Shadowbrook

by Swerling, Beverly

  “Potawatomi and Ojibwe and Ottawa, we are brothers,” Pontiac said. “Once we were a single people.”

  “Ahaw,” Cormac agreed. “Haya, haya, jayek.” So, so, all of us together. The Ottawa would still know those words, however long the tribes had been separated.

  Pontiac nodded. He did know them. “But the Twightwee, the Crane People, are nothing to do with us. Their fat is in my belly.” Pontiac put his hand over his stomach and summoned a loud belch.

  Pontiac had been with the war party three years before that had invaded Pickawillany, slaughtered every Miami there, and finally put Memetosia’s grandson Memeskia into a pot and cooked and eaten him. Corm knew that. And he’d known it would be mentioned. He had a reply ready. “In the past the Anishinabeg had many reasons to be enemies of each other, to fight each other. Now, if they continue in that way, they will all die.”

  Pontiac threw down the bundled arrows. “This is a waste of time. Cormac Shea comes to my war camp to tell me things I already know.”

  “But I bring things others do not know.” Once more Cormac touched the medicine bag. “There is snow on the ground and the Cmokmanuk stay in their forts and do not fight. It is a time for a wise war sachem like Pontiac to think and listen and make plans.”

  Pontiac was silent for a time. Then he nodded and turned and summoned one of the squaws standing nearby. “Prepare a place where I and my little brother Cormac the Potawatomi of Singing Snow may speak further of important things. Later we will eat.”

  Pontiac spread a blanket on the ground between them. It was the color of blood, with a bright blue border, and he arranged it with his own hands, not calling on a squaw or one of the younger braves to do it for him. Something in the Ottawa chief recognized that Cormac’s Crane People medicine bag contained a unique treasure. Instinctively Pontiac paid it honor.

  Corm waited until everything was ready, then he squatted and removed the medicine bag from around his neck and placed it in the middle of the blood-red blanket.

  “Wait,” Pontiac said. “First we will smoke.”

  More honor. Cormac did not allow his impatience to show. Pontiac lit the pipe, drew deeply, then passed it to Cormac. Corm sucked in the tobacco smoke, then opened his mouth and let it drift into the air of the waning afternoon.

  “The calumet means peace,” the Ottawa said. “It may be some time before we smoke again.”

  “This is a Cmokmanuk war. Why should the Anishinabeg spill their blood to serve the white man’s ends?”

  “You too are a white man, Cormac the métis.”

  “I am a bridge person. Inside me is a Potawatomi brave.”

  Pontiac nodded. “Since the Cmokmanuk came, there are many like you.”

  “Not so many.” Cormac passed the pipe back to Pontiac and waited until the other man had smoked before continuing. “Now, in the peace of the calumet, I ask that the great chief of the Elder Brothers listen to me with both his ears.” Pontiac’s glance went to the medicine bag, but Cormac was not yet ready to show him what was inside. “The others, most of them, they fight to gain honor and captives and take back to their village many scalps and much treasure. But I do not think those are Pontiac’s reasons.”

  “Fighting is our way.” The Ottawa’s tone was mild. “We are warriors.”

  It was Cormac’s turn to smoke, but he did not immediately take the pipe. “Co, not this time. This is a Cmokmanuk war.”

  “You speak truth, little métis brother. But they are everywhere, they live among us like the mosquitoes, always biting, sucking our blood.” Pontiac turned the bowl of the calumet into his hand and tapped the live ash into his palm, then rubbed it into the earth beside him. The time for smoking had passed; it was time to talk of whatever had brought Cormac Shea to his camp and whatever was in the Miami medicine bag. “A wise war sachem chooses his enemies at least as well as he chooses his friends. The English are like great dog turds that make a stink in every direction. The French are not flowers, but they stink less.”

  “Because they do not take so much land?”

  “They take whatever they can get, but they do not prize it as much or hold it as long. The French are like trees with shallow roots: they can be moved. The English are like oaks: once planted, their roots reach to the middle of the earth.”

