Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  Pentaquod saw no reason to respond to any of this, so in the darkness the little interpreter remained in the doorway, content to watch the shadowy form of the tall Susquehannock who had made this day so memorable. At last, when night surrounded the village, the former slave of the Susquehannocks slipped away.

  In the ensuing weeks the villagers rebuilt their wigwams and instructed Pentaquod in their language, a much simpler one than his. In all ways this tribe lived on a less complicated level than the Susquehannocks: their werowance had little power and their possessions were fewer. Their medicine man was not so formidable as the mysterious shamans of the north, and for him to try to enforce decisions of life and death would have been laughable; he was a good-luck charm and nothing more.

  The little old werowance was named Orapak; he was past sixty and must soon die, but was allowed to retain his office because there was none to challenge him. He was a wise old man, and gentle too, and for many years he had kept his tribe out of serious trouble. “When the Nanticokes come north to fight us, we flee farther north,” he explained. “And when the Susquehannocks come south to fight us, we flee to the south.”

  “Doesn’t that take you into Nanticoke country?”

  “No, because when we flee south, we go into the marshes, and the Nanticokes wouldn’t dare follow us.” He hesitated. “Mosquitoes, you know.”

  “I know. Last summer I lived in the marsh.”

  “Brave man,” the werowance said. Then he asked, “Why did you think we leave our village each summer?”

  “What good do mosquitoes do?” Pentaquod asked, whereupon the old man raised his eyes to heaven and replied, “On that first day Scar-chin here told you of how Manitou gave this river everything, and then one thing more, the crab. Well, when that was done He said, ‘Now I will keep men from becoming arrogant,’ and He threw in the mosquito.”

  “Why?”

  “To remind us that He can do anything He pleases, and we have to like it.”

  Pentaquod decided that now was the time to raise the question of his membership in the tribe. “The river is excellent. I enjoyed it when I lived here alone.”

  The werowance studied this declaration, then blew out his cheeks, signifying that he appreciated the gravity of what had been said. The Susquehannock was pointing out that he had acquired possession of the place after the villagers had deserted it. He was intimating ownership, even though many warriors were available to contest it. Orapak realized how powerful this stranger was; quite likely he could defeat any of the warriors who up to now had defeated nobody. Warily he said, “It would be good if you stayed with us,” adding hastily, “in the wigwam that’s already yours.”

  “I would like that,” Pentaquod replied, and no more was said about his citizenship. He continued to occupy his wigwam, which women showed him how to finish properly, and he began paying court to Navitan, the werowance’s granddaughter. At seventeen she had been eyeing some of the young warriors during the summer encampment, but nothing much had happened and she now showed herself receptive to the moves the tall Susquehannock was making.

  They were married before the first snow. The old women were delighted that their Navitan had caught herself such a daring man, and the shaman who performed the ceremony gave it as his opinion that Manitou Himself had sent Pentaquod to protect this village.

  In the division of labor common to tribes along the Chesapeake, Pentaquod specialized in cutting tall trees, shaping them and burning out their interior so that canoes could be built. He also became the expert in hunting geese, those remarkable fowl that he had known simply as big birds: from oak and pine he carved eighteen rude likenesses of the geese, coloring them with earthen paints discovered by the tribe, and these he placed at strategic spots related to wind and shore, luring the birds so close that he rarely missed with his strong bow. But the killing of a goose always bothered him; for although he loved the taste of the roasted flesh, he did not like to see the stately birds destroyed.

  It was at the end of winter when the sad night came. Navitan had been scraping the reef for oysters when she saw a flock of geese in a cornfield acting strangely. The males were running at one another, and the yearlings were restless, gathering twigs as if to build nests they knew they did not need. Uneasy chatter murmured through the flock, when suddenly an old gander, much heavier than the rest, ran awkwardly a few steps, flapped his great wings and soared into the air.

  In an instant that whole field of geese flew aloft, circled a few times, then set out resolutely for the north. From other fields which Navitan could not see, other flocks rose into the air, and soon the sky was dark with great black-and-gray geese flying north. “Oh!” she cried, alerting the village. “They’re leaving!”

