A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier

by Robert N. Thompson

  Shortly thereafter, they crossed the Ohio River and continued their march into the Ohio Country. After nine days, Phebe’s body began to wear down under the strain induced by days of walking with little food or water. Her feet were badly swollen, and because of their frequent wading across streams, her skin and nails soon stuck painfully to her stockings. Her repeated requests to stop and allow her to remove the stockings so she could tend to her injured feet were denied, and she did her best to keep up the pace.144

  However, the worst side effect of the lack of nourishment and increasing dehydration Phebe experienced was that her breasts stopped producing milk. Little Tommy sucked plaintively at her nipples, but now only blood came from them. Without food, he began to suffer badly and cried continuously. At this point, the warriors decided the child had become a liability and they would dispense with him. As Phebe held him, they suddenly and swiftly killed him with a single tomahawk blow. Taking Tommy’s lifeless little body from her arms, one of the warriors tossed the infant boy’s body into the bushes, jerked Phebe to her feet and pulled her onward down the trail.145 There was no burial, not even time for a prayer. The last of her children was dead, and her future was darkly uncertain, at best. For Phebe, it must have felt as if her descent into hell was now complete. Still, one can only wonder what her thoughts were as she marched on, numb with deep grief, despair and pain, following the Wyandot onward into the Ohio woods.

  A few days later, the small party reached a Delaware village, probably somewhere near the Muskingum River. Here, the warriors finally stopped to rest and eat something more substantial. By this time, Phebe’s feet were so badly torn that she could barely walk. Seeing her plight, one of the Delaware women took pity on this dirty, ragged young white captive. As the warriors rested, she knelt next to Phebe and carefully removed the shreds that were all that remained of her stockings. She tenderly washed Phebe’s feet and then applied a mix of medicinal herbs to the swollen, bleeding skin. The treatment seemed almost a miracle to Phebe, as the pain soon subsided and her feet actually began to heal.

  However, the rest was short-lived, as the warriors continued their march to the north and west. As they approached the Scioto River and drew closer to their home village, the landscape changed dramatically, with hills and dense forest giving way to a broad, flat plain dotted with the occasional patch of woodlands. This area was described by a missionary of the time as a place where “there is nothing but grass which is so high and long that on horseback a man can hardly see over it, only here and there a little clomp [sic] of bushes.”146 After several more days of walking, the Wyandot finally reached their village in the area that is now Madison County, Ohio, about 20 miles west of Columbus.147 The raiding party had traveled over 250 miles on foot, dragging Phebe with them every step of the way. Phebe’s journey was over, although a new sort of journey was about to begin. As she walked through the palisade gates of the Wyandot town, she entered a new world, one that, in some ways, must have been as alien as that of another planet.

  THE WYANDOT

  The French explorer Jacques Cartier first encountered the Wyandot in his journey up the St. Lawrence River in October 1535. At that time, one group of the Wyandot occupied a large town known as Hochelaga near the current site of Montreal. However, by 1615, when Samuel de Champlain arrived in Canada, these Wyandot had moved west into what is now Ontario, where they joined the rest of their people in a land the Wyandot called “Wendake.”148 The French called them the Huron, a disparaging term that derived from the French hure, or “boar’s head,” which designated an individual as boorish, unmannerly and “savage.”

  However, the people of Wendake referred to themselves as the “Wendat,” from which the word “Wyandot” is derived.149 In the Wyandot tongue, Wendake means “the island,” and the Wendat, therefore, are “those that live on the island.” Wendake was a lush land of forests and lakes located between what we refer to today as Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, where the Wyandot had lived since before 1300. Located between two bodies of water and surrounded by dense woods and wetlands, Wendake did probably feel like an island world unto itself.

