Captive Daughter, Enemy Wife

CAPTIVE DAUGHTER,

ENEMY WIFE

Published by Mary Tweedy at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Mary Tweedy

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Dedication

To Patrick Tweedy, my husband and friend of over twenty years, for his encouragement and patience without which I probably would not have finished this book. And to Clarence and Frances Ciaccio, my parents, for their support and love throughout my life.

Acknowledgments

Although I did a considerable amount of research for this book, three works were particularly useful. The first was The Constitution of the Iroquois Nations: The Great Binding Law, Gayanashagowa, the close to 500 year old document, originally transmitted orally, enumerating the laws, rights and duties of the people of the Five Nations. I closely paraphrase § 20 of this in chapter 18 when Dark Cloud speaks before the council. The version I used was prepared by Arthur C. Parker, the official archaeologist of the State Museum in New York, in 1915. The beauty and poetry of the language, even in translation, substantiates the reputation for eloquence with which the Iroquois was favored.

The second group of sources I feel compelled to mention are the Jesuit Relations, first hand accounts by the Jesuit missionaries in North America between 1610 and 1791. Though they must be read in the context of the time, the Jesuits were keen and truthful observers. With that taken into account, no better contemporary written source is available.

Finally, The Ordeal of the Longhouse, by Daniel K. Richter was an excellent reference for Iroquois customs and behavior in the time of European colonization.

Chapter 1

The memory of one’s past is like looking back through an ever denser fog; it becomes fainter the further from the present that one seeks. Except for those places where the fog, for some reason, cannot go, some event is made strangely clear by the white blankness that surrounds it. I remember my first father only vaguely; the one who planted me in my mother’s womb. The fog lies thick about him. He was Standing Elk of the Bear clan, son of a respected village elder and a fine hunter in his own right. My mother was a daughter of the Turtle Clan. Hole-in -the-Night, as she was then called, was a woman of great beauty. It was said that she was a daughter of the spirit world who was exiled to live among earthly creatures. Great pride was taken in her among those of the Turtle Clan and it was a mark of high honor for my father when he received her as a bride. Perhaps she valued her beauty then, perhaps she found life good, I cannot remember.

My mother’s family must have awaited my birth with eagerness. This one will be a boy. Your uncle will soon see an heir. The child of two such notables would add to the reputation of the Turtle Clan in no small measure. I was born, however, a girl, of unexceptional appearance and with no obvious supernatural abilities. Nonetheless, I was given an ancestor’s name as was appropriate—White Corn.

I remember my father tossing me in the air and I remember the size of his hand against mine and laughing at the difference between the two. My mother was always in the background, always working steadily and quietly at some task. At night, on our platform in the longhouse, I often slept between them, lulled by the snores of our neighboring families and by the sharp smell of the smoke that lingered about us until it finally made its way through the holes in the roof far above.

This was in the days before the world changed. Before the strangers from across the Great Salt dipped their hands into our lives and sent us tumbling in directions we could never have imagined. Beads, copper kettles, woven blankets, metal axes, knives, and silver jewelry were considered mystical things as well as useful, and were often buried with those whose lives here ended to speed them on their way. The makers of these things, the distant Fur Faces, were, at first, considered more than men as well.

Shortly after I turned four a Black Robe came to Kandoucho, our village. We were preparing for the Maple Dance, the sap began to run and thanks were being offered to the Creator and the spirit of the Maple. I stood with my mother as Father Petard arrived guided by a Huron. His face is lost to me. I do not believe I looked at his face. He carried metal vessels of shimmering beauty and a large wooden cross, a symbol of strong magic to the French, and he was singing something in a strange tongue; these things remain in my mind larger, louder, more beautiful, and more terrible no doubt, than they would appear to an adult. Shortly afterward a horrible illness took hold of us. One after another, the people of my village fell ill. They burned with fever and then their bodies erupted in disgusting sores. What began as mild unease as a few succumbed, developed into overwhelming panic as the numbers of those afflicted grew with unexpected speed. If they recovered they were often horribly scarred; most were not so fortunate. My father was among the first to die. The Black Robe did not live much longer, though his was not a death by disease.

Half the population of my village was lost that spring. My mother and I were among the fortunate. I contracted the disease mildly, few sores appeared and I was minimally scarred; my mother, although she was in constant attendance on my father and myself, avoided the disease entirely. The reputation of Hole-in-the-Night as semi-divine was reinforced: her reputation for bringing bad luck began.