  The sun was dropping and both men felt the chill of the approaching evening. They could see the fires of the campsite, but not feel their heat. The cooking smells reached them, and the sounds of children playing a game that involved a repetitive chant and then many shouts. “It grows late, little brother. Say what you have come here to say.”

  Cormac summoned all his strength. “The last time we met you spoke of the need for the Anishinabeg to honor the old ways.” Pontiac nodded. Cormac reached for the medicine bag and loosened the drawstring. “I have here a gift from the past. From the original ways of the Anishinabeg.” He tipped the Suckáuhock into his palm, then one by one he placed each of the dark purple Súki beads on the blanket.

  They looked small and inconsequential on the square of scarlet, but Pontiac instantly recognized their great age and remarkable workmanship. “Ayi …” His sigh of pleasure came from somewhere deep in his belly. “They are beautiful. Memetosia the Miami chief gave these to you?”

  “Ahaw.”

  “Why?”

  “I have asked myself that many times. I do not know the answer for certain, but I think it can only be that he was obeying a message sent to him in a dream.”

  Pontiac nodded. There could be no other reason for a chief full of age and wisdom, even a chief of the Miami, to give such a marvel to a member of another tribe that had nothing to do with his. And a métis at that. “Ahaw. That must be so.”

  Pontiac leaned forward and reached for one of the beads. Cormac grabbed his wrist. The Ottawa stiffened at the insult and started to pull away. “Wait,” Cormac said. “I beg my Elder Brother to forgive my impertinence and to listen with both ears. I too have been sent a dream. In fact, two dreams. One I had while I was awake. The other came while I was sleeping.” He let go of Pontiac’s wrist and waited. It could be that he’d be in a fight for his life. Not that he’d have a chance in this camp of braves sworn to follow Pontiac, but he’d take a few of them with him before he went. Corm’s hand didn’t move, but it was directly in line with the tomahawk at his waist.

  It seemed for a moment that neither man breathed. Then Pontiac spoke. “Tell me the sleeping dream.”

  There would be no fight, not here and not now.

  I feel a great blackness between us, Ottawa, yet we have no quarrel. And I have a mission so I must put these thoughts out of my head. The future will come whatever I think or feel. My only course is to follow the dream. “There was a hawk,” he began, “and a river of blood.” He told of the little birds and the white bear and the white wolf.

  Pontiac listened without speaking. When Cormac was finished he asked, “And the waking dream? What was that?”

  “It came to me after I had fasted and meditated for many days. If the French could be driven from the north country, the place they call Canada, all the Anishinabeg could have that as their homeland. The English could stay here in the south, and we would both live according to our own laws and customs. And both would survive because of the separation.”

  Pontiac turned his head and looked at the woodlands surrounding them. Dusk had drained the fiery autumn color from the leaves, but the beauty of the place was still apparent. “You would give the dog turds all this?”

  “I would give them what is necessary to allow the Anishinabeg to survive.”

  The Ottawa nodded. “In that, I agree with you. There is no doubt we are fighting for our survival. Only those who see no farther than the tips of their fingers mistake this war for anything else.”

  It was time for the hard choices to be made. Cormac picked up one of the Súki beads and placed it in the open palm of the hand he stretched toward the Ottawa. There was just enough light left to see the carving. “
Papankamwa, the fox. I wish Pontiac to accept this. If he does, it will be his forever.”

  The Ottawa did not take it. “In return for what? In the old days Suckáuhock was used as we use wampum. Is my little brother asking me to accept a war belt?”

  “It is a no-war belt. I am asking that Pontiac lead his braves and his people to where they can wait for the end of the war between the French and the English. And that he take this as well.” Cormac picked up the bead that was carved with the spider symbol and placed it too in the palm of his outstretched hand. “Bring it to Alhanase, the Huron war chief who also fights with Onontio. Tell him what I have told you, and ask that the Huron, like the Ottawa, retire from this war and leave the Cmokmanuk to kill each other without our help.”

  “So that in the end we can all go to the frozen land of ice and snow and the Cmokmanuk get our homeland.” Pontiac spread his arms wide to indicate the woods of the Ohio Country where his ancestors had been since the Great Spirit put them on this earth. “In the end the dog turds get what is ours.”