  Wendake’s landscape included deep woodlands, hills and plentiful water in the form of clear, cold streams filled with trout and bass as well as lakes holding even larger fish, such as northern pike and sturgeon. These provided a source of food all year, and the forests were alive with game, including rabbits, squirrel and white-tailed deer that were drawn to the habitat surrounding the Wyandot fields. Those fields were planted on a sandy soil that supported what was known as the “three sisters” of Wyandot agriculture: corn, beans and squash, with corn being the centerpiece of their diet. As one historian points out, this made corn an important crop: “This was crucial in a land powerfully marked by the four seasons, each bearing its own color and foods to add to the staple of corn: muddy brown spring with turkeys calling for males, green summer with plentiful turtles and frogs, orange autumn with pumpkins ripening on the vine, and white winter, difficult to be sure, but also an opportunity to catch fish through the ice and to hunt deer struggling through the crusty snow.”150

  Maps indicating the location of the major woodland Indian nations and the Wyandot homeland of Wendake. Drawn by the author using data from Bruce Trigger’s The Huron: Farmers of the North and Erik Seeman’s The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead.

  However, Wendake was much more than a mere place or even a homeland. It was also a crucial element in the Wyandot belief system and its underlying mythology.151 For them, Wendake was the center of a larger universe, and the story of its creation provides a critical basis for understanding their concept of the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds, as well as their own unique sense of morality, good and evil.

  The Wyandot believed that, in the beginning, a female spirit named Aataentsic lived in the sky with other spirits. One day, as she worked in her fields, her dog saw a bear nearby and began to chase him. Aataentsic ran after her dog and the bear but, in the process, she fell into a hole and plunged out of the sky down to the watery world below the spirit realm. The large turtle that lived in waters below saw her falling and called on the other aquatic animals to help him save her, telling them to gather soil from the seabed and place it on his back. The other animals responded to the turtle’s pleas, and in short order, they had created an island on his back where Aataentsic gently landed.

  As it would turn out, Aataentsic was pregnant when she fell from the sky and soon gave birth to a daughter who magically became pregnant as well but died giving birth to twin sons, Tawiscaron and Iouskeha. Aataentsic raised her grandsons to manhood, but as they grew up, the two boys’ personalities diverged, with Iouskeha becoming something of a malevolent troublemaker, while his brother was gentle and very benevolent. As a result, the twins began to quarrel, and eventually, they battled to the death. Using a sharp set of deer antlers, Iouskeha wounded his brother and then chased him down and killed him. However, Tawiscaron’s death was not totally in vain, as his blood droplets became flint, from which the Wyandot could make axes and arrowheads.

  Following Tawiscaron’s death, Iouskeha, representing the sun, and his grandmother, Aataentsic, being the moon, returned to the sky. There, grandmother and grandson lived much as the Wyandot did below, in a village surrounded by cornfields, forests and lakes, which became the village of the dead. The village of the dead was said to be far to the west and was the final destination for human souls after death. Unlike Christians, however, the Wyandot did not believe in one afterlife for the “good” and another for the “evil.” In fact, they did not see good and evil as two forces in battle but, rather, as two natural elements of life that provided balance for all living things.

  For example, from their village in the sky, Iouskeha and Aataentsic influenced the lives of humans below. Following his brother’s death, Iouskeha adopted much of Tawiscaron’s innate goodness, and it was he who created the animals that provided food for the Wyandot, and as the sun, he delivered good w
eather and warmth. Meanwhile, his grandmother, Aataentsic, often worked to spoil Iouskeha’s good works by bringing bad weather, disease and death. As such, she was a spirit to be feared. For that reason, when she took human form (personified by a dancer) and made her appearance at Wyandot feasts, the people would shout insults at her.152