Despite the depletion of our population, spring planting went on. Every woman and child who could walk assisted, as did some of the men for whom the fear of starvation was greater than their desire to protect their reputation for manliness.

The smell of death lingered within the palisade surrounding our village. The number of the dead was so great that it took the exhausted survivors weeks to bury them all. In the meantime they were piled outside the palisade, some wrapped in bark or reed mats, some left to the elements and animals. I do not remember the pile of dead, but their stench remains in my nostrils to this day as a reminder of the end of childhood. The security of smoky nights in the longhouse was irretrievably gone. I knew life to be uncertain, and often unpleasant and painful.

My mother’s presence was the sturdy raft upon which I floated then and later. Hole-in-the-Night maintained a serenity that again increased her reputation as a supernatural being. She looked out at the world as from a great distance. No laughter or joy was in her eyes and no grief either. She simply accepted each day and what it held. She worked as hard as or harder than any other villager so that none could find any real fault with her. But she made even her own relations nervous; she was a dangerous alien among them, or so they thought. They longed to be rid of her.

Jean Aregnac arrived six months later, just as winter was entering its harshest phase. He was French, but very different from the Black Robe who came with the plague. He was what the French called a coureur-de-bois, or a wood runner: a go- between for those who trapped the valuable beavers, and the French trading post at Trois-Rivières. He dressed like one of the People, in buckskin, moccasins, and a fur cloak to protect him from the elements. He carried a musket, the first I ever saw: a tall wooden stick that I at first thought was a cane to help him walk. Muskets were now relatively common among the Haudenosaunee (those the French called Iroquois), to our east, but we were farther from the Fur Faces’ settlements and so had yet to gain such ready access to the powerful weapons.

My people welcomed him. He brought valuable trade goods and sought from us only the skins we accumulated. No attempt was made to change our ways into something foreign, and disease did not follow him.

Jean was a large man, his face luxuriantly covered with chestnut hair. His eyes were of the same warm hue. Because of those eyes I did not think him ugly as did the others. And he smelled better than the Black Robe, not being averse to the steam baths that cleaned our bodies and purified our spirits. A coureur-de-bois was a valuable contact for my people. He took on the dangers of transporting our furs between the warring Huron and Iroquois nations and brought us the goods we came to depend on. Jean Aregnac was a man to be cultivated. He was feasted and made much of. My mother helped prepare the food for our guest and when she handed him his portion of corn soup he looked at her like a child who has just spotted a bowl of maple sugar.

My mother’s clan saw their opportunity. They would gain influence and material benefits from a trade alliance and they would rid themselves of the beauty that housed a dangerous spirit from the other world. No man of our village would have her.

Jean Aregnac did not know what hit him. The village elders made a great point of his staying till the winter eased its grip. The Jesuit desired a sleeping place apart from the rest of the village. Jean was very content to sleep in the longhouse of my mother’s lineage. During the howling storms that frequently came off the great water to our east, when the stories of our creation and clan history are told for the benefit of the young, Jean would sit listening as eagerly as any child. His grasp of our language was less precise than the Jesuit’s but he understood far more, the meaning behind the words. He in his turn would tell stories of the French and their country across the ocean. We all laughed heartily at his mistakes in speaking and he laughed more heartily still. Then we would beg him for another story, sure that he was the most imaginative liar we ever met. And he sang songs in his own language, songs with strange, happy, insubstantial melodies that dissipated as soon as they left his lips. He delighted The People, and the men gladly passed him the pipe after the evening meal.

My mother, during this period, remained as she ever was, impassive and dutiful. From time to time, at an especially exciting or amusing point in his story, Jean would look over at her to see if she was listening. She sometimes smiled, but more often remained expressionless. Disappointment would pass quickly over Jean’s face but he never lost his rhythm when telling a tale.

Aunt Sparrow Nest, the lineage mother, often sighed in Jean’s presence, Ah poor Hole-in-the-Night, how she pines with no husband. Jean was not a fool, he knew he was being made an offer; he did not know why, but he did not question his good fortune. Soon enough a marriage was arranged. Hole-in-the-Night was bought for several copper kettles, some silver jewelry, five iron knives, and the raw material for the production of many arrow heads, three blankets, and a hoe. The possibility of guns making their way back to the Attiwanaronk people, our village in particular, was also discussed.

