The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby

by H L Grandin

  The canoe crunched ashore on the sandy bank. Trinity sprang from the canoe, lifted the bow, and pulled it out of the water so that it was secured on the shore.

  Tyoga was climbing out of the canoe when the terrifying scream made him jump with fright. Trinity was crumpled on the ground clutching her right calf.

  He was by her side in two steps. “T.J., Trinity Jane, what’s the matter, what’s wrong?” He barely finished the words when the second snake struck the hand she was holding protectively over the first bite.

  “No!” He grabbed the snake behind its head and snapped it in two. “Water moccasins!” he cried out.

  Trinity did not have to ask what that meant. Growing up in the tidewater of Virginia, she knew. With eyes wild with fear and pain, she asked him, “Ty. Ty, what are we going to do?”

  Without saying a word, Tyoga scooped her up into his arms and ran to the shelter. He knew exactly what to do.

  Davey was racing through his mind. He had watched his mother tend to his little brother when he was bitten by the snake. He was well aware of the consequences of not acting fast. His mother had gotten to his brother too late to save him. He wasn’t going to allow that to happen now.

  He lay Trinity on the buffalo mattress and felt her forehead. The poison was traveling fast through her system because her panic caused her heart to race and spread the vile toxin more rapidly. She was perspiring and having difficultly sitting up.

  “T.J.,” Tyoga said sternly. “T.J., keep your eyes open. Don’t close your eyes. Keep looking at me.”

  He searched frantically for a particular basket that held a straight razor given to him by the Mattaponi. When he saw the basket, he kicked it over and the straight razor fell out onto the ground.

  “Lie down, T.J.” He pushed her gently onto her back. He grabbed a corner of a deer hide and placed it in her hand. “Bite down on this, Little One.” He didn’t notice that he had used the term of endearment previously reserved only for Sunlei. “Scream as loud as you want—nobody is gonna hear.”

  He knelt down by her calf, picked her leg up off of the ground, and turned his back to her. “This is gonna hurt, T.J. I’m sorry.”

  Working quickly, he opened the straight razor and wiped the fang punctures with the cuff of his sleeve. He hesitated when he remembered that his mother had always placed her instruments directly into a flame, or dipped them into his papa’s peach brandy before lancing or cutting. He had neither.

  Time was the determining factor. He went straight to work.

  Placing the front edge of the razor over the first fang mark, he cleaved Trinity’s skin with a single deft stroke.

  As the clean red line opened and bled, he placed the edge of the razor into the cut and pushed harder to open the calf muscle where the poison had been deposited.

  He turned to look at Trinity Jane. Tears were streaming down the sides of her face, but she made no sound at all.

  He opened the second fang puncture in same manner, lifted her leg to his mouth, and sucked hard over both cut marks. His mouth filled with blood, serum and residual venom. He spit it out through the front opening of the shelter. Three more times, he sucked and spit. After the final time he filled his mouth with water, swished, and spit.

  He then turned his attention to the bite on her forearm.

  This bite was far more serious than the bite on her leg. The snake was larger, and wasn’t surprised by Trinity’s presence. He saw her, and aimed his strike carefully before lunging for her arm. He had latched on and delivered a full bolus of his venom.

  Her swollen forearm was turning a deep purple and red.

  Tyoga slashed open the puncture marks with the straight razor and extracted as much poison as he possibly could with his mouth. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that he had not tended to this bite in time.

  He remembered that his mother had cared for his baby brother by placing hot cloths over the incisions to force the cuts to bleed. He ran to the fire pit, dropped to his knees and blew the ash off of the two day old coals. Placing dry pine needles directly on the red hot coals, he coaxed a flame to life with three gently breaths. The pit was ablaze in a matter of minutes. He filled a clay pot with water, placed it directly on the flames, and ran back to Trinity's side.

  Her lustrous auburn hair was plastered to her head and her clothing was soaked with sweat. She was beginning to shiver.