  This duality, as well as the one involving Tawiscaron and Iouskeha, was a critical feature of the Wyandot belief system. Tawiscaron was seen as benevolent and his brother the opposite, with Aataentsic being fonder of the more malevolent brother. They were the twin forces of creation, with good and evil required to keep the world in equilibrium. After Tawiscaron’s death, Iouskeha took up the task of balancing the world with his grandmother. Therefore, rather than the Judeo-Christian belief of an absolute good and an absolute evil, the Wyandot saw the moral universe as being far more complex and much more like life itself. In fact, they viewed the idea of both an absolute good and an absolute evil as equally dangerous concepts, for either would throw the world out of the balance needed to sustain life. In their eyes, humans had to have adversity in order to live. The Wyandot, like most of the other Indian nations of the woodlands, saw the universe as a circle in which life triumphs without eliminating death and takes place within a world that is not only beautiful and good but also bleak, mysterious and, at times, dangerous.153

  Furthermore, in the Wyandot view of the universe, humans were not the only creatures imbued with souls. For them, the birds, fish, deer and all living animals had souls as well. Therefore, they held rituals before and after hunting, with those coming after an animal was killed in the hunt seen as especially important. If this was not done, the spirit of the animal would be unhappy and might return to this world to tell all the other creatures of the forest and waters not to cooperate with Wyandot hunters and fishermen. Because of this belief, Wyandot rituals revolved around displaying an honest respect for animal bones, which is where they believed the animals’ souls existed.154

  However, the Wyandot view of souls did not stop with humans and animals—for them inanimate objects such as rocks and water possessed souls as well. Although historians and ethnologists are uncertain if this belief meant every grain of sand or snowflake had a soul, they do know that large, powerful or otherwise unusual objects were believed to have their own spirits. Eric Seeman writes, “If a Wendat traveling through the forest found a stone shaped like a spoon or a pot, he was likely to keep it as a charm. This, he believed, had been lost by a spirit who lived in the forest, and the item itself had a soul that would allow its bearer to connect with the spirit world.”155

  These beliefs persisted even after the Wyandot were exposed to Christianity in the early seventeenth century by first the Recollets and then the Jesuits. In fact, the Wyandot became convinced that the white man was the product of a different creation entirely, and they later came to tell a legend of the battle between the god of the red man and that of the white:

  We are Indians, and belong to the red man’s God. That Book [the Bible] was made by the white man’s God, and suits them. They can read it; we cannot; and what he has said will do for white men, but with us it has nothing to do. Once, in the days of our grandfathers, many years ago, this white man’s God came himself to this country and claimed us. But our God met him somewhere near the great mountains, and they disputed about the right to this country. At last they agreed to settle this question by trying their power to remove a mountain. The white man’s God got down on his knees, opened a big Book, and began to pray and talk, but the mountain stood fast. Then the red man’s God took his magic wand, and began to pow-wow, and beat the turtle-shell, and the mountain trembled, shook, and stood by him. The white man’s God got frightened, and ran off, and we have not heard of him since.156

  Perhaps the most important product of the Wyandot belief system was that no creature of this world was in any way superior to others. In their eyes, men did not have any right to a natural superiority over women, and humans did not hold a higher rank than the animals. For the Wyandot, equilibrium and balance were critical elements in the foundation of life, of all creation. Everyone and everything on the planet were equals, and all had their role to play in the great sacred Circle of Life. Given the nature of this strong spiritual heritage of equality, it is not surprising that, prior to their first contact with the Europeans, the Wyandot were utterly unaware of the concept of human exploitation aimed at the subjugation of others and the accumulation of power by one group “to the detriment of the majority, whose lot in life, condition, and even religion must thereafter be that of acquiescence, or indeed the culture of poverty and destitution.”157 Sadly, Europeans would teach them a very painful lesson in this regard.

  Another critical aspect of the Wyandot belief system and their creation mythology was the idea of the centrality of the Wyandot race. They believed that they were the first people created on the “island,” and therefore, their nation was at the center in the family of all nations. In 1837, the Wyandot chief Oriwahento would say, “When all the tribes were settled, the Wyandots were placed at the head.”158

  Interestingly, there was much fact from real life that lent credence to this idea. When the French first encountered the Wyandot in Wendake, they occupied the position of the chief people in the political and economic hierarchy of the northern woodlands nations. As such, they held sway over what was the most widespread and unified trading network in North America. In addition, the Wyandot language served as the standard, the lingua franca, for trade and diplomacy among at least fifty Native American nations.

