faithkeeper begins to to sing his death song,175 beginning “I’ve fought well in twenty battles…” On his second verse, Two Rivers begins his, “I’ve adventured, and I’ve killed…” Tey begins to murmur “Death come quickly, I have lived….”

Twenty yards south, four boats, a six man canoe and three piraguas, beach.

* * *

Kanéntia feels the warming morning sun to her left. It filters over her skin in slippery long triangles. The corn is resilient and bouncy as she pushes it aside while planning every step around the pregnant squash which divide the ground. Bean vines grab at her fingers and elbows.

She’s soaked with the cold dew but warming. Her breath forms little clouds she is sending to the Áhsen Akhtsí:’a.

Niáwen Áhsen Akhtsí:’a ‘Thank you, my Three Sisters,’ for feeding me in the past and hiding me now…

…so this is what you’re supposed to look like.

Kanéntia crouches quickly and scratches at the ground. Below the lens of black organic humus, lies incredibly rich dark brown silt loam. Its fecundity is astonishing compared to the reddish brown clay sand she knows.

She notices a bright red root cobwebbing through the topsoil. Out of curiosity, she pulls it with all her strength, feeling the root ends tear painfully through the soil. Finally she feels it pop and is enveloped with root beer scent.

I love sassafras.

Dear sassafras:

Thank you for your beautiful smell and delicious taste. I am so sorry I tore you out by the roots. I know I should not have done that. Please accept my apologies, and my continued gratitude.

Niáwen, sheiéteréa ‘Thank you, from your granddaughter’.

She thinks for a moment of the delighted look of her dog on seeing her, of her ledge.

Going to sleep in a pile of nice clean fur, sleeping for days.

The corn stalks entwined with beans keep her from seeing more than a few feet in any direction, while the squash and squash roots keep her eyes fixed downward to avoid tripping.

Raw corn and squash aren’t so good, but raw beans are edible.

Definitely edible.

I’ll just sit down here and eat a handful. Maybe two.

Kanéntia goes through an agony of trying to avoid the snaps and crackles involved in eating beans off the vine and failing. Fear gets the upper hand after half a dozen bean pods sate the sharpest hunger pangs.

* * *

Comber walks along the portage that skirts Káhao’se ‘Shipwrecked Canoe’, telling himself to look like he belongs there. Just another Onöñda’gega, minding his own business. Night and luck might keep him from running into anyone.

I think I have a good Onöñda’gega accent.

Doubt it will pass muster, though. If I can always tell an Onöñda’gega by his accent, an Onöñda’gega will probably be able to recognize me as Kanien’kéha. Or at least as a foreigner.

Comber studies the sounds of the world as he fades his footsteps as closely as he can into the rustling wind. A chipmunk scurries. He hears the quail hen’s "lie low" cluck; then at last the "all's well" chirp.176

Comber remembers a little girl he saw once, when he was about ten. They were blackberrying and her hand was purple. When she turned the sun lit a blazon across her hair.

…Tey’s pretty enough. Strong. Very pretty, really. She’s…

His eyes pass over the procession of chestnut and walnut trees177 on both sides. The wind occasionally lifts the leaves to reveal the lighter green undersides.

And I…

I broke a rattle at a dance. If the rattle had held, all this…

The pressure between the juniper wood ribs and the top of his head rises and falls with each step. He wonders for the fourth time if it wouldn’t be worth rearranging the blanket between the two to give the top of his head both better cushioning and a quick break.

* * *

Wahón:nise ’Long ago’

The costumed band play the Kasowaóno ‘Fish Dance’ 178 while circling the dancers. It’s a wild party bursting with muscles, curves, oiled skin, minimal dress, body paint and bizarre tattoos, ornaments and hairstyles. Two singers begin another song, and all the dancers fall into and elaborate on its rhythm.

Faces flash, rattles shake. Firelight freezes dancers at different points in the same step. Good feeling settles into souls. Hearts join in the same rhythm; people fly towards each other from themselves. Tey faces Comber without trying to, and they dance their lives out to each other. Mist rises from all the dancing bodies. It is, as much as tobacco, an offering and niáwen to God.

An eternity later, birds are twittering, and the fire has a sister in the east.

* * *

Shhhhrrrrrrrlllllll, shhhhhrrrrlllll, is a mourning dove. Twootwoo twoootwooo twotwooo twootwooootweetweetweet is an indigo bunting.

Comber tweezes a hair off his chin with a clamshell,179 gathers his scalplock as neatly as he can, and looks at his spear. Its ash shaft is superbly straight. Lovely pressure flaking rings its almost perfectly oval jasper point.

Before him stands the curiously vertical, densely packed, 25 foot high180 palisade of the town of Onöñda’gega. At any moment the cry will go out announcing his arrival.181 He wonders if he should make himself more conspicuous.

Two young men wearing dirty clothes open the gate to the palisades. They’re twirling finely carved war clubs.

Mother. Fucker.

They walk forward at a leisurely pace, almost shoulder to shoulder.

* * *

The drone of the cicadas drowns out the light. The rowers are working hard, heading towards the dying fire of the setting sun. The anchor pierces the water. The woods are malign, threatening, home to a thousand cicada soldiers waiting for eyelids to drop.

The light returns. The creak of oars alternates with the half drowned splash of blades dipping into water. The vikings are on the paddle, rowing smoothly without going into oxygen debt. The rowed ship seems a single living thing, not thirty-two, and in some sense it is. Freydís, both captain and coxswain, is its heartbeat, rapping out the rhythm of the stroke with the blunt edge of her axe on the gunwale.

On the west bank, a pileated woodpecker rattles a chestnut tree with a deep resonance instantly distinguishable from other, smaller woodpeckers. Noticing Kanéntia, he takes a break, his red crest still nodding slightly. The deep, resonant strikes of its big beak on wood leave a vacuum in their absence, which draws Kanéntia’s eyes.

RAKHTSÍ:’A KARONTAKÁROKS ‘BROTHER WOODPECKER’

Énska A’nó:’wara kar, néktsi tesaráhket.

One Turtle has passed here, but none have returned.182

Kanéntia and the bird stare at each other for one second. Then he begins rattling the chestnut again.

A bend in a deer trail unwinds to reveal a palpable, warm, talisman of home. Comber is approaching two Onöñda’gega outside the palisades of village.

Kanéntia stops dead, then slinks down. A dicey meeting with the enemy doesn’t want her interruption. If things go well, it will be easy to throw her arms around Comber later. If things don’t go well, it may be better the Onöñda’gega don’t know she’s here. He’ll try to save her.

The sugar maple leaves rustle around her like a thousand bloody hearts. There is a painfully bright pink leaf directly above her, twisting. How hard will the owéra ’wind’ have to blow to tear it free? This rising gust, surely… And when the last wahta ’sugar maple’ leaf tears away, Brother Bear will climb into his tree and clamber into the next world, and give thanks for all… Somewhere far away and forward of her eyes she is hunting…look, here is her bow, and her best arrow is half-knocked and all she needs is Rakhtsí’a Oskenón:ton ’Brother Deer’. But Rakhtsí’a Oskenón:ton will never come because owera will rip the last wahta leaf off the branch, and Brother Bear will enter his tree hole and give thanks for us all…Funny the way the mud has pooled and dried on the inside of your left foot…

Thank you Heno, for all your protection in the past…

Comber stands as straight as he can.

Here goes nothing.

COMBER

My most honored Onöñda’gega Rakhtsí:’a: I’ve traveled a week to link your arms with those of your brothers

Goodleaf, the Onöñda’gega on the left from Comber’s point of view, takes a full step forward.

COMBER

…to present you with these magnificent…

Comber digs in his bag, distracted by Goodleaf. Yup, Goodleaf’s club is going back. Son of a bitch.

COMBER

…these magnificent…

Goodleaf swings his club smoothly, muscles smoothly filling. At the last possible second Comber jabs his left forearm up, so the club hits both his head and arm.

The slamming, hollow sound of impact has the feel to Comber of a pointed rebuke. WHY do you have to be such a fool… HOW many times do I have to tell you…

The leaves look dense and pretty from a few inches away, while a steady trickle runs down the inner side of his lip from his upper left canine. It’s salty, like a rock after the rain…

The fact that two men were twirling clubs might have been a clue…

GOODLEAF

…piece of shit.

The club descends again, and then a third time. After a certain hesitation, Goodleaf’s friend joins in, kicking Comber as he lies semiconscious.

* * *

Wahón:nise

How Kanéntia knows there are people nearby, lots of people, she can’t explain. It’s not a crackling of branches, it’s not a rush of leaves, but a long and steady exhalation of breath. She still feels Thoráhkwaneken’s arm across her ribs, even though it’s no longer there.

Nahóten tsónnis? ’What’s going on?’

Io, ’Well’, she answers herself, rather stupidly, It’s Been Always Even is probably breaking a corncob off its stalk in the Áhsen Akhtsí:’a fields, half a mile away…(the stalk bending stubbornly at first, then snapping, with a light spray of dew)…then rolling it off her fingers, the sheaves tickling her fingernails, as it plunges, nose first, into her basket, with a satisfying, full, dull sound.

While the turn of the deer buttons184 185 render their weird judgments on them, four or six old men are probably laughing and cursing each other by the smoky dark Turtle carved on the lintel. One of them is probably down to his breechclout. Wahiakwas and Shatekenhatie may be weaving a basket together, Wahiakwas holding the vertical strips of bark while Shatekenhatie pushes the horizontal strips through…feeling them vibrate as their grains cross. Ohsera:se might be building a weir, wading into the creek with river cobbles swaying in a deerhide blanket. Faithkeeper, certainly, is pressure flaking the last serrations on her Onöñda’gega escarpment point, glinting dully before her.

Kanéntia notices, again, Thoráhkwaneken’s fawn eyes as he looks at Tey. It’s a deep wound, but a clean one. Never really thought, well, that one was just too…. She reboards the stream of her thoughts, to try to make her forget.

Ashes, somewhere, are separating husks from corn, maybe presided over by She Makes Things Good, the Fount of All Gossip, who is continually turning the conversation, like a roast, back to her favorite topics: who is sleeping with whom, and who isn’t.

Children, somewhere are target shooting with kids’ bows, taunting the poor shots, who may decide to try their luck with their fists. Two hunters somewhere are sitting motionless as they have been sitting motionless for half an hour, only their pupils and irises moving, even their breaths slowed to a whisper. A youngest child is flying high in the air, giggling uncontrollably, then falling back into her mother’s arms. 186 Older children are laughing at mom’s impersonation of someone they don’t know. A group, arm in arm, is gathered before a fire somewhere to hear a story, the story teller leaping about, shaking with terror, laughing and screaming, the audience’s eyes boring holes through him. Yes? Yes? What next? Tewatokwas might be trickling a little trail, just a little trail, of maple syrup from her red elm bark jug while she walks up a hill.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’…old Kawen with matching bracelets and anklets of black feathers, looking backwards at a False Face. A man carrying a canoe blindfolded. And pretty boys and pretty girls… you’re my dream, and I’ll die if I don’t have you…smoke rising from twenty fires preparing twenty special meals, some of them so very odd…the shake and rattle of gourds…a sweet old melody…Two Rivers’ look as he gives away his best spear to Comber, the one with the translucent jasper point, too good to actually use for any purpose other than defending life: impassive, but unable to keep a hint of regret out of the corners of his eyes…

A girl is catching a boy’s eye for the first time, and both are pretending nothing has happened while hoping it might be the most important thing that has ever happened. And their names are Tey and Thoráhkwaneken.

Ouch. Well. Life, in short, is going on as it always has, and always will.

The rain is a rain of arrows. Two, three, four, six, land around them. Tey drops the stick she has been using to tend the fish, grabs her spear and runs towards the arrows. A dozen foreign spearmen pop through foliage in two seconds. Thoráhkwaneken runs forward to form up with Faithkeeper and Tey. The face is red on the left and black on the right.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 97 The spear point sinks into the exact middle of Thoráhkwaneken’s abdominal muscles. Now he’s running backwards with both hands on the shaft, trying to keep it from sinking deeper.

She’s screaming at the top of her lungs, SATORÍSHEN! NIAWEN! SATORÍSHEN! ’STOP! PLEASE! STOP!’ something like that.

But Thoráhkwaneken loses his footing and Tangled is over him, driving the sharpened stake through him.

He’s wriggling, helplessly, and Tangled is, what, laughing?

He’s laughing.

Tey about as old then as I am now scoops Kanéntia up and runs with her. Thoráhkwaneken’s bloody hand is shaking around the shaft of the spear.

Tey sets her down a hundred yards away to run on her own. She runs and runs and runs. When she falls behind, Tey stops, picks her up, and runs for another hundred yards. It goes on for hours and hours, running and stumbling and being carried and running again. She stops. She hears a quick, sharp yell. She runs and stumbles on and on. Finally she stops and sits down. Tey looks back but keeps running. There is a wetu nearby. Kanéntia walks into it. An old woman stares her down.

OLD WOMAN (IN MUNSEE LENAPE)

Kuwatu hàch kèku? ‘Hey.’

* * *

Kanéntia watches Goodleaf and his men drag Comber away. She wants to run after them, to beg them to let Comber go, but she stops herself.

Any chance I can get them to let Comber go?

If any.

Any chance they’ll capture me if the see me?

Yes. A very good chance, actually.

And I’m the only one who knows Comber needs help.

Get home and get help.

Fast.

A murmur sends shockwaves of fear through her. There’s a rustle and snap of people. Deciding the sounds come from the northwest, that is, behind her and to her right, she scrambles forward, trying to split the difference between silence and speed.

She stares into the Skonéhtati, then slips into the water.

Kanéntia swims 100 yards, and sees Landherjuðar’s ship’s boat to her left. Diving and turning, she swims for two minutes directly away.

Kanéntia takes another breath and plunges back down. She swims underwater for another two minutes. After a moment she pushes her body up high enough to breathe, dives again, and comes up for breath again. The ship’s boat is near, with Normal Hair in the bow. His eyes meet hers. The shore is still two hundred yards away.

Kanéntia dives. When she comes up, the ship’s boat is only fifty feet behind. The next time she breaks the surface, she feels a large hand around her neck. She grabs the arm with both of hers, trying to wrench it off.

Another hand grabs her arm. They lift her from the water as she writhes and kicks.

* * *

An Onöñda’gega with white circles on both cheeks approaches Tey with exaggerated nonchalance: you don’t scare me; whenever I feel like killing you, you’re dead. Tey makes

White circles takes an odd step sideways, as if dancing, albeit awkwardly. It feels like premature gloating, or strutting, accompanied as it is by a rapid, pigeon-like forward thrust of his head. He turns. Tey quickly scans for archers, wondering if she can dart forward five feet, stick her man and get back to cover before she is shot.

A blood-bearded arrow waves from the man’s hamstring. He is trying to walk normally and failing.

Can your friends be described as ‘inept’? Is ‘piss-poor’ a fair evaluation of their shooting skill? Then friendly fire is apt to be a real hazard.

A couple dozen of you are trying to kill three harmless people, and you go and hurt each other instead. Life is so unfair.

More arrows land, sending Tey shooting back behind cover. But she can’t see archers, and the trajectory indicates they’re coming from farther down the river, from…

Tey watches as the Mahicans, advancing at a run in what approaches a column, slam the first couple of Onöñda’gega they reach with clubs. The rest turn their backs and run, some dropping their bows.

FAITHKEEPER

Wait about thirty seconds, then run to the boat, get it in the water and go. If there’s organized opposition at the shore or near it, get into the forest and keep running.

After a ten second pause, Faithkeeper squeezes through the opening to the right.

FAITHKEEPER

Se’niá:ken’n ‘Run’ ‘Escape’!

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 100 He, Tey and Two Rivers converge on the cargo pile. They pitch weapons and sheets of birch bark into the beached canoe while casting wary eyes at the Mahicans’ backs, which are forming from column into line as their battle with the Onöñda’gega turns from rout to melee.

Give them credit. They rallied quickly.

Tey and Faithkeeper pick up the bow and stern of the canoe, trot twenty steps and place it on the water. Tey carefully hoists herself into the bow, while Faithkeeper and Two Rivers clamber into the stern and center, respectively..

An arrow head shatters on basalt two feet behind Faithkeeper, and one foot ahead of Two Rivers, sending a piece of blackish flint skittering across their path. An Onöñda’gega arrow, Tey thinks, to judge from the color. Which is odd, since…

Heading upstream, the rock formation where they fought slips into the background. A clump of maple trees drifts right, revealing Goodleaf and Tangled. Goodleaf is pointing.

At the retreating Mahicans? They look calm when they should be fighting for their lives.

Tangled and two other men are lowering Blue’s body into a canoe.187 Tangled’s thick, scarred hands let something fly. It’s a bit of fluff. No, it’s a bird, a black-capped chickadee,188 presumably to carry Blue’s soul up to the Ratironhia'kehró:non ’Angels’ ’Residents of the Blue’.189 But the chickadee, it seems, does not want to go. It lands on Tangled’s shoulder perhaps to whisper a last message in his ear. Then the little bit of black and white fluff beats upward through a strong north wind and disappears.

* * *

Rawhide rope squeezes Comber’s neck. Death glints from the blue black Onöñda’gega escarpment spear points which hover near his ear.

Inside the tidy palisade, women weave, pinch clay, and carry water yoked. Perhaps working in tandem, one man knaps a Flint Ridge core while another nearby shaves the last of the non-shaft

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 101 off a shaft with a blue-black, two inch blade. One patches the longhouse190 roof on a rustic ladder. Six laugh and swear while playing the deer button game.

I don’t want your shitty old pipe. If you want to keep playing, get some…

Comber perp-walks by.

Sorry-ass sack of shit.

I told you. You fucking asshole, mouth-bigger-than- your-stomach motherfucker…

…isn’t that the sweetest…

In the third ledge on the left of the longhouse, Tangled sits quietly, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Favorite spears and clubs vie for position on his walls with brown and black bear hides and a sixteen point rack of antlers. Brisk Sky sits beside him, smoking.

Goodleaf and the other captors sit, pulling Comber down by the neck. He can’t breathe and would like to free his windpipe, but tries to keep his movements imperceptible to avoid another rain of clubs and fists.

He delicately slides his windpipe clockwise, away from tension, and draws a wary breath.

GOODLEAF (TO TANGLED)

It’s a Kanien’keháka Turtle. Thought this might cheer you up.

Goodleaf slams his club into Comber’s back, then again, knocking Comber to the ground face first.

Doesn’t want me out cold. Would spoil the fun.

Tangled continues to stare at the deerhide partition, absolutely expressionless.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 102 Comber rolls over and sits up with great effort. Goodleaf clubs him across the temple casually, knocking him down again. Comber reaches into his neck bag very, very slowly. He glances sheepishly towards his captors, expecting a club to descend. But it does not, apparently because they aren’t looking at him. Comber stealthily snakes out one of the skatkowat ‘strings of wampum’ Tey gave him.

He extends the dangling white beaded string towards Tangled. Its tip dances.

A stunning blow lands on the back of his head. Two seconds later, he sees the skatkowat in the dirt, and picks it up between thumb and forefinger.

* * *

Faithkeeper lights his pipe and dusts the surface of the water with sparkling tobacco embers.

FAITHKEEPER

Ó:nen ká:ti ska’nikón:ra tewá:ton táhnon teiethinonhwará:ton ne: Onkweshón:’a, Ionkhi’nisténha Ohóntsia, Ohneka’shón:’a…

’Now we put our minds together as one and we shall greet them: People, Mother Earth, the Waters…’

…for our friends and families and all we hold dear, and finally for our lives themselves, the beautiful passage in this world he has granted us.

O Rawenní:io, grant that we may recover our niece Kanéntia safe and sound, and that my nephews Comber and Two Rivers, my niece Teyohninhaohakára:when and myself will return home safe and sound as well.

You know how things stand—that I love tobacco. So: though I don’t know when I’ll get more, I’ll make you a

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 103 present of the last I have, as a burnt offering. In return I believe you will hear and grant my requests, and that I, as your servant, will give you love and niáwen in return for your gifts. 191

Tey watches six canoes heading south pass about a quarter mile east of Landherjuðar.

Faithkeeper turns and looks, pauses, then turns again. Tey and Two Rivers stare intently at him. He looks back at each in turn.

Undulating forests of chestnut and walnut rise from both banks, burning yellow, red or even pink here and there with the first frosts of autumn. The river‘s light blue-grey plain is ticked into small ripples by the faint ghosts of a breeze. Overhead a ceiling of cirrostratus clouds with fluffy blue and white undersides blocks the sky. Only the zigzagging flat-bottomed valley of the river offers hope, wending towards a light blue sky, clear except for one or two lines of white at either end.

FAITHKEEPER

Show the pipe and the gift.

A wave of biliousness passes through one of Tey’s breaths. One more fucking time. Because it’s working so well...

Maybe I’ll luck out and they’ll kill me quickly. I just can’t take…no, I can take it, I just don’t feel like another desperate scramble for my life…not in the fucking mood…and if I have to hold this damn turkey feather cape one more second, I’m going to scream.

The six boats have closed well within bowshot without firing.

Meaning they‘re smart enough to wait until they‘re in range to shoot.

They‘re Onöñda’gega. We‘re toast.

Somebody or something vaguely familiar is in the bow of the nearest boat.

* * *

Comber tries to rise again, pulling on his noose.

Goodleaf has a this-one-is-really-going-to-hurt big smile on his face. Comber finds Tangled’s eyes, which slowly look up into his.

COMBER (TO GOODLEAF)

I present my head to you, to resurrect the dead.192

It’s time to wipe away the many tears you’ve shed for those you’ve lost in war. Let this skatkowat serve as a tissue to dry your eyes,193 so you can see.

Sure enough, WHAM.

To: nihá:ti ken…

How many times do I…

Comber raises himself on one elbow, expecting the hardest blow yet after this strange, dramatically peaceful interval. He feels a hand relieve his own of the skatkowat’s small weight. Tangled holds the string between calloused finger and thumb. He examines the beads and rotates his hand, draping the string across it. He brings his right hand to his face, not to touch his eyes, which in any case are dry, but to banish one of the hairs which has strayed from his scalplock.

Goodleaf takes his club back far enough to smash Comber’s skull into at least two pieces. He swings, but misses intentionally as Comber flinches, and twirls his club on his followthrough. Fooled ja.

Two Rivers looks at both his captors in a mute plea for permission, and picks himself up into a catcher’s crouch in front of Tangled, choking slightly as the noose stretches taught again.

COMBER

Take this skatkowat to unblock your ears, so you can hear the words of truth and the promises of a genuine peace, since passion deafens and dulls those who let it move them.194

Tangled takes the string, cocks his head and carefully drapes the white beaded string next to the first across his vertical left hand. The other Onöñda’gega watch, Goodleaf leaning casually on his war club, Brisk Sky with his arms folded across his chest. Comber finds to his intense embarrassment that tears are filling his eyes.

COMBER

Take this strand to clear your throat, so you can speak.

Tangled drapes the third skatkowat across his hand. 195 Comber expects the club every second. He sees Tangled’s eyes fill with tears.

TANGLED

Sonhéton rakhtsí:’a’. 196

‘You are resurrected, my elder brother.’

Instead of continuing to avenge the blood of my dead relatives, I will henceforth choose peace, since peace is more precisous to me than my life. If I die as a result of giving life to an enemy, at least I will die honorably.197

TWO RIVERS

If my nation attacks you, my body will serve you as a shield. I would rather they burned me over a slow fire

* * *

"Khe’khén:’a ’Little Sister’," said the tallest of the men, "We heard you call our name. Often have we watched you from above as you worked without complaining. We have seen how you always say… Ohénton Karihwatéhkwen ‘words that come before all else’ ‘the Thanksgiving Address’ to give thanks to the fruits of the earth and for the good rain which we send. It was not right that one such as you should end her life in this way." 200

Ratáti ne okára. Iah iah kíken…

’So the story said. But this isn‘t...’

Fettered in the stern of the ship and accompanied by two guards, Kanéntia watches a one-sided battle between the rest of the vikings and an adjacent field of Áhsen Akhtsí:’a. Swords and axes mow Akhtsí:’a Onénste ’Sister Corn’ down. Redmen carry away Akhtsí:’a Onon’ónsera’ ’Sister Squash’. Our life, our supporters, fatten bags and shirts.

In the forest beyond, Faithkeeper and Tangled watch vikings puffing vapor into the cool, bright morning. They do not move.

Tangled raises his hand. The rescue party and twenty five Onöñda’gega sprint forward, out of the forest and onto the riverbank. Kol, seeing them, releases his shirt tail, letting a dozen corn ears fall.

