Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  “After the Indians, we’ve got to get these bloody Americans up to the line,” rumbled a colonel. “Do you realize how few taxes the bastards pay?”

  Malcolm ignored the last remark but he protested vehemently against the proposal to cut off presents to the Iroquois. Presents were needed more than ever now, because the Six Nations were their best spokesmen with the western and Canadian Indians. William Johnson, speaking as Indian superintendent, wholeheartedly agreed with Malcolm. They tried to explain to these foreigners (what the British really were) that Indians did not see presents as bribes, but as proof of a continuing friendship. An abrupt end of presents would be seen as an insult—a virtual declaration of war.

  Robert Foster Nicolls, playing the American expert, disagreed. He said it was time to teach the savages how civilization worked. “I don’t use that last word lightly,” Robert sneered. “The lazy bastards should learn to do something besides hunt and screw.”

  Malcolm and William Johnson angrily refuted this slander. They described the harsh life of the warriors who spent winters in the woods trapping beaver, muskrat, and other animals. The Seneca and the rest of the Iroquois had almost hunted them to extinction in their own lands, which made it more and more difficult for them to earn money.

  General Amherst listened to the argument without committing himself. Malcolm hoped that with Johnson’s backing, he had scotched a very bad idea.

  A month later, the snow lay deep on the ground as Malcolm slogged into Clara’s village on snowshoes. Ice floes drifted on the lake, driven by a freezing wind from the north. On two packhorses were bushels of corn and barrels of salt meat. The calls of children and warriors drew Clara to the door of the longhouse. There was no smile of greeting on her face.

  “Do you think you’re welcome here because you bring gifts?” she said. “Do you think these can replace the lives of twenty-five warriors?”

  Malcolm was stunned by the Senecas’ losses. “I begged them to follow me down the east bank of the lake to Albany,” he said. “But they were too eager to get home.”

  “Everyone here says you abandoned them. You gave them no food. You kept it for your white men.”

  “That’s a lie,” Malcolm said. “None of us had any food.”

  Grey Owl’s people had been busy refashioning the story of the raid into a parable of white treachery. As the horses were unloaded, Clara told him she had lost all semblance of authority as the matron of the Bear Clan. “You can’t stay here, even for a night,” she said. “I can’t protect you.”

  “I’m a warrior of the Seneca nation. I can protect myself,” Malcolm growled.

  Out of the longhouse of the Wolf Clan hurtled Red Hawk’s mother. Her husband, Little Beaver, had been killed on the way home from the raid. “Look at him,” she screamed. “This is the Evil Brother in the flesh. Look at the man who betrayed the Senecas to starvation and death.”

  In the doorway of the Wolf Clan longhouse stood Grey Owl, his tattered prophet’s blanket around his shoulders, a sneer on his lips. “Here is the messenger of death, returned to seek more souls,” he said. “Does anyone doubt that the Manitou speaks through me, now?”

  “The Evil Brother has possessed your soul, Grey Owl,” Malcolm said. “Ever since you proved yourself a coward in your combat with me, and preferred surrender and flight to honorable death.”

  “I am no longer a warrior,” Grey Owl said. “I cannot make you die for those words. But I have followers who are eager to undertake the task.”

  “I welcome the attempt,” Malcolm said. “I have no doubt I’ll prove them as cowardly as you.”

  In the Bear Clan longhouse, a frantic Clara dragged Malcolm to the dim rear of the building and pointed to the silver statue of the Blessed Virgin. It gleamed like a small ghost on the shelf in the corner. “You brought her back to me. All she does is reproach me for what I’ve become—what I’ve let us both become.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I love you too much. I can’t stop you even though I see you leading my people to destruction.”

  “I’m trying to save them—”

  “You can’t. You’re white. You don’t understand them—or me. Go now, before Grey Owl sends to the next village where he has a hundred warriors ready to kill you. He can’t find a murderer here. Our warriors still adore you. But all the women have turned against you. They’ll tie you to the stake and torture you for days. They’ll force me to watch!”