  Even long after the Wyandot were driven from Wendake, the other nations looked up to them and always allowed them to be the keeper of the sacred council fires. In 1721, the Jesuit historian Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix wrote, “The [Wyandot] nation is almost defunct, and they are reduced to two mediocre villages that are very distant from one another, yet they continue to be the moving spirit in all the councils when matters of general concern are being discussed.”159 Furthermore, even the Americans would know of and understand the Wyandot’s place among the Indian nations. In 1795, following the American victory at Fallen Timbers, representatives of twelve Indian nations met with General Anthony Wayne to sign the Treaty of Greenville, which ended the woodland tribes’ long struggle against the tide of western expansion. At the conclusion of the conference, General Wayne handed over a wampum belt with a stripe of white beads running down its center, which represented the “roads” to the “Fifteen Fires” of the fifteen United States. In doing so, Wayne referred to “your uncle the Wyandot” saying, “I place it…in your uncle’s hand, that he may preserve it for you.”160

  When the Jesuits arrived in Wendake, they found four nations that formed the Wyandot Confederacy. The oldest of these were the Attignawantan and Attigneenongnahac, whose names roughly translate to “Bear Nation” and “Cord Nation,” respectively. In addition, there were the Arendahronon, or Rock Nation, and the Tahontaenrat, or Deer Nation. Like the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederation, the Wyandot Confederacy seems to have been formed for strategic reasons during the sixteenth century. All four nations had strong cultural and linguistic links, and they probably deemed it wise to unify themselves against potential outside enemies.161

  The confederacy was a key factor in the Wyandot’s prosperous trade enterprise because it eliminated any undue internal competition, allowing Wendake to become known as a great clearinghouse for trade among the woodland Indians. Tribes from the north would travel there to deliver beaver, marten and arctic fox pelts in exchange for corn, which they could not grow in the higher latitudes. Meanwhile, tribes from the south of Wendake brought tobacco, which they exchanged for the warm northern furs.

  However, what is perhaps most interesting about this great trade process is that the Wyandot never appeared to seek a profit. Although they clearly wished to obtain basic necessities as well as certain luxuries, their primary goal was to use trade as a foundation for peaceful relations with other Ind
ian nations. Therefore, they did not try to achieve the best “price” for their goods but, rather, used the trading process to create a mutually beneficial dependence among the various nations while maintaining positive communications and reciprocal ties.162

  These Wyandot tribes were a powerful force in the region, living in twenty-five villages, each with a population that varied from approximately 500 to 1,500 people. There are a variety of figures used to characterize the size of the Wyandot population when the Jesuits arrived in the early seventeenth century, but the most likely number was between 22,500 and 25,000 people.163

  Amongst the four Wyandot nations, there existed a social and political structure based on kinship relations grounded in the nuclear family. Each Wyandot belonged to one of the four nations, as well as one of eight clans called yentiokwa, each of which were named for various animals: Bear, Deer, Turtle, Beaver, Wolf, Sturgeon, Hawk and Fox.164 Through these clans, the confederacy was woven into a single, unified political fabric. The Wyandot in one clan within a particular nation were tied to those of their clan in another nation, and these bonds, while essentially artificial, were as real as if they were blood ties. In fact, they were seen as more important than the bonds of a blood relationship, as they were a kinship “desired and dictated” through dreams and visions by guardian spirits. In other words, clans were “conceptualized” as kinship groupings, with members sharing a common name and claiming descent from a particular ancestor. However, there is no evidence that clan members shared any real biological or genealogical relationship. Therefore, clan kinship superseded all ethnic lines and provided a source for harmony and peaceful resolution of conflicts, as even enemies felt themselves to be kin via clan memberships and alliances.165