* * *

Tey mantles over Landherjuðar’s gunwale. She sees two men in poses of idle boredom and a few rusty-looking spears leaning to. She pauses. One man faces her sitting comfortably, propped by his rowing chest. The other, standing and with his back to her, is telling a story, apparently.

BJARNI

The Redbeard [Thor] has been trustier than your Christ.

Tey mantels two inches farther, pauses again, and, just as the seated one yells,

BJARNI

Skraeling! high steps on board, lopes forward and barges into Hrolf, the one with his back to her, as he is turning. He tries to push back, then to fall, but as he grabs the gunwale, Tey tackles him into the water.

Tey wrestles with Hrolf underwater, then pushes him away with both hands towards the shore.

Óhní:tsi ashì:ron “Atá:wens tánon’ iah iah tesasahket!”?

How do you say, “Swim for it and don’t come back!”?

Two seconds after she surfaces, a spear whisks over Tey’s hair. She submerges and swims under the ship, noting the blocky keel and the regular, smoothly joined planks with a kind of abstract admiration. Breaking the surface only so far as to let her eyes, and, for a moment, mouth, touch air, she sees no trace of Bjarni.

Bjarni has begun extending his axe handle forward, presumably to help Hrolf back onboard. He spins as Tey reboards, and flips his axe handle into his hand while she grabs what had been Bjarni’s spear.

Tey checks her spear’s heft and smiles pleasantly at the Greenlander.201

Both understand how the game will play out. Bjarni will have to make some kind of a windup and swing downward, left or right. A hit anywhere but an extremity (in which case, bye-bye, extremity) will mean death. A miss will probably but not certainly mean death for him.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 108 Tey might be able to stick Bjarni in the midst of his windup, but it’s unlikely, as the axe handle is at least a foot longer than the distance between the iron spearhead and the spear’s balance point.

Unless Tey gambles on throwing her spear. She dances two steps forward, turns sideways, gallops one stride, and catapults, falling away a couple of skittering steps to the left as she releases.

The spear has bridged eight feet of air and planted itself in the pit of Bjarni’s stomach as his axe clatters, rocking back and forth on the rounded top of its blade before falling. Bjarni sits down heavily by the gunwale, and, in a moment of impressive stoicism, pushes the spear from his body.

Bjarni pulls himself up and over the gunwale and into the water. He leaves behind a little red river. It’s a map of the Skonéhtati, the bulge in the middle a small Tappan Zee.

Only a cauter pin now separates Kanéntia from freedom.

Tey looks south. The ship’s boat, containing ten vikings, nears.

KANÉNTIA

The hammer you need is in the third box ahead of you. No, one more. It’s the blunt cross-looking thingy.

As it happens, using a hammer to knock a cauter pin out of C-fetters is not so quick and intuitive a process as it might seem. A few tentative taps precede a free swinging direct hit on Kanéntia’s wrist. She winces stoically.

TEY

Niáwen, khekhén:’a.

’Sorry, sister.’

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 109 Once burned, Tey reverts to insufficient force again. Kanéntia is impressed, in retrospect, with the dab hand of Normal Hair, able to knock the cauter pin in and out with a single blow.

The ship’s boat pulls through the water with frightening pace. Its inhabitants yell something barbarous.

KANÉNTIA

You should raise the anchor. It’s the thing on the end of the chain.

Tey takes a full two minutes to manhandle the anchor onboard. The ship pulls forward the moment the riverbed unhooks the anchor.

Tey hammers the cauter pin with nervous urgency, which doesn’t help.

The rowboat nears, but not as quickly as it would have, since Landherjuðar is now going two knots per hour downstream.

TEY

How far away is it?

Tey means the waterfall Káhao’se.

KANÉNTIA

50 yards.

Tey begins hammering furiously at the mainmast where the fetter chain anchors.

Landherjuðar, exhilaratingly, is picking up steam. The water pours into the void in front of them.

Tey takes a desperate swing at the cauter pin. The hammer clinks squarely, and the cauter pin drops out just as the horizon begins to rotate.

Tey and Kanéntia have the sense of the world spinning beneath their feet, sending them sliding towards the bow. Landherjuðar reaches 60 degrees to the horizon. First Kanéntia, then Tey, slip into the air. Both look perfectly relaxed as they float free of the ship. They spin slowly, tumble, twist, spin, tumble, twist, and continue to spin.

Tey and Kanéntia continue to fall, dreaming open-eyed.

Below them, finally, jagged rocks and foaming water near. Suddenly there is a roar of sound. As they near the rocks their floating fall accelerates into a gyrfalcon plummet. The rocks loom nearer and nearer. They’re forty feet away, twenty five, twenty, fifteen, ten…

Tey twists and turns, seeing a flat rock rushing up to her. She flaps her arms with all the strength and speed she can muster while flipping a slow full gainer with a full twist, turning her world around and over herself, pulling desperately away from the danger rushing up below, straining—what, left and forward, if you’re seeing it from above—straining away, danger hot enough to keep her clear where danger is through the spinning, turning world.

And then the thunderclap.

Wreckage on the water. The splintered bow of Landherjuðar bobs and wiggles while planks slip forlornly downstream like guests from a dying party. The bubble of the sail fills with water while rippling with the wind, rising and falling like the river’s breath. The biggest chunk of the rudder ’.gimel, nun, he‘ ג נ ה ,has found an eddy and twirls stupidly off-kilter

* * *

Freydís regrips her blood-stained axe calmly while watching Landherjuðar poke its prow over Káhao’se. It bends thirty degrees, then pitches over vertically and rides the water through its fall, which it punctuates with an echoing slap.

Those who are not engaged look shocked, while those who are go right on fighting. The vikings begin to flee as armies do, from back to front. A couple of those farthest from the enemy, with

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 111 the least chance of getting an arrow or spearpoint in their bared backs, and with the fewest of their companions to provide moral or physical brake, creep, walk, then bolt away.

Freydís runs forward, slapping the flat of her sword on her chest202 to grab her men’s attention.

FREYDÍS

Skjoldar! ‘Shields!’

The vikings react by rallying to her, mostly unopposed, and creating a shield wall. She unclasps a necklace, drapes it over her axe blade and raises it.

Faithkeeper’s desire to kill all the faithless, dangerous aliens loses quickly and decisively to love of family. Wiping out that hornet’s nest of swinging axe blades will cost a dozen Onöñda’gega lives.

TANGLED

Hold!

If they’re leaving, let them go.

The Kanien’kehá:ka replace arrows in quivers. Most of the Onöñda’gega do as well, but a couple of arrows arc towards the vikings, maybe because they haven’t heard or understood Tangled, maybe because the target is too temptingly fat.

Two Rivers runs towards the vikings, and ostentatiously sets his spear down, caressing it slightly out of affection. He walks slowly forward, Freydís extends her axe and Two Rivers takes the necklace, replacing it with his pipe. Their eyes meet, and Freydís nods almost imperceptibly.

Faithkeeper, Tey, Comber, Tangled and the other Onöñda’gega watch as Freydís and the rest of her crew march south. 203

* * *

Heno tamps the burning embers of tobacco down into his pipe with his calloused thumb. He exhales. He has worn and frayed leggings, oiled hair and a crooked, deeply scarred nose. A

* * *

Tey is unable to move or breathe, suffocating before she has a chance to drown. A shriek fills her lungs with air as the roar of the water returns to her ears. Every part of her hurts, her hip and skull feel broken. She’s sinking. Her hands and feet cry with pain when she tries to move them, but they wiggle, at last, and begin oscillating as the water closes over her.

The critical moment. She arches her back and forces her arms out. Her face slips through the lens of water. It’s a sunny day. Beautiful. Hopeless. The water swallows her again. She manages a weakish frog kick but the surface of the water doesn’t break. The day is a fading light.

* * *

Kanéntia falls, spinning and tumbling, parallel to a vast sheet of water. She’s plummeting towards a jagged boulder.

Five yards above the rock a huge blanket rolls out from behind the falls, held by two enormous arms cutting into the waterfall. Kanéntia falls into it as gently as into a featherbed.

A cascading wall of water approaches, inundates, then passes over Kanéntia. As water drains from the blanket that holds her, she sees Heno’s broken nose and ropy muscles. Heno carries her into his cave as easily as if she were a baby, and sets her down on a pile of furs beside the ruffed grouse, who look at her with considerable curiosity and some confusion. Finally, one grouses, extends her wingtip, and pushes three kernels of corn towards her.

* * *

Tey extends her legs again, but it’s too weak to be called a kick. She sinks for what seems an eternity, and sees her breath, a big bubble with a herd of small ones, wander towards the surface.

The bubbles become the katkowa beads which make up the skatkowat she and Kanéntia are polishing, drilling, stringing…for the peace mission…the one she used to have before Comber…

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 113 Her hand has caught on something, or in something, some piece of wreckage. It’s a hand, Kanéntia’s hand, pulling her arm, pulling her up. Daylight grows warmer. Bubbles line Kanéntia’s lips. Air is forcing its way out through her clenched teeth. Or is she smiling?

Afterword

Two things are endless: the universe and human stupidity. But I'm not so sure about the universe. Albert Einstein (original German below) Zwei Dinge sind unendlich: das Universum und die menschliche Dummheit. Aber beim Universum bin ich mir nicht ganz sicher.

There’s an analog to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in trying to understand other peoples: the more useful descriptions of them are to you, the more contact with your culture has likely changed them; and the less contact they have had with your culture, the less likely you will find them usefully described. The principle, in addition to leading me to find very early accounts of any Indians (not just Haudenosaunee) valuable, partly inspired our story. If no actual descriptions of Indian nations before western contact still survive (aside from the Mayan histories, which tend to be rather short on detail), is there some value in making this one up? If so, very well. If not, would you be so kind as to imagine something better?

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 114 Please note: In all unattributed cases, the mistranslations and opinions are my own—though my mistranslations may have been helped or corrected (or, for that matter, hindered or crippled) by other mistranslations, lexicons or dictionaries.

I also ought to note that what may appear to be slapdash scholarship in our story ought to be distrusted as belonging to a work of fiction, and that, insofar as it may be in deadly earnest, if slapdash, merely presents some more or less interesting words of various people including myself who are all untrustworthy, overcredulous and inept to a greater or lesser degree.

Attempting to tell the truth is a journey not so much beset with hazards as consisting of a single, fatal step into the abyss of error. I ought therefore to be sympathetic to my fellow errants, but find my sympathy runs out constantly and for quite arbitrary reasons.

I have a sublime faith in the power of misunderstanding, in the omnipresence of ignorance and in the ineffable obtuseness of the human brain. I have an absolute belief that the oxymoronic social sciences, certainly including anthropology, are for the most part, if not entirely, a waste of breath and ink. How can I understand another culture when I cannot even understand my own—when I cannot even understand myself?

(I don’t mean this as a rhetorical flourish, but as a statement of the obvious; I could claim to understand a robot if I learned enough to build every part and assemble every piece from scratch, from its component atoms, and write all its code. It’s just barely possible with a huge budget and a lot of time. But I could not assemble by myself even a single working part of a human being [and, no, sequencing DNA which could build me does not count. That would only mean I could copy code I did not write and do not understand.]

To torture the metaphor further, we who think we’ve acquired a brand new commodity when we acquire what we call learning have really taken a machete, and ineptly hacked off some bits and pieces of something, and carted them away.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 115 I’m a great believer in learning. Not because I think I’ve acquired something of value, but because the shattered bits and mangled pieces I’ve bundled off remind me in a way I somehow find comforting of my record of perfect futility, and in the right light sparkle a little sometimes.

On the other hand, I like stories and see no necessary harm in them. They do not aim for and fail to reach the height of understanding. Their implicit promise is merely to pass the time pleasantly, a fit and proper human goal. So I thought I’d tell one more.

A Few Quotations from the Era of Hemispheric Genocide

I am glad the [Iroquoian] Cherokees have determined to come to our assistance…. They will be of particular service—more than twice their number of white men.204 George Washington

[The Haudenosaunee205 ‘Longhouse Builders’ ‘Iroquois’ ‘Five Nations’] have manfully fought our Battles for us [the British colonists, against the French].206 Cadwallader Colden

…no longer feed us [the Haudenosaunee] with Promises of Assistance, but now give us Men who are fitt to go wth: Us [to fight the French]…. Then we shall be thoroughly Convinced you have a Brotherly love for Us, as we have for you [the British colonists].207 Lucas (a Kanien’kehá:ka ‘Mohawk’ Pine Tree Chief)

…the Iroquois [Haudenosaunee], more to be feared by themselves, despite their small number, then the English without them. Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix (original French below) …les Iroquois, plus à craindre eux feuls, malgré leur petit nombre, que les Anglois fans eux.208

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 116 What is more astounding is that [the Haudenosaunee] hold dominion for five hundred leagues around, though they are so few in number; of the Five Nations that compose the Haudenosaunee, [the Kanien’kehá:ka] cannot muster more than five hundred men bearing arms. Jérôme Lalemant (original French below) Et ce qui est plus estonnant, c'est que de fait ils dominent à cinq cent lieuës à la ronde, estans neantmoins en fort petit nombre: car des cinq Nations dont l'Iroquois est composß, l'Agnieronnon ne compte pas plus de cinq cent hommes portans armes…209

Our wise forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations. This has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire such Strength and power. Therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out with one another.210 Canassatego (an Onöñda’gega ‘Onondaga’ leader)

It would be a very strange thing, if Six Nations of ignorant Savages [the Haudenosaunee] should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies…211 Benjamin Franklin

None of the greatest Roman Heroes have discovered a greater Love to their Country, or a greater Contempt of Death, than these people called Barbarians [the Haudenosaunee] have done, when Liberty came in Competition.212 Colden

Are you not a free and independent People, and have you not a Right to live where you please on your own Land and trade with whom you please? Your Brethren, the English, always considered you as a Free Nation…the Friendship now subsisting between Us [Pennsylvania, the English colonists, and/or the United Kingdom], the Six Nations, Delawares, Shawonese, Owendatts, and you [the Twightwees ‘Miami], may become as Strong as a great Mountain which the Winds constantly blow against but never overset.214 Onas ‘William Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania’

[Indians] enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments…215 Thomas Jefferson

[Indians] also believe in the immortality of souls. Adriaen van der Donck (original Dutch below) …gheloben ooch een onfterftelichjept [onsterfelijkheid] der Zielen.216

They would live very christianly, had they the Faith. Julien Garnier (original French below) …qui seroient pour vivre tres-chrestiennement, s'ils avoient la Foy.217

[Indians] speak the same way we do…but they have different names for everything. Amerigo Vespucci (original Italian below) Ufono emedefimi accenti come noi...falvo che usano altri nomi alle cose.218

…to see things never heard of nor even dreamed, as we saw—it was so amazing I don’t know how to describe it. Now everything’s destroyed, lost. There’s nothing.

Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ thgordon ©2014 118 Bernal Dìaz del Castillo (normalized Spanish original below) ...hay mucho que ponderar en ello que no sé como lo cuente ver cosas nunca oídas ni aun soñadas, como veíamos.... Ahora toda está por el suelo, perdido, que no hay cosa.219

Do your best. Tontileaugo (original Kanien’kéha ‘Mohawk’ below) Chakoh, chakoanaugh.220

1 Literally, ’head spin’ or ‘turning the brain upside down’, though ‘the revolution of the mind’ may be more idiomatic.

2 Freydís Eiríksdóttir…beiddi þá, at þeir færi til Vínlands með farkost sinn ok hafa helming gæða allra við hana, þeira er þar fengist.

Grænlendinga saga (Eiríks saga rauða ok Grænlendinga þáttr) ‘Greenland Saga (Eirík the Red’s Saga and the Greenland Story),’ prepared for publication by Guðni Jónsson. June 21, 2011. According to the saga, Freydís, Eirík the Red’s daughter and Leif’s younger sister, led an expedition to Vinland from Greenland, accompanied by the Icelandic merchants Helgi and Finnbogi, in an undetermined year. Chronologies for the Vinland expeditions tend to rely on the tradition that Leif’s landfall occurred in 1000 A.D., a date whose virtue is roundness. Writing in 2013, I’d say “One thousand years ago, more or less.” See “About 1013 Erik the Red’s daughter Freydis led an…expedition to Vinland.” September 24, 2012.

3 Aliam mihi Insulam affirmant su pradicta Hispana maiorem: eius incole carêt pilis. Auroque inter alias potissimum exuberat.

Christoferi Colom ‘Christopher Columbus’, De Insulis nuper in mari Indico repertis ‘Of the Islands Reported in the Indian Sea’ February 15, 2012.

4 ‘The river beyond the pines’ in Kanien’kéha. See especially “To the Mohawks…it was Skanatati Gahunda.” W.R. Gerard, The New York Times, October 21, 1899

I find Gerard interesting for various reasons, including his assurance that the name he quotes is a matter of record, and because his spelling “Skanatati” conforms to Kanienkéha spelling conventions, in which “t” is pronounced “d” prevocallically. Since the name means “beyond the pines,” and is derived from onéhta ‘pine tree’, I spell it Skonéhtati in the faint hope this is the most sensible choice.

Algonquins called the Hudson the Mahicanni Siper ‘Mahican River’. The Mahicans, or Mohicans, are to be mistaken for the Mohawk, the pejorative name given to the Kanien’kehá:ka. They are in fact different, typically hostile nations, speaking unrelated languages. Because this isn’t confusing enough, there is also a nation called the Mohegans, lately of casino fame, who are entirely distinct from both of these, though, as part of the Algonquian family (see below), related by language to the Mahicans (or Mohicans).

The Haudenosaunee ‘People of the Longhouse,’ (pronounced ho-dee-no-SHOW-ne) called the Iroquois by the French and the Five (later Six) Nations by the English, were the greatest North American polity when Europeans invaded, a union of the Kanien’kehá:ka ‘Mohawk,’ Onayotekaono ‘Oneida,’ Onöñda’gega ‘Onondaga,’ Guyohkohnyoh ‘Cayuga’ and Onondowahgah ’Seneca’ states. The Ska-Ruh-Reh ‘Tuscarora’ joined later. Haudenosaunee borders non-coincidentally rough out the state of New York, while their area of dominion at its zenith approximated a triangle running from the Chesapeake to the mouth of the Saint Lawrence to the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The Onöñda'gega keep the central fire of the metaphorical Haudenosaunee longhouse, the Kanien’kehá:ka ‘Mohawk’ and Onondowahgah ‘Seneca’ the eastern and western doors, respectively. Debate about the date of

origin of the union continues, though all those I’m aware of postdate our story. See especially “…we may safely set the ratification of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy as having taken place during the afternoon of August 31 in the year 1142.” Doug George-Kanentiio, “Iroquois Roots,” Archaeology of the Iroquois (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 2007) 398.

Pre-contact Indian nations east of the Rockies and north of the Ute-Aztec/Athabaskan southwest included four large language groups (along with many small ones): Algonquian, Iroquoian, Siouan and Muskogean. The largest language group in terms of area in the entire western hemisphere was Algonquian. Speakers occupied something like one third of North America, very roughly speaking the northeastern third. Algonquian tradition and linguistic evidence indicates they came from the west; the oldest Algonquian language is in California.

Iroqouian is a family of languages spoken by many nations including the Cherokee, and— confusingly—the Haudenosaunee, the people the French called the Iroquois. To visualize the area in which Iroquoian languages predominated (as opposed to the area described above which the Haudenosaunee controlled politically), circle the Saint Lawrence and the Susquehanna, and Lakes Ontario and Erie. If the lines are around 100 miles from the Great Lakes, and 50 miles from the rivers, they contain the great majority of Iroquoian speakers at the time of the European invasion.

The wedge between the Missouri and the Mississippi contained the great majority of Siouans. What is now Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, together with western Tennessee and westernmost Kentucky include most Muskogean-speaking people. Algonquians predominated in the remaining area of North America east of the Rockies, south of the Arctic Circle and not including Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

To mark the major exceptions, draw an oval around the Appalachian mountains from northeastern Alabama to southern Virginia. If the oval is around 100 miles wide at its widest, you’ve outlined the (Iroquoian) Cherokee nation. Divide South Carolina in equal halves according to distance from the center of the state. The inner half was the homeland of the (Siouan) Catawba. The eastern third of North Carolina was the home of the Ska-Ruh-Reh ‘Tuscarora.’ The Ska-Ruh-Reh became the sixth and last nation of the Haudenosaunee confederation.

5 The lower Hudson was formed by the incursion of the Atlantic into a plain below a glacial lake. Its slope is less than ½” per mile between Troy and the Battery, a distance of 145 miles. At its mouth you could call it a north-flowing fjord at flood tide and a south-flowing river at neap. September 28, 2012.

6 Hudson looked for a northwest passage in northeastern North America while being paid to find a northeast passage in northwestern Asia. His insubordinate crew subsequently cast their insubordinate captain adrift, where, unable to endure his eponymous bay, he died an inordinately western death. See Douglas Hunter, Half Moon (Bloomsbury: New York, 2009).

7 Or, more literally, ’The arrival of a ship with powerful black magic will not be peaceful, I think.’

8‘[Indians’] swimming is beyond belief, and the women’s more so…’ ...nuotano fuora d’ogni credere, & miglior le donne... (Vespucci 6)

9 ‘Our Life’, ‘Our Supporters.’ The staples of eastern North America are called the Three Sisters because they grow symbiotically: bean vines climb the cornstalks and supply the nitrogen corn requires through its nitrogen-fixing bacteria, while squash gourds fill the open spaces on the ground. Indian national territory typically balanced trisororal fields with larger hunting areas.

While the oldest remains of domesticated squash in New York are around 1400 years old, and the earliest remains of corn are of a similar age, the oldest identified remains of domesticated beans in the state are only around 600-700 years old. See Hart et. al, “Phytolith Evidence for Early Maize” American Antiquity, no. 4, 2003, 619-640. “All of the [six food residue samples taken from early Iroquoian sites] suggested the presence of both maize and wild rice.” Like beans, rice also provides lycene and trytophane, the two amino acids missing from squash and corn. So Sister Bean may have replaced Sister Rice. Hart et al. have shown that [the theory that Indians consumed maize and beans together to provide a complete set of amino acids] must be rejected given that common bean does not become archaeologically visible across the northern Eastern Woodlands until the late thirteenth to fourteenth centuries…” “The Age of the Common Bean (Phaseolus Vulgaris L.) in the Northern Eastern Woodlands of North America,” Antiquity 76 : 377-85.

I would add that beans may have been present earlier than the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries but not, as it happens, “archaeologically visible.”

10 Indians polished and drilled white whelk and purple quahog shells to make valuable katkowa ‘wampum’ beads. ‘Their money is white and black [purple] Zeewant [‘katkowa’ ‘wampum’] which they make themselves.’ Haer gelt is Wit en Swart Zee-want dat fo zij fefs maecken. Adriaen van der Donck, Vertoogh van Nieu-Nederland ’Account of New Netherland.’ November 16, 2011 (9).

Van der Donck generalizes about Indians the Dutch met in the Hudson valley, presumably mostly Lenape (a group of Algonquian-speaking nations who predominated in New Jersey, Delaware and the New York City area, sometimes known as the Delaware) and Kanien’kehá:ka.

Katkowa ‘wampum’, though thought a kind of money by Europeans, did not in fact fulfill any of its three basic definitions (“a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value” September 19, 2012.>), at least until the Dutch began manufacturing it to speed the fur trade in the seventeenth century. ‘Katkowa’ is Iroquoian, wampumpeag ‘wampum’ Algonquian.

11 Analysis of the remains of four people buried in Ward’s Point in New York City around 1000 years ago indicated they were either eating a relatively large amount of marine food or that maize was not a major component of their diet. Patricia Bridges, “Prehistoric Diet and Health in a Coastal New York Skeletal Sample,” Northeast Anthropology 48, (13-23).

12 Money kickstarts history, considering the first writing tracked who owed whom what. Put another way, the first time anyone wanted to write anything down badly enough to invent a writing system to do it, he or she eternalized a claim on someone else’s filthy.

It may be useful to point out that eternalizing debt tends to happen less between people who know and trust each other than between strangers. It seems a way to enable people who do not trust each other to avoid disputes—and/or, a way for the more powerful party to regularize his income at the expense of the less powerful.

In either case, Haudenosaunee society seems explicitly organized to make debt calculation unwelcome, bound as it is by family relationships. They lived in a world without money, a condition which many of us, I think, would find a great improvement (and which may yet be on its way back, if the profusion of pro bono work on the internet heralds a new age.)

People competing in generosity and selflessness, as the Haudenosaunee and other Indians did, certainly seem preferable to those competing for personal wealth. It’s fair, I think, to call the

former characteristic of a heroic culture. Europeans whose ancestors had known a heroic era themselves called it the golden age. Those who called Indians noble mostly did so for retaining this earlier, less mendacious ethos.

