FOR BETTY LEVIN
* * *
Boast not proud English, of thy birth & blood
Thy brother Indian is by birth as Good.
Of one blood God made Him, and Thee and All.
As wise, as faire, as strong, as personall.
ROGER WILLIAMS, 1643
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island,
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.
WOODY GUTHRIE, 1944
PART ONE
* * *
FREEZING MOON
ONE
He had left his canoe in the river, tied to a branch of a low-growing cherry tree. Now there was green marshland ahead of him, all round the river’s last slow curve. He pushed his way through waist-high grass toward one of the three high places in the marshland, where trees grew. They were islands of trees, never visited; the duck hunters went only to the marsh. He had chosen this place months ago, and now was the day to come back.
In a squawking flurry two ducks erupted ahead of him, flying low, but his bow stayed on his back; he would not hunt till later, on the way home. He reached the trees—a tangle of pin oak and cherry, sumac and hickory, juniper and birch—and threaded his way through the grabbing branches to the two rocks that marked the tree he had chosen. There it still was, beside the rocks, still the proper shape: the small bitternut hickory tree with its twin leading stems growing in a slender V.
He gave the tree a respectful greeting, and explained what he was about to do.
The woven birch-bark pouch was heavy round his neck. He took out the stone blade, a long, notched rectangle of flint with one edge chipped to a fine sharpness. This blade had belonged to the tomahawk used by his father and his grandfather, until its handle broke; nobody knew where it had come from or when it was made. It was very precious to him.
Carefully he fitted the blade into the cleft between the tree’s two slim branches, twisting them together above it. Then, with tough strands of deer sinew from his pouch, he bound the joined branches tightly above the stone—so tightly that they would grow together as the years went by, enclosing the blade.
To make a tomahawk for your son, you needed the stone blade, and the wooden shaft, and time.
In my father’s day, there was still time.
When he’d finished his binding, he thanked the small tree, and gave it good wishes to grow straight and strong.
Then he went back across the marshland to his canoe. On the way he shot three ducks, for the feast celebrating the arrival of the baby son who had been born early that day.
I was that son. Because Flying Hawk was my father, the name they were giving me was Little Hawk.
TWO
Eleven winters later, my father Flying Hawk took me to the bitternut hickory tree on the marshland. It was a longer journey than it had been for him before, because a year later our village had moved on. All the goodness of the land where it stood had been used up, by our years of growing crops on the fields, and the time had come to give the land back to the trees who would replenish it. This is the way of things.
So the crops had been harvested and packed into baskets, corn and squash and beans, and one by one the houses of elm-bark shingles and woven birch-bark matting had been taken apart. Everyone had carried the shingles and mats a long way through the forest to the new land that the men had been burning and clearing since spring, and poles had been set in the ground to make new frames for the houses.
This was home—the only one I could remember. Though hunting or fishing would take us away in their seasons, this was now the place to which we always returned—until, once more, the time would come for us all to move on.
From here the marsh had to be reached on foot, and that took my father and me three days. But when after all our walking we came out of the woods to the open marshland, I could hear the distant breathing of the sea. And across the waving grass—fading now from green to gold—I could see the three islands my father had described to me. They were three dark hummocks of woodland, in this flat bird-haunted elbow of almost-land that the river made on its winding way to the sea.
My father headed for the smallest island, zigzagging on clumps of grass so that our moccasins would stay dry.
“We were out here on a hunt, before you were born,” he said. “I saw the small bitternut then. It was already a tomahawk tree.”
A tomahawk tree is a sapling with that double shoot, the two leading branches that can—with help—become one.
“If I wasn’t born yet,” I said, daring, “you didn’t know I would be a boy. I might have been a girl.”
He said quietly, “I knew.”
And I saw the bitternut hickory, beside its two rocks. It was a tall tree now, twice the height of a man. The stone blade stuck out on both sides of the slender trunk, a little way below the branches; it was as deep in the wood as if it were a natural part of the tree. It had been there as long as I had been alive.
There was an odd feeling in my throat as I looked at it, like pain and happiness mixed together, and I did what my father had instructed me to do. I said to the tree, “Thank you, my brother.”
My father’s hand rested on my shoulder for a moment, and then he took some tobacco from the pouch at his belt and put it on the ground as a gift to the spirit of the tree. And he too thanked the hickory, and gave apologies for what we had to do.
Then he took out his own axe and cut down the tree. Because it was green wood, the trunk was tough, but before long he had trimmed it down to the first unfinished shape of the tomahawk that he and the tree had begun for me the day I was born. At home, by the time it was finished and perfect, winter would be here.
That was when I would be taken deep into the woods, blindfolded, for the three-month test of solitude that would turn me into a man. This tomahawk would be one of the very few things I could take with me, to help me stay alive.
THREE
When my proving time came, snow lay on the round roofs of all the homes in our village, and the ground and all the forest trees were white. You were truly a man if you could manage to survive alone, out in the forest, in the darkest part of the year, when most living things on the earth die or sleep, and the cold rules all.
