Chesapeake (26 page)

The Indians presented a problem. When he had learned more of their language, they warned him that they owned the marsh and the land he occupied and that if he wanted it he must buy it as Steed had done. When he objected, they took him far to the east where the werowance lived, and Matapank verified the Choptank claim. Turlock argued with them for some days and in the end had to concede that the land was theirs; to protect himself he said that he would buy it. Obtaining a well-tanned deerskin, he drew on it an outline of his property, showing the oblong marsh and the triangle of fast land, and he asked the leading Choptanks to make their marks; Matapank made his, and the little man with the cleft chin, and then the feeble white-haired giant and his daughter, Tciblento, the stately mother of two sons. When all had signed, Turlock made his mark.

But when the map was completed he realized that it represented no real authority, since it bore only unidentified marks and he had no way to indicate who had signed what. So it occurred to him that what he must do was carry the entire group of negotiators to Devon Island, where the Steeds could write the names and verify them. Matapank understood, and agreed to go; the man with the cleft chin was eager to go, white-haired and quick like a ferret; the giant would not leave his quarters, but Tciblento showed a surprising desire to visit Devon. So canoes were readied, but before they departed the white-haired old man halted proceedings to ask, ‘And what does this stranger give us for signing his document?’

There was much discussion, during which the Indians proposed various items they needed. Turlock listened attentively, accepting some, rejecting others: ‘I … get … that.’ ‘I … think … I … get … that.’ And so on. At last an agreement was reached, and the convoy set forth.

It was a delightful trip down the river, with never a sign of human occupation on either bank, just the ospreys and the herons, with here and there a family of ducks that had lingered instead of flying north. When the canoes passed Turlock’s marsh everyone commented approvingly, and finally Devon Island loomed ahead. Now Tciblento grew nervous, and when the canoes actually entered Devon Creek, she leaned forward to catch sight of the house and did not take her eyes from it while the canoes neared the wharf. Finally, servants saw the approaching procession and shouted to the master, and after a while young Henry Steed came down the pebbled path, and Tciblento fell back, said nothing, but kept her fingers to her mouth.

The signing was conducted on the table in the Steed kitchen, with Henry writing in the five names, adding a date, and asking his mother to testify to the accuracy and then his brother, after which he signed himself. In time the deerskin would be registered at St. Mary’s City, but only after Turlock had cleverly altered the line showing the northern boundary, a trick which added another two hundred acres.

Then came the matter of payment. Leading the Indians apart from the Steeds, Turlock assured them that after the second full moon they could come to his marsh and he would deliver to them the specified number of axes, guns and other implements. Matapank and the little fellow with the cleft chin agreed, but Tciblento asked, ‘Why not hand them to us now?’ and he replied, ‘Now … don’t … have.’

So the Indians returned home empty-handed, but after the first full moon had waned Turlock went to work. At night he sailed his sloop to a cove on the far side of Devon, hid it among low-bending trees, and for three nights in a row crept inland to reconnoiter the Steed plantation. Then, in one busy night, he took axes from positions at which they would not be quickly missed; his guns he stole right from the quarters of those sleeping servants charged with hunting game; he filched three wheels, a hammer, a crowbar, two hoes, and when he had picked up several choice items for his own use, he crept back to his sloop and moved silently upriver to his marsh.

As he was about to unload his booty and carry it to his hut, it occurred to him that it might be more prudent to sequester it in the marsh. So with extreme care to leave no footprints, he picked and dodged his way into the heart of the swampiest section, where on a platform of sticks he cached his goods. Then he tiptoed out by a different course and sat innocently in his hut when an angry Henry Steed and three men came up the creek to search his place.

‘Mr. Steed!’ he pleaded, grinning at the plantation owner. ‘What … I … do … stolen … axes? Have … my … own.’ The servants verified the fact that Turlock’s axes had never been Steed property, nor the guns nor the hoe.

‘He’s hidden mine somewhere,’ Steed insisted, and his men searched
the woods, but could find no sign of earth that had been disturbed. Steed directed them into the marsh, but when they tried to penetrate that wilderness they sank to their middles and he had to call them back.