But what, you may ask, does this analogy explain? I’ve used the phrases “heroic culture” and “golden age” to explain Indian cultures. But no one really has a clear idea of what those phrases mean. Both are, one might argue, works of fiction, referring to some semi-mythological past in Europe, which might or might not have had much basis in reality. To then apply them to non- European cultures, you might argue, merely adds to the muddle; either the nature of pre- invasion Indian societies or our modern understanding of them, or both, depending on your point of view, remain unclear or at least controversial. You might also object that their use in this context implies a unilineal progression of human social development in which Indian nations at the time of European contact were at an earlier and therefore more primitive stage. So, does the use of the two phrases really help?

13 Made by overlapping long, thin planks one above the next.

14 Theory indicates that long, light-displacement craft should have high speed potential, and this was in fact demonstrated during trials of the Greenwich faering of longship proportions; the [replica viking ship] achieved an unexpectedly high speed of 7 knots under oars, probably because she rode up out of the water and skimmed along in a semi-planing posture, almost like a power boat. Experiment and theory thus show that in favourable conditions the viking longship could have achieved high speed under oar or sail, provided that she had a competent crew.

James Graham-Campbell, The Viking World (Francis Lincoln: London, 1980) 63.

15viking = vik bay (Norse) + ing. “[T]his termination [ing]…denote[s] the persons who live in, or possess a particular place or district : as we metaphorically say, the sons or children of such and such a place : thus, the Brytfordingas are the inhabitants of Brytford.” "Proceedings. v. 1-6; 1842/43-1852/53 : Philological Society, London" February 24, 2012.

While the example is from Old English, it applies to Norse as well. Therefore, the metaphorical sons or children of the bay (vik), their characteristic habitat, are vikings.

16 As in other downtowns, people pushed hills into dales in New York to produce an artificial flatness.

17 The withy is the rope that binds the rudder’s pivot point to the ship.

18 From Norse stjornbjorð ‘steering side’ because the rudder was on the right.

19 The word for Indian or Eskimo in Norse is skraeling, cognate with scream and cry.

20 Keychains worn at the belt published the domain of Scandinavian women one thousand years ago. They, not men, were the masters of houses.

21 The Cree are the largest single Indian nation by area, Algonquians occupying a broad swath of Canada. Canada, incidentally, derives from kaná:ta’, the Iroquoian word for village (spelled here in its Kanien’kéha variant). One explanation is that when Cartier sailed west along what is now the Saint Lawrence, Iroquoians asked “So you want to go to kaná:ta’?” meaning did he want to go to a village, presumably the next village west. “Sure,” Cartier said. And when he got to the

next village and was asked the same question again, he concluded that travelling to Canada was his vocation, which it became. But there are other explanations.

22 The Lenape, often called the Delaware, were the most numerous and most confusingly counted group of Algonquians, since they included two sub-groups, Munsee and Unami, each of which numbered a large number of individual nations like the Canarsie, Wickquasgeck, Sinsink and Tappan. They lived mostly in New Jersey, Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania and southern New York.

23 Translating standard greetings accurately misses the point that they are the first steps in a meeting dance. Messamott’s words mean (more or less), “Do you know anything?” but would be understood as we understand “Hi,” “Whassup?” or “Hey.”

24 Translation means to change sides. Therein lies the rub. For translated words to be meaningful, they should awake in our minds the meaning they have in others’. But while denotation may seem straightforward, connotation and cultural cues are not. So it seems to me a less severe fault to translate speech into the present idiom (since I’m trying to communicate with people of my own time and language, as are my models), than, in an attempt at more technically correct rendering, to make it seem as if my models constantly struck each other as quaint, old-fashioned, formal, etcetera.

25 Father or mother were also titles indicating that the person so-called had greater status than the speaker. A grandfather or grandmother was a person of great status, like the captain of a ship.

26 Some vikings used yew heartwood for the belly of their long bows and yew sapwood for the back, as the Welsh and English more famously did. Their typically dirty and rusty iron points

were deadlier than Indian flint primarily because they carried tetanus and other infectious agents. See

Robert Hardy, Longbow: A social and military history (Arco: New York, 1976) 164-5.

Saxton Pope, Hunting with the Bow and Arrow. Project Gutenberg Ebook < http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1469458> September 29, 2011.

27 Indians seem to have sworn more or less as we do now, or close enough as makes no difference—unless we are to take Paul le Jeune, below, precisely at his word (and assume what is true of the Innu is also true of the Kanien’kehá:ka), in which case “pussy”, “cock”, “cunt”, “bollocks”, “schmuck”, and so on should take the place of our more common “fuck” and “shit.”

…in place of saying, as we do very often out of amazement, “Jesus, what’s that? My God who did this?,” these infamous villains pronounce the dishonorable parts of man and woman. Their mouths, even those of small children, are full of this excrement incessantly.

...au lieu que par admiratiõ nous disons assßs souuent, Iesvs qu'est cela! mon Dieu qui a fait cela? ces vilains & ces infames prononcent les parties des-honnestes de l'homme & de la femme. Ils ont incessamment la bouche puante de ces ordures, & mesmes iusques aux petits enfats...

Paul le Jeune, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1633 & 1634 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1635) 252. April 4, 2012. Le Jeune writes here specifically of the Innu, whom he calls Montagnais, an Algonquian nation related to the Cree.

A Kanien’kehá:ka two centuries later, according to an adoptee, did swear in what the adoptee found to be the normal way, except he found one of our common oaths objectionable.

“…a trader accidentally broke his gun lock and called out aloud, ‘God damn it!’ Surely the gun lock was not an object worthy of punishment by Owaneeyo [Rawenní:io], the Great Spirit [Tecaughretanego responded].” James Smith, “Prisoner of the Caughnawagas” published in Captured by Indians (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1985) 52.

A caveat: stories about excessive literalism are staples of stories about what are, from Europeans’ points of view, other peoples. The imputation of childishness may be a symptom of racism. A caveat to that caveat: stories about excessive literalism are also staples of stories of all people at all times, certainly including Indians. Excessive literalism is also a staple of all peoples at all times, and not just among children.

28 Kinship terms are the usual mode of address and reference among Indians. They reflected status, so you would call someone of slightly greater age and status akhtsí:’a ‘my older sister’, a younger peer khekén:’a ‘my younger sister’ a superior mother, a leader grandmother, and so on. But the terms fluctuated both as status does and according to the effect desired by the speaker.

‘One calls me brother, another uncle, another cousin. I’ve never had so many relatives.’ L'vn me traitte de frere, l'autre d'oncle, l'autre de cousin, iamais ie n'eus vne parentß si nombreuse. François Joseph le Mercier, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1654-1656 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1657) 98. April 18, 2012.

I should mention that le Mercier’s grasp of the idiom was imperfect or, more likely perhaps, he had no wish to bore us with the fact that neither Kanien’kéha nor any of the other Haudenosaunee languages distinguish uncle from father.

I should also mention that in this and other work collected and expertly translated as The Jesuit Relations (Ruben Gold Thwaites, editor) my sole functions in re-translating the original Latin and French are to modernize diction and introduce errors.

29 freestyle

…the Native Americans swam a variant of the front crawl, which had been used by people in the Americas, West Africa and some Pacific Islands for generations, but was not known to the British.

History of swimming 9/1/2011. Their stroke was described as thrashing the water with their arms in a motion "like a windmill" and kicking in an up-and-down motion. See also The Development of the Modern Stroke 9/1/2011.

30 Keksá'aa Uneúke ‘Spirit of the South Wind.’ The north, west, east and south winds are represented as a bear, panther, moose and fawn, respectively.

A Haudenosaunee Pantheon December 13, 2011.

31 ‘[Indians] are inclined to give away all they have.’ Tutto quello che hanno sono disposti a darlo. Giovanni da Verrazzano, Lettera da Giovanni da Verrazzano a Francesco I - luglio 1524 ‘Letter from Giovanni da Verrazzano to François Premiere, July, 1524.’

March 11, 2010. Verrazzano generalizes about Indians he met in what became the US east coast, including some in the New York City area.

But in Liberality they excel, nothing is too good for their friend; give them a fine Gun, Coat, or other thing, it may pass twenty hands, before it sticks…

William Penn, William Penn’s Own Account of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians (Moorestown, New Jersey: Middle Atlantic Press, 1970) 30. Penn’s experiences were predominantly with Lenape in the eastern part of what came to be called his woods (Pennsylvania).

‘They seek fame for liberality and munificence. They give away what they have and hardly ask for anything in return…’ Liberalitatis & munificentiae famam aucupantur: sua largiuntur ultro; ablata vix repetunt… Joseph Jouvency, Canadensium domus & res familiaris; morbi; aegrorum cura & mortuorum ‘Canadian Home and Family Life, Diseases, the Care of the Sick and the Dead’ (274). March 27, 2012. Jouvency generalizes about the Indians of the Saint Lawrence area, many if not most of whom were Iroquoian.

Giving away what you have is not just a social but a religious virtue. If adversity provides an opportunity to reflect on your own humility, poverty offers a chance to reflect on your dependence on God, and on God’s love for you.

“Brother,” Tecaughretanego [a Kanien’kehá:ka] said, “as you have lived with the white people, who have stocks of cattle and barns filled with grain, you have not had the same advantage as we Indians of knowing that the Great Being above feeds his people in due season. We are often out of provisions and yet are wonderfully supplied—so frequently that it is evidently the hand of the great Owaneeyo [Rawenní:io] that doth this…. Owaneeyo sometimes suffers us to be in want in order to teach us our dependence upon him, and to let us know that we are to love and serve him.” (Smith 56)

32 There is no direct account of trade in North America before European arrival. Its nature is therefore highly debatable. Nevertheless, it seems clear that one thing it was not was trade in our sense, that is, economic activity which typically satisfies one’s needs or wants and another’s desire to accumulate wealth.

The commerce [of Indians] has in common with the ancients that it is purely a trade of goods for goods.

Leur Commerce a cela de commun avec celui des, Anciens, qu'il eft un pur troc de denrées contre denrées.

Joseph-François Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, comparées aux moeurs des premiers temps ‘Mores of the Forest-Dwelling Americans, Compared to the Mores of Ancient Times (332). February 27, 2012.

Social status lay not with those who hoarded wealth, as in our culture, but with those who gave it away. It may be pointed out that these are two sides of the same coin, and that our

wealthiest are also our greatest philanthropists. The crucial difference nevertheless remains that Indians did not and would not accumulate capital because they considered it immoral.

The principled refusal to play the game of capitalism may have played as great a role as vulnerability to disease, in my opinion, in enabling Europeans to dominate the western hemisphere. Capitalism works very efficiently to dispossess those who don’t practice it. It is easy enough to say that in retrospect, Indians should have avoided trading with Europeans entirely. But their cultures tended strongly to be highly adaptable and pragmatic. (Consider how quickly they excelled Europeans in using European imports like horses and guns.) European goods were very useful. An iron skillet, for example, a highly prized item, would save hours of labor over the course of a week, as would a steel axe. “[I saw Indians] admiring the rich marchandises that their confederates brought from the ffrench, that weare hattchetts and knives and other utensils very commodious, rare, precious, and necessary in those countreys.”

Peter Esprit Radisson, Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, Project Gutenberg Ebook August 24, 2012.

And it wasn’t merely that this was the thin edge of the wedge of capitalism; success or lack of it in acquiring guns tended to correlate with success in war. So trade multiplied, and wealth flowed into European hands and out of Indians’. The latter fell into the cash crop trap, dislocating their culture in a failed attempt to square their accounts, despite ever-more labor intensive and environmentally, economically and culturally denuding fur-gathering expeditions. European goods rapidly became a deadly addiction, which led to greater and greater impoverishment, both individually and culturally. Capitalism enables people to be poor.

The desire for wealth by Europeans provided simultaneously the original and main impetus for genocidal continent stealing. The first object was the spices of the east in general, and black

pepper in particular, due to its palliative effects on bad meat, the typical dish of the European upper classes. The second was gold, silver and precious gems, which sent the Spanish mass murdering through Mexico, Peru, and, rather less successfully, Nebraska. The third was furs, which proved to be the pot of gold at the end of the Saint Lawrence and Skonéhtati Gahunda. The fourth was partially a consequence of the fact that the Chesapeake, unlike the former two rivers, did not enable the fur trade. Making the best of what they did have (in the tradition of mountebanks everywhere), Raleigh and others manufactured European addiction to tobacco. The dream of wealth through tobacco farming, as unlikely as it may seem (in fact it tended to involve its practitioners in a cash crop trap of its own which Washington, for one, rebelled against), may have provided the crucial impetus which moved a critical mass of English people into North America. If it did not, then the succeeding dream, which was not so much of wealth as of prosperity arising from largeish farms on good land, certainly did.

33 ‘…that folk [Indians and/or Inuit] rather wanted to have red cloth…’ …vildi þat fólk helzt hafa rautt skrúð… (Grænlendinga saga) You may object, I’ll speculate at this point, that I seem to be treating the Greenland Saga as historically valid. On the contrary, I do not believe it is in almost any way trustworthy. It’s just that I don’t trust my other sources either. My notes are a collection of things people wrote down that I find interesting. Their veracity is typically impossible to determine.

34 Copper was advancing in popularity in North America in 1492, though not gold and silver. It could potentially have displaced katkowa in time—though neither was, properly speaking a currency.

In Eurasia, on the other hand, gold and silver displaced salt (at the root of the words “salary” and “soldier”) as currency. So in Europe, substances whose function (other than holding value)

were entirely decorative (gold and silver) displaced one of great practical value (salt), while in North America the substance with practical value (copper) may eventually have displaced the decorative substance (katkowa). What does it mean? Hell if I know, except that value is in the eye of the beholder.

In Mexico, it should be added, gold was commonly traded, according to del Castillo, the most interested (what other traidor ‘traitor’ counted the steps of Mexican pyramids?), ethnological and persuasive, if not necessarily the most trustworthy, of early European genocidas. (I call del Castillo a traidor and not a conquistador since his army owed its success to the treachery they committed against Montezuma.)

...there were many other merchants…who brought gold to sell in grains as they get it from the mines, filling vials thin as goose legs. These vials are so white as to look like gold from the outside. By the length and thickness of these vials they calculate how many robes or how many xiquipiles (a Nahuatl measure) of cacao they are worth, or what number of slaves or other trade item.

...estaban otros muchos mercaderes, que, según dijeron eran de los que traían a vender oro en granos como lo sacan de las minas, metido el oro en unos canutillos delgados de los de ansarones de la tierra, y así blanco porque se pareciese el oro por de fuera; y por el largor y gordor de los canutillos tenían entre ellos su cuenta qué tantas mantas o qué xiquipiles de cacao valía, o qué esclavos u otra cualesquiera cosas a que lo trocaban. (del Castillo 172)

Note, however, that he has not really made a case for the use of gold as a currency, merely stating that it, like other goods, could be traded. Gold incidentally was not considered nearly as

valuable as jade by the Mexicans, according to words del Castillo attributed to Montezuma, as translated by Doña Marina.

And I give you also some very precious stones which are sent in my name, which are not to be given to persons other than your great lordship. These are chalchiuis ‘jade’ (Nahuatl), and each stone is worth two cargos of gold…

Y también yo os dare unas piedras muy ricas que le envíes en mi nombre, que son chalchiuis, que no son para dar a otras personas sino para ese vuestro gran señor, que vale cade piedra dos cargas de oro... (del Castillo 203)

35 Fe is the Norse word for money, cattle, sheep and possessions, depending on context. So lausafe, for example, means furniture, liquid assets or spare change, not loose sheep (as opposed to virgin wool). Messamott has come to understand the sheep/cattle sense of fe as a kind of docile, marvelously furry deer of indeterminate size, which comes when you call it, like a dog. He’s never seen a sheep or cow himself, and lacks a word, in any case, to describe one in Lenape, which is not his first language. Since he’s unsure whether Freydís wants gold or these sort-of deer-ish creatures, he mentions both to be on the safe side.

36 The Kanien’kéha word for no, iah, pronounced “yah,” sounds like the Norse word for yes, já, pronounced “yow.”

37 Schenectady is derived from Skonéhtati, the opening referred to in the name Skonéhtati Gahunda ‘River of or beyond the Opening,’ now the Hudson River. From the Kanien’kehá:ka point of view, the Hudson was beyond the point where the Teugega Gahunda ‘Mohawk River’ opened into it; beyond Albany, in other words. In fact, the town the Kanien’kehá:ka called Skonéhtati was not Schenectady, but Albany. The portage between the two rivers runs from

one to the other, and the name seems to have run along with it, due to misplacement, misunderstanding and/or mistranslation. The portage was necessary to bypass Gáhao’se ‘Cohoes’ ‘Shipwrecked Canoe’ (now Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk River) and efficient because it cut out the serpentine the Teugega makes between the two towns. In any case, such mix-ups were commonplace in the Age of Genocidal Continent Stealing (aka the Age of Discovery), including one involving Freydís’ home. João Fernandes, returning home to Portugal from a northern voyage, announced with considerable fanfare that he had discovered a wondrous new land in the north, ‘Farmer’s Land’ (Tiera) Do Lavrador. Denmark, unenthused, replied, “That’s Greenland.” Undismayed, another Portuguese, Gaspar Corte Real, went on soon afterwards to land, not, tragically, in the present Labrador, but in Newfoundland. He called it ‘Greenland’ Tiera Verde.

38 Messamott translates, correctly, from Munsee Lenape into Norse, that there are mountains of gold in Onoalágonena, the present Schenectady; but the word he uses, borg, meaning mountain and deriving from an Indo-European root meaning rise, also came to mean fort— since forts also rise—and then town and city—either because towns and cities rise also, or because they tended to grow up around forts, or both. So Freydís misunderstands that there are cities of gold in Onoalágonena, which itself is a town.

39 Both European and Indians sources agree that Indians are, in general, far superior in a number of human virtues, certainly including hospitality and kindness towards visitors. For example:

It was my chance to be landed in the parts of New England where I found two sortes of people, the one Christians, the other Infidels. These [latter] I found most full of humanity…

Thomas Morton, New English Canaan ([originally published by] Charles Green, 1632). February 13, 2012.

As to their honesty, here is a description of the Nimíipuu ‘Nez Perce’:

Simply to call these people religious would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades their whole conduct. Their honesty is immaculate, and their purity of purpose and their observance of the rites of their religion are most uniform and remarkable. They are certainly more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages.

Washington Irving, The Adventure of Captain Bonneville. October 11, 2012.

And yet many European genocidas seem to have received from Indian contacts various false reports of vast reservoirs of gold lying beyond the next body of water (for the first, see the passage from Columbus that opens our story). If the Europeans are to be believed, (not, famously, a good idea) it is difficult to square this circle, except, perhaps, to speculate that giving murderous and treacherous strangers reason to go elsewhere may have been viewed as a pardonable, or even praiseworthy, tactic. Conversely, seeing strangers so desperate for something, it may have seemed an act of kindness, or at least good manners, to give them hope it would soon be found. See for example Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971) 415 and 420.

40 Paraphrased from Joseph Bruchac, “Hodadenon: the Last One Left and the Chestnut Tree” published in Iroquois Stories (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1985). His introductory note:

All of these stories are much older than my voice. They are from the traditions of the People of the Long House.

41 This last [gold] they do not appreciate due to its color. Of all metals, actually, they value gold the least, because of its yellow color. They abhor yellow. The colors they love are blue and red.

Quest'ultimo [l'oro] non é apprezzato per via del colore. Tra tutti i metalli, anzi, l'oro é quello di minor valore perché di colore giallo e il giallo lo aborriscono. I colori piú amati sono l'azzurro e il rosso. (Verrazzano)

Note also: ‘…that folk [Indians] rather wanted to have red cloth…’…vildi þat fólk helzt hafa rautt skrúð… (Grænlendinga saga)

And: ‘The red calumets are the most stylish and the most highly esteemed.’ Les Calumets rouge font les plus en vogue & les plus eftimez. Mr. le Baron de Lahontan, Nouveaux Voyages L'Amerique Septentrionale ‘New Voyages to North America’ (47). Google Books November 2, 2011. De Lahontan’s experiences were primarily with the Haudenosaunee.

42 Boys and some girls in most Indian societies attended hunting and fighting schools led by adults with excellent reputations. Increasingly long and dangerous hunting and raiding expeditions formed their classrooms, deftness in killing and self-defense, courage, discipline and the ability to endure hardship their curriculum.

43 The vikings used square-sails woven from wool, a fact that is well attested by surviving written sources and contemporary iconography.

B. Cooke et al., ‘Viking Woollen Square-Sails and Fabric Cover Factor’ Nautical Archaeology, 31.2. 10/27/2011.

44 Smörring involves a two-stage process of, firstly, brushing into the fabric an emulsion of water, horse fat, (from beneath the mane) and ochre. This is allowed to dry and then hot liquid beef tallow is rubbed and smoothed into the sail. (Ibid.)

45 The vikings’ cardinal points included the prefixes ut- and land- (out- and land-) for west and east, since this was the perspective from Norway, the spring of most Icelandic and Greenlandic settlement. So the southwest was útsuðr, the southeast landsuðr. Vetr, a cognate of English weather, means wind.

46 The Kanien’kehá:ka, like other Haudenosaunee, divide themselves into some of eight possible matrilineal clans, tribes or gens: Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk. This arrangement, along with similar divisions in Algonquian and Siouan peoples, cross-cuts and ameliorates division into nations, and, along with the presence of common cultural traits including but not limited to the use of tobacco and sweat lodges as sacraments, a mixed economy, and similar religious beliefs and diplomatic and martial practices, may justify the designation of that portion of North America between the Rockies and the Atlantic, and between the Muskogean and the Inuit, as a single cultural entity.

Clans are fictive rather than genealogical matrilineages, since they also include adoptees, who are often of entirely different ethnic backgrounds. I would argue that Indians, very much like the Romans (for whom adoption, also, was a central practice) and very much unlike the Greeks and Europeans, do not distinguish fundamentally by the popular fiction of race or ethnicity, only by the meaningful criteria of nation and clan. The Haudenosaunee had leaders who were Algonquian, French Jesuit and, Hiberno-British.

…the Onöñda’gega ‘Onondaga’ now [1657] count more foreigners than naturals in their country. They have seven different nations who have come to establish themselves, and the Onondowahgah ‘Seneca’ have eleven or so…

…qu'on y compte plus d'Estrangers que de naturels du pays. Onnontaghß à sept nations differentes qui s'y sont venuës establir, & il s'en trouue iusqu'à onze dans Sonnontoüan…

Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1656 & 1657 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1658) 264. March 14, 2012.

The fictive matrilineages of the clans anchor the carefully refined Haudenosaunee governmental system. There is an executive, the hereditary clan mother, who consults with the other senior clan women who form a kind of cabinet; a house of lords, male rotiiáne, selected from those of eligible descent by the senior clan women (who may also recall them); Pine Tree Chiefs (whom Europeans sometimes described with the Algonquian word sachem) recognized by merit, whose typical arena is war and diplomacy rather than public ceremony; a popular assembly which votes on major decisions and expects the senior clan women, rotiiáne and pine tree chiefs to serve their interests; and individuals, who reserve to themselves considerable rights and liberties—such as the decision to serve in the army.

Land belongs to the clans. Since women are always the clan leaders among Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples, land therefore belongs to women. The Haudenosaunee system features a far more equitable balance of power between the sexes than do contemporary western democracies, not only because the clan mother is the executive, but because women, as the

owners of the land, effectively control domestic policy, while men, as war and diplomatic leaders, effectively control foreign.

Marriage is forbidden between clan members, and formerly between the members of every clan’s three sister clans, though the latter ban has disappeared over time. Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle are sisters of each other, as are Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk. So, for example, a Turtle originally could only marry a Deer, Snipe, Heron or Hawk, but now can marry anyone who is not a Turtle. Tradition claims two Ur-clans, Bear and Deer, which sprung the others while preserving the original exogamy. Though exceptions occur, particularly in the cases of high ranking men, a general rule of uxorolocality tends strongly to make men outsiders in their own homes; guests of a foreign clan and recognized as such. So boys are mostly fated to be exiles.

Divorce is easy. Either the man chooses to return to his clan or the woman kicks him out. The woman’s clan owns the land and the house, which eliminates the possibility of disputes about property. And not only does the man have no rights to the children, he is not, by matriarchal reckoning (which feels, with obvious justice, that the child is the woman’s) even related to them. His possessions pass to his sister’s children and/or per stirpes matrilineals.