Plans for our departure were made; we would leave immediately after the Midwinter Ceremony. The weather made the long trip to the trading post at Trois-Rivières too difficult, but Jean had a hunting cabin a day’s march away. Jean grew restless, having spent too long in one place, and fresh meat would be welcome. My mother would process the kill and I was to accompany them. On day five of the ceremony, after the white dog was incinerated and sent to the spirit world, Aunt Sparrow Nest approached my mother. I was standing next to Hole-in-the-Night, clutching her skirt. The moment is etched in my memory like the carving on a Grandfather mask. It is well that you go with your strong new husband, Hole-in-the-Night, but White Corn is young and it would perhaps be best if she remained with her clan. I remember the feel of the blood leaving my face. When people left they did not always return. I made no sound but only grasped the buckskin in my hands till it seemed that my fingers, as stiff and strong as any awl, would leave holes. I remember the feel of my mother’s hand on my back. The pressure it exerted did not change but the warmth of the palm seemed to concentrate and then spread through my entire body. One did not counter the request of a clan elder, especially not the lineage mother. My fate, I thought, was sealed.

No mother, I think not, said Hole-in-the-Night quietly. The world froze. I never heard my mother say no and indeed would only ever hear it once again. Sparrow Nest stared, unable to believe her ears. My mother did not move, neither flinching nor tensing. She spoke, it was done. Sparrow Nest made a small movement as if to speak again, instead fear shone briefly in her eyes and she merely nodded and shrugged her shoulders as if it was a matter of no importance. She turned away, and I had my mother. I bit back tears.

The night before we left, even as the men of the different clans were playing the plum stone game in another longhouse, we gathered our supplies: clothing, dried fruit, preserved meat, corn and corn meal, and my mother’s few tools and ornaments. Jean entered and approached us in an uncharacteristically quiet manner.

I have given gifts to your people, but nothing to you, he said.

It is not necessary, Hole-in-the-Night responded.

It is necessary to me. Jean pulled a beautiful silver necklace of linked medallions from the bag he carried at his waist and clasped it about my mother’s neck. He reached again into his bag and pulled out a silver and bead bracelet. He bent down, took my hand and fastened it around my wrist. It was too big and he laughed as it slid over my hand and landed on the ground. I was awed at such a gift and horrified when it fell. I dropped to the ground on all fours, scrambling, and then clutching my treasure to my chest. Jean laughed again and said, You’ll have to grow into it, Petite. The look on my mother’s face was hard to read, but one might almost have thought her touched.

We all slept on the same platform that night. In the morning, strapping on our snowshoes, both my mother and Jean pulling loaded toboggans, we set out through the woods. It was a cold, still day. My breath made ice on my eyelashes, my eyes being the only part of my face not covered by the fur cloak I wore. The ice on the twigs of the trees glistened as we passed. The forest, which was so thick with trees and vegetation in summer as to be almost impassible in many places, shone with a pure colorless light made beautiful by the reflection off of ice and snow. It seemed curiously empty, a spirit world. The village elders saw us off; I do not think I turned back once to watch the palisade of my home disappearing behind us.

We stopped only briefly to take food. When my short legs could not keep the pace, Jean swung me up on top of the toboggan he pulled, where I drew my legs up under me and clung with my hands to the rope that tied the furs and supplies in place. Thus my cloak covered me completely so that I must have been indistinguishable among the furs. We arrived at twilight at a large Algonquin style wigwam built in a stand of white spruce. The bowl shaped structure was covered with bark like our longhouses. The smoke hole at the top was protected by a mat so that snow had not made its way inside. Powdered with white, it could not be easily seen from a distance. A wolf skin covered the door and inside bear and wolf skins covered the walls. Reed mats cushioned the floor around the central hearth. My mother carried in wood from the store Jean laid up behind the wigwam, and Jean started a blaze from the fire box he carried from the village. This dwelling was far more comfortable than the longhouse, better insulated and less drafty. I liked it here: just the three of us, away from the stares and tongues of the village, unfettered by the expectations of others. I did not realize until then that my village had become oppressive since the death of my father. Now, fear and uncertainty, the two demons that it is difficult to avoid if one walks the earth, flew away for a time.

My mother set about arranging our food stores and cooking our evening meal. Jean stowed his precious beaver pelts. After resting a bit I left the warm shelter of the wigwam and wandered about, though not far for fear of wolves. I was delighted with myself when I discovered some frozen clusters of high bush cranberry still dangling from their stems. I presented my treasure to Jean who laughed and lying on his back, lifted me over him to briefly hover like an eagle in an updraft.

