Eye of the Raven

by Eliot Pattison

  “You no doubt know the chief’s Mohawk escort. From the turtle clan, Skanawati’s clan. And you just had more of a trial than Skanawati was given. I expect they will find a quiet place in the woods for you between here and Shamokin.”

  The color drained from Felton’s face. He darted one way, then another as the Iroquois closed in, then one raised a small war club and gave him a blow on the side of his head that dropped him to his knees. When he rose they had fastened a leather strap around his neck, attached to a pole, the traditional way to transport war captives. One of his captors snapped off the arrow shaft, leaving the head in Felton’s flesh to torment him. His last protest was choked away by a twist of the pole.

  As Duncan watched the shadows where they had disappeared, another figure stepped forward. Magistrate Brindle had his collar turned up against the cool evening breeze.

  “You’ll never see him again,” Duncan said.

  The Quaker nodded solemnly. “I think,” he said with a heavy voice. “I have never seen him. Sometimes,” he added after a long moment, “we let our charity blind us to the evil in the world.”

  To Duncan’s surprise Brindle stayed as a wagon pulled up bearing a coffin, driven by Reverend Macklin. The Quaker silently held one of the torches as Macklin, Duncan, Conawago, and Moses eased the remains of the dead Moravian missionary from the Indian grave scaffold and placed it in the coffin. He did not move even as Conawago and Moses returned and offered a low prayer to the disturbed dead.

  The moon was high overhead when they finally had the wagon loaded. As Duncan began to climb up beside the driver, Brindle restrained him with a hand on his arm. “No, McCallum. This wagon goes south.”

  Duncan glanced in confusion from the Quaker to Conawago and Moses, who had appeared beside Brindle. “I will not dishonor you, sir. You are obliged to return me to Philadelphia.”

  “There are higher laws than those of Philadelphia,” the magistrate said. Duncan now saw his own pack hanging from the shoulder of Conawago, his rifle in the Nipmuc’s hand. “The new indenture Ramsey tried to force on you was never signed. And as a judge of this province I have received an affidavit in elegant handwriting from a highly revered man named Socrates Moon. He attests, has sworn before me, that he is an agent of a different bondholder. I have been made to understand from him that someone on the New York frontier has a superior claim over you.” Brindle extended his hand.

  “You, sir,” Duncan said as he accepted the farewell handshake, “are a noble man.”

  “No. There was but one noble man in this entire sordid affair,” Brindle said, his voice cracking as he spoke, “and we hanged him today.”

  “The tribes will be furious,” Duncan said. “It will be many years before they think of ceding land again. And that was what he intended from the start. No matter what we did he would have found a way to his noose.” Skanawati dreamed it, he almost added.

  “It makes it no less painful,” the Quaker said, then climbed up onto the seat. “I have arranged a second wagon, and a second coffin. Would you see him to his home?”

  They watched in silence as the magistrate disappeared down the river trail toward Bethlehem.

  “What do we tell them in Shamokin?” Moses asked in a near whisper. “What do we tell his village when we arrive with the body of their greatest chief?”

  “We tell them the truth,” Duncan said. “Skanawati died so no more land would be taken from the tribes.”

  Epilogue

  THE WOODLAND ANIMALS seemed comforted by the low, steady throb of the drum, the squirrels and birds watching from the great cottonwood tree with curiosity, not fear, as the sound rose in volume. Duncan and Johantty had started an hour before dawn, beating together on the log drum, then Duncan had played his pipes as the young Onondaga brave continued the drumming. Lost in the music, the drum like the heartbeat of the tribe, the pipes conjuring visions of his youth, Duncan turned with surprise to find new onlookers. He had expected only Conawago and Moses to help him prepare Johantty for the dawnchaser trail, but most of the inhabitants of the new village hidden deep in the mountains had appeared in the gray light before dawn, sitting at the perimeter like monks in silent meditation. A cedar torch had been lit by the chimneylike formation of rocks, above a smoldering pile of the fragrant tobacco favored by the spirits.

  Johantty stepped along the circle of villagers, receiving blessings from young and old, then moved to the central fire and stripped to his breechcloth and leggings. His body had been elaborately painted, not for war, but with the sacred signs of his tribe, a large turtle on his chest.

  The young Iroquois offered a sober nod as Duncan approached.

  “Today is the day we reconnect the gods,” came a familiar voice at his side.