See Lewis Henry Morgan, League of the Iroquois (Citadel Press: New York, 1962)

47 Kanien’kéha distinguishes between my older sister and my younger sister (akhtsí:’a and khe’kén:’a), and between other older and younger relatives. Akhtsí:’a literally means, she has me for a sister, while khe’kén:’a means I have her for a sister.

48 Indians struck early European genocidas as notably large and powerful: ‘…as they are grown so great of body and go nude, from a distance they appear to be giants.’ …i como fon tan crefcidos de cuerpo, i andan defnudos, defde lexos parefcen Gigantes.

Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca ‘Shipwrecks of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’ (Chapter 7). Project Gutenberg EBook February 29, 2012. De Vaca generalizes about the Indians he met along what became the Gulf Coast of the United States. Also:

‘They are taller than we are.’ Di statura sono piú alti di noi. (Verrazzano).

…one of these men pressed our captain between his arms and carried him to the land as lightly as if he were a five year old child, he was such a big and strong man.

... l’un d’iceulx hommes print nostre cappitaine entre ses bras, & le porta á terre aussy legierement que sy feust esté ung enfant de cing ans, tant estoit icelluy homme grand & fort.

Jacques Cartier, Voyage de J. Cartier au Canada (Lexington: Bibliobazaar, 2007) 56. Cartier describes Iroquoians living along the Saint Lawrence.

“Such great and well-proportioned men are seldom seen.” Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, editor (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988) 160. < http://explorepahistory.com/odocument.php?docId=1-4-F0 > February 29, 2012. Smith describes the Susquehannock, Iroquoian relatives of the Kanien’kehá:ka.

49 Kanien’kéha may refer to female human beings as either akaónha, which is used exclusively for female human beings, or aónha, which refers to females of all species. While the latter’s bound form is customary in some usages, more so with older speakers, using it in a context where aka’ónha would normally be used translates well as ’bitch.’

50 Every translation is a mistranslation. From a practical point of view, there remains what seems a crucial distinction between the mistranslations that seem to get across the essential points and those that do not.

“I asked him who was Interpreter for the Gov r . with that Indian, he said Cap ln Celick, I answer'd him, he might make as great a Mistake in the Cajoga Tongue now, as he [ ] Last Year at the treaty with Gov r . Delancey.”

“Letter from Arent Stevens to William Johnson, July 27th, 1755,” Papers of William Johnson 784.

51 ‘Their [Indians’] weapons formerly were bows and arrows, which they knew how to wield wonderfully well.‘ Haar gheweer plach te fpn Pijl en Booghe daer fp haer wonder wel mede wisten te behelpen. (van der Donck 11)

Please note that while I tried to make out and correctly transcribe the Dutch manuscript, I’m sure I failed (though my translation doesn’t miss the mark too tragically, I think). As of 2/14/2012, the Dutch manuscript version is not available at its original link, nor have I found it anywhere else, so I was unable to compound my original transcription errors.

Indians used a wide variety of bows, with a great range in size, materials, composition and effectiveness, but the most popular type in North America may have been a composite flat bow made of so-called juniper or other juniper backed with deer sinew glued with fish paste. Because juniper resists compression well, it’s a good material for the belly or inward curving side of the bow. Since it holds tension poorly, Indians tended to use a composite material on the bow’s back or outward curve. Deer sinew glued with fish paste seems to have been particularly common. A bow is called flat, incidentally, because the blade is from the archer’s perspective, relatively wide (from left to right) and shallow (from front to back), as opposed to

a longbow, which, in addition to being longer (six to seven feet, compared to a flat bow’s three and one half to five) is narrower (from left to right) and deeper (from front to back).

52 …our [Kanien’kehá:ka] warriors, untroubled, promptly dressed themselves in their most precious things, a custom they observe in such occasions, and then, without any commander but their own courage, advanced in force on the enemy [the Mahicans].

…nos Guerriers sans se troubler, s'habillent promptement de tout ce qu'ils ont de plus precieux, selon la coustume qu'ils observent en ces rencontres: & tous, sans aucun autre chef; qui les commande que leur propre courage, donnent avec force sur l'ennemy.

François Joseph le Mercier, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1669 & 1670 ‘Relation of what passed in New France in the years 1669 and 1670’ (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1671) 138. April 18, 2012.

53 The words in italics before the footnote are a partial paraphrase of those below, in which Charlevoix describes Haudenosaunee reaction to a hopeless naval battle.

The [Haudenosaunee] for their part, who would not doubt the battle would come, implored [their French commander] to board the largest of the enemy's vessels rather than surrender, as they preferred to die arms in hand and after pre-avenging their own deaths.

Les Sauvages de leur côté, qui ne doutèrent point qu'il ne fallût fe battre, prient cet Omcier que plutôt que de fe rendre, il abordât le plus grand des Vaiffeaux Ennemis, parce qu'ils aimoient mieux mourir les armes à la main, & après avoir vengé par avance leur mort.

Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France ‘History and General Description of New France’ (II : XVII : 247). Google Books February 9, 2012.

54 Norse and Irish visual and poetic imagery share sinuous, involute and interlocking tendencies.

55 In 1893, a few years after the Gokstad ship was discovered, an exact replica was built. It was properly named Viking, and a Norwegian sea captain, Magnus Andersen, sailed her across the Atlantic. Viking did her finest lap from the 15th to the 16th of May, when she covered a distance of 223 nautical miles. It was good sailing. In the semi-darkness the light from the northern horizon cast a fantastic pale sheen on the ocean as Viking, light as a gull, glided over the wave-tops. We noted with admiration the ship's graceful movements, and with pride we noted her speed, sometimes as much as eleven knots.

Bertil Almgren et al., The Viking (AB Nordbok: Gothenburg 1975) 254.

56 The italicized words are a translation of:

…las canoas…quedábanse atrás por muchos remeros que llevaban...era gran maestría lo de las velas y remos todo junto. (del Castillo 192)

Del Castillo describes Spanish bergantines (in the older sense of ships powered by oar and sail) racing Mexican canoes and piraguas.

57 ‘…everyone who travels by land or river or has any business takes [a pipe] with him.’ Quand ils veulent traverser la terre, pour aller à quelque riviere oú ils ont affaire, ils les portent avec eux.

Samuel de Champlain, Oeuvres de Champlain (L’ Université Laval: 1632) II : 10 : 74.

58 The smoke rising towards heaven is the means of two-way communication with Rawenní:io, its inventor and the Supreme Being, Great Spirit, or God, depending on your tastes in religion and/or Kanien’kéha/English translation. Because tobacco is his essence, Rawenní:io enters into smokers, while the breaths or spirits of the smokers enter their smoke and rise to him.

Rawenní:io is the son of Ataensic ‘Sky Woman’ and the twin brother of Hänegoategeh. Pictured by some Christians as analogs of God and Satan, the twins may originally have been at least somewhat closer to personifications of the yin yang duality; twin forces necessarily both linked and opposed. The Hindu classification of supernatural beings as deva and asura also comes to mind. While deva are nominally the (good) gods (though perhaps sharing a root with devil, as well as deity, Zeus and the Tiew in Tuesday), the asura, who oppose them, are in the earliest literature seen as so good and wise that deva trust them to foster their children. The good sense of asura is preserved in the Zoroastrian supreme God Ahura ‘asura’ Mazda. The Zoroastrians, in turn, saw the deva (Avestan daeuua) as evil.

59 “…in this cake [Radisson’s term for a bag or pouch Kanien’kehá:ka and other Indians carry] there is nothing but tobacco and roots to heale some wounds or sores…” (Radisson)

While it seems generally accepted that Radisson was adopted by Kanien’kehá:ka, pending further reading, I cannot be certain they were not Onöñda’gega. When asked his affiliation by his adopted mother, he responds: “Shee inquired [of] mee whether I was Asserony, a french. I answering no, saying I was Panugaga, that is, of their nation.”

The Jesuits (among whom Radisson lived; his English rendered them the “ghostly fathers”) called Kanien’kehá:ka Agneronon and Anniehronnon, not as close to “Panugaga” as their words for Onöñda’gega, which were Onontagué and Ondagega. Note also the similarity between

Panugaga and the first syllables of Gana’dagwëni:io’geh (which could be rendered “ganadagwa,”) another name for Onöñda’gega. I think it’s possible that the family and/or clan who adopted him, though in an area in which Kanien’kehá:ka predominated, were actually Onöñda’gega.

Radisson’s national affiliation was, in succession, French, Kanien’kehá:ka, French, Kanien’kehá:ka, French, English, French and English, making Alcibiades and Benedict Arnold by comparison the most constant patriots (and accounting, incidentally, for his unique orthography). Influenced by anthropological thought, if that is not too strong a word, (thought, that is, not influence) I find him valuable for epitomizing that discipline’s beau ideal of traveling completely into another culture, and completely back again. The idea is that a person who has made this journey can best explain the former culture to the latter (and, for that matter, vice versa).

60 Paraphrased from Bruchac.

61 It was common practice among the Lenape in historic times not so much to give a child a dog as vice versa, so the dog would treat the child as her puppy. They believed that the dog would protect the child as much in the spiritual as in the material world. The animal would attract any sickness that was about, thus sparing the child.

The animal was thought to say, ‘I am only a dog, the child is more precious.’

Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Folk Medicine of the Delaware and Related Algonkian Indians (36). March 1, 2012.

62 The best reasons in the world are not heard in this country if they are not accompanied by presents.

Les meilleures raifons du monde ne font pas écoutées en ce Pays-là, si ells ne font accompagnées de prefens.

Louis Hennepin, Nouvelle découverte d'un trés grand pays situé dans l'Amérique, entre le Nouveau Mexique, et la mer glaciale ‘New Discovery Of A Very Large Country Situated in America between New Mexico and The Glacial Sea’ (Autrecht: Guillaume Broedelet 1697) 85. October 18, 2011. Hennepin generalizes about Indians in what are today the United States and Canada. His knowledge, if that is not too strong a word, would have been most extensive about some of the Iroquoians and Algonquians in northeastern North America.

63 The forest people use [calumets of peace, or peace pipes] for negotiations, for political affairs, and for all their voyages, for they travel in security when they have the calumet in hand…. [I]t has the effect that a flag of truce has with us; for the forest people believe it a great crime and a violation of the laws of nations, if the rights of this venerable pipe are violated.

Les Sauvages s’en fervent pour les Négociations, pour les affaires politiques, & fur tout dans les voyages, pouvant aller par tout en feureté des qu’on porte ce Calumet à la main...il fait chez eux le même effet, que pavillon d’amitié fait chez nous ; car les Sauvages croiroîent avoir fait un grand crime, & même attirer le malheur fur leurs Nations, s'ils avoient violé les droits de cette vénérable pipe.

Mr. le Baron de Lahontan, Nouveaux Voyages L'Amerique Septentrionale ‘New Voyages to North America’ (47). Google Books November 2, 2011.

64 ‘[The calumet, or pipe] is garnished with yellow, white and green feathers.’ Il eft garni de plumes jaunes, blances & vertes. (Ibid.)

65 Some make capes or coats from raccoon hide, others from the pelts of bears, wildcats, wolves, dogs, weasels, squirrels, beavers and the like, and also from turkey feathers.

Of Elants-hupt om haer lijf fommige een Beeren hupt daerfe ooch Wambafen ban maechen andere weder rochen van Efpamten Cataloffen Wolben Honden Differs Cenhorens Bers of derghlijche ooch heenfe van kalchhoenfe Deeren gemaecht. (van der Donck 23)

66 Unlike most Indians, who tended to carve their pipes from wood or stone, the Indians Hudson met, who were all Algonquians and mostly Mahicans, ‘had copper tobacco pipes there.’ …hadde daer koperen Toback pijpen… Joannes de Laet, Nieuvve wereldt, ofte, Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien ‘New World, or Description of West India’ (Leyden: Isaack Elzevier, 1625) 89. October 19, 2011.

67 [The Indians Champlain met between the Saint Lawrence near Lake Champlain, Algonquians and Iroquoians including Kanien’kehá:ka] slept on hides with their companions and their dogs with them.

Ils couchent sur des peaux, les uns parmy les autres, les chiens avec eux. (Champlain II : 10 : 74)

68 [Indians] get along with each other amazingly well. You’ll never see disputes, quarrels, enmity, or reproaches among them. Men tranquilly leave the management of their homes to women: they cut, they divide, they give as they please, without making their husbands angry.

Ils s'entraiment les vns les autres, & s'accordent admirablement bien; vous ne voyez point de disputes, de querelles, d'inimitiez, de reproches parmy eux, les hõmes laissent la disposition du mesnage aux femmes sans les inquieter; elles coupent, elles tranchent, elles donnent comme il leur plaist, sans que le mary s'en fasche. (le Jeune 232 & 234)

Also:

‘…at home they cultivate peace, diligently avoiding quarrels.’ …at domi colunt pacem, rixasque diligenter cavent. (Jouvency 274)

69 ‘They cherish their children wonderfully…’ Liberos mira caritate complectuntur… (Jouvency 276)

70 Two of the most common words used by early English to describe Indians are “merry” and “grave.” William Penn, for instance, uses both (Penn 30 & 42) while for Champlain:

All these people [Indians] are of a joyful humour. They laugh often, but they are all a bit saturnine.

Tous ces peuples sont tous d'une humeur assez joyeuse; ils rient le plus souvent; toutes fois ils sont quelque peu saturniens. (Champlain II : 13 : 77)

At first you think one or the other of two conflicting propositions is incorrect (ignoring the third, perennially underrated possibility that both are). Then you realize Penn and Champlain are, unbeknownst to themselves, describing their own reflections.

71 What the Dutch will call Spuyten Duyvil ‘Spitting Devil‘ Creek is the outlet of the Harlem River which defines Manhattan’s north edge.

72 To indicate Kanien’kéhá differentiated between two very different types of boat, I use the Spanish distinction between canoa, a light, fragile vessel typically covered with birchbark, and piragua, a relatively heavy and almost indestructible boat made of a portion of a tree trunk which has been hollowed out by burning. The first were essentially eggshells; very delicate, but with the great advantage of extreme lightness, being composed largely of bark. Consequently they were ideal for speed and for inland routes requiring portages. Piraguas were as indestructible as birch bark canoes were delicate, but heavier and slower.

73 Pierre Raffeix slightly illustrates the nature of Indian river battles below, here between a small group of Guyohkohnyoh ‘Cayuga’ and a larger group of (Iroqouian) Susquehannock.

These young [Susquehannock] victors, appraised that the brigade of [Guyohkohnyoh ‘Cayuga’] left in canoes, looked promptly to their own canoes, and pursued them with such diligence, that they caught up with them and defeated them. Eight of ours [Guyohkohnyoh] died in their canoes. Fifteen or sixteen returned pierced by arrows…

Ces jeunes victorieux ayant appris que la brigade des Goiogoüens estoit allße en canot, se mirent promptement sur des canots, & les poursuivirent avec tant de diligence, que les ayans joints, ils les ont battus, huit des nostres ont estß tuez dans leurs canots, quinze ou seize sont retournez tout percez de coups de fleches…

Pierre Raffeix, Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1671 & 1672 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1673) 56. April 19, 2012.

74 “Thus armed, and carrying up to 60 arrows…” (Hardy 165) Hardy paraphrases Pope, who describes a Yuma Indian hunting. It’s interesting to note that he, whose nation lived in California, used a composite juniper (juniper) bow backed with deer tendon glued with fish paste, the same composition used most often, as far as I know, by Haudenosaunee.

75 “[My Kanien’kehá:ka adopted family and I] went into a small river to kill salmons, as in deed we tooke great many with staves [spears]…” (Radisson)

76 Historical Kanien’kehá:ka bathed more often than contemporary Europeans, who considered the practice insalubrious, especially in mid-millenium Spain, where bathing was considered Moorish and consequently Inquisition bait. Queen Isabella hoped her Jesuits would succeed in stamping out the pernicious habit in Mexico and Peru. Regular bathing may be an Indian custom that other Americans took to like filthy, squeamish ducks to water.

The [Kanien’kehá:ka] squaws made signs to me to plunge myself into the water. I did not understand them… For some time I opposed them with all my might, which occasioned loud laughter…. Though they plunged me under water and washed and rubbed me severely, I could not say they hurt me much. (Smith 32)

77 ‘...Kanien’kehá:ka, who are fiends (enemies) of the Mahicans.’ Mackwaes, de welcke vyanden syn van de Mahikans… (de Laet 88). Also:

…[an armed force,] of whom the greater part were Kanien’kehá:ka, went out to capture a village of certain forest people called Mahicans…

…dont la pluspart estoient Agniehronnons, estant allße pour enleuer vne Bourgade de certains Sauuages, qui s'appellent Mahingans…

Jérôme Lalemant, Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1663 & 1664 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1665) 138. April 16, 2012.

78 Kanien’kéha before European influence did not have direct equivalents to uncle and aunt; it did not distinguish lateral steps in the family tree for any except co-generationals. While there were separate terms for brother and cousin, you would call both your father and your uncle rake’niha ‘my father’. I’ve chosen to use uncle in a phrase which would literally translate ‘our father’ because the latter conjures up visions of western deities and their coteries, whereas ‘our uncle’ catches at least a vague sense of an honorific for a respected older person. See

Nora Deering and Helga Harries Delisle, Mohawk: A Teaching Grammar (Quebec: Thunderbird 1976).

79[Many have on their skin] stable and perpetual birds or animals [tattoos]; serpents, eagles, or toads for example, images they impress on the skin. Awl, spear or thorn galls the neck, chest or cheek to effect their crude outlines. Then they curl back the bloody skin and mingle pulverized charcoal, which, when concreted with the blood, impresses their effigies on living flesh, never to be expunged.

…stabiles ac perpetuas avium aut animalium, putà serpentis, aquilae, bufonis, imagines imprimunt cuti, hunc in modum. Subulis, cuspidibus, aut spinis collum, pectus, genasve ita pungunt, ut rudia rerum istarum lineamenta effingant: mox in punctam & cruentam cutem immittunt atrum è carbone comminuto pulverem, qui

cum sanguine concretus impressas effigies ita inurit vivae carni, ut eas nulla temporis diuturnitas expungat. (Jouvency 278)

80 Other than tobacco and sunflowers, eastern North America’s contributions to the world’s crops are mostly berries, including strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, cloudberries, whortleberries and cranberries. Hanundäyo ‘Strawberry Thanksgiving’ was one of a half dozen major Haudenosaunee holidays, preceded by Otädenonene No Wäta ‘Maple Thanksgiving’ and Ayentwätä ‘Planting Festival’, and followed by Ahdakewäo ’Feast’ ,‘Green Corn Festival’, Dayonunneoquä Na Deohako ‘Our Supporters’ Thanksgiving’ and Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ ‘New Year’s Celebration.’

81 “…early Iroquoian vessels are made largely by ‘modelling’ in which the potter begins with a large lump of clay rather than thin coil and models this lump into the vessel shape.” Ronald F. Williamson, “The Early Iroquoian Period of Southern Ontario,” The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650 (London, Ontario: London Chapter of the Ontario Archaeological Society, 1990) 297-98.

82 [T]he old sitt in a half moon upon ye Ground, the middle aged in a like figure at a little distance behind them, & the young Fry in the same manner behind them.

William Penn, ”Letter to Robert Spencer,” July 28, 1683 (Penn 42). While Penn’s experiences were primarily with Lenape, the Haudenosaunee and other Indians may have also arranged themselves thus.

83 I almost believed in the past that the images of the Roman emperors represented the highest ideals of painters, not men who ever were, so strong and powerful are their heads, but I see on the shoulders of these people the heads of Julius Caesar, of

Pompey, of Augustus, of Otho, and of the others which I saw in France, drawn on paper or stamped on medallions.

…I'ay quasi creu autrefois que les Images des Empereurs Romains representoient plustost l'idße des peintres, que des hommes qui eussent iamais estß, tant leurs testes sont grosses & puissates, mais ie voy icy sur les ßpaules de ce peuple les testes de Iules Cesar, de Pompße, d'Auguste, d'Othon, & des autres que i'ay veu en France, tirßes sur le papier, ou releußes en des medailles. (le Jeune 228)

Le Jeune’s experience was principally with Innu and secondarily with Wendat ‘Huron’, close linguistic relatives of the Haudenosaunee. According to Radisson, either a Wendat or an escaped Haudenosaunee captive “doubts that there is great difference of language between the Iroquoits [Haudenosaunee] and the Hurrons [Wendat].”

84 The entire indented passage is a translation of the following:

Questa é la gente piú bella e di costumi piú miti che abbiamo trovato in tutto il viaggio...Il volto é affilato, i capelli sono lunghi e neri ed essi li curano moltissimo, gli occhi sono neri e guizzanti, l'aspetto é dolce e soave alla maniera degli antichi. (Imitando la compostezza delle statue classiche). Le loro donne sono altrettanto belle e ben formate, molto gentili, eleganti, di aspetto gradevole. (Verrazzano)

This first review of New Yorkers by a European is a rave, interestingly enough. Chances are excellent these people were Munsee Lenape, and may well have been Canarsie.

85 The italicized words are a translation of:

...nudo indossava una pelle di cervo lavorata come i tessuti di Damasco, con vari ricami. (Verrazzano)

He’s describing the elder of two sachems he met in the vicinity of the straits which bear his name.

86 ‘…another [Onöñda’gega] took hemlock because she couldn’t bear her spouse abandoning her to marry a rival…’…vne autre a pris de La Cicue ne pouuant se voir abandonnße de son mary qui ßpouse sa riuale. Jean de Lamberville, Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1672 & 1673 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1674) 164. April 16, 2012 .

87 (Bruchac)

88 A brief history of human economy: For more than 95% of our existence, people hunted and gathered. The occupation has the advantages of providing both a varied and healthy diet and plenty of exercise. On the other hand, it leaves its practitioners vulnerable to starvation by allowing little food storage. Furthermore, when a group outgrows its resources, they denude their environment, creating demographic busts in which the population falls to considerably lower numbers than the area would naturally support.

Of course, there is an alternative, frequently taken: organized armed robbery and murder. War, in this case, as has been observed, is the perfect provider: always able to provide enough death for the losers, and enough of their resources to sate the winners. Nevertheless, near-starvation pressure over the millennia forced people to begin eating grasses like proto-wheat and -rice. They improved these, at first unconsciously, then semi-consciously. From this spark, settled

agriculture spread. It is a peculiarly bad way of life, except perhaps in its latest stage of development, featuring very hard work and a malnourishing diet.

On the other hand, the relatively great reserves of food it creates enabled significant numbers to spend the lion’s share of their time on tasks other than food acquisition. So settled agriculture enabled a greater degree of both social stratification and technological development, the latter via a newly possible artisanal class. It looks a lot like the apple in the hunter-gatherers’ Garden of Eden.

It’s interesting to note how much of what we believe to be our humanity is now bound up with surplus labor. It is our technology which makes us us to us. Consciousness, contemplation, fellowship and human interaction in general have become rather barbarous stopgaps for the temporarily technology-deprived. Put another way, we believe that we shine in our technology’s reflected glory, and that those who are not in such close proximity are very benighted indeed. Considering the distance between most people and significant technological achievement of any kind, I would call it a very faint glow, but what do I know?

With the aid of technology, some of us, at least, now eat well. Our far more efficient exploitation of the earth and the population explosion it viciously cycles with denude the earth of its resources at an amazing rate, and will lead, unchecked, to a really massive die-off. A secondary problem is that modern life promotes a sedentary lifestyle. So Europeans 500 years ago (as well as Mexicans, Quechuans and many others) suffered from too little nutrition, while we as a group today suffer from too little activity. The Haudenosaunee, along with other North American Indians seemed to have had, for the most part, enough of both.

Their sensible system, featuring a mix of about half agriculture and half hunting and gathering, enabled a healthy diet and lifestyle, ecological sustainability and considerable food storage. It may have been for them, as it probably was for other groups, a transitional state. Corn was only introduced in what became the northern United States about 1000 to 2000 years before the European invasion, the literature now claims. Certainly, Mexicans, who had eaten corn millennia earlier, were more determined agriculturalists than Europeans—and at least as malnourished. On the other hand, there is no reason to assume that the North American Indians could not have continued their lifestyle indefinitely. The main obstacle would seem to have been population growth—but it’s unclear why and how population growth takes place. For the great majority of our existence, it has been insignificant. Cultures, for example, in which wars occur at a sufficiently frequent and deadly rate will, obviously, maintain their equilibrium with the environment, and Algonquian-Iroqouian-Siouan North America seems to have been as martial an area as most.

89 What will become known as “Bayard Mount at 110 ft. the tallest hill in lower Manhattan.” Bayard Mount was around 200 yards northwest of the present City Hall, near the African Cemetery, around a quarter mile northwest of where the World Trade Center used to be. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan> September 11, 2011.