‘Think … Indians … took,’ Turlock suggested, but the Choptanks lived too far away to be investigated, so Steed had to return to the island. As the ketch departed he warned Turlock, ‘I know you’re the thief. We’ll catch you.’

He never did, but once Turlock had delivered his purchase goods to the Indians, he stayed clear of the plantation, having guessed that Steed would post sentries to apprehend him if he attempted new forays. The marsh and the fast land were legally his, four hundred acres of the former, nearly eight hundred of the latter, and he was determined that nothing, neither winter blizzards nor summer mosquitoes, would ever dispossess him.

When Turlock had occupied his marsh for well over a year he became aware that an occasional hunter or vagrant from the western shore had begun to camp at the abandoned Indian site of Patamoke and that a rude landing had been established inside the protective harbor. The Steeds at the mouth of the river did not seem to object; indeed, they profited from the accidental trade that came to their supply house on Devon, and no Choptanks were in the area to protest.

But the types of men who squatted on the ruins of the old village were so violent that trouble was inescapable; from their bloody experiences with Indians along the James they had learned to hate red men and were unable to distinguish the inoffensive Choptanks from the savages who had burned and slaughtered at Jamestown. Immediate war was declared against all Indians, and when a casual group of five Choptank braves wandered onto the ancient hunting grounds to the north of Patamoke, they were fired upon, and two were slain, including the husband of Tciblento.

A cry of anguish burst from the Choptank settlement when the three survivors stumbled back with reports of what had happened. Matapank, the werowance, was thrown into confusion by the tragedy; he realized that the unavoidable confrontation was at hand, but he had no concept of what he should do. Without a plan he assembled three counselors to accompany him on a visit to talk with the white men about the injustice they had done, but when this peace mission approached, the white gunners fired on them and Matapank was killed.

Now the burden that Pentaquod had sought to escape fell heavily upon him. The body of Tciblento’s husband had not been recovered, so that funeral rites could not be conducted, and the beautiful woman was left without the consolation that might have come from a proper burial and
the assurance of a secure life for her husband in the hereafter. She sat mourning with her sons, and nothing her old father could do assuaged her grief; her husband had been the first to fall in the warfare that she had known to be inevitable.

Pentaquod was further disoriented by the meaningless death of Matapank, to whom the mantle of leadership had been given almost a quarter of a century earlier; he had never been a strong werowance, but he had held the tribe together and should have attained old age as its respected leader. Now he was gone and the only force that could give these drifting little people the encouragement they required was Pentaquod, who was in his eighty-first year and eager for the grave. When the Choptanks came to him, begging his counsel, he not only retained his three turkey feathers, but in order to give his people courage he also agreed to wear, for the first time, the copper disk designating a werowance. Assisted always by Tciblento, he made the decisions required to give his adopted people courage.

In five canoes he and his wisest braves went down the Choptank to reconnoiter. They kept away from the camp, where the hunters were carrousing, and put into the marsh, where Turlock, a man they had learned to trust, kept himself aloof. Pentaquod, sitting in the fugitive’s rude hut with Tciblento at his side, asked, ‘Turlock, what do the white men want?’

‘The river.’

‘Why do they kill us?’

‘You’re Indians.’

‘Must we quit this river and live as slaves under the Nanticokes?’

‘They be killed too.’

‘Must it be war? The war we have always sought to avoid?’

They talked for two days, with Tciblento acting as her father’s memory, and then the whole entourage, including Turlock, proceeded downriver to Devon Island, where they consulted with the Steeds. Young Henry was of the opinion that the Choptank was permanently lost and that the Indians must move far to the east, to avoid trouble, but Turlock said that he had gone on two journeys in that direction, clean to the ocean, and had found white men gaining footholds there, too. At this doleful news Pentaquod asked what his little tribe could do, and Henry suggested that they move south and make common cause with the Nanticokes.

‘And lose our freedom?’ the old man asked.