That was a good time. Jean, with his musket, brought down several deer. My mother and I were kept busy curing the hides and smoking and drying the meat that we did not eat immediately. Portions of the animals we let freeze in the cold and stored in a bark lined pit so that we could eat fresh meat for a longer period after each kill. Jean occasionally made the trek back to the village with the extra, but we always waited behind.

Long evening hours were spent with Jean singing, telling stories, and playing a small wooden pipe he carried with him. I grew so comfortable with him that I started to try to sing along with some of the strange French songs that, after many repetitions, began to stick in my head. Jean was delighted and began to use the songs to teach me French words and phrases. Most of these mysterious songs, it turned out, had to do with women and their lovers, and a great many had to do with drinking brandy; and some had to do with priests and women and brandy. This last was very difficult for me to understand as the Jesuit who came briefly to our village was the only priest I ever met. He forswore women, an unnatural thing, much commented upon, and was never drunk. Nonetheless, I liked singing and learning to speak to Jean in his secret language. My mother had no interest in either. She was a dutiful wife, keeping us all in comfort in the wigwam, and lying with Jean whenever he wished, but silent as ever. His desire for conversation, for laughter, he satisfied with me.

I was never so sorry to see a winter end. But the thaw came and the time for the Maple Dance was fast approaching. Then it would be time to harvest the precious sap. And Jean was becoming restless again. He longed to be off in his canoe, bringing his furs to the French trading post and making other native contacts. The time came when we packed up our necessaries and made the journey back to the village. Jean deposited us in our longhouse, staying only a few days out of politeness.

I remember watching him from our platform in the longhouse as he made his preparations for leaving. He was singing and laughing, Petite, what is the word for bird? I sat, pretending to embroider the burden strap in my lap. My fingers played with the strip of leather. I could not concentrate. I was angry, furious that he was leaving us. I did not answer him.

Qu’est ce que tu as? he asked suddenly stopping, his hands planted on his hips.

Tu ne reviens plus.

You’re a foolish child, he said smiling and he recommenced singing although the sound seemed a bit forced now.

The following morning he left, first heading back to our winter home to retrieve his furs, and then by canoe the rest of the way. I stood outside the palisade watching him till he was out of sight. My mother was busy in the maple grove and did not come.

I missed Jean dreadfully for a while, his laughter, my French lessons, the attention he would lavish on me when he was in the mood. Soon enough the increasing activity of the village, now that winter was over, and the companionship of the other children, drove Jean’s absence from my mind. I helped gather the maple sap and beat it in its kettle over a fire until it turned to syrup. Some of the syrup was cooked down to provide us with sugar.

As spring wore on I went on forays with the other children to gather groundnuts, sunflower root, and young strawberry spinach. Some of the boys, who were not yet old enough to go hunting with their fathers, brought their blow guns to bring down small birds and squirrels.

Soon it was time for the planting festival. My great uncle led the prayer thanking the Three Sisters, Corn, Beans, and Squash, for their gifts to us. Tobacco was burned as an offering both to the Sisters and the Creator. Then the women began planting the crops in the fields that were designated for their clan and longhouse. Shortly after this the men and many of the women left for the spring fishing season. The village and the fields were left to the care of the very old, the very young, and those without husbands, like my mother.

It was a pleasant summer. The longhouse was nearly empty or seemed so because of the absence of the fishermen and their wives and older children. Aunt Sparrow Nest and her husband, Axe-in-the-Hand, remained, being too old to fish. Sparrow Nest and the other women loved to gossip, and I sometimes sat, after coming in from the fields, and listened to them:

She has taken a new lover

Is her husband jealous?

He’s been too busy with Happy Fingers down by the stream.

At least he’s a good provider. Their longhouse never lacks for meat.

She’ll keep him; the one she’s dabbling with now doesn’t know one end of an arrow from another.

My man sent the Fur Face away with a good bundle of furs. High quality. I want a necklace like the one the French man gave to his wife.

At the mention of Jean the pleasure would fade from my day. I would get up and find my mother where she worked tanning the hides from the previous year. Beating a deer skin viciously was a great release to me then.

It soon became apparent that Jean had planted a child in Hole-in-the-Night. My feelings were at first mixed. My anger toward Jean was at times directed at my unborn sibling, at other times it seemed only right that Jean give me back the companionship he took away. He, after a fashion, made amends for his own defection. In the end this last impression is what remained and I forgave Jean heartily. I did not fear for my mother’s safety in childbirth. It did not occur to me until later that this was because I took to heart the superstition surrounding my mother. She could not be killed by something as mundane as childbirth; the spirits would take her back to themselves when her time here was through. I think that I believed that she might just float up to Sky World one day like down on a breeze.