  He cradled her head and shoulders in his arms, shook her lightly, and said, “T.J. T.J., can you open your eyes?” When she did not respond, he held her close to his chest and rocked her gently. There was little else he could do.

  As the hours passed, Tyoga kept the hot compresses over the wounds. He placed a cool cloth on her brow, neck and upper chest, and blotted away the sweat that pooled in her eyes.

  Wiping her face and cradling her body against his chest, he looked closely at the soft young woman lying in his arms. She was beautiful in a way that was oddly foreign, yet hauntingly familiar.

  He had never held a white woman in his arms before. Her skin was velvet soft and creamy white. Her lips were thin and smooth. When she swallowed, the dimples in her cheeks puckered to give her an oddly impish aire even while asleep. Her neck was long and supple.

  Brushing her hair from the right side of her face, he saw the scar that ran the length of her jaw, from in front of her ear lobe to her chin. The laceration had been deep and jagged. It was easy to imagine how the Shawnee brave who had held the knife in his hand thought that he had slit her throat. That the war party left her for dead was no surprise.

  Tyoga gently touched the scar with the tips of his thick fingers and shook his head in disbelief that she had endured such an injury and survived. His hand slid from her cheek to her soft shoulders. He lingered there for a moment and rubbed her gently.

  He picked up her limp left arm in his muscular, calloused hand. She felt so frail, so light, almost as if she wasn’t there at all. He placed her tiny hand in his and smiled when he brought it close to his face. The long delicate fingers had worked hard. Very hard.

  The lot of a white girl brought into an Indian tribe at a young age was often difficult. Days were filled with work from sun up to sun down. Fetching water, scraping hides, planting and harvesting crops, milling grain, butchering game, cooking and caring for the needs of the young and old.

  Those who survived the harsh realities of servitude and debasement were accepted as full members of the tribe. Their strength, courage, and stamina were unquestioned.

  Just as Trinity had done for him, Tyoga did not leave her side for twenty-four hours.

  On the morning of the second day, he awakened to his clotheswringing with sweat from Trinity lying against him through the night.

  She was mumbling and shivering with fever. Remembering that this is exactly what had happened to his little brother, he threw back the blankets covering her lower leg, and beheld the sight that he hoped not to see. Her leg was so swollen that he could not discern her ankle or knee. If he didn’t do something soon, her skin would tear like an old linen sheet.

  Gently he laid her on her back, removed all the covers and lifted her blouse over her head. He stripped her doeskin skirt up over her head so as not to disturb her swollen leg.

  For the briefest moment, he felt a catch in his chest at seeing a naked white woman for the first time in his life.

  Scooping blankets and sheets up in his arms, he ran to the river. He stumbled into the river until he was knee deep and submerged the bedding in the cold water. With the wet sheets and blankets slapping at his arms and legs, he ran back to the shelter. When he fell to the ground, he crawled the final ten feet into the shelter.

  He covered Trinity first with the soaking linen sheet and then with a cotton blanket. Startled at the sudden cold, she shuddered and moaned, but did not awaken enough to protest. He placed a separate sopping wet, cold compress directly over her calf. He did the same for her forearm.

  Placing his hand on her chest, he felt her heart
beat. It was strong and her breathing was deep and regular. Grabbing another armful of covers and sheets, he ran down to the river again and repeated the process. All through the day he made the circuit from shelter to riverbank and back.

  The sun was setting when his legs grew weak from lack of food and sleep. He collapsed onto the elkhide next to Trinity, placed his hand on her forehead, and dropped his chin to his chest in relief. Her fever was down and she had stopped shivering. He laid down beside her and fell asleep in a pile of soaking blankets—completely exhausted.

  He was awakened by a gentle nudge to his side, and a whispered request, “Esgihusi.”

  Propping himself up on his elbow, Tyoga rubbed his eyes and saw that it was dark outside. “T.J.,” he said. “You’re thirsty? That’s good.”

  Trinity acknowleged with a slight shake of her head but did not open her eyes. Propping her head up with his hand, Tyoga held the water gourd to her lips. She drank slowly until it was nearly empty.