  “In the end we survive.” Cormac could feel in his belly that Pontiac did not believe in the meaning of the dreams. He was in turmoil, but despite what he felt and the length of time he had held out the hand offering the Suckáuhock, Cormac’s arm did not tremble. He held it steady, as if he were passing it over Potawatomi the Sacred Fire, proving the strength of his manhood. “The fox and the spider are for the Ottawa and the Huron. I myself will take the racoon to the Abenaki.”

  “And you think they will make you welcome and agree to do what you ask?”

  “I think they will rejoice at the thought of land they no longer need to share with intruders who bring them disease and trouble and wars not of their making.”

  “But there will still be Cmokmanuk here. The English are to remain, according to your dream.”

  “Not in Canada. It is a vast place. There is room for all of the Anishinabeg to hunt in Canada.”

  “It is a frozen place,” Pontiac insisted. “Mostly snow.”

  “Not all the year and not all of it. And the hunting is magnificent.”

  Pontiac made a sound in his throat that represented a grudging sort of agreement. “The sickness, and the white man’s goods that the Real People now believe they cannot do without … knives made of metal not flint, clothing of cloth not skins, firewater, none of that will have gone away.”

  “Those Anishinabeg who wish to continue to trade with the Cmokmanuk will do so. We must make a new way for the future, Elder Brother. We cannot change the past.”

  “And the other beads?” Pontiac was looking at the four beads on the blanket.

  “They are for the Lenape and the Kahniankehaka.”

  “Shingas and Scarouady,” Pontiac said, knowing immediately the chiefs Cormac had in mind. “Who will speak to them? Not you, I think. Uko Nyakwai?”

  “He knows them better than you or I.”

  Pontiac turned his head and spat on the grass. “He is not even half Anishinabeg.”

  “He is a full Potawatomi brave by adoption. That has always been our way. Does Pontiac deny the right of a tribe to adopt whom they will?”

  Pontiac didn’t look at Cormac, but he shook his head. He couldn’t deny truth.

  “You know that Uko Nyakwai wears the amulet given him by the great chief Recumsah, your uncle. Whatever your quarrel with my brother the Red Bear, it is not—”

  “My quarrel is that he is Cmokman. And English.”

  Neither fact could be denied. Better to let go the matter of Pontiac’s animosity toward Quent. His arm was on fire, still stretched in front of him; he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold the position, but if he put down the beads he had conceded the advantage. “The Anishinabeg can survive in Canada. If we remain as we are, the French and the English will crush us between them.” They were Quent’s words, but Cormac knew none better.

  Pontiac continued to ignore the offer of the Súki beads. “For your plan to succeed the English must win this war. Even if both sides fight without our braves, how can you be sure of that?”

  “The English have more men and more guns and more food and—”

  “And they fight for more,” Pontiac said quietly. “They fight for the right to land, and for the English, land hunger can never be satisfied.”

  “They will agree that we have Canada,” Cormac insisted. “If it means they must fear no further attack from any of the Anishinabeg they will agree. Does Pontiac agree?” The Suckáuhock was still on offer in his outstretched palm.

  “Is it enough,” Pontiac asked softly, “to say I will try to see how this thing can be made to work?”

  Cormac did not hesitate. “It is enough.”

  Pontiac reached over and took the two beads. Cormac’s palm was empty, but he did not immediately drop his arm. “My Elder Brother is sure?”

  Pontiac watched the hand that remained stretched out toward him. He spoke slowly, knowing the test was not over until he said the final word, wondering how much longer the métis could hold out, half wanting him to fail, half impressed with his strength. “Your Elder Brother is sure that he will examine this thing in all its parts, and try to make it real. The north for us. The south for them.” Pontiac hesitated as long as he dared. If he forced the trial beyond its natural limits it no longer counted for anything. “I will try,” he said at last.

