Chesapeake (7 page)

‘There is better,’ Navitan assured him, and when he doubted, she told him to wait until the crabs began to shed, and one day she brought him
four that had newly cast their shells, and these she fried directly in hot bear grease, without first boiling or picking them.

‘Do I eat legs and all?’ Pentaquod asked, and she goaded him into trying them; when he had finished the four he declared them succulent beyond belief.

‘Now you are one of us,’ Navitan said.

While Pentaquod was initiating himself into such pleasant customs he made a discovery which disturbed him: he found that what Scar-chin had reported was true. This tribe never defended itself from enemies, and when the Susquehannocks intruded from the north, or the Nanticokes from the south, no attempt was made to protect the village. The villagers seemed not to care what happened; they mounted no sentries, sent no patrols to check the frontiers, engaged in no self-defense maneuvers. He was not surprised, therefore, when children ran in one morning to report, ‘Here come the Nanticokes again!’

No one panicked. Everyone placed essential goods in deerskin pouches, hid supplies of food in the nearby forest, and fled. The werowance marched at the front of his people, as gallantly as if heading for battle, and took them deep into the fragmented, river-cut area northwest of their village. They had learned from frequent experience that the Nanticokes were reluctant to follow them into that chopped-up area, so they marched with a certain confidence that after a decent interval, during which the invaders would steal everything left behind and then retreat singing victory songs, they could return to their homes and resume life as it had been.

Pentaquod was staggered by this attitude. When the children first reported the invasion he had wanted to storm out to engage the enemy, teach them a lesson and drive them back to the southern regions, but the old werowance would have none of this, nor did any of his people wish to face the sturdier men from the south.

‘What do we lose, doing it this way?’ one of the women asked Pentaquod as they fled to the land of the broken rivers.

‘We lose my wigwam,’ he said in some anger.

‘A wigwam we can build in a day. The dried fish? Who cares. The salted duck they won’t find. We stowed it among the oaks.’

When the tribe had hidden for seven days, it was deemed likely that the Nanticokes had done their damage and retreated, but to confirm this, scouts had to be sent back to ensure that they had really gone. No volunteers offered to do the spying, so Pentaquod, speaking for Scar-chin, said, ‘We’ll go.’ The interpreter, who had been captured once, wanted nothing to do with such a venture, but Pentaquod insisted, and since going in the company of this brave Susquehannock would lend distinction to the little man, he reluctantly agreed.

No spy in the long history of the region ever moved with more circumspection than Scar-chin as he entered the territory occupied by the invaders. Indeed, he was so painfully careful not to snap a twig that Pentaquod realized the little fellow’s crafty plan: he would move so slowly that the Nanticokes would have two extra days to clear out. When he and Pentaquod did finally reach the village site, the enemy would be practically back in their own villages.

But Pentaquod would have none of this, and was determined to press forward to see what kind of people the Nanticokes were. But he was simply unable to budge his fellow spy; no amount of scorn, no appeal to Scar-chin’s manhood prevailed. The little man refused to move forward ahead of the prudent schedule he had set himself, and in the end he attached himself to a locust tree and could not be budged, so Pentaquod moved alone to the river.

From a vantage point he observed the tag end of the Nanticokes as they rummaged one last time through the captured village, collecting final souvenirs of their raid. While the main body rambled east along the river, chanting a victory song which told of how they had subdued the fiercely resisting village, four laggards remained behind, wrestling with some captured article too big for them to handle. Pentaquod, watching them with amusement, could not resist making an arrogant gesture, even though he knew it was foolish and risky.

Leaping from behind a tree, he uttered his wildest war cry, brandished his spear and lunged at the four startled Nanticokes. They were terrified by this apparition, five hands taller than they and much broader of shoulder, and they fled. But one kept his senses long enough to shout to those ahead, ‘The Susquehannocks!’ and terror ensued.