  “I’ll go if you come with me,” Malcolm said.

  “I’ve told you. I can’t go back.”

  “Neither can I—until I know you’re safe.”

  Malcolm went into the woods and with his usual uncanny combination of luck and marksmanship killed a huge buck with a single shot. He carried the carcass back to the village and proclaimed a great feast to celebrate the English victory over the French. The warriors were astonished and delighted by the news. He told them that he would do everything in his power to make sure their contribution to the victory was remembered by their father, King George.

  Grey Owl receded into the shadows, overwhelmed once more by this giant with his confident prophecies of future power and contentment. The Senecas would be the king’s spokesmen with the Canadian and western Indians. All the gifts, the peace councils, the distribution of hunting grounds and the control of the fur trade would flow through their hands. It was a dazzling vision. There was only one thing wrong with it. Malcolm had no authority to say such things. He was talking for Clara’s sake, to insure her safety and happiness. He was ignoring those ominous words he had heard from Robert Foster Nicolls and others at General Amherst’s victory banquet.

  FIVE

  IN NEW JERSEY, TWO MONTHS LATER, I received a letter that was so obviously full of lies, it drove me half mad.

  Dear Wife:

  I have decided to remain here on the lake with the Senecas for the winter. The war is won, thank God, but the political situation between the English and the Indians is very unstable. There is talk of discontinuing the presents to the Iroquois and treating the tribes who formerly dealt with the French in the same harsh way. “We are conquerors and they are conquered,” some people around General Amherst are saying. “We owe them nothing.” A worse understanding of the Iroquois and the Indians in general cannot be conceived. I have been to Albany a number of times where with William Johnson and others we are doing our best to prevent such a policy from being put into execution. If it is attempted, more blood may flow on the frontiers and even in places as settled as North Jersey than we saw during the worst of the war with the French.

  I know you want to see me at home and no one wishes it more fervently than I do. If all seems well, I may manage it in the early spring, the end of April, perhaps.

  Clara sends her love.

  Your affectionate husband,

  Malcolm

  Clara sends her love. I raged up and down the bedroom for an hour, letting those words burn a furrow in my brain. The war was over, he was a hero once more, acclaimed on all sides—but he could not bear to part with Clara. I easily convinced myself that the stuff about the British not giving presents to the Indians was so much drivel. He was using wild rumors to delay his departure from Clara’s arms.

  In the northern woods, Malcolm spent much of the winter far from Clara’s arms. He traveled throughout the Iroquois country, conferring with sachems and chiefs and clan leaders, compiling a dossier of warnings against abandoning the traditional policy of annual gifts of cloth and blankets and gunpowder and wampum to the Iroquois. The ruling sachems of the Six Nations received him at the council fire in Onondaga and urged him to issue a solemn exhortation to King George to convene a council as soon as possible to resolve these rumors that were endangering the great chain of friendship between the two peoples.

  In the spring, when the ice thawed, General Amherst deputized Malcolm to cross the great lakes and accept the surrender of the French forts at Detroit and Michilimackinac. Robert Foster Nicolls persuaded
the general to let him go along. Robert was eager to explore the prospects for profits at these posts. With Amherst’s backing, Robert saw himself becoming the king of the fur trade in America.

  At these distant forts, Malcolm saw even more ominous portents of trouble. Around these places dwelt about twenty-five hundred French Canadians, tough frontiersmen who had spent their lives in intimate contact with the western Indians. They had no enthusiasm for accepting English rule because a French army had lost a battle in distant Quebec. Malcolm rushed back to Albany to tell Amherst that astute diplomacy—and thousands of pounds’ worth of presents—were going to be needed to keep these people from influencing the western Indians.

  Nicolls told Amherst the precise opposite. Back him with a regiment at each fort and he guaranteed he could turn Detroit and Michilimackinac into immensely profitable entrepôts for British goods. In that polite but arrogant style that is a British trademark, Amherst ignored Malcolm. He also ignored his own Indian superintendent, William Johnson, who backed Malcolm with growing desperation.