  Cormac dropped his arm. It throbbed and quivered from wrist to shoulder, but that didn’t matter now. He was as light-headed as if he had already achieved the final victory. Cmokmanuk in the south, Anishinabeg in the north. Blessings on the Great Spirit and his white wolf totem and Miss Lorene’s Sunday morning Jesus God. He had maintained his Potawatomi honor, and possibly enlisted a powerful ally.

  Neither man said anything while Cormac returned the other beads—the turkey and the elk and the possum and the racoon—to the Miami medicine bag and replaced it around his neck. The bag felt different, lighter. When Cormac got to his feet he nearly stumbled. Pontiac paid him the courtesy of pretending not to notice.

  The rich odors of the cooking fires made Cormac’s mouth water and he looked forward to the meal. Stewed beaver, from the smell and the last of the season’s fresh corn. He was being treated as an honored guest and the Ottawa were known as fine cooks. It was said they flavored their food with dried sumac, but when squaws of other tribes tried the same tricks they did not produce the same taste. The Ottawa cooks had secret—Ayi!

  Corm saw himself lying on the ground at Singing Snow with the Midewiwin priestess leaning over him. Because the leaves of a tree turn red in the time of the Great Heat Moon does not always mean the tree is a sumac. That’s what she’d said and neither he nor Bishkek had known what she meant. Now he did. A thing might look like one thing but have an entirely different taste, because in reality it was something else. The brave who attacked him in the sweat lodge had looked like a Huron and smelled like a Huron, but that didn’t mean he was a Huron. Perhaps he had disguised himself as a snake because that was what he wanted Cormac to think. “Ayi! It could be so.”

  He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until Pontiac turned to him. “What could be so?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking that in dreams, sometimes things are not exactly what they seem to be.”

  “That is true. But put these thoughts aside now, Little Brother. It is time to eat and to talk, and later to smoke and sing and dance. The winter is coming. Then it will be the time to prepare for war. Or”—Pontiac touched the pouch at his waist where he had put the Suckáuhock—“to prepare for no-war.”

  WINTER, 1755-1756

  LAC DU ST. SACREMENT

  A time to plan and listen, and think about war and prepare for war.

  The French troops billeted at the northern end of Bright Fish Water, the lake they called Lac du St. Sacrement and the British now called Lake George, began work on a fort meant to be as impregnable as Fort St. Frédéric on Lac du Champlain. At first it was to be called Carrion, for Philippe de Carri
on who had once maintained a trading post on this land. It was Vaudreuil back in Québec who rejected that idea. “Despite what passes for commerce these days, I will not name a fort after a smuggler.” Eventually they settled on Fort Carillon, for the pealing sound made by the outlet of the waters of the lake. It was a compromise made necessary because Vaudreuil also rejected the suggestion that they use Ticonderoga, the Iroquois name for the high rocky promontory between Lac du Champlain and Lac du St. Sacrement. This new maréchal de camp, the marquis de Montcalm, had the usual French disdain for all things Canadian and Indian. No point in alienating him so soon after his arrival.

  Bright Fish Water was frozen solid by early January. Eight leagues to the south, in the thin clear air of winter, surrounded by a mostly leafless forest temporarily empty of enemies, the Yorkers heard the sounds of French axes whistling through the air and felled trees crashing to the ground. They too took up their hatchets and saws.

  The Yorkers began by constructing a fleet of the flat, raftlike boats known as bateaux. Fast and simple to build, they were strong enough and big enough to carry at least twenty soldiers, as well as the heavy artillery that must sooner or later determine the outcome of this as yet undeclared war. Meanwhile, General Johnson sent out scouts who returned with the information that the French were also budding bateaux, and constructing a mighty fort. The Americans set about constructing a fort of their own.

  It had four bastions and was set on a steep rise. One side faced a cliff that fell sharply to the lake below. To protect the other three exposures they dug a dry moat around log walls thirty feet thick and fifteen feet high. Johnson said the fort was to be named for the two royal princes. Most of the Yorkers, whose sweat and back-breaking labor had made this thing, were born and bred Americans and had less regard for the royals than an Anglo-Irish transplant like the general. Still, Johnson was in command and he prevailed. The new fort was named William Henry.