  Duncan turned to face Stone Blossom. For the first time since they had arrived at their new village with her son’s shrouded body, the grief had left her face. She had known they were coming, though had not expected Hadley or the Scottish soldiers, and had led them to a burial site that had been prepared below the ancient shrine discovered by Skanawati the year before. The Onondaga matron had kept a solitary vigil at the grave for two days and two nights. Returning, she had offered the first smile Duncan had ever seen on her wrinkled face when she had discovered Duncan, Conawago, Moses, Hadley, and half a dozen Scots working with the tribe to clear fields and build longhouses. Hadley had brought Becca, Mokie, and Penn with him, explaining that he was going to help Rideaux build a new school for the Indians, far removed from those who would hunt for runaways. McGregor and his men had stretched their orders as an escort for Skanawati to cover the return of his body and had a slip of paper from a friendly ranger captain passing through Shamokin that stated they were now pursuing a raiding party on his orders, a thin excuse but enough to cover them on their return to Ligonier.

  With the new longhouses constructed and the crops now planted, a great weight seemed to have been lifted from Stone Blossom. She was radiant with pride for her nephew, but also clearly worried. The old tales of the daylong dawnchaser course said that runners often died.

  “There now, madame, the spirits be watching over him.” Sergeant McGregor’s brawny frame loomed over the woman. “Ye be fortunate. I remember when I was a boy in the Highlands we once had spirits who watched over us.”

  The words tugged open a chamber long locked in Duncan’s heart. Images flooded over his mind’s eye, of his mother at the hearth, his brothers roaming high in the heather among the shaggy oxen, his grandfather playing pipes by the moonlit sea, his sisters dancing at clan gatherings. He saw Skanawati, heard again his words that their clans had been linked together, and in that moment the dark weight that for weeks had been pressing on his heart began to fall away.

  Conawago was whispering directions in Johantty’s ear, still concerned that the youth would lose his way, when he looked up at Duncan. His words trailed off. McGregor muttered a soft exclamation of surprise, and both men stared as Duncan slowly loosened his buttons. Then suddenly the ragged old Scot’s eyes lit with joy, and he helped Duncan pull away his shirt.

  Duncan worked quickly, tightening his moccasins and leggings, letting Conawago tie his hair tightly at the back as the old Nipmuc whispered prayers in his ear, not objecting when his friend took one of the feathers from his own braids and tied it into Duncan’s hair. He became aware of a new sound above the pulsing drum, a sound like the rustle of leaves, realizing finally it was the whispered prayers of all the Iroquois in the circle. McGregor, wiping an eye, joined in with his own Gaelic prayer. The old clans, Iroquois and Highland, may be battered, but they were not lost.

  He did not know how long he chanted with his companions, blending the old magic of Gaelic with Iroquois words, but gradually something quickened inside him, a new resonance, and he knew it was now the pulse of the forest itself he felt. Suddenly Conawago lifted a small red feather over his head, and every voice stopped. Johantty and Duncan exchanged exalted smiles then turned their gazes to the feather. Moments later
the tip burst into color as the first rays of sun hit it, then side by side, running like deer, the two men slipped down the ancient trail into the shadows of the forest.

  Author’s Note

  TO THOSE WHO have glimpsed the complex social structure and spirituality of the woodland Indians it should come as no surprise to learn that Skanawati was an actual Iroquois chief of the 18th century. As reflected in these pages, he alone faced the difficult challenge of being both a war chief and a peace chief, with the added responsibility of being an Onondaga and head of the turtle clan, which underscored his duty to protect the traditions and spiritual well being of his people. Although this tale of the Skanawati chief is fiction, it was in part inspired by an account from the historian Francis Parkman, who described an early war between the Iroquois and their traditional foes the Hurons during which the Skanawati chief entered the enemy’s territory as a peace emissary representing the Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederation. When Seneca and Mohawk warriors, members of that confederation, invaded the Huron lands despite his presence, he felt his own honor and integrity so affronted, and the need to demonstrate the Iroquois commitment to peace so great, that he committed suicide in the Huron camp.

  Honor and integrity were often stretched thin as Europeans began taking the traditional lands of the woodland peoples. During the first century of settlement, the colonial governments acknowledged the tribes as separate nations, and the European appetite for land was relatively small, largely confined to strips along the Atlantic coast. William Penn, the most significant of the early leaders in the region, exerted great efforts, including travel among the Indians along the Susquehanna, to assure that colonists and Indians would jointly inhabit a “peaceable kingdom.”