The entire foraging party fell into panic, abandoning whatever they had stolen, and with great clatter stormed and thrashed their way in undignified retreat. So definitive were the sounds of defeat that even Scar-chin was lured from his hiding place in time to see his friend Pentaquod brandishing his spear and chasing an entire Nanticoke army through the woods. It had never occurred to Scar-chin that one resolute man might be the equal of four surprised Nanticokes or forty frightened ones, but when he saw the retreating feathers of the southern braves he realized that he had witnessed a miracle, and he began fashioning the ballad that would immortalize the victory of Pentaquod:

It was an epic, a portrait in the most exalted woodland tradition, and as Pentaquod casually surveyed the trivial damage done his village and his wigwam, he listened with amusement to the chant. It reminded him of the war songs he had heard as a boy, when the Susquehannocks returned from their forays against the tribes to the south; those songs had depicted events of unbelievable heroism, and he had believed them:

And it now dawned upon Pentaquod that the village his ancestors had attacked with such bravery was this village; the enemies they had subdued were ones they had never faced, for the foe had been hiding in faraway marshes. There had been no battle save in the minds of ancient poets who knew that when braves march forth to battle, it is obligatory that there be victory songs.

And yet, even though he knew the fraudulence of such behavior, when the villagers timidly returned and saw to their delight that this time their goods had not been carried off, they began to chant Scar-chin’s composition and to believe it. With appealing modesty Pentaquod stood silent, allowing Scar-chin to lead the applause. If the village had been saved, Pentaquod reasoned, it was because of my actions, and I will accept the credit. It was that night when the older men began thinking of him as a possible werowance.

But when word next reached the tribe that Susquehannocks were moving south, even though Pentaquod assured the villagers that he knew certain tricks which might fend them off—provided he could find nine brave men who would not run away—the old werowance brusquely countermanded his proposal. ‘The only sensible thing to do is run into the marshes. We have been doing this for many years, and in all that time we have enjoyed a good life, with plenty of food and enough marsh grass to weave again the sides of our burned wigwams. Let the enemy have his triumph, if he needs it. Our security is in the marshes.’

The strange aspect of this policy was that it in no way diminished the self-respect of the villagers, and it certainly did not diminish Pentaquod; he had proved his valor against the Nanticokes, and Scar-chin had composed the epic. Pentaquod was a true hero, and he did not have to repeat his heroics endlessly to retain his reputation. As he fled with the others into the safety of the southern marshes, every man believed that
if Pentaquod had wanted to oppose the Susquehannocks, he could have done so. Instead he preferred safeguarding his pregnant wife, and this, deemed the villagers, was much more sensible.

As they crossed the river, and hid their canoes, and straggled through the rushes that lined the southern shore, Pentaquod heard two tribal tales that fascinated him, and he kept asking the older men numerous questions: ‘You say that to the east, where you go in summer, there is a river much greater than the ones I know?’ ‘The water is much saltier?’ ‘The birds are different and no man has ever seen the opposite shore?’ ‘And it is there, all the time, and a canoe cannot cross it?’ ‘What do you mean, waves coming to the shore so high they knock down a man?’

He was so excited by their descriptions, and so willing to believe because all agreed, that he wanted to set out immediately to see this marvelous thing, but the werowance said, ‘We will be going there in the summer, to escape the mosquitoes.’ So he waited.

The other story was incredible, much weightier than the tale of the big river, for it contained disturbing implications. He first caught rumor of it from Scar-chin, who said casually, ‘Maybe when the Great Canoe returns, it will chastise the Susquehannocks.’

‘What Great Canoe?’

‘The one that came many winters ago.’

‘It came where?’

‘Near the island.’

‘How big was it?’

‘I didn’t see it, but Orapak did, and so did Ponasque.’

He had gone immediately to Ponasque, a very old man now, to ask directly, ‘Did you see the Great Canoe?’

‘I did,’ the old man said as they huddled in the marshes.