‘The Indians on the western shore have learned …’ Henry began, but he did not finish, for what they learned was too painful to report: that wherever white settlers came, the Indian must abdicate.

At this gloomy point Mrs. Steed thought it desirable to introduce some less lugubrious topic, and she remembered how Tciblento had once been
in love with Edmund Steed and had married instead one of the Choptank braves. ‘How is your husband?’ she asked brightly.

‘The hunters killed him.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Mrs. Steed cried, as if Tciblento had volunteered proof of what the men had been discussing, and she felt such compassion for the Indian woman that she embraced her, resting for a moment on her shoulder.

‘You shall stay with us through the winter,’ she said softly.

‘I must help my father.’

‘He shall stay, too, in one of our houses.’

‘These are the days when all are needed,’ Pentaquod said, and when this was translated, Mrs. Steed reached up and kissed the old man. ‘At least let your daughter stay,’ she said, but Pentaquod took Tciblento by the hand and said querulously, ‘There was a day long ago when I wanted her to leave, but now she is needed,’ and silently the Indians went to their canoes as if preparing for a funeral journey.

In the three winter months of 1641 Timothy Turlock passed back and forth between Devon and the Choptank camp, bearing messages and trying to devise some kind of amicable arrangement whereby the Indians could survive in their small corner of forest, but the hunters were intractable; they intended driving out every Choptank and had already fired the opening salvos of warfare with the Nanticokes to the south.

In his discussions, Turlock met increasingly with Pentaquod, whose tear-dimmed eyes saw only the dissolution of his people. The old man was an infinitely greater philosopher than Turlock, who could barely grapple with an abstract idea, but they shared a love for the land that enabled them to communicate. Pentaquod tried to convince the ferret-faced little Englishman that it would prove as difficult for him to hold on to his land as it would be for the Choptanks to keep theirs.

‘No hunters in my marsh,’ Turlock boasted, using his hand to indicate the musket he would use to repel them.

‘They aren’t the enemy,’ Pentaquod corrected.

‘Who?’

‘Steed.’

‘No,’ Turlock said firmly. ‘Steed … peace.’

‘Not warfare,’ Pentaquod said. ‘No guns. But he will always want more land. His barns will always be hungry. He will grab clear to the ocean, and you and I and all of us, even the hunters, will be consumed.’

During these fearful days Pentaquod brooded about the future of his tribe, but something immediate was happening which caused him deep personal concern. He had observed that Turlock lingered in the Choptank camp not so much to consult with him as to be near Tciblento, and one morning the appalling thought came to him: Great Spirit! He intends to marry her!

It was a pitiful mismatch: she was a head taller, beautiful where he was grotesque, poetic by nature whereas he could barely voice a complete thought, and forty-four while he was only thirty-two. What seemed strangest of all, the couple had practically no common vocabulary. How could they converse? How could there be any companionship?

And yet Pentaquod understood what impulses might be driving his daughter to this unlikely suitor. She stood at the parting of days, her husband slain, her tribe in disarray, her permanent home burned, the future a gray and dismal blank. It was not illogical for her to move with the strangers and make with them what life she could, but the necessity for such a decision was tragic.

Oh, Tciblento, he said to himself one morning, that you have missed a Susquehannock deserving of you, and the Steed that you should have married, and the worthy warriors that should have come … His shoulders trembled and tears filled his weakened eyes: How fearful that you should be driven to thinking of this pitiful man. Tciblento! You are the daughter of kings!

The wedding was a shocking affair, a travesty of ancient tradition: one morning the little Englishman mumbled, ‘Time … go … marsh,’ and this urge Pentaquod understood, for no man should remain long absent from his land. As the afternoon sun started dipping toward the west, Turlock merely left the wigwam and drifted casually toward his boat, indicating that Tciblento was free to accompany him, if she wished. Without saying farewell to her father, she silently fell in behind the little trapper and without ceremony of any kind entered the sloop. Her departure went unnoticed in the village; there was no celebration befitting the marriage of a princess, no beating of drums, no prayer by the shaman. This tribe was disorganized; the pressure from the Chesapeake was too pervasive.