  She struggled to open her eyes for just a moment and looked up at him.

  Seeing a hint of surprise in her furrowed brow, Tyoga responded with a playful, “Don’t run off. It’s me! I just shaved off my beard. Had the straight razor out anyway, so I figured I’d put it to good use.”

  Smiling, he brushed her hair out of her eyes. Trinity had never seen him cleanshaven. He had not shaved during his trek through the mountains and he had been with her for nearly a month now. After nine weeks of not shaving, he looked more animal than man. He understood how the dramatic change would have startled her. He rubbed his cleanshaven face with his open hand and shrugged his shoulders.

  Standing up, Tyoga stretched his back and discovered that he was starving. Before he could get himself something to eat, he had to make a fresh bed of dry pelts and wool blankets for Trinity to lie on. He took the wet covers off her, and dried her body from head to toe. Placing her gently down on the soft dry bedding, he covered her with a clean sheet, and leaned over to place a soft kiss on her sweaty brow.

  The kiss caught him completely by surprise.

  Tyoga stoked the fire, heated some venison stew, took off his wet clothes and put on a store-bought cotton shirt and trousers, which were gifts they had brought back with them from their visit to Passaunkack. He had worn a pair of cotton trousers only once before. His papa had bought him the pants on one of their trips to Yorktown. They weren’t as durable as his doeskin britches, but he liked the way they felt against his skin.

  Looking up at the stars, he thought of Sunlei, Tes Qua, and Prairie Day. He wondered if they were looking up at the moon at that exact same moment.

  Are they thinking of me?

  As two distant owls sang their haunting serenade, and nightbirds twittered overhead, Tyoga stretched and went inside to go to bed.

  One side of the interior of the shelter was a muddy mess from where Tyoga had kept Trinity soaking in cool, wet blankets all day. The only dry part of the shelter floor was where he had placed her on a soft elkskin.

  In the month that they had been together, Tyoga and Trinity had never shared a bed.

  This never would have been the case had Trinity been pure Cherokee. Warming each other through the night with their shared body heat was an expectation rather than an act of intimacy. From the very first night, they would have slept together while keeping each other warm.

  This was surely something Trinity would have done if she had been with a Cherokee brave. Somehow their “whiteness” dictated a contrary set of moral guidelines. That they wanted to snuggle through the cold nights was without question. It made sense to do so. That they did not, spoke to the power of societal dictate as the oppressor of natural inclination.

  Tyoga removed his shirt and lay down next to Trinity Jane.

  Chapter 49

  Twin Oaks

  Trinity’s recovery was remarkably fast. She was young, and strong, and determined.

  Tyoga had administered all of the prescribed treatments for snake bite. Thanks to the help he had given his mother when she cared for his younger brother, he had provided care well beyond what the untrained woodsman would have been able to do.

  Tyoga steeped a tea of willow bark and yarrow to keep Trinity’s fever in check. He managed her pain by using ginger root and wild mint that acted as a powerful sedative. He made sure that she drank water, even when she claimed that she wasn’t thirsty. And, he was prepared to incise her leg from ankle to knee if the swelling had begun to rip her flesh apart.

  While Trinity was recuperating, a great deal of time was spent helping her to remember the English language. She had been taken from her family when she was eight years old and already quite fluent in her native tongue. A schoolteacher, her mother had read to Trinity from an early age.

  Trinity could read and write in English before that horrible day when she was the lone survivor of the Shawnee attack. As it turned out, the fact that she had only spoken and heard Algonquin for the past ten years diminished her recollection of the English language hardly at all. There were some difficulties with subject and verb agreement. Everyday items like the words for “fork” and “spoon” and “shoes” had to be relearned; but once they were, she never needed to ask again.

  The summer of 1707 lasted well into the fall, and the tidewater stayed green and warm into the later weeks of October.