  By 1760 this dynamic had dramatically changed. Britain’s imminent victory in the French and Indian War meant that the political leverage of the Iroquois—long a vital buffer between French and English—was disappearing. A massive increase in population was pushing farmers over the mountain ranges that had for decades served as the de facto boundaries for settlement. Indians were being cornered in taverns and persuaded over their cups to place their marks on contracts to cede land, contracts upheld in English courts despite the lack of tribal authorization. For years Virginian officials insisted the deed signed by the Iroquois to cede the Shenandoah country covered all the land to the Pacific. Provincial officials deliberately misplaced names on maps to deceive Indians when land was sold. While settlers often paid in blood for such official sleight of hand, the push for land was relentless. Competition among the colonies themselves was fierce. Connecticut laid claim to tribal lands in northern Pennsylvania, Virginia asserted preemptive rights over lands of western Pennsylvania, and one of the Pennsylvania governors himself surveyed and acquired lands along the Susquehanna for his personal estate despite prior treaty assurances that the lands belonged in perpetuity to the tribes.

  The Iroquois leaders struggled to resist these encroachments, sending wampum message belts with depictions of axes smashing kegs to warn those along the Susquehanna to dump, not drink, English rum, circulating other belts that rallied the subordinate tribes to resist new land cessions. Leaders on both sides sought to alleviate tensions through treaty councils, which brought tenuous, intermittent peace, but the Iroquois chiefs well knew that every treaty conference was ultimately about the European lust for land, and that their centuries-old way of life was slowly, inexorably being consumed by that lust.

  This was a time of historic change populated by many heroes, saints and villains, when worlds were being altered for European and Indian alike. The era offers not only a vital platform for understanding succeeding centuries in America, it also presents a rich tapestry of mixed cultures and stunning natural beauty. The people, places, and events woven into this story are all directly rooted in 18th century experience, from the use of symbols on trees, to the tribes’ distrust of written words, the clandestine French support for runaway slaves, the Iroquois reburial of the dead, the massacre of Iroquois warriors by Shenandoah farmers, the kaleidoscopic town of Shamokin (present day Sunbury, Pennsylvania), the unique intermediary role of the Moravians, even the fascination of some tribal members with clockwork gears. While the intervening centuries have eclipsed many details of Iroquois ritual and religion, it is not difficult to imagine how these very spiritual people would react to the petroglyphs found along the Susquehanna River, already ancient in the 18th century. The Susquehanna valley had one of the greatest concentrations of petroglyphs on the continent, and many survived well into the last century.

  Seismic shifts too were underway in European science, as dramatically reflected in the rise of electricity as a field of scholarly study. Inspired by the work of Benjamin Franklin as much as by advances in England, France and Germany, electrical devices of the types described in these pages were indeed being used for experimentation and even medical treatment by the mid-18th century. Franklin reported that his life was forever changed by the gift of an “electrical” glass tube in 1746, and his years of research that followed resulted in a number of important discoveries—including the existence of positive and negative particles—that had a lasting effect on Philadelphia’s burgeoning community of scientists.

  While Scots certainly played a role in science—and Duncan McCallum’s own training reflects the preeminent role of Scotland in the medical science of the day—it is the Scottish connection to native Americans that drives the central characters in this book. Doubtlessly a shared martial tradition and a common generosity of spirit contributed to this link, but ultimately that connection is one of those fascinating quirks of history that cannot be fully explained and perhaps can only be fully appreciated in retrospect. Scots adapted and integrated into cultures all over the globe—the wandering Scot was a fixture in many countries even in medieval times—but the link between the Scots and the woodland Indians of America is unique in history. While it began among the northeastern tribes when Highland troops and Iroquois served together in the French and Indian War, a Highlander born on the shores of Loch Ness, Lochlan MacGillivray, became the leader of the southern Creek nation, the chieftain of the Indians who decades later waged a bloody campaign against Andrew Jackson was a red-haired Scottish warrior named Weatherford, and John Ross, the revered chieftain of the Cherokee who led his people for thirty-eight years, was seven-eighths Scottish by blood.

  Ross led his tribe on the infamous Trail of Tears, marking the final chapter in the destruction of the woodland Indians’ way of life. That process was very much in its opening chapters in 1760, and real life heroes did indeed struggle to forestall it, though soon the chieftains would look back in disbelief at the violent transformation in relations with the Europeans. Some were no doubt present in 1763 to sift through the ruins when twenty peaceful Christian Indians were massacred at Conestoga, Pennsylvania by a mob of settlers. In the ashes of the burnt buildings was found one of the original treaties signed by William Penn, its words still legible, including the promises that both people would live “with One Hand and One Heart,” and that the settlers would for all time “shew themselves true Friends and Brothers to all and every one of ye Indians.”

  —Eliot Pattisong

  Timeline