90 The Haudenosaunee make a thanksgiving address before meetings or other great or important events. On the centrality of thanksgiving to the Haudenosaunee:

…Ohenten Kariwatekwen or “words that come before all else,”…known as the Thanksgiving Address…. We [Kanien’kehá:ka] use words of thanksgiving to thank the Creator for all elements of Creation from the People to the Skyworld to the Creator. These words are

used before every meeting, ceremony, or gathering of people. We say that it assists us to reach consensus or “one mind.” (Benedict)

91 …from the Narraganset Mohowaùuck, 'they eat (animate) things,' hence 'man- eaters'…

October 27, 2011.

I have no particular interest in entering into any debates on the presence or absence of various practices you might find appalling. Why should I? What’s in it for me? Close description of extreme cruelty, I think, will do nothing but overshadow our story. Perhaps it’s best to mention in passing that Indians and vikings were at times appallingly cruel (putting them in the exclusive company of everybody else). For example, the putative first European in North America was allegedly so barbaric as to have been a perfect fit for 21st century Fatherland (Or is it Homeland? I get so confused) security work:

‘Leif tortured three of Freydís’ men. He found they told one story.’ Þá tók Leifr þrjá menn af liði þeira Freydísar ok píndi þá til sagna um þenna atburð allan jafnsaman, ok var með einu móti sögn þeira.

Of course, supposedly higher modern standards have not in fact precluded relatively modern people from doing things far worse than either the vikings or the Indians ever did. Neither group ever killed millions because they belonged to an ethnic group or an economic class, or enslaved millions because of the color of their skin. Perhaps best to say ancient artisans of sadism rivalled ours, perhaps, in retail ghastliness, while their modern counterparts, thanks to superior technology, are far more generous in providing wholesale

death, torture and cruelty. Human inhumanity, in any case, never knows a dry season. The one way Indians were unique in the history of cruelty is that, by all accounts, they didn’t rape. “I have been always assured, that there is not one Instance, of their offering the least Violence to the Chastity of any Woman that was their Captive.” (Colden)

92 The Mohawk hairstyle, incidentally, seems to have been misplaced on the Kanien’kehá:ka from their linguistic cousins the Wendat ‘Huron,’ if Radisson is to be trusted. “You must know that the Hurrons, so called by the ffrench, have a bush of a hair rised up artificially uppon the heads like to a cock's comb.”

93 Ronon:kwe Sewakárien, Kanien’kéha, literally, ’they eat people’.

94 Bird List of the Henry Gerber Reist Sanctuary, Niskyuna New York October 3, 2011.

95 Or Invisible Aids, including all the beneficial lesser deities from Heno, the Thunderer, down to the spirit of the strawberry and to those of individual trees. The class reminds me of the Zoroastrian Amesha Spenta ‘immortals bounteous’ ‘good spirits’, a similarly inclusive category (in one of its two uses). In any case, all religions of all peoples seem to have sprung from one root, to judge from their thematic congruencies, best outlined, as far as I know, in Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice ‘The Nature and Function of Sacrifice’, by Hubert and Mauss. In a nutshell, all are based on the idea of another world, the world of the dead, from which and to which the sacrificed communicate.

96 The Dutch will name Wickquasgeck Trail Heerestraat ‘Lords Street,’ then Breede weg, which the English will transliterate to Broadway. The Wickquasgeck were perhaps the most prominent Manhattan nation when Europeans invaded, though Canarsie were also present. Both were

Munsee Lenape. Broadway (New York City) September 7, 2011.

97 Five Points, Manhattan September 7, 2011.

98 “…named for the numerous oyster shell middens left by the indigenous Native American inhabitants.” Collect Pond September 28, 2011.

99 A depth guesstimate derived from having excavated the original soil matrix there. People had assumed building foundations had penetrated this matrix (as they should have, for safety’s sake). They had in fact been built in the fill which early civic movers had pushed into this lowest spot in lower Manhattan from one or more of its surrounding highlands in the process of flattening the entire area. Two hundred years of downtown Manhattan on top of it had packed this fill and the alluvial silt beneath it harder than many rocks.

100 A domed hut made of juniper (juniper) and interwoven grass.

101 I’ve encountered strong criticism of Morgan from contemporary writers. No doubt sentences, paragraphs and even pages taken out of context reveal, it seems, varieties of paternalism and even racism. I would argue nevertheless that Morgan deserves to be taken as a whole, and also that it is unwise and in some sense unfair to expect those who wrote more than a century ago to meet the byzantine requirements of modern political correctness. I doubt many of us will pass such a test.

Morgan certainly had a number of close friendships with Haudenosaunee, and seems to have been highly thought of by them, and understandably enough, I think. He relied heavily, in particular, on Ely S. Parker.

It remains for the author to acknowledge his obligations to Ely S. Parker, Ha-sa-no-an– da…to whom this volume is inscribed. He is indebted to him for invaluable assistance during the whole progress of the research, and for a share of the materials. His intelligence, and accurate knowledge of the institutions of his forefathers, have made his friendly services a peculiar privilege.

I have trouble believing that Parker, a Seneca leader and brigadier general in the US Army, was Morgan’s fool, or anyone else’s. I think he was an excellent judge of character and of human enterprise, as well as a Seneca patriot. He evidently believed Parker’s work a considerable service to his people. I also have trouble believing anyone who has read Morgan’s book in its entirety could disagree.

Consider also the following, if in doubt about Morgan’s sympathies:

…the darkest frauds, the basest bribery, and the most execrable intrigues which soulless avarice could suggest, have been practiced, in open day, upon this defenceless and much-injured people [the Seneca]. The natural feelings of man, and the sense of public justice, are violated and appalled at the narration of their proceedings. It is no small crime against humanity to seize the fire sides and the property of a whole community, without an equivalent, and against their will; and then to drive them, beggared and outraged, into a wild and inhospitable wilderness. And yet this is the exact scheme of the Ogden Land Company; the one in which they have long been engaged, and the one which they still continue to prosecute. The Georgia treaty with the Cherokees, so justly held up to execration, is a white page, compared with the treaties of 1838 and 1842, which were forced upon the Senecas. This project has already, however, in part, been defeated, by the load of iniquity which hung upon the

skirts of these treaties; and it is to be hoped, for the credit of humanity, that the cause of the Indian will yet triumph.

102 …all harmonizing marvelously well, in a fashion resembling our plainsong.

…tous s’accordans merueilleufement bien, fe mirent à chanter d’vne façon femblable en quelqe façon à noftre plain-chant.

Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1655 & 1656 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1657) 40. March 14, 2012.

103 ‘Ears bear rings of every type in the oriental style.’ Alle orecchie portano pendenti di ogni tipo, alla maniera orientale. (Verrazzano) While it’s certainly possible that the copper goods reported by Verrazzano and de Laet in the Hudson area spread from early Europeans, I would guess they were mainly or exclusively of Indian origin, as copper goods had been widespread in northeastern North America for thousands of years.

Copper was central to five major ritual manifestations in Eastern North America, dubbed by scholars: the Old Copper Culture; the Adena, Hopewell and Copena peoples; and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. The Old Copper Culture was a Middle to Late Archaic development that lasted from about 3000-1000 B.C. and was focused primarily in the upper Great Lakes region.

Amelia M. Trevelyan, Miskwabik, metal of ritual: metallurgy in prectontact Eastern North America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004)

104 Rather like collars, which are descended from pieces of armor designed to protect clavicles, which are peculiarly vulnerable to downward strikes.

105 Why a breechclout (a kind of fore and aft loincloth) and leggings? Why not pants? The great advantage is that movement is relatively unrestricted. The much greater speed and agility of Indians owed a lot to early and frequent training, but something as well to Europeans’ typically tight, restrictive pants and hobbling shoes. “The ffrench…weare…incapable to follow the wildmen who went with all the speed possible…” (Radisson)

Shoes, incidentally, may have regressed over the last 4,000 years. Ötzi, the formerly pre-copper age man found frozen in the Alps, wore warm, extremely comfortable boots with deerskin uppers and bearskin soles, fitted with nettings and padded with grass for insulation and comfort. Unlike our shoes, they didn’t deform the feet. Since his discovery, the copper age has grown to encompass him and his 99.7% pure copper axe blade. Some now believe his boots were attached to snowshoes. September 9, 2012.

106 Haudenosaunee suitors left a deer at the residence of their intended. If the prospective bride and her mother approved, her mother would then leave firewood at the residence of the suitor’s mother. If she also approved, she would then present a loaf of cornbread to the prospective bride’s mother. The husband ate dinner with the bride and her mother and stayed with them to complete the ceremony. Note that the groom, the bride and their mothers had given each other the key elements of the dinner: venison, cornbread and fire.

107 …red cinnabar, black pigment from the eye of the trout, a green dye from wild onions, and a blue…from a root…mixed with sap or resin…applied with a little stick or hairs from a fox’s tail drawn through a quill. (Pope quoted in Hardy, 165) Pope describes the ingredients and application of a Yuma Indian’s makeup or facepaint.

108 Radisson found himself ravishing thanks to his Kanien’kehá:ka makeover.

they cutt off my hair in the front and upon the crowne of the head, and turning up the locks of the haire they dab'd mee with some thicke grease. So done, they brought me a looking-glasse. I viewing myself…smir'd with redde and black, covered with such a cappe, and locks tyed up with a peece of leather…I could not but fall in love with myselfe, if not that I had better instructions to shun the sin of pride. (Radisson)

109 Whatever calamities occur, [Indians] never lose their patient tranquility of spirit, which they believe defines happiness.

Quaecumque calamitas ingruat, nunquam se dimoveri de animi tranquillitate patiuntur, qua felicitatem potissimum definiunt. (Jouvency 275)

A Kanien’kéha greeting, Skennenkówa ken?, transliterates: “Do you have great peace?”

110 ‘Friends never quarrel or expostulate with friends, wives with husbands, or husbands with wives.’ Nihil unquam amicus cum amico, uxor cum viro, cum uxore vir, queritur & expostulat. (Jouvency 276)

111 Rather than appear impolite by contradicting anything said at [Haudenosaunee] council, even the greatest absurdity in the world, they will respond to everything with Niaoüa; that is to say, you’re right, my brother…

Cependant on pafferoit pour mal-honnefte homme parmi eux, fi on contredifoit aux chofes, quife difent dans leur Confeil, & fi on ne convenoit de tout, quand même on diroit les plus grandes abfurditez du monde. Ils répondent donc toujours à tous, Niaoüa, c’eft a dire, tu as raifon, mon Frere... (Hennepin 89)

Niaoüa, as Hennepin rendered the Onoñda’gega’, is niáwen in Kanien’kéha. It is commonly translated as ‘thank you’ and understandable in Hennepin’s sense as ‘thank you for your wise

contribution.’ It’s not far from the ritual “Thanks, Paul,” after a presentation at a business meeting.

While they are closely related, Kanien’kéha and Onoñda’ge are different languages, farther apart than Italian and Spanish, but closer than English and German. In addition to this difference, and the vagaries of transcription, spelling conventions, or the lack of them, further cloud the picture. I hope to be able to convert mine more or less correctly to the Kanien’kéha Standardization Project. See http://kanienkehaka.com/msp/msp1.htm and http://kanienkehaka.com/msp/msp.htm. These are two of the longest texts available in both English and Kanien’kéha.

112 ‘From the same love of concord comes their [habitual] assent…’ Ex eodem concordiae studio fit ut assentiantur ultro… (Jouvency 275)

113 ’[i]f the sentiment for war continues to prevail… bad news for the ambassadors! The people’s law does not guarantee a point of respect for their [ambassadorial] character…’ [s]i le fentiment de continuer la Guerre prévaut…alors malheur aux Ambafadeurs; le droit des Gens ne les garantit point : on n'a de refpect pour leur caractère… (Lafitau 313)

Of the historical treatment of Kanien’kehá:ka ambassadors by Mahicans:

…fifty or sixty Mahicans…were waiting in ambush for them by the lake to capture these [Onöñda’gega and Kanien’kehá:ka] ambassadors, with whom they were at war…

…cinquante à soixante Mahingans…estoient en embuscade dans le Lac, pour se ietter sur ces Ambassadeurs Iroquois, contre lesquels ils sont en guerre…

François Joseph le Mercier, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1666 & 1667 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1668) 82. April 17, 2012.

114 A Calumet [peace pipe] such as I have described serves as assurance [of safe conduct] to all the allies of those that provided it.

Un Calumet, tel que je viens de le reprefenter, fert d’affurance à tous ceux, qui vont chez les Alliez de ceux, qui l’ont donné. (Hennepin 150-151)

Meaning presumably also that those who are not allies will not grant safe conduct.

115 From the Sinsink, an Algonquian Lenape Munsee nation like the Canarsie, Wickquasgeck and Tappan, arose the names Ossining and Sing Sing.

116 Few scholarly debates have been so neatly summed up by one title as the question of pre- Columbian North American population and the book Numbers from Nowhere. Speculations on the subject have had, as a firm rule, no useful data to work with.

I will however introduce my own number from nowhere: considering that the largest city in North America before European contact was Cahokia, and that its population has been estimated (more or less reliably [!]) at 20,000, and considering also that the largest city in North America today is New York, with a population of around 8,000,000, I might propose that since that proportion is 400:1, the proportion for what is now the US might be around the same, giving the pre-European US area a population of around 7.5 million people. I mention this idea not only because my ignorant guess may be as good as any, but also because I once made an earlier estimate, which, as it happened was (to quote myself from memory) “2.5 – 5 million in the Southeastern US, and another 2.5 – 5 million in the rest of the US and Canada put

together”—giving a mean number, also, of 7.5 million (though this one included Canada). This number from nowhere was based on two factors (I might add for a laugh): 1. Seems about right (!) & 2. Population should be considerably higher in well-watered areas without severe winters. Accounts of Indians in the north and southwest frequently return to the theme of seasonal dearth.

117 Women were the principal and typically sole farmers among the Haudenosaunee and most other Indians. Put another way, men’s work was limited to hunting, fishing, war and occasional heavy lifting. Women worked harder, as a general rule, but also had more control of their households than they do now.

The men calmly leave the disposition of the menage to the women…[the women] work incessantly, searching for firewood, building the houses, dressing the skins, and occupying themselves with other arduous work. Each sweetly manages her own small affairs nearly uncontested.

…les hõmes laissent la disposition du mesnage aux femmes sans les inquieter…qu'elles trauailloient incessamment, allans querir le bois pour le chauffage: faisants les Cabanes, passans les peaux, & s'occupans en d'autres oeuures assez penibles, chacun fait son petit affaire doucement, & paisiblement sans dispute. (le Jeune 234)

118 In testing, the best Indian bows cast a little more than 200 yards, while many failed to reach 150. The best English longbows cast 250 yards or a little more. (Pope) So full-time artillers with the best in iron age technology and an archive to draw on, unsurprisingly, make better bows than part-time bowyers lacking both. More surprising, perhaps, is that the difference in quality between the best Indian and the best European bows was not very great. The testers themselves noted another essential difference. While they with their bows were considerably

better at the two tests they valued, namely distance and static target shooting, the Indian they knew best was far superior, in their opinion, in the very different skill of bow hunting (Hardy 164-5). The best historical bows, incidentally, were Turkish and Mongol horn and tendon composites, which cast arrows nearly one hundred yards farther than the best European bows—surely one of the less appreciated and more consequential facts in the history of technology. The Turks’ greater cast sped their conquest of Constantinople, which led, in turn, to the search for an alternate route to Asia.

119 His war cry is so terrifying it makes the sun hide behind clouds. (A Haudenosaunee Pantheon)

120 What twentieth century archers called the Sioux grip seems to have been common among many Indian nations. (The shaft is held between the second and third fingers and the pinkie does not touch the string in what many think of as the conventional grip.)

121 There’s something about finding an artifact, something which the dull Latinate word “artifact” suffocates. It is not an artifact. It is not a projectile point. It is a piece of rock a person sculpted into a sweet little killer a long time ago. And that person has not disappeared completely. He or she (probably he, but you never know) has left a very precise record of how his or her hand hit a piece of flint with a hammer stone, a record which will last longer than any record you will leave. You now touch this record of lively actions. You hold it greedily, sinfully, searching out the sharpest edge. You run your calloused fingertip across its dappled hollows--so you can mainline, what, not the rock, but the hand that made it, that blood-pulsing, calloused, beaten up hand, so strong and so skillful, into your own. That hand, its flesh, even the skeleton that scaffolded it, down to the last molar—down to the hardest, roundest, last nugget of bone-- has long since surrendered to the soil, but the rock remains, as fresh as a lettuce, as perfect a silicate chalice and record of one hand’s pilgrimages as ones and zeros now form. What vitality

this person must have had; if he or she could strum this cracking tune on that piece of flint, what symphonies he or she must have traced on the ground. Finally you usher this piece of the Onöñda’gega escarpment to its proper place in a beading plastic bag, with, perhaps, a stick-on label, on the theory that some day it will mean something to someone else. It is, at any rate, most certainly not yours. You found it to give it away to your human family, your society, your culture. But you feel with a bittersweet certainty that no one else will ever drink in even the smallest honeydew drop of the long draught of nectar flowing through you. And you rub your calloused fingertip once more over the pressure flaking, and feel the flint blade slide across the creases of your fingers.

Then you take it out of the bag and slide it back, once more, into the groove of silty loam that held it, a shocking 20 degrees from vertical. Musta shot that thing at a really high arc, maybe to hit someone behind cover…or just planted it there for some long lost—very long lost—reason. And you remember that click of the trowel when the blade hit it, not the ugly, grating, scrappy sound ordinary rocks make, but a click clear and clean as fine-grained flint.

How much better if it would go to a place anyone could consider a proper home instead of to some office in Harrisburg, the capital of a commonwealth that doesn’t recognize a single Indian nation these days.

“An approach to archaeology and cultural resource management has to be built so that it is accountable and subject to the scrutiny of the people whose ancestors are being studied.” Salli M. Kawennotakie Benedict, “Made in Akwesasne” A Passion for the Past: Papers in Honour of James F. Pendergast, ed. J.V. Wright and J.-L Pilon, Mercury Series, Archaeology Paper no. 164 (Gatineau, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2004).

In days gone by, as it happens, when it needed Indian support, Pennsylvania had great respect for Indian nations—or so, at least, Rakhtsí:'a Ónas ‘The Governor of Pennsylvania’claimed.

Are you not a free and independent People, and have you not a Right to live where you please on your own Land and trade with whom you please? Your Brethren, the English, always considered you as a Free Nation…the Friendship now subsisting between Us [Pennsylvania, the English colonists, and/or Great Britain], the Six Nations, Delawares, Shawonese, Owendatts, and you [the Twightwees ‘Miami], may become as Strong as a great Mountain which the Winds constantly blow against but never overset. Rakhtsí:'a Ónas ‘William Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania’

It seems Brother Onas suffers from a mnemonic disability. He can only remember the promises he makes to his friends until it is to his advantage to forget them.

(Ónas is the Haudenosaunee name for the Governor of Pennsylvania. They would call each incumbent Onas as US citizens might call their leader Mr. President.)

In a dispute over repatriation of artifacts with (non-Indian) academics, Iroquois

argued that for one culture group to assert that its scientific interests took precedence over the religious rights of another was itself evidence of how deeply entrenched racial bias was in the social sciences.

Richard Hill “Regenerating Identity: Repatriation and the Indian Frame of Mind,” The Future of the Past: Archaeologists, Native Americans, and Repatriation (New York: Garland 2001).

In my opinion, museums or other cultural custodians which believe return of human remains and other sacred objects to their rightful owners compromises their mission are sadly mistaken

about their mission. I have zero sympathy for museums’ refusal to repatriate human remains, sacred objects and other cultural resources to Indians, or for that matter to Greeks, Jews, Africans or Asian Indians, whether the looters are United States functionaries, British Imperialists, or Nazi art collectors.

Imagine for a moment that the shoe was on the other foot. Say the Maya had devoted their genius not to astronomy and art but to shipbuilding and gunpowder, and that they conquered Europe in the seventh or eighth century. Most Christian relics, icons and art now sit in museums curated entirely by Mayans, deaf to calls by the remaining Christian community for the repatriation of the sacred relics of their church. Would this seem unfortunate, even outrageous?

Given that their right to ownership of the items ranges from more or less to completely nonexistent, it’s hard to see how traditional (non-Indian) museums can continue to display Indian artifacts. Even the United States government, as genocidal as it has been, at this point recognizes that Indian cultural objects should be repatriated appropriately after analysis. It would seem far more appropriate that Indian institutions house and display Indian cultural objects. There may be less trouble doing this than it might seem. Once granted ultimate authority, Indian groups might wish to make use of existing museums’ facilities and expertise. Museumistas, in turn, might welcome the chance to do their work properly.

122 The Haudenosaunee twisted two feathers around the nocks of their arrows to create rifling (spinning which keeps the projectile flying straight towards a target). Morgan believes this inspired the rifling of guns. (Morgan 305)

Wikipedia disagrees, claiming “True rifling dates from the mid-15th century.” But it also cites twisted feathering on arrows as the inspiration. And since the previous quote currently

precedes the phrase “citation needed”, I would not yet rule out Morgan’s theory. September 20, 2012.

123 ‘…he loves us…we’ll defend him or die at his feet.’ …il nous aime…l faut le défendre , ou mourir à fes pieds. (Charlevoix II : XX : 366) The speaker is a Wendat ‘Huron’.

Also, on the topic of devotion to younger relatives:

…you French people love only your own children, but we love all the children of our nation catholically…

…vous autres François vous n'aimez que vos propres enfans, mais nous, nous cherissons vniuersellement tous les enfans de nostre nation… (le Jeune 254)

Le Jeune’s speaker is Innu, but his sentiment seems to be common to Indians.

124 ‘…in some parts the women use these bows…’ …in alcuna parte ufana quefti archi le donne... (Vespucci 5)

On the topic of Indian women taking part in battles:

’the [Kanien’kehá:ka] women…armed themselves with knives and defensive weapons…’ les femmes…s'armer de cousteaux & d'armes deffensives… François Joseph le Mercier, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1669 & 1670 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1671) 136. April 9, 2012.

Le Mercier describes Kanien’kehá:ka women arming themselves during a siege, probably implying both that most of them did not normally serve as soldiers, and that they were tough and experienced enough to serve usefully when they did. I will hazard that as a general rule,

Indian women did not fight in planned military actions, but that most could and did in a pinch, and a few fought as regularly and as well as men.

125 Scattered bones were a shorthand for the devastation of war. So retrieving and burying bones scattered by war was a metaphor for peacemaking:

Unkle your great men that have died in the war and others where whose bones lye Scattered and above ground we now gether together all in one place and bury them, because we would not have the bones of your great men lye scattered on the earth.

“Speech Of Stockbridge Indians to The Mohawks” Papers of William Johnson 126.

126 Middle Kingdom Egyptian arrows penetrated extraordinarily deeply into body cavities, to judge from osteological evidence from Neb-Hepet-Re, around 1900 B.C. You might guess first that its archers had particularly strong bows (they didn’t) or that they fought at particularly close range (they may or may not have). The probable cause was unusually light reed shafts with “tiny” flint and hardwood points (Hardy 23)—not the first explanation I, at any rate, would have hit on to explain their extraordinarily deep penetration.

127 Gáoh is the god of winds, portrayed as the master of a house with four doors facing the cardinal points. A bear, panther, moose and fawn tend the north, west, east and south winds, respectively.

128 Thomas Pownall, A topographical description of the dominions of the United States of America Google Books February 14, 2012 in Douglas Hunter, Half Moon (Bloomsbury: New York, 2009) 214.

Pownall describes what he knew as the Tappan Zee in 1755. The name is Dutch for ‘Lake of the [Algonquian Lenape Munsee] Tappans.’

129 Viking ships were designed to be supple and to 'ride the punch' of the sea, rather than be rigid and battle against it. In this they were probably more successful than any rigid structure could have been, for, with the materials and technology of those days, a rigid structure would inevitably have had to be more massive. Leakage at the seams and through fastenings must always have been a problem, however, and bailing out a constant task. (Graham-Campbell & Lincoln 63)

It fell, in other words, more on the canoa than the piragua side of shipbuilding, and was, as canoas are, relatively portageable. Of course, a portage of a longship or knarr was still a major and relatively slow undertaking, but it could and was done frequently on Russian rivers. The crew rolled their ships over logs, the back log replacing the front, or partly disassembled and carried them.

130 Witches in Haudenosaunee belief acquire their power to shift shape by betraying their best friends.

131 The Haudenosaunee said that we [the French] were of the Otkon ‘Otgon’, which is to say in their language piercing spirits.