‘How big was it?’

‘Twenty canoes, forty, piled one on the other. It rose high in the air.’

‘How many paddlers?’

‘None.’

This was the most ominous statement Pentaquod had ever heard, a Great Canoe moving without paddles. He contemplated this for some time, then asked the old man, ‘You saw this thing, yourself, not some great story recited at night?’

‘I saw it, beyond the island.’

‘What did you think of it?’

The old man’s eyes grew misty as he recalled that stupendous day when his world changed. ‘We were very afraid. All of us, even Orapak. We could not explain what we had seen, but we had seen it. The fear has never left us, but as the years pass we have managed to forget.’ He indicated that he was not happy to have a stranger to the tribe revive those distant fears and he would say no more.

By prudent questioning, Pentaquod satisfied himself that all members of the tribe believed that the Great Canoe had indeed come to the mouth of the river, that it was huge in size, that it moved without paddles. One old woman added to the story: ‘It was white on top, brown at the bottom.’

Pentaquod carried the disquieting news with him as they penetrated deeper into the swamp, and when they reached relatively solid ground on which they could camp, he went to the werowance and asked bluntly, ‘What did you think, Orapak, when you saw the Great Canoe?’

The old man sucked in his breath, then sat down beneath an oak. He reflected on what he should reply to this penetrating question, knowing that it cut to the heart of his tribe’s existence, then said slowly, ‘I cannot come into the marshes again. I find it too exhausting and know that my time for death is at hand. You must be the next werowance.’

‘I did not ask about that, Orapak.’

‘But this is the significant answer to what you did ask.’

Of this Pentaquod could make no sense, but the old leader continued, ‘When we gathered on the shore that day to see the Great Canoe as it moved slowly north, all of us saw the same thing. You are probably aware of that from the questions you’ve been asking.’

Pentaquod nodded. He was convinced that this tribal memory was no mere chant composed by some imaginative ancestor like Scar-chin. Satisfied on this point, the old man went on, ‘When the others had seen the Canoe, and assured themselves that it was real, they returned home, but my grandfather, the werowance then, took my father and me along the shore, and we were hiding in the forest when the Canoe came close, and we saw that it contained men much like us and yet much different.’

‘How?’

‘Their skins were white. Their bodies were of some different substance, for the sun glistened when it struck.’

That was all the old man knew, and since none of the others had told him of these startling facts, he realized that this was privileged knowledge, to be possessed only by the succession of werowances. In sharing this sacred knowledge of the glistening bodies, Orapak was passing along to Pentaquod the burden of leadership. He did not need to warn that no mention must be made of what the Great Canoe actually contained, for it was clear that one day it must return, bringing the enigma of men with white skins and bodies that reflected sunlight.

‘They will come back, won’t they?’ Pentaquod asked.

‘They will.’

‘When?’

‘Every day of my life I have risen from my bed with one question: Is this the day they will return? Now that burden is yours. You will never
place your head upon the sleeping reeds without wondering: Will they come tomorrow?’

They buried the canny old werowance, a craven who had lost his village a score of times but never a man in battle, deep in the swamps away from the river he had loved. From his tired, worn body they removed the copper disk symbolic of leadership, proffering it to Pentaquod, but he refused, for such disks of authority were not part of the Susquehannock ritual. Instead he planted three tall turkey feathers in his hair, so that he towered even more conspicuously over his little charges, and Scar-chin recited his epic of how the new werowance had once defeated the Nanticokes single-handed. And so this tribe became the next in that strange procession of nations who choose as their leader someone who is not even a member of their tribe.

The first test of Pentaquod’s leadership came when the Nanticokes marched north on their traditional raid. The women assumed that the tribe would flee north in the accustomed manner, but some of the younger warriors, infected by Scar-chin’s epic, believed they should stand and fight. ‘With Pentaquod to plan the battle,’ they argued, ‘we could repel the invaders and end our annual shame.’