This was also the sacred time when you would be given a vision of the spirit who would guide your life: your Manitou.
All through the summer and fall my father had been rehearsing me in the ways of trapping and hunting that I had watched since I was a very small boy. My mother had been teaching me to cook and to sew, skills that my sisters seemed to have by nature, and my grandmother had methodically made me show her all the plants, seeds, and roots in the woods that could be used or eaten. All our lives we had been learning these things from her, but this time one of them could decide whether I lived or died.
Four boys from our village would be taken out, this winter: Leaping Turtle, White Oak, Spring Frog, and me. We had been talking about it, planning for it, as far back as we could remember. Now that it was really going to happen, there was much less talk. I knew that although nobody would admit it, each of the others was feeling, like me, a coldness at the pit of his stomach when he thought about the moment of being left alone.
The sun went into the trees early, this short winter day. Inside our house in the warmth from the fire pit, I looked down at my sleeping mat, where my mother had set out a little row of things to go with me. There was a skein of sinew thread, and a special stone for making fire; a small skin pot for cooking; the bone awl that my grandfather had made, in its little case of bone. My bow, and the quiver with twelve arrows. And my tomahawk. Privately I thought that these last three were the only things I should be allowed to
take, but I didn’t argue.
My sister Quickbird came in from outside, carrying a pot packed full of ice and snow. She pulled off the skin draped over her head, and shook it near the entrance. Then she peered at my collection.
“Needles,” she said. “For goodness’ sake—you have thread and no needles. Boys have no sense.”
My mother clicked her tongue reprovingly, bending to put the pot beside the fire. The baby was bound to her chest, fast asleep.
“Hah,” said Quickbird.
“I have three needles for him,” my mother said. “Show respect.”
Quickbird had the sense to hold her tongue, but I heard the very small snorting sound she made. She was my younger sister, only a winter younger than me; we grew up together, and the older we grew, the more she wished to be a boy. Whenever she bragged about her skill at girl things—sewing, planting, cooking—I knew it was to hide her longing to learn instead to hunt and fish and track with our father, like me. She was totally unlike our older sister, Southern, who was as peaceful and gentle as our mother.
Southern wasn’t there; she had gone to the women’s house, because she had her moontime bleeding and that was when women stay separate. She had managed to give me a hug before she went.
“Come back safe,” she said.
I knew she was remembering the time four winters ago, when the boys who had been her playmates had been sent out one by one for their lonely testing time. The boy who was her favorite never came back, and it was a long time before they found what was left of his body.
My mother reached into a bag hanging from the wall and put a small fold of doeskin on my mat. “There,” she said.
Inside the fold, stuck into the skin, were three tiny strong bones from a bird or an animal, each with a hole bored in the blunter end.
“Beautiful,” I said. “Thank you, Mother. But are you sure—”
“Don’t lose them,” Quickbird said. “Keep them all together. Like this.” She picked up the doeskin fold and the loop of sinew thread, wound the thread round the doeskin, and tucked the tiny package into the top of my belt. She gave me her quick brilliant smile. Then it vanished.
“Moccasins!” she said. “You forgot the most important thing: spare moccasins! I know where they are.”
She dived into the shadows behind her sleeping platform at the back of the house. I wondered if she was right. On hunting trips in winter, my father did indeed make sure always that we had extra foot coverings with us. Walking in snow without moccasins, your feet will freeze, and you will die.
A wave of cold air washed over us and my father came in, turning to make sure the entry mat was closed behind him. He straightened up, and shook snow from his head. The tiny flakes dropped in a shower, melting as they fell.
He looked down at the things set out on my sleeping mat, which was right in front of him, and he frowned. He was a tall, fine man, my father, with a brow and nose as strong as a cliff, and a frown on his face was an alarming thing to see.
“What is this?” he said.
Quickbird was back with the extra moccasins; she put them down beside the rest and smiled up at him. I sometimes felt she was the only person in the world who was never afraid of my father.
“For Little Hawk when he goes,” she said.
My father ignored her; he was looking directly at our mother. It was a terrible look, and I felt suddenly cold.
“What can you be thinking?” he said. “Have you lost your senses? You know how it must be.”
My mother was as strong as him, in her way, and she looked right back at him, chin up. Wrapped against her chest, our baby brother gave a little sleepy sigh.
“I have one grown son,” my mother said.
“I too,” said my father. “And he will go out into the winter as all sons do, with a bow, an axe, and a knife. Those things only. And he will come back a man.”
They were staring at each other as if they were enemies. Quickbird had been standing still as a rock beside me, holding the forbidden moccasins, but I felt her shift very gently until her shoulder was touching my arm. I lifted my hand just enough to rest my palm briefly against her back, for comfort—and with the other hand I took out the little pack of needles and thread that she had tucked into my belt, and quietly gave it back to her.
My mother said nothing.