[The Haudenosaunee] difoient, que nous étions des Otkon [Otgon], c’eft á dire dans leur langage des éfprits perçans. (Hennepin 100)

While Hennepin may have missed the Haudenosaunee implication that the French were sorcerers, and even black magicians, his exact words for possessors of Otgon, éfprits perçans ‘piercing spirits’, strikes me as not bad at all, especially as it connotes the yang, masculine force.

Not spirits as such, [Orenda and Otgon] can assume the force of sentient spirits under some circumstances. Orenda and Otgon are the invisible Power, spiritual and/or magickal force which permeates all being. They can be collected and enhanced, but they exist and flow through everything. Orenda is good energy, Otgon is evil energy. (A Haudenosaunee Pantheon)

As in the case of the twin sons of Ataensic, Rawenní:io and Hänegoategeh, I believe good and evil may be less descriptive of the Orenda-Otgon duality (which the twins personify) than yin and yang, respectively. Otgon, Radissonized as dodcon I believe, is a term of high praise in the following passage:

As we came neare the village, a multitude of [Kanien’kehá:ka] people came to meete us with great exclamations, and for the most part for my sake, biding me to be cheerfull & qualifying me dodcon [Otgon], that is, devil, being of great veneration in that country to those that shew any vallour. (Radisson)

Another rough correspondent of Otgon which Star Wars has popularized is the Norse siðr, which the god Óðinn ‘Odin’ ‘Wotan’ (and the Wedn in Wednesday) demonstrated and augmented by sacrificing himself to himself in order to increase his own power.

132 Ataensic ‘Sky Woman’, the Haudenosaunee first mother, fell from the sky to the water world. Brother Eagle glided her safely down, and Brother Turtle raised his back to meet her, forming the earth, or Turtle Island.

133 Ibid.

134 …one of those who make themselves women, and are called women by the Indians. There are several of this sort among most Indian tribes, if not all. They are commonly called agokwa.

John Tanner, “White Indian,” Captured by Indians, 157. Reports of gays among Indians are common, z.B:

…[the Totenec priests] have boys dressed in women’s clothes…these papas ‘priests [Nahuatl]’ are sons of princes and don’t have wives, evilly committing sodomies…

...tenían muchachos vestidos en hábitos de mujeres...aquellos papas ‘padres’ eran hijos de principales y no tenían mujeres, mas tenian el maldito oficio de sodomías… (del Castillo 87-88)

…among the American Indians, from the Eskimo of Alaska downward to Brazil and still further south, homosexual customs have been very frequently observed. Sometimes they are regarded by the tribe with honor, sometimes with contempt, but they appear to be always tolerated.

Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion (Studies in the Psychology of Sex), Volume I (New York: Random House, 1942) 16.

…[A]t the age at which a normal youth began the full activities of man and warrior, these special individuals…formally donned women’s clothes, and from that time forth worked, and were classed, as women…. The custom provided a useful place for persons who otherwise would have been hopelessly misfitted.

Oliver La Farge, A Pictorial History of the American Indian (New York: Crown Publishers, 1956) 100.

Europeans took a much dimmer view of sexual heterogeneity than of genocide.

I want to say that in all the provinces of New Spain, a dirtier and more evil people of worse habits can’t be found than in the province of Panuco, because they are all sodomists and suck ass, a perversity never heard of in the world.

…quiero decir que en todas las provincias de la Nueva España otra gente mas sucia y mala y de peores costumbres no la hubo de la provincia de Panuco porque todos era someticos y se embudaban por las partes traseras, torpedad nunca en el mundo oida… (del Castillo 385)

I beg to differ.

135 ‘[Indians in the Saint Lawrence area] pass one, two and three days without eating, while continuing to row, hunt and work to their utmost.’ Ils passerõt vn iour, deux & trois iours sans manger, ne laissans pas de ramer, chasser, & se peiner tant qu'ils peuuent. (le Jeune 238 & 240)

136 Joseph Bruchac, “The Wife of the Thunderer” published in Iroquois Stories (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1985).

137 There are a great many conflicting statements by Europeans about Indians promiscuity or lack of it. Since this is equally true of Europeans talking about Europeans, we could do worse than guess the two groups were not so very different in chastity and fidelity. Different Indian

nations undoubtedly varied tremendously, however. I’d guess most Haudenosaunee would seem conservative by modern standards, though tolerant of those who were not. For what it’s worth, I find Garnier’s words, below, ring truer than most.

I know more than 200 families among [the Onondowahgah ‘Seneca’] whose marriages are firm and stable. They raise their children to have good morals and prevent their daughters from being too conversant with the outside world, so that they do not fall into the disorders of impurity…. [They] would live most Christianly, had they the Faith.

Je connois pres de deux cent familles, entr'autres, dans des mariages fermes & stables, qui eslevent moralement bien leurs enfans, qui empechent que leurs filles ne conversent trop au dehors, & qu'elles ne se jettent dans les desordres de l'impuretß…& qui seroient pour vivre tres-chrestiennement, s'ils avoient la Foy.

Julien Garnier, Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1671 & 1672 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1673) 138. April 16, 2012.

138 ‘[The town of Onöñda’gega] is a kind of parliament of the entire [Haudenosaunee] nation.’ Onontaghß estant comme le Parlement de tout le pays. Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1656 & 1657 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1658) 40. March 14, 2012.

By de Quen’s time, 650 years after our story takes place, the town which was the eponymous capital of the Onöñda’gega had become the capital of all five Haudenosaunee nations. It is where Syracuse, New York, is now. Also:

[Onöñda’gega], the great village, which is the center of all the Haudenosaunee nations and in which every year they hold a kind of Estates-General…

…Onnontaß, grande Bourgade, qui est le centre de toutes les Nations Iroquoises, & où se tiennent tous les ans comme les Estats generaux…

François Joseph le Mercier, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, en l'année 1666 & 1667 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1668) 174. April 9, 2012.

139 ‘…you are tired of living…’…tu es lassé de vivre… Champlain (III : 303 : 452) Champlain’s speaker, an Odawa, is correctly criticizing Champlain’s companion, Nicolas de Vignau, for leading them into danger due to his arrogant and mendacious ignorance. Champlain eventually described Nicolas as ‘the most impudent liar I’d seen in a long time’ le plus impudent menteur qui se soit veu de long temps.

140 ‘[Indians in the Saint Lawrence area] have only to dream of a thing to go on a long voyage in quest of it.’ Il ne leur faut que resuer à vne chose pour leur faire entreprendre de grands voyages à sa recherche. Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1656 & 1657 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1658) 133. April 23, 2012.

‘…[the dream] is nearly the only divinity of the [Haudenosaunee] country, and the people glory in committing a thousand extravagances to obey it…’…c'est presque l'vnique diuinitß du païs, & l'on fait gloire de mille extrauagances pour obeïr à ce… Jérôme Lalemant, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, en l'année 1647 (Paris:

Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1648) 46. March 29, 2012.

141 Iroquoian katkowa or Algonquian wampumpeag ‘wampum’ had religious, diplomatic and communicative meaning (a perpetual name of one of the Onöñda’gega rotiiáne ‘nobles’ ‘officers of the state’, was Honowenáto ‘Keeper of the Wampum’, who “was required to be versed in its interpretation”). (Morgan) For more on the meaning of katkowa, see

Richard Hill “Regenerating Identity: Repatriation and the Indian Frame of Mind,” The Future of the Past: Archaeologists, Native Americans, and Repatriation (New York : Garland 2001).

142 It would be cruelty, even a kind of murder [the Haudenosaunee, Wendat and others believe], not to give a man what he dreamed of, for a refusal is capable of killing him...

Ce seroit vne cruautß, & vne espece de meurtre, de ne pas donner à vn homme ce qu'il a songß: car ce refus seroit capable de le faire mourir…

Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1655 & 1656 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1657) 164. March 14, 2012.

143 During the celebration of the Festival of Dreams [Ononharóia, an Onöñda’gega] repeatedly refused to give his well-worked tobacco pouch to a dreamer, shaming him with the refusal. Refusing a request like this is very rare. The deference towards dreams is so great that ordinarily people give dreamers all they have dreamed of.

Pendant que l'on solennisait ici la fête des songes, il a refusß constamment de donner son sac à pßtun, assez bien travaillß, à un songeur qui, ainsi, a eu la honte d'être

refusß, ce qui se fait rarement; car l'on a tant de dßfßrence pour les songes que l'on accorde ordinairement tout ce que demande celui qui a songß. (Lamberville 208)

144 …if you refuse them something, their reproach is to say, Khisakhitan Sakhita ‘You love this? Love it as much as you want!’

…si vous leur refusez quelque chose, voicy leur reproche, comme ie remarquay l'an passß, Khisakhitan SaKhita, tu aime cela, aime le tant que tu voudras… (le Jeune 238)

While le Jeune spoke specifically of the Innu, the tendency of the Haudenosaunee to give and share, and to expect giving and sharing, is well remarked. I quoted these words for their piquancy.

145 It isn’t, properly speaking, the dream which [the Guyohkohnyoh ‘Cayuga’] worship as the Master of their Life, but a certain one of the spirits they call Agatkonchoria…when they speak of the dream as a God, they mean to say nothing but that the dream is the means through which they recognize God’s will and what is necessary for the conservation of their life; and that to accomplish the things they see in the dream is a means of contributing to the establishment of their health and fortune.

…n'est pas à proprement parler le Songe qu'ils adorent comme le Maistre de leur vie, mais un certain des Genies qu'ils appellent Agatkonchoria... lorsqu'ils parlent du fonge comme d'un Dieu, ils ne veulent pas dire autre chose, sinon que c'est par luy qu'ils connoissent les volontez de Dieu; & ce qui est necessaire à la conservation de leur vie, & que l'accomplissement des choses qu'ils ont veu en songe, est un moyen qui contribuë à l'establissement de leur santß, & de leur fortune.

Estienne de Carheil, Relation de ce qvi s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1669 - 1671 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1672) 64-66. March 30, 2012.

146 I’ve spent a lot of time daydreaming about how artifacts arrived at the places I found them, but have kept a line intact, I think, between fact and fantasy. This is apparently not always all that easy in a field with the motto, “Never let your data get in the way of your interpretations.” Archaeologists painstakingly gather data in order to draw unwarranted conclusions from it.

The Grossmann Celt Cache discovered this summer (2001) near O'Fallon, Illinois, consists of 70 finely worked celts (ungrooved axes), including the largest one ever found in this region, at 18-inches long and weighing 25 pounds!

The cache was found complete, in its storage pit, just as the Native Americans left it approximately 1000 years ago. A tool kit of this size and weight implies communal construction projects, possibly of monumental proportions.

2/5/2010.

The readiness of people in general, and archaeologists in particular, to leap to speculative conclusions unjustified by the evidence is remarkable. As it happens, I was excavating in City Island in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when some friends of mine working fifteen feet away found a cache of 20 blank celts, most a bit larger than the 18 inch/25 lbs dimensions mentioned above. Does ”[a] tool kit of this size and weight impl[y] communal construction projects?” Not hardly. Our collective guess, considering everything about the place seemed to indicate a yearly festival/trading fair is that the celts had been intended for trade, or gained in it, and buried for safekeeping. But that was just a guess, not worth the paper it wasn’t printed on.

The only facts (given the marks of the digging stick used to bury them) seemed to be that someone had made them, someone had buried them, and no one had dug them up until we did. The burial of tools, even relatively large caches, was, if not a common occurrence, not exceedingly rare—and that to say that these burials “imply communal construction projects” is simply wrong. There are various possible reasons why people may bury 70, or 20, celts which do not involve communal construction projects. The larger point is that just-so stories which provide emotionally resonant post facto explanations of known outcomes should not be mistaken for scholarship, however frequently they are.

Crazy as it sounds, a cache of celts implies nothing more, necessarily, than a cache of celts.

To say that anthropologists and archaeologists have a gift for reasoning poorly implies that everyone else does not, which of course isn’t true. But their ability to leap to speculative conclusions unjustified by the evidence remains to me at least impressive. This is the field, after all, which brought us “ceremonial cities.” A popular theory among archaeologists for some time was that the Maya didn’t actually live in their cities. They built them and then went out and slept in the jungle, only darkening their door on certain ceremonial occasions. So: you go and build yourself a house. Then you sleep outside, in the mud, only coming in, say, Thanksgiving and Christmas to have dinner. Then you go back to sleep in the mud. I couldn’t make this up.

Another remarkable example concerns the so-called Neanderthal. Many found the greater robustness of certain groups of skeletons sufficient reason to assume they were a different and therefore inferior species. (Don’t ask me why they couldn’t have been superior. There’s a good girl.) However, Professor Richard E. Green, Svante Pääbo and 54 colleagues recently established, to their great credit, that they were not (a different species, that is, as opposed to inferior); that so-called Neanderthal were as human as we are (not that that’s saying very

much); that they are in the lingo Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, not Homo neanderthalensis. They did so by salvaging and sequencing Neanderthal DNA. It turns out that all population groups save Africans number Neanderthal among our ancestors. So, it would seem, a triumph for science over prejudice—except that Professor Pääbo has concluded that non-Neanderthals must have been superior after all, and has set out on a quest for the genetic basis of this supposed superiority.

It’s not everyone whose own research makes his chosen line of research untenable, but here we are.

“I want to know what changed in fully modern humans, compared with Neanderthals, that made a difference,” Pääbo said. “What made it possible for us to build up these enormous societies, and spread around the globe, and develop the technology that I think no one can doubt is unique to humans. There has to be a genetic basis for that…”

“What Happened Between the Neanderthals and Us?” < http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_kolbert> November 3, 2011.

Yes, there has to be a genetic basis for that. It occurred at the moment human beings speciated. Each human being is capable, given time, fellowship and favorable circumstances, of contributing significantly to human efflorescence.

No, it does not have to have anything to do with the genetic differences between the Neanderthal “subspecies” or “race” of human beings and the rest of us. In fact, it can’t, because while species is a meaningful concept, race is not. Species is a group of organisms that can

interbreed to create fully viable offspring. Race is a popular fiction given to apparently meaningful clusters of genetic variation. It disappears on close examination. No definition of a race can distinguish any discrete sub-group of any species. The range of genetic variation within any human race or subspecies far exceeds the difference between it and other races. Neither Pääbo nor anyone else can define “Neanderthal” so as to include all the individuals he wishes to call Neanderthal and to exclude all those he wishes to call non-Neanderthal. Shall we define Neanderthals as having more robust bones? Plenty of people alive now have bones more robust than many of the so-called “Neanderthal.” Skull shape? Brow ridges? Same thing.

As to the popular fiction of race: am I not an African American, since, after all, I am a United States citizen and all my ancestors’ ancestors ultimately came from Africa? What could be more African American than that? Or, if a refinement to the definition is attempted, if the rule is that my ancestors have to have left Africa after, say, 50,000 years ago for me to be African American, wouldn’t that mean that a woman crossing from Africa to Asia at 50,000 years ago plus one second would have descendants who weren’t African American, while her brother following at her heel would have descendants who were? The idea that African Americans can be meaningfully distinguished is nonsense.

Since Neanderthals were Homo sapiens, genetic difference between them and other Homo sapiens ceases to be meaningful, just as genetic difference between Jews and any other ethnic group is not. You’d think everyone would be clear on this at this point, what with the Shoah and all.

This would be funny if it weren’t tragic: I watched a PBS Nova special in which a certain professor treated skull shape as diagnostic of the difference between “modern human beings” and Neanderthal. (Never mind, for a moment, that nothing is. As it happens, I’ve tried to

determine the race of skeletons I’ve found, and know that those who are best at it do so with about 85% success; in other words, there’s nothing you can hang your hat on.) It was, he explained, with suitable show-and-tell examples, the difference between long-headed and round-headed skulls—the exact same difference which supposedly demonstrated white superiority over Africans, and Aryans over Jews. The African American skulls I’ve excavated were, for the most part, considerably closer to his round-headed, “Neanderthal” example than to his “modern human” long-headed skull. Africans are the one group of human beings who do not have any Neanderthal ancestry. There is no hope for humanity.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one of the hallmarks of human beings is our ability to revolutionize our way of living without changing genetically. This is how we differ from, say, spiders. We did not develop digital technology due to a genetic mutation, but because our unchanged genomes have found increasingly complex and fruitful ways of interacting in a network of behaviors which is increasing in complexity and sophistication at an accelerating rate. We may, however, trust that 200 generations from now anthropologists will, presumably, be looking for the genetic change that gave rise to digital technology.

While I would need to do far more work to establish the idea (and did not originate it), I believe the difference between Neanderthal and other human skeletons corresponds at least in part to the difference of a wild to a domestic animal. Our domestic cats and dogs have more gracile skeletons than their wild ancestors. We’ve domesticated ourselves.

The accepted geneology of human beings, incidentally, beginning (debatably—oh so debatably) with Australopithecus anamensis and culminating in Homo sapiens, has exactly the same relation to scientific evidence as Greek mythology: none whatsoever—but, my, what interesting stories!

Until very recently, hominid geneology has been constructed entirely from the differentiation of skeletal remains. The only problem is that skeletal differences have no necessary correspondence to genealogical differences. How many species of dog would science contrive if none were left to gather DNA from? Five? Twenty? My guess, and it is only a guess, is that there were far fewer hominid species than have been proposed and generally accepted, and that there may well have only been two or three. In any case, the only thing we’ve learned about the subject is that Neanderthals can be knocked off the list of possible different species. So, many thanks to Green, Pääbo et al.

147 “…a woman of the said [Kanien’kehá:ka] company taking hould on my haire, signifying great kindnesse. Shee combs my head with her fingers…and sunged.” (Radisson)

148 Early 11th century Kanien’kehá:ka, like other Indians and early 21st century computing types, were silicologists. Instead of creating microchips from silicon, however, they created projectile points from silicates, especially, in the case of the Haudenosaunee, Onöñda’gega Escarpment flint. Pure silicon is glass. Flint, which is silicon plus other elements, is glassy in the sense that it fractures cleanly, creating smooth, sharp cutting edges. Creating a projectile point involves hitting a hammer stone against a core, or unworked piece of flint, so that the bulbs of concussion caused by the impact fracture the flint into the desired shape. It’s a multi-stage process, beginning with roughing out the shape, and ending with so-called pressure flaking to hone the edges.

149 As technologically hopeless as we might find Indians, consider how technologically hopeless they would find us. If parachuted into an ancient North American forest without any of the accoutrements of our culture, what could most of us do but freeze and starve? All our technology is too complex for a single individual to build from scratch. Haudenosaunee

technology was what a man and a woman could craft from scratch out of a temperate forest. Adeptness required, I would guess, every bit as much skill and training then as now.

150 They also say that all animals of every species have an elder brother, who is, as it were, the first and original of all the individuals, and that this brother has marvelously great power.

Ils difent en outre, que tous les animaux de châque efpece ont vn frere aifné, qui eft cõme le principe & cõme l’origine de tous les indiuidus, & ce frer aifné eft merueilleufement grand puiffãt. (le Jeune 46)

151 Bjarni told of the voyage where he had sighted land [Vinland; presumably North America], and men thought he had been unintrepid (óforvitinn, literally, “un-travelling- savvy”) because he had nothing to tell of it. He fetched from this a certain disdain.

Sagði Bjarni frá ferðum sínum, er hann hafði lönd sét, ok þótti mönnum hann verit hafa óforvitinn, er hann hafði ekki at segja af þeim löndum, ok fekk han af því nökkut ámæli. (Grænlendinga saga)

152 Claims to understanding Indians have largely foundered, lately, on the shores of political correctness—excepting those who paint them as proto-New Agers, which requires a lot of painting. On the other hand, many continue to feel comfortable with their understanding of the vikings, those big, lovable, serial killing galoots.

Though I’ve read their language since college, I find the vikings as bizarre and enigmatic a people as any. As pioneers of democracy, restless inventors, the greatest sailors of their time, and creators of an extraordinarily far flung trading network, they resemble the Athenians (I

seem to be alone in thinking—perhaps because Norse prose is so laconic). But their other qualities seem to clash deliberately.

To plagiarize a half-remembered article in the New York Review of Books: I can accept that these people, trotting around on their darling little Shetland ponies, were both insanely cruel murderers and a bunch of Philadelphia lawyers. The point where I lose them completely is that they were simultaneously mad for poetry.

153 Enthusiasm for remaining alive is as much a vice to Indians as to vikings. In a situation where we would try desperately to save our own lives and (we fondly hope) those of our companions, “[w]e…tooke a strong resolution to die like men, and went to meet those monsters.” (Radisson) He is one of a group of Haudenosaunee, probably Kanien’kehá:ka. An Indian or viking would be astonished at how hysterical we moderns become at the most distant rumor of danger, and would conclude we are the rankest and most despicable cowards who ever hit the earth. I wish I could disagree.

154 (Grænlendinga saga)

155 Or, more literally, ‘the dirty one.’

156 People used to lacking the language of their interlocutors commonly use, and become surprisingly good at, impromptu sign language. Some signs we ourselves use: the open hand, whether offered in a handshake or displayed as “hello,” indicates a lack of weapons, hence a desire for friendly relations. Necessity mothers others: we would all, I think, given sufficient hunger and the presence of a foreigner with food, point at the stomach or mouth to indicate a desire to eat. The ability to play act, to point, and to gauge and nurture understanding, and the ability of the audience to indicate whether they understand or not, supply the rest. “We sailed

from the big water, you know, the ocean, up into the river, where we met some people on the right bank with big, funky hairdos—they smelled bad, phew!--who traded us food for beads,” can be, for example, fairly easily explained. Other, yet more complicated pieces of communication can also be transmitted—with a certain unknowable portion of potentially fatal misunderstanding.

On the other hand, there is a lot which can’t be explained adequately with gesture language. In this instance Freydís ran into the problem of trying to explain what a thing is without the thing at hand. The ship needed pine tar for re-caulking and some very soft wood, preferably linden, to replace some of the trunnels. But how do you explain what a pine or linden is without one at hand? You explain tree, then point at the planks, hoping people can figure out the planks have been made of pine. In fact, this worked with pine, a tree sacred to the. But linden, even after pointing at the trunnels, proved to be a stumper.

157 ‘This belt contains my word.’ Ce Colier contient ma parole. (de Lahontan 53)

158 I thank you in return in [the Haudenosaunee’s] name, for bringing into their lands the calumet of peace…and I applaud your wisdom in leaving the war axe buried that is so much reddened with French blood.

Je te remercie in leur nom, d'avoir raporté fur leurs Terres ce Calumet de Paix... Je te felîcit même tems d'avoir laiffé fous la ter che meurtriére qui a rougi tantd fang de tes François. (de Lahontan 52)

159 We are astounded at your boldness, or should I say your temerity. You shame us to our faces, you imply we are frauds.

Nous nous estonnons de vostre hardiesse, ou plustost de vostre temeritß, vous nous iettez la honte sur le visage, vous nous faites passer pour des fourbes.

Jérôme Lalemant, Relation de ce qvi s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1645 & 1646 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1647) 284. April 6, 2002. The speaker is Kanien’kehá:ka.

160…[Indians] inviolably observe this law: that whoever…accepts a present will execute what its giver demands…

…ils gardent inuiolablement cette loy, que quiconque…accepte le present qu'on luy fait, doit executer ce qu'on luy demande par ce present…

Barthelemy Vimont, Relation de ce qvi s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1642 & 1643 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1644) 52. April 5, 2002. Vimont’s experiences were mainly with the Haudenosaunee.

For example: “I gave them [the people of present-day Shenango, Pennsylvania, of mixed Shawnee, Mohican and Haudenosaunee nationality] a String of Wampum to enforce my request.” Tharachiawagon ‘Conrad Weiser,’ “Journal of a Tour of the Ohio, August 11 – October 2, 1748” Pennsylvania Colonial Records, Volume Five. Conrad Weiser was adopted by the Kanien’kehá:ka.

This is why, if [an Indian] does not wish to grant the desire, he will return the present.

…c'est pourquoy quand ils ne veulent pas accorder ce qu'on desire, ils renuoyent les presens… (Vimont 52)

George Groghan describes such an event below, when “one of the Chiefs of the Six Nations” refuses a French demand that the Haudenosaunee steer clear of the English.

“FATHERS: I mean you that call yourselves our Fathers…[y]ou desire we may turn our Brothers the English away…I now tell you from our Hearts we will not…as long as there is one of us alive…”…and then he returned the [katkowa] Belt [that Joncaire, the French representative, had given him].

George Groghan, “Proceedings of Croghan and Andrew Mountour at [the] Ohio; May 18-28, 1751, Pennsylvania Colonial Records, Volume Five.