  To some extent, General Amherst was only obeying orders. His superiors in London were determined to reduce the expenses of running this vast empire they had acquired and the Indian departments offered an irresistible opportunity to cut and slash. Soon from British army headquarters came the announcement that, henceforth, if any Indian wanted a musket or a blanket or cloth for his wife, he would have to pay for it by exchanging furs of the proper vaiue—or coin of the realm. Robert Foster Nicolls backed by two British regiments announced the policy at Detroit and Michilimackinac.

  A profoundly anxious Malcolm returned to Clara’s village with a cargo of guns, gunpowder, more blankets and cloth, and a box of jewelry which he purchased on his own account, sending the bill to me. He was trying to create an island of loyalty on which Clara could live in safety.

  It was not to be. Clara and her people at Shining Creek were grateful for Malcolm’s generosity and they welcomed him back into their midst as an adopted member of their tribe. But the impact of England’s meanspirited policy flooded into their village from all sides. First came war belts of red wampum from the Senecas closer to Niagara. They had often been loyal to the French. The messengers carrying the belts told how the British had declared the end of presents and brotherhood and mutual respect. The Indians were to be reduced to mere buyers and sellers—and eventually to beggars.

  The Niagara Senecas said a great chief had arisen among the Ottawas at Detroit, named Pontiac. He was calling on all the Indians to form a union against the white man. Then came messengers from the Shawnees and other tribes who lived in the Ohio country, telling of a terrible drought and the failure of their crops. When starving Indians had sought food and medicine at the fort on the forks of the Ohio River, the British commander had turned them away.

  “You knew about this policy?” Clara asked Malcolm, in the rear of the Bear Clan longhouse that night.

  “I … I feared it. I heard something about it.”

  “You knew?” Clara said, insisting on the truth.

  “Yes. But this village has nothing to fear. You’ll never be in want. Catalyntie has plenty of money. We’ll supply you with everything you need.”

  He was thinking like a white man again. “This village doesn’t exist on the moon,” Clara said. “We’re blood relations of all the Senecas. Do you think Grey Owl’s supporters aren’t talking to their brothers and sisters and sons and nephews in the longhouses, telling them he was right from the start—that you’re a liar and a seducer? Do you think they’ve forgotten those twenty-five dead warriors who went with you to the St. Francis River and never came back? Their ghosts are still calling for your scalp.”

  She was right, of course. Malcolm was dismayed to see how many warriors shunned him in the next few days. Others listened to his assurances of perpetual support and turned away. One said: “Do you think we’re women, to be bought and sold? Have you forgotten what we taught you when you became a Seneca? All the Senecas, in their different villages, are one people, descendants of the same parents long long ago.”

  A week later Grey Owl arrived, accompanied by a prophet from the Ohio country, Neolin. He was a tall gaunt old man, a Shawnee chief who said he had received a vision from the Manitou. The Indians must change their ways. They must abandon the white man’s guns and kettles and cloth. They should wear skins and furs of their animal brothers once more and rely on their bows and arrows to hunt them. They must cease killing so many animals for furs and take only those they needed to sustain life. They must drink no more of the white man’s rum, which made them kill each other in drunken frenzies. If they obeyed these commands from the Manitou, they would regain their ancient strength and pride and drive the white men out of their country forever.

  Neolin preached this message with tremendous authority around a council fire in the village street. Grey Owl added words of approval. “This man is a greater prophet than I am. He has seen into the heart of the Manitou. He has taken my message and transformed it into a vision of glory!”

  Malcolm stepped out of the group of sitting warriors and responded to Neolin and Grey Owl. “I speak as an adopted Seneca warrior, a title I consider the proudest I shall ever wear. I do not claim to have a vision of the Manitou. But I have a heart full of love for the Seneca people. Time is like a swift river. You cannot paddle against the current. Even the Manitou cannot make the river flow backward. The white men have settled many leagues of this land. The Seneca and the other Indians must learn to live with them. We must be strong and patient and firm and force the English to treat with us. My own people, the Americans, must learn to do the same thing.”