“Come, Little Hawk,” my father said. “It is time to go to the sweat lodge.”
He turned back to the entrance, and after a quick glance at my mother’s rigid face, I followed him. There was nothing else I could do.
Outside, the houses were glimmering white shapes in the winter twilight; snow was drifting slowly down, and there was no moon. The snow had come early that year; our elders said it would be a hard winter. Two dogs lying huddled against the wall of a longhouse stirred hopefully as we passed, but my father hissed at them and they lay still.
Smoke was billowing from the hole in the roof of the sweat lodge. The land sloped upward here, and the lodge had been built into the slope so that half of it was under the earth. Like our house, it was made of heavy bark shingles and reed mats on a sapling frame, but it was much bigger. The lodge was not a house but a center for cleansing and special rituals—like this one, the final sweat for the boys who would go out the next morning on their quest for manhood. We would sit naked in the hot steam. We often did this, whole families together, but this time we would sweat out not only the dirt on our bodies but also the fears in our minds.
And tonight the sweat lodge was only for the men. The women had special places of their own too, like the house where my sister would stay until she stopped menstruating that moon, and where she would be if she were having a baby. It is the way things are.
At the entry to the sweat lodge my father and I dropped our clothes, then we went in. The air was thick with heat and steam and smoke, from the fire pit where water had been poured onto heated rocks; it was like walking into a barrier, except that the barrier was the air you breathed. Through the steam I saw a blur of naked bodies shining with sweat, and I heard deep voices greet my father. Then a damp hand grabbed my arm.
“Hawk—here.”
It was my friend Leaping Turtle; he pulled me down to sit beside him on the wooden bench with the other boys, White Oak and Spring Frog. We had grown up together, he and I—done all our learning together, from the day we strung our first small bows to the stretch of nine moons in which patient, wise old Running Deer led us through the transformation of a live growing birch tree into a small, light birch-bark canoe. That was a magical time, perhaps the best of my life. But neither of us would take our canoe on the solitary journey that waited for us the next day.
“Can’t breathe!” I whispered to Leaping Turtle.
Complaints were strictly forbidden; our fathers would never say such a thing.
He hissed back, “You’ll die out there anyway!”
Jokes about serious things were even more unthinkable; if anybody had heard that, we’d both have been banished from the sweat lodge and maybe the whole solemn ritual.
We grinned nervously at each other for a private moment—and then we heard a great hissing and we were choking in new clouds of steam, as an elder poured more water on the hot stones. Sweat was running down my forehead and dripping off my eyebrows; it stung my eyes; it made little rivers down my back and chest.
One of the deep voices rose, booming through the steam-filled room, and the ritual of chant and prayers for the departing boys began.
By the time it was all done, my brain was spinning from the noise and the heat and the sense of mystery. They sent us out through the entryway, the four of us boys who in a few hours would be gone from the village, and we dived into the thin layer of snow on the ground and rolled our sweaty bodies in its wonderful crunching cold.
Above us the sky was clear of cloud now, and the stars blazed down, countless chips of Manitou fire in the darkness, each star with a human being somewhere in his care. I wondered which one was looking out for
me, and hoped he would be paying attention in the morning.
* * *
By dawn I was up from my sleeping mat, dressing in my belt and breechclout, tunic and leggings, with my body underneath them already covered in grease like an extra skin, to keep out the winter cold. When I put my moccasins on my feet I could tell that my mother had fitted an extra layer of rabbit fur inside—something she must have done the night before, a secret, defiant gesture, when only Quickbird was there to see.
I took no food or drink that morning, nor would I have any until I could find it for myself. Out there, alone.
This was what we had been taught: that you must go out fasting, and that this first fast couldn’t be broken until you were given the vision of your Manitou, the spirit who would go with you all your life. Only then might you hunt for food, to start the long lone survival ordeal. My father said that too long a fast would bring not just a vision but weakness and death, so my Manitou would wisely decide the time when he revealed himself. So did my grandmother, who was the wisest person I knew. I hoped they were right.
Everyone was awake—except my baby brother, tucked into his cradleboard, fast asleep. My mother set a log on what was left of the fire. Her face was stern and unhappy, as it had been the day before. Quickbird came and gave me a silent hug, and I could feel that her cheek was wet.
My father was dressed for our journey. He set my bow beside the door, and put my quiver of arrows across my shoulder and my tomahawk in my belt. I reached for my sharp stone knife in its deerskin casing, but he gripped my wrist to stop me.
He said, “I have a better knife for you to take. It cost me many skins, so you must take care of it. And take care of your fingers, too. It is very sharp.”
And he gave me something I’d seen only twice before in my life, in the hands of those who had traveled north to trade with the white men from across the sea. It was a knife made of metal, in a holder of thick hide, moose skin perhaps. The handle was covered in skin too, and the blade was shiny, flat, thin: like the leaf of a bulrush but a thousand times more strong. It was a treasure. I couldn’t imagine where he got it.