161 Regarding Indian underwater swimming skill, one Indian of uncertain nationality astonished Radisson by catching a beaver underwater.

That wildman no sooner saw him but throwes himself out into the watter and downe to the bottom, without so much time as to give notice to any, and before many knewed of anything, he brings up the castor [beaver] in his armes as a child. (Radisson)

162 ‘…a [n Indian] woman thinks nothing of running a league or two…’ …nó tiene in conto na donna correre una legha, ó due… (Vespucci 5)

163 An old-growth forest differs from most modern ones primarily in being less cluttered. Tall trees, in this case mostly oaks, catch almost all the light far from the ground. New-growth forests were more common 1000 years ago than people once believed, however. Intentional burning seems to have been widespread. But it still appears likely that much if not most of the arboreal canopy remained untouched for centuries, if not millennia.

164 (Bruchac, “The Wife of the Thunderer”)

165 ‘Single combat ends some [wars of the Haudenosaunee and other Indians].’ Interdum bella singulari certamine finiunt. (Jouvency 269)

Jouvency describes a specific single combat which decides a war between the Haudenosaunee and the Innu, but speaks of Indians in general.

John Keegan in The Mask of Command (Penguin: London, 1987) describes the evolution of warfare as the regression of its leaders. His first exemplar, Alexander led an army which followed in tightly packed ranks at his shoulder, and his last, Kennedy, sat thousands of miles behind the front. If we take Keegan’s analysis one step farther back, we have the Iliad, where leaders ran ahead alone in search of single combat and to encourage the rest. This Homeric fighting, with its thirst for individual glory and tendency towards single combats, seems to apply rather nicely to pre-European Indian warfare. Radisson summarizes the leader’s role in Haudenosaunee warfare: “…the Commander [puts himself] in the front of his army to encourage his men…” (Radisson)

While the game had life and death stakes and determined the fate of nations, it was still a game. Its springs included the desire of young men and occasionally young women to win honor, fame and reputation among their peers, as well as more earthly prizes including survival.

166 Shields consist of hewn wood, predominantly juniper, curving slightly at the edges. They are light, very long and wide, so that they protect the whole body. [Indians of the Saint Lawrence area] sew the shields together on the inside with leather cords, which interlace most of the shield, so that arrows and axes don’t split them. They aren’t suspended by the left arm, but hang from a cord around the right shoulder, so they

protect the left side of the body. After Indians shoot an arrow…they retract their right sides, to present their shielded left sides to the enemy.

Clypeos conficiunt è ligno dolato, plerumque cedrino; paulum ad oras incurvos: leves, praelongos & peramplos, ita ut totum corpus protegant. Jam, ne jaculis aut securibus perrumpantur omnino ac dissiliant, eos intus consuunt restibus ex animalium corio contextis, quae totam clypei molem continent connectuntque. Non gestant è brachio suspensos, sed funem ex quo pendent, rejiciunt in humerum dextrum: adeo ut latus corporis sinistrum clypeo protegatur; mox ubi jaculum emiserunt…paulum retrahunt dextrum latus, ac sinistrum clypeo tectum obvertunt hosti. (Jouvency 269-70)

The shields Jouvency describes resemble Roman shields closely, though there seem few other striking resemblances between Roman and Indian warmaking. The method of hanging the shield from the shoulder, on the other hand, Philip pioneered for his phalanx. It was an important innovation for leaving both hands free, which could therefore wield the sarissa, which was much longer than the spears used in Hellas proper.

167 On Indian determination to endure pain stoically:

Even the pains of childbirth, however acute, are so dissimulated and overcome by the women that they do not even groan; and if anyone did let a tear or a groan escape, she would suffer eternal ignominy…

Inediam multorum dierum, morbos, & aerumnas lenissime & constantissimè perferunt. Ipsos partus dolores, licet acerbissimos, ita dissimulant feminae vel superant, ut ne ingemiscant quidem: ac si cui lacryma vel gemitus excideret, aeterna flagraret ignominia… (Jouvency 276)

Shee was in travell ‘labor’ and immediately delivered. I awaked all astonished to see her drying her child by the fire side. Having done, [she] lapt the child in her bosome and went to bed as if that had ben nothing, without moan or cry, as doe our Europian women. (Radisson)

While Radisson is traveling with Kanien’kehá:ka while this incident takes place, the woman is one of their hosts. Her national affiliation is unclear, though it appears likely she is Haudenosaunee. I ought to mention that stories of women enduring labor without an outward sign of discomfort are a stock-in-trade of Europeans describing those they consider less civilized. Their readers would have been disappointed not to find them, just as in an earlier time they would have felt a traveler had not really gone anywhere if he had not run into unipeds, the vikings’ einfætingr.

168 ‘…sell our lives dearly.’ …vendons cher notre vie. (Charlevoix II : XX : 378 ) The speaker is an Abenaki explaining his plan for an impending battle at impossible odds.

169 [The Indians of the Saint Lawrence area] often speak so persuasively and appropriately ex tempore as to earn the admiration of the finest speakers.

…sunt tam appositè ad persuadendum perorare, idque ex tempore, ut admirationem exercitatissimis in dicendi palaestra moverent. (Jouvency 276)

170 The most vivid scarlet, the happiest green, and the purest yellow and orange of Europe yield the palm to the different colors Indians make from their roots.

L'ßcarlate la plus viue, le vert le plus riant, & le jaune & l'oranger le plus naturel de l'Europe, cedent aux couleurs diuerses que nos Sauuages tirent des racines.

Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1656 & 1657 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1658) 258. March 14, 2012.

Genocidas extolling local virtues, including dyes and perhaps precious metals, may be doing so to drum up settlers and/or investment. The grandaddy of all these scammers (as far as I know!) is Eirík the Red.

[Eirík] called the land he found Greenland, because he said men would be eager to go to a land if it was attractively named.

Hann kallaði land þat, er hann hafði fundit, Grænland, því at hann kvað þat mundu fýsa menn þangat, ef landit héti vel. (Grænlendinga saga)

171 Indian paints were [also] made from naturally occurring mineral pigments, primarily black, obtained from lignite, graphite and charcoal, red from ochres and haematite, and blue or blue-green from copper minerals or soladinite, a blue-green iron-based mineral. The binder used was primarily fish-egg tempera, obtained by chewing salmon eggs wrapped in juniper bark and spitting the saliva and egg juices into the paint dish.

“Native American Art – Painting” 9/1/2011.

172 She would then dip her hands into cold water, spoon some of the batter into her hands, and shape the hot batter into round, thick, flat, shaped corn bread. She put it in boiling water, and when it came to the surface it was cooked.

Ohnekanohsne ia’tonionnihsnónhsohwe’. Eniontokwatsherotsenhte’ iehsonhsa:ke eier:ren’ tenietakwenhtenhste’ tanon’ teniehwe’non:ni tetiohnekontie’s ieniaketa’. No:nen enwata:kerahwe, né ken:ton’ tsi o:nen wá’ka:ri’.

Both Kanien'kehá:ka and English taken from February 9, 2012 by Warisó:se Kaierithon ‘Josephine Horne’.

173 You would do well…not to shorten my life, because it would give you more time to learn to die like a man.

Tu aurois bien dû…ne pas abreger ma vie, tu aurois eu plus de tems pour aprendre à mourir en Homme. (Charlevoix III : 16 : 173)

The speaker is an ancient Onöñda’gega who has been captured by his enemies, a group which includes the French. He speaks while he is being tortured to death.

174 …asked our captain to lay out his arms for them to be kissed and caressed, which is their mode of welcome in that land [Quebec].

...pria nostre cappitaine luy bailler ses bras pour les baiser & accoller qui est leur mode de faire chere en ladicte terre. (Cartier 48)

The people described are Iroquoian, possibly Haudenosaunee. “…the Iroquoits ‘Haudenosaunee’ dwelling was where Quebecq is situated…” (Radisson)

175 “…the Iroquoits did sing, expecting death…” “Some sang their fatall song, albeit without any wounds.” “…for to shew their courage [the Haudenosaunee wounded] sung'd lowder then

those that weare well.” (Radisson) The Haudenosaunee and other Indians believe singing while dying is pretty cool.

176 Ishi could imitate the call of quail to such an extent that he spoke a half-dozen sentences to them. He knew the crow of the cock on sentinel duty when he signals to others; he knew the cry of warning, and the run-to-shelter cry of the hen; her command to her little ones to fly; and the "lie low" cluck; then at last the "all's well" chirp. (Pope)

Pope is valuable, I think, for close description of an Indian apparently little touched by European culture, and consequently informative about the kind of culture Europeans have lost.

177 ‘The forests [near Lake Onondaga in 1657] are composed almost entirely of chestnuts and walnuts.’ Les forests sont presque toutes composßes de chasteigners & de noyers. Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1656 & 1657 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1658) 256. March 14, 2012.

It appears from various sources that Indians practiced arboreal horticulture, cultivating nation- wide gardens of the trees whose nuts and fruits they preferred.

178 “The peculiarity of [the Gasowäono ‘Fish Dance’] was the opportunity which it afforded the Indian maiden to select whoever she preferred as partner…. In the midst of the dance, the females present themselves in pairs between any set they may select, thus giving to each a partner.” (Morgan 286) It is one of 32 Haudenosaunee dances, including the Ostowehgowa ‘Great Feather Dance’ which marks the end of Ononharóia ‘The Festival of Dreams’ ‘New Year’s Celebration’.

On the second day the Great Feather Dance was performed by a select band of Onondaga and Seneca dancers. The author then first had occasion to realize the magical influence which these dances have upon the Indian. It was impossible even for the spectator to resist the general enthusiasm. It was remarked to Da-at -ga-dose (Abraham La Fort), an educated Onondaga sachem, that they would be Indians forever, if they held to these dances. He replied, that he knew it, and for that reason he would be the last to give them up. (Morgan 251-252)

179 ‘…commonly the men hardly have beards, which some pluck out…’ …ghemeenlijch hebben de Mans gheen Baert of heel wepnich fommige plochense ooch uit… (van der Donck 9)

180) ‘…surrounded by palisades 25 feet high.’ …entourez de palliffades de vingt cinq pieds de haut. (Hennepin 135

Hennepin describes the palisades of a Wendat ‘Huron’ village.

181 ‘…the cries made by an old person to notify the village, as is the custom among these Barbarians…’ …les cris faits par un Ancien pour averter le village felon la coûtume de ces Barbares… (Hennepin 82)

The village Hennepin describes is Haudenosaunee.

182 Pararaphrased from Bruchac, “Hodadenon: the Last One Left and the Chestnut Tree.”

183 The Kanien’kehá:ka Turtle clan was known historically to act independently.

“…he is Certain the tribe of the Turtle of the Mohawk Castles, and as manny of the upper Nations of Inds will Join General Shirley, as will Join you.”

“Letter from Arent Stevens to William Johnson, July 27th, 1755,” Papers of William Johnson 784.

184 In the deer button game, a kind of Haudenosaunee craps, each player throws eight pieces of elkhorn carved into buttons and burned on one side. Six buttons that turn up either burned or white win two beans (which serve as chips), seven four and eight twenty. One player continues until rolling four of each, or five of one and three of another, which loses his turn. (Morgan 302- 303)

185 Perhaps the most controversial issue among Indian nations today is the question of gambling. Since the US has always recognized their sovereignty (though, today, incompletely: nations are unable to issue passports or conduct foreign policy), they have the right to make their own laws about gambling (as well as cigarette and gasoline taxes). As a result, some have built casinos on their land, some of which are extraordinarily successful.

Traditionalists view casinos as wrong for various reasons, and understandably enough. I’m struck by the delicious irony of nations funding the fight to recover stolen lands, rights and sovereignty by marketing a vice to non-Indians. In any case, partly through gambling money and partly through other means, Indian nations have pursued legal suits which have resulted in the last few decades in significant territorial gains.

186 “…the Indians are marvellous fond and affectionate towards their Children.” Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England (Boston, 1676). September 6, 2011. He therefore found killing them particularly delightful.

187 Haudenosaunee burial customs balanced fear of the power of the dead with a desire to keep the bones of relatives from being scattered or falling into the hands of enemies. Their characteristic pre-genocide burial pattern, therefore, seems to have been small cemetaries at a certain distance from the village—as, for that matter, is ours. Those killed in battle would probably have been transported back home if practicable. See “Patterns of Iroquois Burial”

188 “…should you offer it [a black capped chickadee], no matter how small a portion of your fare, it alights without hesitation, and devours it without manifesting any apprehension…” John Jay Audubon, Black-Cap Titmouse October 10, 2012.

189 A beautiful custom prevailed in ancient times, of capturing a bird, and freeing it [over a grave]…to bear away the spirit to its heavenly rest. (Morgan 172)

190 The earliest evidence for Iroquoian longhouses is “sometime after A.D. 900.” Garry A. Warrick, “Precontact Iroquoian Occupation of Southern Ontario” Journal of World Prehistory 14, no. 4 (2000).

191 Thou knowest how matters stand—that I am a great lover of tobacco. Though I know not when I may get any more, I now make a present of the last I have unto thee, as a free burnt offering. Therefore I expect thou wilt hear and grant these requests, and I, thy servant, will return thee thanks and love thee for thy gifts. (Smith 58)

192 ‘I present my head to you…to resurrect the dead.’ J'y viens apporter ma tête…pour réfufciter les Morts… (Charlevoix II XIX : 311)

The speaker is an Odawa. While all sources cannot, of course, be trusted, since they are just telling stories and reciting what they may hope are facts, and while some, clearly, are prejudiced against Indians, some have a different slant. The learned, complex and Jesuitical Charlevoix may have romanticized the Indians in his accounts, partly to bring the faults into relief ‘…of the societies whose members are not born to think grandly, and in which nothing unites but interest’ …des Sociétés, dont tous les Membres ne font pas nés pour penfer en Grand , & qui ne font unis que par l'intérêt. (Charlevoix II : XX : 402)

193 …it’s time to wipe away the tears which you have shed in abundance for the death of those you have lost in war. Here is a handkerchief to that effect.

…il est temps d'essuyer les larmes, que vous versez en abondance, pour la mort de ceux que la guerre vous a enleuez. Voila vn mouchoir pour cßt effet.

Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1655 & 1656 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1657) 50. March 14, 2012.

De Quen’s speaker is an Onöñda’gega.

It is the custom of the people of these countries [the Haudenosaunee] that when a considerable person dies, they wipe away the tears of their relatives with some present.

C'est la coustume des peuples de ces contrßes, quand quelque personne de consideration parmy eux, est morte, d'essuyer les larmes de leurs parens par quelque present. Jérôme Lalemant, Relation de ce qvi s’est passé en la Novvelle France, les années 1645

& 1646 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1647) 292. April 6, 2002.

194 …to open your ears to the words of truth and promises of a true peace, knowing well that passion renders stupid and blind those who let it carry them away.

…pour leur ouurir les oreilles aux paroles de la veritß, & aux promesses d'vne vraye paix, sçachant bien que la passion rend lourds & aueugles, ceux qui s'y laissent emporter.

Jean de Quen, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1655 & 1656 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1657) 50. March 14, 2012.

“Att our coming there we made large guifts, to dry up the tears of the friends of the deceased.” (Radisson)

195 Accepting katkowa is the equivalent in Haudenosaunee usage of reaching an agreement. Note below the French ambassador imitating Haudenosaunee custom.

With these words, he laid five katkowa belts at the feat of the ambassador. Father Bruyas picked them up, which is the same thing as accepting [the proposals].

En achevant ces mots il mit aux pieds des Ambafladeurs cinq Colliers. Le P. Bruyas les releva, ce qui eft la même chofe, que les accepter. (Charlevoix II: 17 : 247)

Katkowa belts served as contracts or treaties because the Haudenosaunee used katkowa belts to record, and so contain, contractual points.

…after long deliberation on proposals public and secret, [the rotiiáne ‘Anciens’ ‘Sachems’ ‘Chiefs’] use the katkowa belts to record what they said…each one to record one sense, or point, so they don’t forget anything…

…après avoir long-temps délibéré sur les propositions publiques & secrètes qu'ils dolvent faire, on a foin de les bien recorder fur ce qu'ils ont à dire; on leur fait la leçon comme par écrit fur leurs colliers…et qui ont divers fens, afin que d'une part, ils n'oublient rien… (Lafitau 311)

All of these national compacts were " talked into " strings of wampum, to use the Indian expression, after which these were delivered into the custody of Ho-no-we-na- to, the Onondaga sachem, who was made hereditary keeper of the Wampum, at the institution of the League ; and from him and his successors, was to be sought their interpretation from generation to generation. Hence the expression "This belt preserves my words," so frequently met with at the close of Indian speeches, on the presentation of a belt. Indian nations, after treating, always exchanged belts, which were not only the ratification, but the memorandum of the compact. (Morgan 82-83)

196 ‘My older brother, you are resurrected.’ Mon frère aifné vous êtes réfufcité. Pierre Millet, Lettre a Quelques Missionnaires du Canada; Onneiŏt, July 6, 1691 ‘Letter to Certain Missionaries of Canada; Onayotekaono, July 6, 1691.’

March 23, 2012.

The speaker is Gannassatiron, an Onayotekaono ‘Oneida,’ who is telling the author that his death sentence has been commuted. He calls Millet his elder brother because he has been adopted to take the place of an Onayotekaono rotiiáne, whose name he will take. Millet includes both his rendering of the Onayotekaono, Satonnheton fzakli, and the French, which

I’ve translated above into English and Kanien’kéha. In Kanien’kéha I believe it would be (as above) sonhéton rakhtsí:’a’ [s (bound second person singular pronoun) + onhéton ‘give life’ ‘resurrect’ + ‘rakhtsí:’a’ ‘he has me as a brother’ ‘my older brother’]. It’s interesting to note the similarity between onhéton ‘to resurrect’ and onéhta ‘pine.’ If this is not a false friend, it indicates the Haudenosaunee connected evergreens with resurrection, as does a Christmas tree, presumably for the same reason, that the foliage does not die.

See

Rev. James Bruyas S. J. Radical Words of the Mohawk Language with their Derivates (New York: Cramoisy 1862) 13. Google Books March 28, 2012.

Père Bruyas, as it happens, entered our story a couple of footnotes ago in the act of accepting five katkowa belts. His words, I reflect idly, have survived a long and perilous journey from Kanien’kéha through both Latin and French into English—if translation did not kill them. See also Deering & Delisle.

197 …for peace is more precious to me than my life, so I prefer to risk it in order to procure this great good for my little nephews, rather than to avenge the spilling of the blood involved in the deaths of my ancestors. At least I will die honorably, if I do, after having given you life.

…puis que la paix est plus precieuse que ma vie, i'aime mieux la risquer, dans le dessein de procurer vn si grand bien à mes petits neueux, que de venger par l'effusion de ton sang, la mort de mes Ancestres. Au moins mourray-ie honorablement, si on me tuë, apres t'auoir donnß la vie.

François Joseph le Mercier, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, en l'année 1653 (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1654) 174. April 9, 2012.

Le Mercier’s speaker is a Wendat captain. His respondent below is a captain of the Haudenosaunee.

198 …you think rightly. It’s true that you can take my life; but you give it to me to save your own. The glory that I have gained for my nation by my victories does not make me so inconsiderable in the minds of my compatriots that I lack the strength to assure you and your clan of life. If they rise to attack you, my body will block them. I would rather suffer to be burned me over a slow fire than to be so inglorious as not to reward your good faith, and my return, by your deliverance.

…tes pensßes sont droites. Il est vray, que tu me peux oster la vie: mais donne la moy, pour te la conseruer. La gloire que i'ay acquise à ma Nation, par mes victoires, ne me rend pas si peu cõsiderable, das l'esprit de mes Compatriotes, que ie ne puisse t'asseurer de la vie, toy & tes gens. Si les miens te veulent attaquer, mon corps te seruira de bouclier. Ie souffrirois plustost, qu'ils me brûlassent à petit feu, que de me rendre mßprisable iusques à ce point, de ne pas honorer vostre bien-fait, & mon retour, par vostre deliurance. (Ibid.)

199 On the willingness of Kanien’kehá:ka to befriend those who have harmed them:

In the same Cabban that I was, there has bin a wild man wounded with a small shott. I thought I have seen him the day of my taking, which made me feare least I was the one that wounded him. He knowing it to be so had shewed me as much charity as a Christian might have given. Another of his fellowes (I also wounded) came to me att

my first coming there, whom I thought to have come for reveng, contrarywise shewed me a cheerfull countenance; he gave mee a box full of red paintings, calling me his brother. (Radisson)

200 (Bruchac, “The Wife of the Thunderer”)

201 There are two great fallacies about other people. The first is that they are like us. The second is that they are different. I tend to view the second error as more pernicious because it is antipathetic.

Indians and Indo-Europeans only separated one thousand generations or so ago, some Indo- Europeans guesstimate. If this is true, human history is scaled to a year, and the first unique human ancestor appeared January 1st, the two groups went their separate ways sometime around noon on December 31st, and renewed acquaintances (if the sagas are to be trusted, and they aren’t), when Freydís’s brother Leif arrived in North America around 11:15 pm that same day. So perhaps the difference between the peoples is not so very great.

Most Indians, I should add, reject the Indo-European theory that human beings arrived in North America via the Bering Strait. Doug George-Kanentiio, for example, finds the idea that “within an astonishingly short period [10-15,000 years] [North America Indians] developed 500 languages” risible, along with a number of the theory’s other implications. (George-Kanentiio)

I agree. They would have had little time for anything besides making themselves mutually unintelligible. I also agree that peoples own their cultural traditions; and that consequently their histories have an integrity which pseudo-scientific speculations lack.

However peoples distributed themselves, the fact we are all one species nevertheless indicate our genetic differences are trivial.

202 ‘[Freydís] then drew out her breast from under her clothes and slapped the sword across it.‘ [Freydís] dró þá út brjóstit undan klæðunum ok slettir á beru sverðinu. (Eiríks saga rauða 11)

203 It was early one morning that Freydís got up and put on forest clothes, though it was so mild a heavy dew had fallen. She put on her husband’s cape and went to the door of Helgi and Finnbogi’s hall. Someone had left the door half open. Freydís pushed through the door and stood silently in the doorway.

Finnbogi, who was lying inside, awoke.

“What do you want here, Freydís?,” he asked.

“I want you to get up, come outside with me and talk.”

So he did. They walked to a log which lay under the hallway and sat down.

“How do things seem to you?,” Freydís asked.

“I like the choice of land, but I don’t like the shit between us, which, it seems to me, I did nothing to cause.”

“Then you’re saying what I’m thinking,” Freydís said. “I’m here to buy the ship you and your brother have because you have more ship than I do and I want to leave.”

“I can make that happen,” said Finnbogi, ”if you want.”

With that they parted. She went home and Finnbogi went back to bed. Freydís climbed into bed and woke Þorvald with her cold feet. He asked why she was so cold and wet.

She answered furiously, “I went to see the brothers to buy their ship, since I want more ship. That set them off so badly they attacked me and beat the shit out of me. Not like a punk like you would do anything about the way they dissed both me and you. But you’ll see I’ll dump you and go back to Greenland if you don’t.”

He didn’t stand up to being told off. He had his men get up and arm themselves as quickly as possible. They went to the brothers’ hall immediately, entering while they slept. Þorvald and his men took Helgi and Finnbogi and their men, bound them, and led them outside. Freydís had them all killed as they came out.

After all the men were killed, only women were left, and no one wanted to kill them.

“Fetch me my axe,” Freydís said.

Someone did. She went at the five women and killed them.

They went back to their hall after their evil work. It seems that Freydís thought things had gone perfectly. She told her crew: “If we’re lucky enough to get bacl to Greenland, I’ll off whoever talks about what happened here. We’ll say the brothers stayed on here after we left.”

In early spring they loaded what had been the brothers’ ship with as many of their goods as the ship could bear. They put to sea and after an easy passage reached Eiríksfirth in early summer….

Freydís then went to her farm. Because no one could go there without her permission, she took most of the loot there, since she wanted to conceal what the dead owned. Freydís sat tight at her farm.

At first everyone held their tongues, but the story of the killings eventually came out. Leif was apalled. He took three of Freydís’ men, tortured them, and found they told one story.

“I refuse to do anything to Freydís, since she’s my sister,” Leif said, “but I’ll hazard those who did this will not profit from their work.”

Þat var einn morgin snemma, at Freydís stóð upp ór rúmi sínu ok klæddist ok fór eigi í skóklæðin, en veðri var svá farit, at dögg var fallin mikil. Hon tók kápu bónda síns ok fór í, en síðan gekk hon til skála þeira bræðra ok til dura. En maðr einn hafði út gengit litlu áðr ok lokit hurð aftr á miðjan klofa. Hon lauk upp hurðinni ok stóð í gáttum stund þá ok þagði. En Finnbogi lá innstr í skálanum ok vakði.