  Grey Owl leaped up and whispered in Neolin’s ear. “Grey Owl asks me to look in this man’s eyes and tell you what I see,” Neolin said.

  He stared at Malcolm for a long solemn moment. “I see the face of the Evil One,” he said. “He has taken this man’s form to lead you to destruction. He has already cost you many warriors. Why do you listen to him? Drive him from your midst. If he does not go, kill him.”

  A murmur of angry assent rose from many throats. Red Hawk’s mother strode to the edge of the fire. “He destroyed my son and my husband with his magic. Why don’t we kill him now?” she cried.

  Clara rose to her feet. “If you kill him, you’ll have to kill me too,” she said.

  “She lies,” Grey Owl said. “The white men have pardoned her for her services. She has opened her cunt to hundreds of them. They want her back for a thousand more of her wonderful fucks.”

  At another time or place, Malcolm would have killed Grey Owl for saying that. But in a Seneca council, everyone was free to speak without fear of retaliation. Malcolm had to content himself with saying: “Grey Owl’s tongue is rotten with lies.”

  “No, white man,” Neolin said. “It is your tongue that is rotten. Your stench sickens my belly.” He turned to other villagers. “All along the Ohio and the lakes, the war drums are beating. Your brothers, the Senecas of Niagara, have responded with red war belts. Will the people of Shining Creek be known as the old women, the cowards, of the Seneca nation? I hope not.”

  The prophet stalked into the forest, followed by Grey Owl and his escort of two dozen warriors. The village council exploded into discord. Dozens of people rose to urge the banishment of Standing Bear. Red Hawk’s mother reiterated her demand that Malcolm be seized and tortured at the stake. She was in a minority but the voices in favor of banishment were clearly in the majority.

  Clara said nothing. She was in her mother’s dream again, watching the island dwindle to a spit of mud, while the falls roared their message of oblivion in her ears. Neolin was another Caesar, lost in a fantasy of impossible hope, preaching hatred as a nostrum. Evil could fester in the forest as readily as in the cities. Malcolm was right, of course, time could not be reversed, but he refused to see what time was doing to the Indians, with its relentless flow.

  In the longhouse of the Bear Clan, Clara fled to the rear corne
r and dropped on her knees before the statue of the Virgin. Again, she begged her to speak, to tell her what she should say or do to alter the doom that was descending on them. Malcolm stayed outside, arguing stubbornly with a half dozen warriors who were urging him to go in peace. She could hear his angry voice, refusing to leave, daring them to kill him.

  Suddenly the Virgin began to speak in Clara’s soul.

  You are bathed in my tears, O daughter of the morning. I do not understand any more than my son the inner darkness of the Manitou, the great god, whom we call Father. Be consoled by this promise. Your love will never die. It is in your beloved’s heart forever. It will pass down the generations through his sons and their sons and daughters like a river winding slowly to a vast sea where love and hate, sorrow and joy, hope and despair will be reconciled at last.

  Clara stretched her arms in the form of a cross. She felt waves of warmth beating against her body. The Virgin’s face was aglow with light from beyond the stars. Clara did not know how long she knelt there, suspended between heaven and earth, filled with a sweetness that transcended anything she had ever known in Malcolm’s arms.

  Suddenly a Seneca woman’s voice was whispering anxiously behind her. “They’ve sent me to tell you. Do not sleep in the longhouse beside Standing Bear tonight. He refuses to leave the village. They are coming to kill him with knives and hatchets.”

  The roar of the great falls filled Clara’s soul. She thanked the woman and told her she would try to persuade Standing Bear to leave the village. In a few minutes she heard Malcolm’s heavy footsteps. Clara lit a candle and gestured him down beside her. “You must go. They’ll do nothing to me. You must go back to Catalyntie before this war starts. No white man will be safe anywhere beyond the Mohawk.”

  “I won’t go without you,” he said.