  No one required to be told who was leaving. The geese, those notable birds on whom the tribe had feasted for generation after generation, were quitting the river. In nine days there would not be a goose visible anywhere, and to see them flying north, to hear them honking as they repaired to the distant ice-bound fields on which they would raise their young, was a moment of such sadness that many of the older men and women wept, for the great geese had been their calendars and the counting of their years.

  Now the werowance appeared, white and stiff-legged, with his face to the sky, and after he had cast his blessing on the geese, the shaman uttered the tuneless prayer:

  “Great Power, You who watch over us and establish the seasons, guard the geese as they leave us. Watch over them as they fly to distant areas. Find them grain for their long flight and keep them from storms. They are our need, our protection from hunger, our sentinels at night, our companions through the winter, our source of food and warmth, our tenants on the land, our watchmen in the sky, the guardians of our streams, the chatterers at the coming and going. Great Power, protect them while they are gone from us, and in due season bring them back to this river, which is their home and ours.”

  No child made a sound, for this was the most sacred moment of the year. If the mysteries were not properly cast, the geese might fail to return, and the winter when that occurred would be terrible indeed.

  Some moons after the geese had gone, crabs moved in to take their place as the principal source of food, and now Petaquod discovered what the villagers meant when they claimed that Manitou, the Great Power, looked after them especially. It was a day in late spring when Navitan led him to her canoe, handing him a basketful of fish heads and bear gristle to tote along. The concoction smelled offensive, but Navitan assured him this was what the crabs preferred, and he wondered how the loose and almost rotting stuff could be attached to the curved hooks used in fishing.

  To his surprise, his wife had no hooks. “What kind of fishing is this?” he asked, and she smiled without offering an explanation. But once he had paddled her to the spot she had selected, she produced long strands of twisted fiber and deer gut, and to these she tied fish heads and chunks of gristly bear meat, throwing the lines aft.

  Pentaquod looked for the telltale signs which indicated that a fish had bitten the lure, but there was no such movement and he concluded that Navitan was not going to catch any crabs, but after a while, when there was no visible reason for her doing so, she began to pull in one of her lines with her left hand, holding in her right a long pole to which was attached a loosely woven wicker basket. As the line slowly left the water, Pentaquod saw that the first fish head was about to appear, but what he did not see was that attached to it was a crab, cutting at the meat with his powerful claws and oblivious of the fact that it was being pulled almost out of the water.

  When the crab was visible to Navitan, she deftly swept her basket into the water and under the startled crab, lifting it as it tried to fall away, and plopping it, all legs wiggling and claws snapping, into the canoe.

  Pentaquod was stunned by the performance, and when his wife continued to haul in her line, catching crab after crab, he realized that here was a brand of fishing totally unlike any in which he had ever participated. “
Why don’t they swim away from the bait?” he asked. “Can’t they see you’re going to catch them?”

  “They like us to eat them,” Navitan said. “Manitou sends them to us for that purpose.”

  Pentaquod gingerly touched one and found the shell extremely hard, but he could not examine it closely, for the fierce claws snapped at him. He was even more perplexed when Navitan carried her two dozen crabs to camp and pitched them into a pot of boiling water, for within moments they turned bright red. She then instructed him in how to pick meat from the carcasses, and when she had a clay bowl filled she told him to stop, for she knew that picking crab was a tedious and demanding job: a dozen crabs produced only a handful of meat

  But when she took this meat, as her mother had taught her, and mixed it with herbs and vegetables and corn meal, and formed it into small cakes and fried them in sizzling bear fat, she produced one of the finest dishes this river would ever know. “Cakes of crab,” she called them, and Pentaquod found them subtle and delicious.

  “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 atíd 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:

  “Fearless he strode among the robbers,

  Strong he faced the innumerable enemy,

  Thoughtless of danger he engaged them,

  Throwing the bodies up and over,

  Smashing the heads and twisting the legs

  Till the exhausted foe screamed and trembled,

  Beseeching mercy, kissing his hands in fear ...”

  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:

  “Now the bravest of the brave Susquehannocks,

  Cherodah and Mataloak and Wissikan and Nantiquod

  Creep through the forest, spy out the fortress

  And leap with violent bravery upon the foe ...”

  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 cer
tain 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.