Hann mælti: "Hvat villtu hingat, Freydís?"

Hon svarar: "Ek vil, at þú standir upp ok gangir út með mér, ok vil ek tala við þik."

Svá gerir hann. Þau ganga at tré, er lá undir skálavegginum, ok settust þar niðr.

"Hversu líkar þér?" segir hon.

Hann svarar: "Góðr þykkir mér landkostr, en illr þykkir mér þústr sá, er vár á milli er, því ek kalla ekki hafa til orðit."

"Þá segir þú sem er," segir hon, "ok svá þykkir mér. En þat er erendi mitt á þinn fund, at ek vilda kaupa skipum við ykkr bræðr, því at þit hafið meira skip en ek, ok vilda ek í brott heðan."

"Þat mun ek láta gangast," segir hann, "ef þér líkar þá vel."

Nú skilja þau við þat, gengr hon heim, en Finnbogi til hvílu sinnar. Hon stígr upp í rúmit köldum fótum, ok vaknar hann Þorvarðr við ok spyrr, hví at hon væri svá köld ok vát.

Hon svarar með miklum þjósti: "Ek var gengin," segir hon, "til þeira bræðra at fala skip af þeim, ok vilda ek kaupa meira skip. En þeir urðu við þat svá illa, at þeir börðu mik ok léku sárliga, en þú, vesall maðr, munt hvárki vilja reka minnar skammar né þinnar, ok mun ek þat nú finna, at ek em í brottu af Grænlandi, ok mun ek gera skilnað við þik, útan þú hefnir þessa."

Ok nú stóðst hann eigi átölur hennar ok bað menn upp standa sem skjótast ok taka vápn sín, ok svá gera þeir ok fara þegar til skála þeira bræðra ok gengu inn at þeim soföndum ok tóku þá ok færðu í bönd ok leiddu svá út hvern, sem bundinn var. En Freydís lét drepa hvern, sem út kom.

Nú váru þar allir karlar drepnir, en konur váru eftir, ok vildi engi þær drepa.

Þá mælti Freydís: "Fái mér öxi í hönd."

Svá var gert. Síðan vegr hon at konum þeim fimm, er þar váru, ok gekk af þeim dauðum.

Nú fóru þau til skála síns eftir þat it illa verk, ok fannst þat eitt á, at Freydís þóttist allvel hafa um ráðit, ok mælti við félaga sína: "Ef oss verðr auðit at koma til Grænlands," segir hon, "þá skal ek þann mann ráða af lífi, er segir frá þessum atburðum. Nú skulum vér þat segja, at þau búi hér eftir, þá er vér fórum í brott."

Nú bjuggu þeir skipit snemma um várit, þat er þeir bræðr höfðu átt, með þeim öllum gæðum, er þau máttu til fá ok skipit bar, sigla síðan í haf ok urðu vel reiðfara ok kómu í Eiríksfjörð skipi sínu snemma sumars….

Freydís fór nú til bús síns, því at þat hafði staðit meðan óskatt. Hon fekk mikinn feng fjár öllu föruneyti sínu, því at hon vildi leyna láta ódáðum sínum. Sitr hon nú í búi sínu.

Eigi urðu allir svá haldinorðir, at þegði yfir ódáðum þeira eða illsku, at eigi kæmi upp um síðir. Nú kom þetta upp um síðir fyrir Leif, bróður hennar, ok þótti honum þessi saga allill.

Þá tók Leifr þrjá menn af liði þeira Freydísar ok píndi þá til sagna um þenna atburð allan jafnsaman, ok var með einu móti sögn þeira.

"Eigi nenni ek," segir Leifr, "at gera þat við Freydísi, systur mína, sem hon væri verð, en spá mun ek þeim þess, at þeira afkvæmi muni lítt at þrifum verða." (Grænlendinga saga)

* * *

204 George Washington, “Letter to Governor Dinwiddie, September 8, 1756,” The Writings of George Washington (Volume I, p. 342). Google Books October 27, 2011.

205 To know anything useful about the Haudenosaunee, if you are not a specialist, dates you—as devastating an indictment of the US educational system as most (not that they are particularly thin in the field), analogous to Italians knowing nothing about the Roman Empire. My grandmother and my mother knew what the Three Sisters were and who Molly Brandt was, but my contemporaries don’t. It’s true that the burgeoning United States defrauded, betrayed, robbed and committed genocide on the Haudenosaunee. It’s also true that the United States is to a very considerable degree their legacy, the fruit of their victories and blood.

206 Cadwallader Colden, The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada (London: T. Osborne, 1747). Project Gutenberg EBook August 24, 2012.

207 Papers of William Johnson, Edited by James Sullivan (Albany: NYU, 1921) 903. The speaker is reminding the British of their promise to help them, the Haudenosaunee, fight the French. His words were translated and transcribed by Warraghiyagey ‘William Johnson’, who is therefore, as translators of undocumented words are, an unverifiable single source. The real (Kanien’kéha) name of Lucas is unknown, only the name the British called him, which may have been baptismal. Johnson was, like Lucas, a Kanien’kehá:ka Pine Tree Chief, i.e. a leader who owed his eminence to merit rather than noble descent. It may be hard to accept that a Hiberno-British Superintendant of Indian Affairs was “really” a Kanien’kehá:ka, but the Kanien’kehá:ka and other Haudenosaunee viewed adoptees like Johnson as indistinguishable from the native-born:

You are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone…. You are one of us by an old strong law and custom. (Smith 32)

208 Charlevoix (II : XX : 361)

209 Jérôme Lalemant, Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France, les années 1659 & 1660 ‘Relation of What Passed in New France in the Years 1659 and 1660’ (Paris: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1661) 206. March 29, 2012.

210 Canassatego, A TREATY, Held at the Town of Lancafter, in PENNSYLVANIA, By the HONOURABLE the Lieutenant-Governor of the PROVINCE, And the HONOURABLE the Commifioners for the PROVINCES OF VIRGINIA and MARYLAND, WITH THE INDIANS OF THE SIX NATIONS, In JUNE, 1744 (Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by B. FRANKLIN, at the New-Printing- Office, near the Market, M,DCC,XLIV) 75. September 15, 2012 in Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen, “Examplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy” March 5, 2012.

Canassatego was a Haudenosaunee leader who was speaking at a 1744 conference of English and Indian leaders at Lancaster, PA. His words were translated by Tharachiawagon ‘Conrad Weiser’ and printed by Benjamin Franklin.

211 Benjamin Franklin, “Letter to James Parker, Philadelphia, March 20, 1750.” August 10, 2011 in Grinde and Johansen.

212 (Colden)

213 (de Lahontan 53) Otréouate originally spoke in Onöñda'gega. Lahontan recorded the French translation he heard.

Note also: ‘...each [Indian] is lord of himself...’ ...che ognuno e fignore di fe... Amerigo Vespucci, The First Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci Reprinted in Facsimile and

Translated From the rare original edition (Florence, 1505-6) (London: Bernard Quaritch 1893) 5. Vespucci generalized about the range of Indians he either had or feigned slight acquaintance with.

214 “A Speech delivered to the Owendatts [the Wendat ‘Huron’ and Tionontate ‘Petun’ ‘tobacco people’], from [Onas ‘William Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania’] [translated] by George Croghan” from George Croghan, “A Treaty with the Indians of the Six Nations, Delawares, Shawonese, Owendatts and Twightwees,” Pennsylvania Colonial Records, Volume Five, 348- 358.

215 Thomas Jefferson “Letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787” Jefferson Papers, Volume 11, Julian P. Boyd, Editor (49) in Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen, “Sauce for the Goose: Demand and Definitions for ‘Proof’ Regarding the Iroquois and Democracy” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Volume 53, Number 3, “Indians and Others in Early America” (July 1996).

216 (van der Donck 9)

217 (Garnier 138)

218 Vespucci 7. It’s observations like this that get half the world named after you—though a more literal translation would be ‘They use the same sounds we do…’

219 Bernal Dìaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España ‘Truthful History of the Conquest of New Spain’ (Mèxico: Editorial Purrùa, 2009) 159.

220 Smith 42. The speaker is Tontileaugo, the author’s Caughnawaga Kanien’kehá:ka ‘Mohawk’ adopted brother. Smith provides the words in both languages.

A Concluding Essay, Weighing in, Perhaps Unwisely, on the Topic of Haudenosaunee Influence on the Nascent United States

Debates about Haudenosaunee influence on the origin and structure of the United States are many and long-running—I would say interminable. To what degree the United States formed due to an Indian’s suggestion, for example, is now unanswerable. Only Benjamin Franklin could have provided detailed information, he is long dead, and even the information he could have provided would never have truly answered the question.

(To summarize inadequately: the questions are whether, first, Benjamin Franklin wrote the Albany plan of Union due to a speech by Canassetego, and, second, whether this gave rise to the Articles of Confederation.)

The degree to which Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson and other creators of the US government were influenced by Haudenosaunee structure and institutions is equally unknowable. But the impossibility of resolving these and other debates has not ended them—rather the opposite, perhaps, as is often the case.

I personally would be surprised to find that a society partly of Indian ancestry, which used Indian military tactics, adopted Indian national symbology (the bundle of arrows in the US great seal, and—debatably--eagle as well), supported itself largely on Indian crops, and had mostly Indian names for its states, would have been purely European in its origin and ideological superstructure, especially considering the largest local Indian polity shared a number of its features, including an emphasis on individual liberty, a popular assembly and a complex organization featuring differently empowered and selected governmental arms.

Would it not seem wiser, I might ask, to see the US in general as a hybrid of European and Indian (and, of course, African) parentage?

But what does that opinion mean, really? I have set up a straw man, namely, the thesis that Indians in general, and the Haudenosaunee in particular, were not influential in the genesis and structure of the United States, then done my best to knock him down.

Besides setting up straw men, another popular tactic is to accuse your opponents of having a thumb on the scales, which Phillip Levy, avails himself of by describing his opponents’ evidence as “misattributed, decontextualized, inaccurately paraphrased, liberally edited, and misinterpreted.” See:

Philip A. Levy, “Exemplars of Taking Liberties: The Iroquois Influence Thesis and the Problem of Evidence” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 53 (July, 1996) and

Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen, “Examplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy” March 5, 2012.

My first thought is that there’s a lot of that going round. Grinde and Johansen attempt to hoist this engineer by his own petard, rather successfully I would say, in

Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen, “Sauce for the Goose: Demand and Definitions for ‘Proof’ Regarding the Iroquois and Democracy” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Volume 53, Number 3, Indians and Others in Early America (July 1996).

Turning the accusation on myself, I would never say that I am entirely innocent of Levy’s criticisms. For another example, Samuel Payne, writes:

“Grinde and Johansen offer no evidence that the other British-American leaders knew even as much about Indian political practices as Franklin and Thomson did.”

Samuel B. Payne, Jr., "The Iroquois League, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution" The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 53, No. 3, Indians and Others in Early America

(Jul., 1996), pp. 605-620. Stable URL: February 20,2012.

While this may be true, Payne’s text here strikes me as careful to imply more about European ignorance of Haudenosaunee social organization than it actually claims. In any case, expert and detailed knowledge of the Haudenosaunee seems to have belonged to (or, at least, was claimed by) Warraghiyagey ‘William Johnson’, who was among other things a native Irishman, the British Sole Superintendant of Indian Affairs (and therefore a leading British, if not British- American leader), an adopted Kanien’kehá:ka, and a Haudenosaunee chief:

…you must be sensible that I do well know your [Haudenosaunee] ancient customs, that I cannot be mistaken in them, having committed them all to writing an age ago, when they were better understood than they are at present…

Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York and the Documentary History of New York, Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan, editor; Volume 8 (366) in Fintan O'Toole, White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).

Working knowledge of Haudenosaunee government also seems to have belonged to Tharachiawagon ‘Conrad Weiser’ and George Croghan, two more adopted Kanien’kehá:ka, since they were influential and successful diplomats, and fluent in Kanien’kéha. They worked closely with British officials including Johnson, Washington and Franklin.

Consider that European leaders knew the Haudenosaunee well enough to imitate their diplomatic and rhetorical style. Here is Onas ‘the Governor of Pennsylvania’ at the Lancaster Conference in 1744:

Who were the Aggreſſors is not at this time to be diſcuſſed, both Parties having agreed to bury that Affair in Oblivion…

He has mastered and chosen to use the Haudenosaunee tactic of “burying” a source of dispute when clarifying its details would, by inflaming feelings, potentially cause a breach which would hurt both parties—and has used a Haudenosaunee rhetorical figure to express this. The remnant of this trope lives on in the phrase “bury the hatchet.” I wonder if English leaders imitated French custom so closely or so often as Onas does in the following passage, also from Lancaster:

[They] come to enlarge the Fire, which was almoſt gone out, and to make it burn clearer; to brighten the Chain which had contracted ſome Ruſt, and to renew their Friendſhip with you; which it is their Deſire may laſt ſo long as the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, ſhall give Light. Their Powers are derived from the Great King of ENGLAND, your Father…

So while it may be true that “Grinde and Johansen offer no evidence that the other British- American leaders knew even as much about Indian political practices as Franklin and Thomson did,” the conclusion a casual reader might draw from his passage, that all non-Indian leaders in colonial America lacked a working understanding of Haudenosaunee governmental structure, is not really claimed, and is certainly not true.

Concerning the points of debate, whether union was an idea begun by an Indian, and whether the US took its structure from the Haudenosaunee, see:

methods, our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire such Strength and power. Therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out with one another.

Canassatego, quoted from A TREATY, Held at the Town of Lancafter, in PENNSYLVANIA, By the HONOURABLE the Lieutenant-Governor of the PROVINCE, And the HONOURABLE the Commifioners for the PROVINCES OF VIRGINIA and MARYLAND, WITH THE INDIANS OF THE SIX NATIONS, In JUNE, 1744 (Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by B. FRANKLIN, at the New-Printing-Office, near the Market, M,DCC,XLIV) 75.

Also see:

Benjamin Franklin, “Letter to James Parker, Philadelphia, March 20, 1750.” August 10, 2011.

Canassatego’s words were translated by Tharachiawagon ‘Conrad Weiser’.

Both these quotes appear in Grinde and Johansen, “Examplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy” 8/24/2012.

I would say that Canassetego’s suggestion the English colonists unite looks suspiciously like the direct cause of their eventual union, his words being printed as they were by Benjamin Franklin, who in turn (though six years later) proposed his Albany plan of union. The similarity of the

Albany Plan of Union to the Articles of Confederation is well remarked enough, I think. Very likely (doubtless?), the colonies would have united eventually without it, but perhaps in a very different way. As it stands, I would say Franklin may be termed the founding grandfather, and he, in turn, began his work uniting the colonies due in some degree at least to Canassetego’s suggestion.

How true my opinions are, I believe, no one will ever know. I would suggest that in a lower stakes world, the usual course for a good idea is that one person has it, and someone else implements it, with or without giving credit to its originator. If that is the case here, Franklin seems if anything eager to advertise his plan’s Indian source.

The influence of Haudenosaunee governmental structure on the the US constitution, on the other hand, appears from its historical trail slight or trivial. While providing reassuring confirmation that a tripartite system of government was general, it did not, I think, serve as a model. The founding fathers seem, I think, to have made up a kind of democratized English system, with governmental branches similarly poised, but with power shifted considerably (though certainly not completely, or even mostly) down the ladder from the upper to the middle class.

See Philip A. Levy, “Exemplars of Taking Liberties: The Iroquois Influence Thesis and the Problem of Evidence.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 53 (July, 1996).

Samuel B. Payne, Jr., "The Iroquois League, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution" The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 53, No. 3, Indians and Others in Early America. (Jul., 1996), pp. 605-620. Stable URL: February 20,2012.

There is a circumstantial case to be made, nevertheless, based on organizational similarity. In Haundenosaunee clan organization, there is an executive, the hereditary clan mother, who consults with the other senior clan women who form a kind of cabinet; a house of lords, male rotiiáne, selected from those of eligible descent by the senior clan women (who may also recall them); a group who may be termed officers of the house of commons known as pine tree chiefs (whom Europeans sometimes described with the Algonquian word sachem) recognized by merit and regardless of birth, whose typical arena is war and diplomacy rather than public ceremony; and the general assembly itself, which votes on major decisions and expects the senior clan women, rotiiáne and pine tree chiefs to serve their interests; and individuals, who reserve to themselves considerable rights and liberties. The congruencies of this system with that of the United States as originally envisioned are striking. The problem is that we have no way of judging how unlikely these congruencies are. A particular point is that the Haudenosaunee system, I would say fairly described by Morgan as a “liberal oligarchy” (I might have said, “constitutional aristocracy”) actually resembles 18th century Britain more closely than the US. There is also the point that while the several clans of each nations have executives, neither the component nations, nor the united states of the Haudenosaunee do.

I believe rather firmly, on the other hand, that Indian civil liberty, or, more precisely, what Europeans understood to be Indian civil liberty, was vital to the development of Enlightenment political thought and therefore of modern democracy and civil liberty. I am not even certain, unlike the union of colonies, that it would have arisen in anything like the same form had Indians not lived comparatively freely, or seemed to. Therefore I’d say it’s fair to see Indians as central to our freedom, liberty and democracy, and even as their fount.

The question was often asked in Britain why the colonists were so aggressive about matters pertaining to liberty, when they were by most standards freer than anyone in Europe save the

citizens of a few small countries. The answer the colonists gave was that the suffered the peculiar burden of taxation without representation, which was true enough. What was also true was that they were not as free as almost all their Indian neighbors, and that freedom, like material wealth, tends to be judged in relation to the nearest others, not in relation to more distant people.

Few Americans today feel satisfied that they have a better house and car than most people in Bangladesh or Nigeria. They judge their material well begin by comparison with their nearest neighbors. Likewise, the ways in which colonists were beholden to a government in which they had no voice probably grated in comparison to the near total control of their own affairs their Haudenosaunee neighbors exerted over themselves in their general assembly. Furthermore, this point would be driven home continually in the negotiations between themselves and Indians. Colonists would have continually needed to explain that they could not do this or that because they were largely powerless in various matters controlled by their British government. The Indians might well have responded by intentionally or unintentionally turning the knife. “Why not fix that problem?” they were likely to have asked, or implied, since it is in the interest of all diplomats to deal with potent representatives.

It is not at all farfetched to believe that the liberty of their Indian neighbors played a role in inspiring the colonists fight for liberty—though it is impossible to quantify how important this role was.

Borrowing again from Grinde and Johanssen (borrowing from Locke):

‘"In the beginning," wrote Locke, "all the world was America."’

If the so-called founding fathers are mute as to the impact of the Haudenosaunee and other Indians on their work, the theorists of democratic and representative government to whom

they are deeply indebted are not. Rousseau’s bon sauvage ‘good man of the forest’ (or Dryden’s ‘noble savage’—translations and political correctness do their usual do-si–do here; “savage” is certainly politically incorrect, but surely “wild man” is no better. Meanwhile if we forget all the connotations of “savage,” its root, silvaticus ‘person of the forest’, is not, perhaps, such a bad description of a Haudenosaunee) is their poster boy, actually. The argument of the partisans for popular rule, if I may be so daft as to try to sum it up in a sentence, is that since freedom and independence are l’etat de nature, government ought to proceed as the voluntary and limited cession of powers by its ultimate lords, the people. But the state of nature, it can be argued, had nothing particularly to do with nature, less with Europe, where kings rights were divine, and everything to do with a certain number of distinct political cultures developed by non-Europeans, which featured a degree of liberty not to be found in European monarchies, including and perhaps especially the Indians of North America in general and the Haudenosaunee in particular.

Of course, civil liberty had a long European history involving Greeks, Romans, the magna carta and Swiss cantons. But more or less unlimited monarchy was generally accepted in 1500, while three hundred years later, the most influential and populous European country, and a rising power in North America, could be called democratic republics. I might sum up what happened by saying that the comparatively free Indians seemed more natural to Europeans than they did to themselves, that the natural was or became the fashion, that North American Indians in general and the Haudenosaunee in particular were the ultimate models of people living “naturally”, that this natural libertarian vogue swept Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (immediately after news of Indians swept through) and that the entire process may have had as much to do with fashion as it did with reason, as the more interesting and influential Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth century found Indians, as well as freedom and liberty, highly fashionable as much as they found them empirically reasonable.

We may wish to consider, also, that the Haudenosaunee, as the principal British Indian allies, enabled their triumph in the French and Indian War, being the principal actors in key victories such as Lake George and Fort Duquesne (consequently known as Pittsburgh) among many others. When the war began there were a number British leaders like Braddock, who believed the British did not need Indian help and could triumph on their own. There was one fewer after Braddock was surrounded and killed by a predominantly Indian force perhaps half his size. The British rebounded from the disaster thanks to leaders like Johnson and Washington, who assiduously cultivated Indian allies in general and Iroquoians in particular.

“I am glad the [Iroquoian] Cherokees have determined to come to our assistance,” Washington wrote. “They will be of particular service—more than twice their number of white men.”

George Washington, “Letter to Governor Dinwiddie, September 8, 1756,” The Writings of George Washington (Volume I, p. 342). Google Books October 27, 2011.

So were it not, it seems, for Iroquoian arms and diplomacy, the English would not have won the French and Indian war and our government would therefore be très différent--so one aspect of the United States of America resulting from Iroquoian influence would seem to be its existence.

Finally, while the founding fathers may be essentially mute as to their Indian influences, on one key occasion they chose to advertise them spectacularly. The Founding Fathers performed their signature act of rebellion against the English monarchy while pretending to be Kanien’kehá:ka. The dual identity of the Boston tea partiers seems a felicitous metaphor for the nascent United States. They were Europeans trying to be Indians.

But perhaps these paragraphs, also, rely too much on rhetorical tricks. Is it better, I wonder, in the end, to say that the river which is the United States of America was at first attended exclusively by Indians, and that therefore Indians should be considered, honored and cherished

as its grandmothers and grandfathers—and that this river’s headwaters were in Indian national territory, and its course still is?

Many have pondered why Europeans had better technology. Having excavated and read a bit, I wonder why Indians seem to have been better people. I’ve read Europeans claim Indians are better soldiers, better speakers, diplomats and politicians, better with guns and horses, better spouses, better parents, better and more faithful friends, better hosts, better Christians, bigger, stronger, smarter, tougher, and more virtuous in general. Maybe--I’ve come around to thinking—the Indian heritage of this country may be excellence. We know better than most we can be better than we are. Somewhere in the heart of America, perhaps, lies the desire to be as good as an Indian.

While the genocide committed on Indian nations destroyed many of them, many still survive, and these have been rallying--for the most part and to some extent--from their nadir around a century ago. While their losses will always remain inestimable and their problems continue to be many, I find it a source of strength that the Kanien’kehá:ka, as well as the rest of the Haudenosaunee nation, can now be seen as having won survival, and even increase, through or despite all the fighting they did to bring my country into being.

I have a fond hope that if things continue in the current direction for long enough, the nations will regain all the land they have lost.

Current (non-Indian) residents could not and would not return from where they came. They would have to want to be adopted by an Indian nation. Indian nations, in turn, would have to be amenable to adopting many new members. The process would be complete when all the land in the United States belonged to Indian nations, as it did before the genocide—though perhaps in some sort of a union, which might, perhaps, retain the name the United States of America. Why not? The future is unwritten.

Ohénton Karihwatéhkwen

Ó:nen ká:ti ska’nikón:ra tewá:ton táhnon teiethinonhwará:ton ne: Onkweshón:’a, Ionkhi’nisténha Ohóntsia, Ohneka’shón:’a, Kentsionhshón:’a, Ohonte’shón:’a, Ononhkwa’shón:’á, Ohtehra’shón:’a, Kaienthóhsera, Kahih’shón:’a, Otsinonwa’shón:’a, Kontirío, Okwire’shón:’a, Otsi’ten’okón:’a, Iethihsothokón:’a Ratiwé:ras, Kaiéri Nikawerá:ke, Eh Tshitewahtsi:’a Kiohkenékha Karáhkwa, Ionkhihsótha Ahshonthenhnékha Karáhkwa, Otsistohkwa’shón:’a, Kaié:ri Niionkwé:take, Shonkwaia’tison.

“Thanksgiving Address

Now we put our minds together as one and we shall greet them: People, Mother Earth, Waters, Fishes, Grasses, Medicines, Roots, Food, Fruits, Insects, Animals, Trees, Birds, Thunder, the Four Winds, the Sun, Grandmother Moon, the Stars, the Four Beings, the Creator.”