  True to his word, Chief Blue Coat had assigned the task of marking Tyoga’s property lines to four young braves who were instructed to walk two-days in each direction of the compass, and mark the corner trees with the Twin Oaks brand. Over two hundred square miles of pristine Virginia countryside had been claimed in the name of Tyoga Weathersby. All of the land, timber, minerals, streams, and lakes belonged to the eighteen-year old man. All of the fish and fowl, hides and pelts were his to do with as he pleased.

  In forty-eight hours, Chief Blue Coat had made Tyoga Weathersby a wealthy man.

  The Mattaponi men helped Tyoga build a sturdy log cabin with a door of solid hickory, and two large window openings in the back and front of the home. The back wall faced the forest to the east and the path to Passaunkack. The front faced the Mattaponi River, the Appalachian Mountains, and the setting sun. The roof was made of the woven thatch the Mattaponi had learned to rely upon for a watertight lodge covering because milled planking and shingles would have to be purchased and transported from Calvert County. Glass windowpanes would have to be shipped from Yorktown.

  The cabin had a great room and an area partitioned off as sleeping quarters. A kitchen area for preparing and processing foodstuffs was along the north side of the cabin, and the majority of the south wall was taken up by an enormous stone fireplace.

  The Mattaponi had seen chimneys before, but had never been involved in the construction of such a massive stone structure. The lean of the chimney to create the necessary updraft to keep smoke from filling the interior of the house had them a bit puzzled. However, they carried the stones, mixed the mud and straw mortar, and made the scaffolding necessary to construct a fireplace more grand than the one planned for the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg—the new name for Middle Plantation.

  As warm and inviting as it seemed in the winter of 1708, the cabin, was only the beginning of what would become the magnificent estate along the Mattaponi known as Twin Oaks.

  While the men were building the main house and out buildings, Trinity was hard at work learning the ways of the woodland tribes. She had grown up in the Nansmond Clan of the Powhatan, a tribe that lived among the estuaries of the Chesapeake. They grew corn, beans, and squash, and hunted the tidal basins for sturgeon, clams, mussels, shrimp, crabs, and shad. Their subsistence was based upon the harvesting of seafood rather than sowing and reaping vegetables and grains. While coaxing sustenance from the land was a talent not completely foreign to her, she had never had the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills of the inland Powhatan who were experts at planting, sowing, and preserving their crops.

  Trinity Jane’s sister, Grows Strong, and
her family and friends were frequent overnight visitors to Twin Oaks. Although it was far too late to plant any crops, the women of Passaunkack taught Trinity how to store seeds, preserve bulbs, and winter tubors for planting in the spring. They showed her planting and sowing techniques that would allow her to enjoy an abundant harvest the following growing season.

  The fall was the time when the women of the village were most involved in the tanning of hides and the preparation of skins to make warm winter clothing for the cold months ahead. This was a skill at which Trinity had a great deal of experience. She showed the women of Mattaponi more efficient ways of fleshing a hide and new ways of making stretching frames that allowed for a final product that was uniform in thickness and shape.

  The women exchanged clothes patterns and sewing techniques that produced warm and durable clothing the likes of which neither had been able to manufacture before.

  As the weeks and months passed, the aloneness felt by Tyoga gradually faded away with the growing admiration for Trinity’s uncanny knack for teasing opportunity from adversity. The admiration born of shared hardship, misfortune conquered, and health restored blossomed into mutual trust that, over time, solidified into unshakable commitment. Desperation, perseverance, and triumph are the ores from which the strongest bonds are forged. They revealed their devotion to one another in the transparency of a smile, the gentleness of a glance, or the open flirtation of a sensuous sigh.

  Still, they had not touched.

  One evening in late October, they were sitting around the campfire, watching the blazing orange ball of the sun slowly sink into the mountains to the west. Their bellies were full of turkey breast and trout fillets. The remnants of blanched watercress partially filled one of the two clay bowls. The other held a helping of creamed corn.

  They were both very tired. Their muscles ached with the throb of accomplishment and progress. They were content and relaxed.