The crops grew well that summer and I took my turn, with the rest of the children, in a tree hut, so that I could scare away the creatures that came to feed on our labor. I went berry collecting and ate fresh strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries to my heart’s content and still had a large amount left to dry for the next winter. Wild onions and skunk cabbage flavored our stews as did the fresh eel we caught in the nearby river. And the mosquitoes, which always plague us in the summer, seemed less noisome than in the past.

By the time the nuts were ready to be gathered, Hole-in-the-Night’s middle became noticeable. In pregnancy, as in everything else, she remained imperturbable. She swelled nowhere but in her middle, she did not complain of back ache or shortness of breath. Most unforgivable of all to the other women, she did not consult them concerning the sex of the child or its future. Three Reeds, Sparrow Nest’s daughter, was a great one for dreams and visions. She was held in high respect for an early frost she predicted some years back. Hole-in-the-Night never consulted her; indeed she seemed to go out of her way to avoid her. My mother’s disassociation from the community was almost complete. She would have been ostracized by the women had she not already isolated herself from the others in everything but body. The supernatural aura that surrounded her kept her from physical harm. We lived on, unmolested, in the longhouse.

The Green Corn Festival passed, then the Harvest Festival, and Hole-in-the-Night’s time fast approached. Winds off the lake grew colder, and still Jean did not return. My hopes did not yet die, and would not until the first great freeze, when the rivers became impassable.

The harvest was good that year. We had corn in plenty hanging from the poles in our longhouse. Some had already been parched; some ground fine for bread, the rest would keep our hands occupied and our bellies full during the winter. Pumpkins and squash were dried; beans were in their lined pits for future use. The hunters did their job and dried meat and fish would enrich our stews.

The harvest festival was joyous. The Thanksgiving Address was recited with true and profound gratitude to the Creator, the Earth, the Three Sisters, and all the animals and plants that provided for our needs. The Great Feather Dance was sung with the women turning in the center and the men on the outside of the great circle of dancers. The women prepared a feast and I particularly remember running back to our platform in the longhouse with a bowl of maple sugar I was given.

That night Hole-in-the-Night left for the hut set aside for birth. She took Aunt Sparrow Nest with her. For the time being my aunt forgave my mother all. A new child was coming to fill the diminished ranks of the Turtle Clan. I followed after them in the chill dark. Sparrow Nest would have sent me back but my mother quietly took my hand and said, Let her come.

In the small hut, Sparrow Nest set about lighting a fire. Then she settled my mother on the mats covering the floor and covered her with a blanket. The horizontal birthing pole was set before Hole-in-the-Night. I sat with my back against the wall. Sparrow Nest turned to me and said, Go little one and seek Holds-in-her-Hands.

Holds-in-her-Hands was a medicine woman of repute. She was the oldest woman in the village, having outlived her own children and several of her grandchildren. She was bent, toothless, nearly blind, and trailed a strange and unpleasant odor. Officiating at every village birth, with her turtle rattle and high quavering voice, she drove away the spirits of death and ill fortune from the presence of the laboring woman.

Filled with the importance of my commission, I leapt for the hut door, nearly overbalancing Sparrow Nest. Ignoring her indignant comments regarding my lack of grace and the need for the liberal application of a stout stick, I raced to the longhouse of Holds-in-her-Hands. The symbol of the Wolf Clan, which hung clearly over the door during the day, was invisible in the depths of the night. The stars were far distant, crisp, cold points of light. I pushed pass the bark covering of the door and, passing the storage area, arrived at Holds-in-her-Hands’ platform. Through her ingenuity in outliving the rest of her lineage, she took possession of one of the most desirable platforms in her longhouse: one of those nearest the entrance. She had possession of the entire platform to herself. I never slept alone before and thought it looked a cold and lonely way to dream. Holds-in-her-Hands was snoring moderately, occasionally snorting as though to remind herself to breathe more deeply. Her mouth was open, saliva dripped from the toothless cavity. Now that I was in her presence, the task of awakening a being of such power from her rest did not seem the privilege I at first felt it. I hesitated to lay my hand on her and cleared my throat loudly instead. The old sleep lightly and she started, closed her mouth, and swallowed several times. She opened one eye and croaked, What has the spirit of the great bull frog come among us? I was tongue tied, Speak! she said with such authority that I cleared my throat again and